Santa Fe Dead

19

IT WAS NEARLY Eagle’s bedtime when he got home, and Susannah was already asleep in his bed, but there was something on his mind, and he had to deal with it.

He went to his study and switched on the computer, then opened his word-processing program and began to write.

To Walter Keeler:

Dear Mr. Keeler,

You and I are not acquainted, but I am in possession of some informationwhich I feel you should have. I met Joe Wilen on the golf course today in Santa Fe, and during our conversation later at the clubhouse, he told me that you and he had been business associates and that he is your personal attorney. I thought it would be better if I asked him to deliver this letter than if I simply sent it to you. I have not, however, discussed its contents with him. I have told him only that it concerns the woman you recently married. The following is everything that I know of her.

She was born Hannah Schlemmer, in Cleveland, Ohio, one of three daughters, to a Jewish pawnbroker. As an adult she moved to New York City and worked in a restaurant there. At some point she married a diamondwholesaler named Murray Rifkind, and she worked for some time at running his office.

She subsequently met a man named James Grafton and fell in love with him, apparently her first time. Grafton had a criminal background, and he convinced her that the only way they could be together was for him to rob Rifkind’s business premises. She went to the office and used her knowledge of its security systems to admit him for the robbery. Grafton then shot and killed her husband. She was shocked, she said, but he forced her to come with him to Miami, where he liquidated the diamonds he had stolen.

Shortly after that, they were both arrested. Hannah then agreed to cooperatewith the prosecution and testified against Grafton. She pled to involuntarymanslaughter and received a sentence of five to eight years in a women’s prison near Poughkeepsie, New York. During this time, I visited her in connection with a double murder in a client’s home in Santa Fe, involving her older sister, Miriam, who had changed her name to Julia. Hannah would ordinarily have been considered for parole after three years served, but as a result of a lawsuit against the State of New York alleging prison overcrowding, she was released early and unconditionally. While in prison, she legally changed her name to Barbara Kennerly.

Shortly after her release, Barbara came to Santa Fe and contacted me. I helped her find employment, and we began to see each other socially. A romance developed, and we were married a year later.

We had been married for a year when I awoke one morning to find that I had been drugged the night before and that Barbara had left Santa Fe after emptying my bank accounts of an amount exceeding a million dollars and wire-transferred the funds to a Cayman Islands bank and thence to one in Mexico City. She also attempted to empty my brokerage accounts, but I was able to prevent that minutes before the broker would have wired the proceeds.

I hired a former IRS agent, specializing in forensic financial work, who was able to recover all but $300,000 of the funds. I also hired two private investigators to go to Mexico and try to persuade Barbara to sign divorce papers and a settlement agreement giving her the $300,000. She shot one of the investigators and pushed the other off a ferry in the Gulf of Cortez. Both recovered. My investigators learned during this period that Barbara and her sister, Julia, by then deceased, were being sought by the Mexican police on a charge of having cut off the penis of a man they said was trying to rape them.

Barbara eluded my investigators and crossed the border into California, where she hid in a well-known spa in La Jolla and had her appearance altered.She came to Los Angeles and saw me in the dining room of the Hotel Bel-Air. Because of the changes in her appearance, I did not recognize her.

Later that night, she drugged the man she was staying with, returned to the hotel and went to the suite where she and I had stayed a number of times while we were married. Unfortunately, the suite was occupied by another couple, and she shot both of them in their sleep, then returned to her friend’s house. The following morning, he did not realize that she had left the house.

She was later arrested and tried for the two murders. While waiting for the verdict and fearing conviction, she escaped from a courthouse conference room and, with the help of a friend, made her way to the El Rancho Encantado Spa. She had, by this time, bought a forged driver’s license and passport in the name of Eleanor Wright. Ironically, she was acquitted at trial, due to the testimony of her friend, who placed her in his home at the time of the murders. It was at this point you made her acquaintance.

I know that all this will come as a shock to you, because Barbara is a very convincing liar. It will seem strange to you, as it does to me, that, having been released from prison and being comfortably married, she would then decamp with my funds and be willing to kill, both to avoid being detained and to take some sort of revenge against me. A psychiatrist friend of mine who knew her says that she is certainly a sociopath and may be a paranoid schizophrenic, a dangerous one. Perhaps it runs in her family, because her older sister murdered three people, one of them her youngest sister.

I tell you these things simply as a matter of conscience, because I believe that you may well be at considerable personal risk. I have no other motive.

My address and phone number are on my letterhead, should you wish to contact me. In the meantime, I hope you will take steps to protect yourself and your property.

Sincerely,

Ed Eagle

Eagle signed the letter, put it into an envelope and sealed it, then he went to bed and slept well.