Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

The Big Shuffle by Clark Howard

In his introduction to his new short story collection, Challenge the Widowmaker, Clark Howard talks of a common element to all Iris stories: “That characteristic is the quality of pride... manifesting itself in surprising ways at unexpected times, giving... desperate people the mind and muscle... to get through another day, and hopefully get another chance.”

Jack Nash had not even sat down at his desk on Monday morning when his boss, Sam Spear, the company’s Director of Claims, came briskly into his office with a file folder in his hand.

“Where the hell have you been for two days?” he asked gruffly. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you since noon Saturday.”

“I went down to Ensenada,” Nash replied undefensively. “Did a little albacore fishing. Laid on the beach. Drank tequila. It’s a primitive custom called enjoying the weekend.”

Spear was a beefy, overbearing man of sixty, with a widely held reputation throughout California All-Risk Liability Company of being able to frighten subordinates with a mere glance. Nash, his best claims investigator, was the one person who was never intimidated by him.

“I don’t suppose you’re up on the news,” Spear said. It was actually an accusation.

“The only news that interests me on weekends is the weather report, Sam.” Nash sat down at his desk while Spear dropped his heavy bulk into one of the chairs facing it and tossed the file folder over to him.

“Eureka Petroleum,” Spear said. “One of their company planes went down in a lake up in northern Nevada late Friday afternoon. Pilot survived, but one of their vice presidents, Richard Tenney, sank with the plane. We carry a blanket policy for a million on all the company officers.”

“With P, T, and A?” Nash asked, opening the folder.

“With P, T, and A,” Spear confirmed. P, T, and A was insurance jargon for Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It was a clause that doubled the amount of insurance payable if an insured was killed while on company business as a passenger on any of those modes of transportation.

“What brought the plane down?” Nash asked.

“Don’t know yet. It’s at the bottom of Ghost Lake, along with Tenney. The lake’s in the Granite Mountains, six or seven thousand feet up, and it’s deep, very deep: fourteen, fifteen hundred feet. They’ve had divers looking for the plane and Tenney’s body for two days, but no luck yet. The lake is four miles wide and twelve miles long. I’ve been on the phone with the local sheriff up there; he’s not too optimistic. Says there’s half a dozen or more bodies in there already — fishermen, boaters, swimmers — that have never been recovered.”

“Ghost Lake,” said Nash. “Aptly named, apparently. What’s the pilot say?”

“He hasn’t been questioned too extensively yet; he’s hospitalized for exposure. Wandered around half the night soaking wet before he found a fishing lodge to get help. All he’s said so far is that the engine was missing badly and in danger of quitting. Says he either had to try a lake landing or risk a crash in the trees.” Spear rose and adjusted his ample belly back under his vest and belt. “Anyway, my notes are all there. I want you to handle this, Jack. You’re the best man I’ve got. Get up to Ghost Lake and start digging in every direction to see if you can find a reason to deny this claim. Company can’t afford to take a two-million-dollar hit this quarter. This could affect our bonuses for the whole year.”

The phone rang on Nash’s desk. He answered and handed it to Spear. “Nelson in data processing, for you.”

Spear took the phone. “Hello — yes — Richard Tenney — T-E-N-N-E-Y, that’s right.” The burly man frowned. “What! Are you sure? Social Security numbers and birth dates match?” His face reddened. “Son of a bitch!” He slammed the phone down.

“Another policy?” Nash asked, raising his eyebrows. He had worked for Sam Spear for ten years and knew what detonated the older man.

“Yes, goddamn it! A personal policy! Half a million!”

“With P, T, and A?”

“Oh, yes! Of course!”

“That raises the death benefit to three million.”

“I can add, Jack!” His face turned redder. “We’ve been double-shuffled!” A double shuffle was when an insured managed to obtain two policies for an amount in excess of what would have been allowed, according to his age and health, in a single policy.

Nash opened the credenza behind his desk and from a small refrigerator got out and opened a bottle of Pellegrino. Coming around the desk with it, he said, “Here, take one of your pills, Sam, before you have a stroke.”

