Reaction: Wengerts are shocked they might have been a hit man’s targets.

SAN CLEMENTE —  James Wengert describes himself and his wife, Margaret, as normal, middle-class people, which is all the more reason why “we’re terrified . . . utterly dumbfounded” about a police investigation that on Tuesday cast them as victims in a possible murder-for-hire scheme.

Wengert, 48, who with his wife lives on a scenic bluff in San Clemente, was shot in the face April 10 by a man who confronted him in the basement parking lot of a small, two-story office building on South El Camino Real here between 7:30 and 7:45 a.m.

When the man approached, Wengert said “only the obvious” went rushing through his brain: He was soon to become the victim of “a mugging, a random urban robbery.”

“I got out of my car. He got out of his. He walked up, stuck a gun in my face and said, ‘Give me your wallet.’ I’d never seen the guy before in my life. But I never thought he would shoot me,” Wengert said.

His assailant--”a perfect stranger”--shot him in the face with a single round from a 9-millimeter, semiautomatic handgun.

But as Wengert learned Tuesday, the full scope of the brief attack was even more incredible, “something I would have never imagined in a million years.”

The couple is “floored,” he said, by revelations made public Tuesday that Wengert’s shooting appears to be related to the 1995 murder of a flight attendant in Fountain Valley and a bizarre case of mistaken identity involving Wengert’s wife.

Police say they now believe the killer’s intended target was not Jane Carver, the flight attendant, but rather Margaret Wengert, who leaves a cheery “Thank you and God bless you” as the greeting on their telephone answering machine.

“We’re as dumbfounded about it as everyone else is,” James Wengert said through clenched teeth, the result of having his jaw wired together in the wake of the shooting. “I don’t want to screw up anybody or anything--the police and my lawyer don’t really want me to say anything--but I’m as mystified by all this stuff as everyone else is. It’s amazing. It’s shocking.”

Court records show that Wengert owed about $400,000 to a Huntington Beach finance company called Premium Commercial Services Corp. Two men associated with Premium Commercial have been linked by police to the Carver killing and to the shooting of Wengert, who declined to talk about his dealings with the company on the advice of his attorney.

For reasons he says he can’t discuss, Wengert and his wife--both native Californians--moved to San Clemente in January from their Fountain Valley home of 24 years, near where Carver was slain.

They told neighbors, however, that the move would put them closer to their daughter, who, neighbors said, is expecting a child in July.

Margaret Wengert was upset to be moving, according to former neighbor Rose Marie Trenkle.

“Part of it was that she had lived there so long,” said Trenkle, who writes the neighborhood newsletter, the Greenbrook East Newsletter. “She is a sentimental person. But she was happy to go help with her new grandchild.”

The Wengerts, original owners of the house in the small neighborhood of tract homes, lived quietly and kept to themselves, neighbors said. Margaret Wengert, or Peggy as she was called by her neighbors, walked her dog every evening along Sioux River Circle with a neighbor and was a parishioner at King of Glory Lutheran Church, where she attended Bible study each week, said Lynn Marecek, who directed the class.

“I can’t believe this happened to them,” Trenkle said. “No one ever knows what’s going to happen [in the future].”

Wengert said his wife, who was recently laid off from her job with an East Coast banking interest, is “scared . . . very scared” about the police discovery that Carver’s killer may have intended her as the target of a contract hit.

“She’s handled it pretty well, but she’s pretty shaken up,” Wengert said.

He chuckled at media references to himself as a “private eye,” saying he was in business for himself as a “financial researcher,” a job that is usually no more harrowing than scouring the country for missing heirs who are due to receive money after someone dies.

“It is not dangerous work,” he said. “Listen, that morning in the garage surprised me as much as anyone else. I’ve never, ever been in that kind of danger before at any time in my life and pray I won’t be again.

“I’m nowhere close to this Phillip Marlowe stuff I’ve been hearing about. My wife and I are normal, middle-class, everyday people who get up and go to work for a living. And right now, we’re scared. This is way out of our league.”

As for the ongoing investigation, “you probably know a hell of a lot more than I do,” Wengert said, but he commended the Orange County Sheriff’s Department for “doing just a hell of a job. The patrol deputies showed up immediately, which may have saved my life.”

The man accused of shooting Wengert, Paul Alleyne, was formally charged with attempted murder.

From the crime scene, a bleeding Wengert was rushed to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, where he underwent more than three hours of surgery to repair the physical damage to his body. But the psychological damage is, in his words, an open wound.

“I’ve become very, very careful,” he said. “I’m very careful and apprehensive about going in dark places. I get a little jumpy when I see people I don’t know.”

And these days, that applies to just about everyone--investigators, the news media . . .

“I think it’s fair to say,” Wengert said, “that I’m more than a little surprised about this whole turn of events. It’s incredible. Just incredible.”