Spear fingered a tiny white pill from his vest pocket and quickly swallowed it with the cold sparkling water. After a few breaths, he started to relax. Presently he gave Jack what he perceived to be a kind, fatherly smile. “You know, my boy, I may be getting too old for all this pressure.” He put an arm around Nash’s shoulders. “You know what? If we can find a way to deny this claim, so that I can go out on a high note, I’m going to put in for retirement and recommend you for my job. Let you move up.”

“You’ve been saying that for five years, Sam.”

“But this time I mean it,” Spear insisted. “It’s time. And you’ve earned it, Jack. Especially if you get us out from under this one. You know as well as I do, Jack, that we’re not Prudential or General America or one of those other giants. California All-Risk is a small regional company. A claim like this can impact our earnings two, even three years down the line. Impact my retirement, too. Find us an out on this one, my boy,” he patted Nash’s back, “and not only will the claims director job be yours, but you’ll be a hero at California All-Risk. A living legend.”

Spear left the office, taking the bottle of Pellegrino with him. Nash returned to his desk and dialed an in-company number. Presently the ring was answered by a female voice with a pronounced Southern drawl.

“Typing pool. This is Stella.”

“Hi. It’s me.”

“Hi, there. Is your back sunburned?”

“A little. I felt it a couple of minutes ago when Sam put his arm around me.”

“Did he give you his retirement speech again?”

“Complete with promises of glory,” Nash said pragmatically. “Listen, I won’t be able to make supper tonight. I have to go over to Nevada on a big claim we’re going to get hit with.”

“That the corporate plane that crashed in some lake?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Two secretaries from sales were talking about it in the john earlier. Will you be gone long?”

“Couple of days is all. Unless I find something funny, of course.”

“Call me?”

“You know I will. You sunburned?”

“I will. ’Bye.”

“ ’Bye, now.”

Hanging up, Nash left his hand on the receiver and thought about Stella. She was from a small town in Georgia and had come to Los Angeles with her husband to work for Pacific Telephone when they were both nineteen. Before long, Stella was pregnant, and her husband was out partying every night, drinking and smoking stuff with his buddies from work. Stella lost the baby and ultimately left her husband. On her own for five years, she had been seeing Nash for a year, seriously for half that time. He was fourteen years older than she, but Stella didn’t seem to mind. Never one to be totally at ease around women, Nash felt he had found a comfortable niche with Stella. He liked everything about her, from the naturally unrestrained drawl of her speech, to the spontaneous humor of her personality, to the abundance of her healthy body and uninhibited libido. And she liked him because all of his excesses were practiced in private, with her. That was all Stella required of a man. Practice gluttony, drunkenness, sexual perversion, whatever — just do it at home with me, sugar.

That suited Jack Nash just fine. Maybe, he thought, after half a dozen false starts over the years, he had found a woman to keep.

While his hand was still on the receiver, Nash’s phone rang. “Jack Nash,” he answered.

“You still here?” Sam Spear asked incisively.

“Just leaving, Sam,” Nash answered. He hung up and left.

Nash flew to Reno, rented a car, and started driving north. He had fifty miles of decent scenery and good highway up to and around the bottom shore of Pyramid Lake, then began a hundred miles of steadily worsening blacktop that took him through dry flats, lava beds, and alkali prairies that looked like moonscapes. After five hours, he reached the stark foothills of the Granite Range and began a slow, steady climb on narrow, snaky roads from four thousand feet up to sixty-seven hundred. There he found high, green meadows, thick pine forests, and crystal streams of clear, cold water. When he rounded a bend and pulled into the little mountain town of Cascade, just before sunset, he felt like he was driving into a picture postcard, it was that pretty.

An attendant at the town’s one service station directed him to the sheriff’s office. It was a compact brick building with a public room in front, two jail cells in back, and a small private office off to one side for the sheriff, a ruddy outdoors-looking man about Nash’s age.

“Sheriff Dan Bosey?” Nash asked, sticking his head in the door. “I’m Jack Nash, claims investigator for California All-Risk Liability Company in Los Angeles. I believe you spoke on the phone with Sam Spear, our director of claims.”

“Sure did,” Bosey said, rising. “Come on in.” He extended his hand. “Like some coffee?”

“Sure would.” Nash shook hands. “Pretty little town you have here.”

“Whole country’s pretty up here on the mountain,” said Bosey with a smile. “It’s getting to it that’s not so pretty.” He poured Nash a cup of coffee from an old-fashioned metal pot on a hotplate in the corner. “Sugar’s there. No cream, sorry.”

“Black’s fine.” Nash sat. “Has the plane been found yet?”

“Nope. Not likely to be, either. I told your boss first time I talked to him not to get his hopes up. Look here.” He handed Nash an eight-by-ten plat diagram showing a cutaway side view of Granite Peak, the mountain they were on, and Ghost Lake, which lay in its center at the top. “Elevation here is sixty-seven hundred and twenty-two feet. Ghost Lake is four miles wide, twelve miles long, and fourteen hundred and twenty feet deep — and it’s a spreader lake. That means that it’s bigger at the bottom than it is at the top. The walls of the lake bed stay pretty much the same nearly all the way down: about four-by-twelve miles, just like at the top. But at the bottom, the bed spreads out just like the mountain does and expands to something like eight-by-twenty miles, with a depth of maybe thirty feet. Just picture a huge mountain cavern down there, only it’s filled with water. Anything sinking vertically to the bottom then starts floating off in some horizontal direction in the surrounding cavern. It could go anywhere the water movement takes it, for miles, before it settles. Or, it might not settle at all; it might just keep moving until it rots away to nothing.”

“So you don’t think the diving operation will be successful?” Nash asked. Bosey shook his head.

“In the fifty-eight years since the town was incorporated back in 1941, which was when we started keeping official records, there’s been six swimmers, four fishermen, and nine boaters lost in Ghost Lake, along with five boats. Not one body and not one boat has ever been brought up. Only thing we ever find is surface debris, pieces that broke off of something, or articles of clothing, like a shoe. Believe me, Mr. Nash, when something or somebody goes down in Ghost Lake, it stays down. It can’t be found, and it can’t be brought up.”

“Sheriff, you sound very convinced of what you’re saying,” Nash offered, “but I have to ask you whether it’s a completely reasonable conclusion? After all, divers found the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean and brought articles up from an incredible depth.”

The sheriff shrugged. “Sure. And it cost tens of millions of dollars to do it. The state of Nevada pays thirty thousand for a diving operation to find someone that drowns in one of its lakes. When that amount gets used up, usually in about three days, the operation is terminated unless an outside source agrees to pick up the tab to continue it. Now maybe California All-Risk or Eureka Petroleum is willing to spend millions of dollars for an unlimited dive operation, in which case there’s probably a chance of success. But remember, there’s a hundred and sixty square miles of water down there that can’t be reached by underwater detection devices because it’s got fourteen hundred feet of rock on top of it. So those hundred and sixty square miles will have to be searched visually, with underwater lighting, about six feet at a time.” Bosey shook his head. “Big job, Mr. Nash. Mighty big job.”

Nash nodded thoughtfully. “You’re a very convincing man, Sheriff.” He finished his coffee. “Incidentally, where’s the pilot?”

“He’s in our little hospital out at the edge of town.”

“What’s his condition?”

“Pretty good. Got two broken fingers, cuts and bruises on his head and shoulders, a banged-up knee, and possible low-grade pneumonia from exposure. But I’d say he’s in great shape — considering the other fellow’s condition.”

Nash looked out the window. It was dark now, the little town’s streetlights on. He felt suddenly tired from the long drive, and realized that his sunburn was itching. “Anyplace in town to stay?”

“You bet. Mountaintop Motel, right at the end of Main Street. Couple fellows from Eureka Petroleum already staying there.”

“I’d like to go out to the lake in the morning, if that’s all right, see the dive site, get some pictures for my report.”

“No problem. I go out there about nine. Pick you up, if you like.”

“Thanks, Sheriff. I appreciate that. How about seeing the pilot?”

“That’s up to the doctors, but I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

“You’ve been very helpful, Sheriff,” Nash said, rising. “Thanks for the time.”

“See you in the morning,” said Bosey.

As Nash walked out to his rented car, he noticed at once that it was becoming considerably cooler on the mountain now that the sun had gone down. He could only imagine what the water temperature was at the bottom of Ghost Lake. If Sheriff Bosey’s description of the lake had been accurate, Richard Tenney’s body would, as the high-elevation air got colder during the night, soon resemble a frozen piece of driftwood, wafting slowly through miles of underwater caverns. Not a very peaceful grave, he thought. And immediately wondered: Or was it?

Hunching his shoulders against the cold, Nash got into his car and headed for the Mountaintop Motel.

After checking into the motel, Nash called Sam Spear, knowing the director of claims would still be in the office. Spear liked to brag that he only worked half days — twelve hours.

“Doesn’t look like we’ll get the body up, Sam,” he told Spear. “It’s at the bottom of a high-elevation spreader lake, floating around in subterranean caverns. It’s doubtful we’ll get the plane up, either, unless maybe it broke up and some pieces surface. I’ll know more tomorrow after I’ve been out to the dive site.”

“That’s bad, Jack, very bad. Without a body, we can’t eliminate foul play between the pilot and the victim. And without the plane, we can’t eliminate malicious tampering or industrial sabotage.”

“I know, Sam. But from what I’ve learned so far, the cost of a possibly successful dive for either one would be exorbitant. Not at all cost-effective for a three million payout.”

“Forget cost-effectiveness!” Spear stormed. “There’s not going to be any three million payout! Now listen to me, Jack,” his voice took on an urgency, “we’ve got to start digging. There’s got to be a glitch there someplace. Now you start asking questions up there. Find out if the pilot was suicidal in any way. Or whether he had a bottle of booze stashed in the cockpit. The victim’s wife is the beneficiary on both policies; find out if the pilot knew her at all. I want to know why we were double-shuffled on these two policies. Hell, nobody’s life is worth three million bucks, not even mine.”

“I’ll get to work on all the angles, Chief,” said Nash, because that was what Spear wanted to hear. And Spear loved to be called “Chief.”

“Remember, my boy, that claims director job is waiting for you.”

Yeah, right, Nash thought as he hung up.

It was too early yet for him to call Stella; he liked to save that for the last thing at night, when he was already in bed, because they had a phone-sex game they liked to play. So he put his coat back on and hurried across Main Street through the chill night air to the Hi Mountain Cafe. He hadn’t a clue what kind of place it was, but when he got past the steamed-up windows he found a neat little establishment run by Mom, Pop, and two daughters who waited tables. Nash ordered the day’s Supper Special, a trout plate with French fries and coleslaw.

While Nash was eating, two executive-looking types came in with a Sharon Stone look-alike who had two inches of a better body ah the way around. Nash figured the two were the men from Eureka Petroleum that the sheriff had mentioned, and the blonde was probably either the widow of the geologist who went down with the plane, or the pilot’s wife. Probably the latter. Pilots always seemed to marry well-built blondes; they seemed to go well with the image.

Nash didn’t bother going over and introducing himself. He liked to keep as low a profile as possible with people until it became necessary to talk to them. So he finished his supper alone, went back over to the motel, got a bag of chips and a can of pop out of the vending machine, and snacked while he watched part of a fight card being telecast on cable from Reno. Finally, when he noticed his earlier fatigue returning, he took a warm shower to soothe his sunburn, climbed into bed, and called Stella.

“Hi, it’s me,” he said when she answered.

“Hi, sugar. Where are you?”

“Little town called Cascade, up in the Granite Mountains of Nevada.”

“Oh, the adventurous life of a claims investigator,” she kidded. “Cold up there?”

“Cold as a well-digger’s ass.”

“How’s the room? You warm enough?”

“I’m fine. Had some good trout for dinner.”

“Waitress pretty?”

“Yeah, I guess. If a guy likes high-school girls who still have their baby fat. Which I don’t.”

“That’s my good boy,” Stella purred.

They talked a little about the claim and the fact that it looked bad for California All-Risk. Three million was by far the largest claim the comparatively small firm had ever been faced with paying. It had paid a one-million-dollar claim some years earlier when a personal-liability insured had gone postal over a job review and killed his supervisor and two coworkers. But aside from that incident, the company’s annual payouts had been remarkably modest when measured against premiums received. Of course, Sam Spear had foiled three other million-dollar claims on policy technicalities and investigative evidence, making him the legend in his own mind that he thought he was. And now, of course, he was trying, with Nash’s help, to do it again — on the company’s largest claim yet.

“Someone said at lunch today,” Stella told him, “that a claim this big might bankrupt the company.”

“That’s nonsense,” Nash said. “We’re a privately owned company. A hit like this would hurt the owners and the employees for the next two or three years, but the company would survive.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Stella drawled. “I don’t want to have to look for a job.”

“You wouldn’t have any trouble finding work. Any typing pool in L.A. would be happy to get those fast fingers of yours.”

“Hmmmm, I know. But I like the job I’ve got. It’s easy. Lets me save my fast fingers for other things.”

That was his opening. “Such as?”

“Well, let me see now...”

She started to talk, beginning their game of telephone intimacy. Soon Nash reached over and turned off the light. It was easier to see what she was saying in the dark.

Early the next morning, Nash ate a Hi Mountain breakfast special across the street, then rode out to Ghost Lake with Sheriff Bosey. The Nevada State Rescue and Recovery Team was already at work when they got there. One diver was in the water, another was preparing to go off the edge of the dive barge, and two others were suiting up for their own dive times. Divers went in at thirty-minute intervals, stayed down one hour, were up for one hour, then back down for another hour, until three dive cycles had been completed. With dive times spaced thirty minutes apart, there were always two divers in the water at the same time except for the first and last half hours of the six-hour search day.

The large dive barge was about a mile out from shore. There was a small speedboat moored next to it for transport to and from the narrow, man-made, rough sand beach. Parked back up from the lakeside were several state vehicles, including a huge tractor-trailer rig with a crane on it, which was used to lift and transport the barge. A number of civilian cars and pickups belonging to locals who had come out to watch the operation were parked farther back, toward the highway.

Sheriff Bosey parked next to the tractor rig and cut the engine. “Bert Cooper, the state dive master, is in charge out there,” he said. Unhooking the dashboard mike, he radioed the barge. “Recovery, this is Cascade One, come in, please.” Within seconds there was a reply.

“Cascade One, this is Recovery. That you, Dan?”

“Yeah, it’s me, Bert. I have Mr. Nash from the insurance company with me over here on shore to take some pictures. Can you give us a quick inventory of everything you’ve found so far.”

“No change from about noon yesterday, Dan,” said Cooper. “We’ve got a total of three pieces of the aircraft. Two were floaters, on the water when we got here: a broken-off section of propeller about fourteen inches long, and a section of fuselage measuring about eighteen-by-twenty inches, which looks to me like it came off the underside of a wing. The third piece is a section of tail stabilizer that was found floating at about eight hundred feet; looks like it probably snapped off from water pressure as the plane sank.”

“Engine?” Nash asked the sheriff.

“Bert—?”

“I heard,” said Cooper. “Not much chance of finding it. Something that heavy went clean to the bottom of twenty feet of silt wherever the plane hit. Maybe it broke out of the fuselage and went down by its lonesome, or maybe it dragged the plane with it. Either way, the hole closed in on top of it. Take six months to find it, less’n you got very damn lucky.”

“Anything else?” the sheriff asked his passenger. Nash shook his head. “Thanks, Bert,” said Bosey. “You packing it in after today?”

“That’s affirmative,” said Cooper. “I’ll stop in and say adios.”

“Ten-four,” said Bosey, and hung up the microphone. “Want me to run you out to the hospital now to see the pilot?”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” said Nash. “Just let me take a few quick pictures first.”

Nash uncased a 35mm Handlemann with a telephoto lens and took a series of photographs on a one-hundred-eighty-degree swing from where the sheriff’s car was parked. Then he got back in the cruiser and Bosey drove away. “I’ll introduce you to Dr. Smalley, who heads up our little hospital,” the sheriff said on the way.

The Cascade Regional Medical Center was a fifteen-bed facility with a separate maternity ward and basic surgery unit. It had two administrative employees, three general nurses, one general-surgery nurse, and a resident physician, all under the supervision of Dr. Leo Smalley, who had come to town to fly-fish twenty years earlier, fallen in love with the little mountain community, and stayed to build a hospital and become its chief of medicine. He fished every day from eleven to two, even when he had to cut a hole in the ice to do it.

Dr. Smalley was tying a fly as he spoke with Nash and the sheriff about Cliff Logan, the Eureka Petroleum pilot who had survived the crash.

“We’ll probably release him in a couple of days,” Dr. Smalley said, “soon’s the swelling in his knee goes down. Knee wasn’t broken, but there is a minor hairline fracture and some very deep bruising. He’ll limp for a while and need some therapy. Also got a broken forefinger and middle finger on his right hand, but both set all right. Contusions and abrasions on his head and upper torso are no problem. Symptoms of pneumonia were false; just respiratory stress and fever from being wet in the woods most of the night.”

“Any objection to my interviewing him?” Nash asked.

“None at all. He’s in room eight, down the hall.” The doctor looked at the sheriff. “They going to have that damned barge off my lake today, Dan?”

“Looks like, Doc.”

“Good. Disturbs my fish.”

Nash left them and walked down to room eight. The door was open. When he stepped inside, he saw that the blond woman from the cafe the previous night was sitting near the window, looking through a magazine. Their eyes met and she said quietly, “I’m afraid he’s asleep right now.”

“No,” a voice said from the bed, “I’m awake.” Cliff Logan used a control to raise the head of his bed to a half-sitting position. “Can I help you?”

“Jack Nash, claims investigator for California All-Risk Liability Company,” Nash said, handing Logan a business card. “We carry the blanket life policy on Eureka Petroleum’s executives. You feel up to a few routine questions?”

“Sure. The personnel director of Eureka is in town and came to visit me yesterday. He said there’d probably be someone coming around to see me. Said I was to cooperate fully.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Nash. “Claims are always settled more quickly when everyone cooperates.” He drew a chair alongside the bed and sat down. “Any idea what caused the crash?”

“Wasn’t a crash,” Logan said firmly. “It was an emergency landing.” He had a square jaw, unshaven for a few days, and a brush crew cut, giving him an old-fashioned B-movie convict look.

“Okay,” Nash said agreeably, “what caused the emergency landing?”

“Fuel leak of some kind. The engine just started missing. First thing I thought of was a clogged fuel line, almost like when a fuel valve ices up, except it wasn’t cold enough for that to happen. I knew I shouldn’t be running low, because I had refueled in Boise after Dick and I flew up from Reno—”

“What was the purpose of that trip anyway?” Nash asked. He didn’t really need to know right then, but he liked to interrupt a person’s story in its early stage to see if it would throw the person off.

“Well, Dick was the vice president of leasing rights and the company’s geologist. He was going up to southwest Idaho to get some soil and rock samples from the Hagerman Fossil Beds. He’d had a hunch for a long time that there might be oil under those beds. It was an exploratory trip.”

“I see. Go on,” Nash said.

“Where was I? Oh yeah, the fuel line. I knew I’d started with enough fuel and my gauges didn’t indicate a problem. But about that time, I smelled fuel in the cockpit. I looked around but didn’t see any leakage. Then I felt down beside my seat on the port side and discovered that the fire wall there was cold and damp. Then I knew fuel was seeping out of the tank, very slowly, probably through a tiny crack. It was such a slow seepage that it wasn’t radically affecting the gauges yet. But I knew that sooner or later the fuel gauge would suddenly drop from maybe half full to bone empty. Make a long story short, I was flying over very barren northern Nevada wilderness and hadn’t the slightest idea how much fuel I had left. For all I knew, I could lose power any minute. Then it would have been a crash. At that point, I decided to find a place for an emergency landing, while I still had some power left to control the plane.”

“Was Ghost Lake the first place you came to?”

“No, third. We flew over a couple of smaller lakes first, but I wanted more room. The flight map showed a bigger lake not far ahead. So that was the one I picked.”

“Did you radio your position?”

“Tried to, but I couldn’t throw a signal. I was too low in the mountains by then. I’d have had to get altitude to guarantee a signal, and I was afraid I might not have enough fuel to make the climb.”

“What kind of plane was it?” Nash asked, even though the file Sam Spear had given him contained that information.

“A Bolo-Horizon J20,” Logan said.

“I’m not familiar with that one.”

“Single-engine, cabin-type monoplane,” Logan replied. “Air-cooled reciprocating engine, fixed-pitch propeller. Nice little ship. Handles easily, can get in and out of small places. Carries a pilot plus three.”

“Your passenger, Tenney, wasn’t a pilot, was he?”

“No. I’m Eureka’s only pilot.”

“When you hit the water, what happened?”

“I went in to do a belly-flop, landing gear up, as close to the middle of the lake as I could. I wasn’t sure how the plane would take it, whether it would crack up or not. So I instructed Dick to go out the cabin door as soon after we hit as possible, and I’d go out the sliding port window. That way we wouldn’t jam up with each other trying to abandon the plane.”

“But Mr. Tenney didn’t get out?”

“No. I don’t know what happened. Maybe the cabin door jammed from the impact. I barely got out myself; the window turned out to be a tighter squeeze than I thought it would be.”

“How’d the plane go under?”

“Tilted forward on its nose. The engine weight was pulling it down when I was halfway out the window. My legs were still inside and I got pulled under as the cockpit submerged. I managed to swim away underwater. When I surfaced, I was maybe thirty feet away and the tail section was just going under.”

“No way at all you could have helped Mr. Tenney?”

Logan shook his head emphatically. “No way. I couldn’t even see him.”

Nash cleared his throat. “I have to ask you a sensitive question, Mr. Logan. Might as well get it cleared up now before the formal cause-of-death hearing with the claims adjusters. Was there any animosity or hard feelings of any kind between you and Mr. Tenney? Anything that might be construed as a reason for you not helping him get out of the plane?”

“I’ll answer that,” a female voice interjected. The blond woman walked over from the window. Nash had almost forgotten she was in the room. “I can vouch for the friendship between Cliff and my husband.”

“Cliff and your—?”

“I’m Ruth Tenney. Richard Tenney’s widow.”

Nash’s expression registered surprise. He had figured her for the pilot’s wife, not the victim’s. Wearing a stylish, light green St. John two-piece knit suit, a dark green Givenchy bag slung from one shoulder, the last thing she looked like was a new widow.

“And as long as you’re a California All-Risk representative,” she said quietly, “I might as well show you something.” She opened the Givenchy and removed an envelope. “This is a flight-insurance policy Dick purchased from one of your vending machines at the Reno airport and mailed to me. Cliff said he just did it on the spur of the moment. It’s for one million dollars.”

Nash’s eyes flicked from Ruth Tenney to Cliff Logan and back again. The payout had been raised from three million to four million.

The double shuffle had just become a triple shuffle.

“It’s murder,” Sam Spear said flatly. “I can smell it. A big shuffle. Three policies, four million payoff. Coincidences like that don’t happen in the insurance business. The pilot and the wife killed that poor son of a bitch just as sure as God made little green apples. And you and I, Jack my boy, are going to nail them for it.” Spear cocked his basketball-shaped head, squinting across the desk at Nash. “You agree with me, don’t you?”

“I agree that something’s wrong,” said Nash. “I’m not sure it’s murder.”

“What else could it be?” Spear demanded. “You said yourself that they exchanged ‘knowing’ and ‘suggestive’ glances when you were with them in that hospital room. You said that in your opinion she didn’t look or act like a new widow. Now look, nobody was with Tenney when he bought that vending-machine policy at the Reno airport except the pilot. The same pilot who got out a window of the sinking plane while the victim couldn’t get out the cabin door! They’re in it together, I tell you.”

“Maybe they are,” Nash allowed. “But it still could have been an accident, Sam. A very lucky accident for them — but still an accident. Maybe the cabin door really did jam on impact—”

“Bullshit!” Spear declared. “Tenney didn’t get out the cabin door because Cliff Logan hit him in the head with something and knocked him unconscious. Why the hell do you think Logan flew over two other lakes to land on that one? Because they planned it that way. They knew that lake was a spreader. They knew the physical evidence of their crime would disappear forever. But, by God,” he slammed a fat fist down on his desk, “we’re going to get them anyway, Jack! We’re going to get them on circumstantial evidence!” Spear leaped from his chair with surprising dexterity for his size, snatched up the Tenney file, and growled, “Come on!”

“Where to?” asked Nash.

“Herman Golden’s office. After you told me about this on the phone yesterday, I set up a meeting with him.”

“Herman Golden? I thought you said his fees were too high.” Golden was a private detective who specialized in fraudulent insurance claims.

“They are too high,” said Spear, “but so is a four-million-dollar payoff.”

Golden’s office was in a modest but respectable building on the Westwood edge of Santa Monica. It was furnished in California-tacky. Golden himself was somewhere near Sam Spear’s age and had been a private detective for twenty years, since retiring from the L. A. County sheriff’s office where he’d spent the preceding twenty years. In neither job had he ever been required to raise his hand in anger, even while working the street. A devoutly religious man, he believed in calm reasoning, polite behavior, and fairness. He closed his offices on every Jewish holiday, for himself, and every Catholic holiday, for his wife of forty-two years.

“My, my, my, the things that some people do for money,” the detective commented after Sam Spear had outlined the facts of the claim for him. “All people have to do in life is work hard and save diligently, and they’ll end up just as well-off. Don’t you agree, Sam?”

“Herman, at your exorbitant hourly rate, I don’t want to listen to any personal philosophical theories,” Spear carped. “Let’s stick to business. I’ll tell you how I want this handled. I want around-the-clock surveillance on both Cliff Logan and Ruth Tenney. I want deep background checks on both of them. I want discreet, off-the-record interviews with superiors, peers, and subordinates at Eureka Petroleum, as well as neighbors around both residences. And I want everything you do to be coordinated with Jack here; he’s to work right along with you so that I can be kept up to speed on everything.”

“No problem,” said Golden. “Jack and I have worked together before.”

“All right, then,” said Spear, getting up to leave. “I’m putting it in your hands. I’ve got forty-five days before the claim has to be paid or formally denied. There’s a board of directors meeting in four weeks. I want to be able to go in there and recommend a denial of the claim and have it approved. I’m counting on you two to make that happen.” He patted Nash on the shoulder. “Jack, my boy, you know what’s in it for you if we pull this one off.”

After Spear left, Nash and Golden looked at each other knowingly. “Same old Sam,” said the private detective. “Still holding out the carrot. He’ll probably be in that claims-director job until he drops dead.”

“You just might be right,” Nash agreed.

He was surprised to find that the thought of Sam Spear dropping dead was not unpleasant to him.

They worked the deep background checks first, Nash doing Cliff Logan and Golden taking Ruth Tenney. Through accessing of public records, beginning with voter registrations and driver’s licenses, they developed past addresses, which they sent out for subsequent neighborhood canvasses by out-of-town agencies. Soon they learned that Cliff Logan had lived in Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, and Honolulu. Ruth Tenney had resided in Dayton, Hollywood, and Reno.

“No residential matches,” said Golden.

Logan’s pilot’s license showed that he had learned to fly in the Marine Corps, and after discharge had logged flying hours as a crop duster in Oklahoma, piloting inter-island commuter flights in Hawaii, and later flying between Las Vegas and Reno for a small, regional airline called Las Reno Air.

Ruth Tenney, maiden name Ruth Slott, had left Ohio to try acting school in Hollywood, done some modeling, and finally been a pole dancer for a while before giving up on California and moving to Reno, where she took dancing lessons and ultimately landed a job in the revue line at the Miramar Hotel’s showroom.

“Reno might be a match,” said Nash. “Ruth lived there, Logan flew in and out.”

Golden nodded. “I’ll check with Las Reno Air.” After he had done it, he said, “Bingo. When Las Reno flight crews overnighted up north, they stayed at the Miramar.”

Sam Spear was almost maniacally gleeful when Nash reported that news to him. “I knew it! They’re a couple of losers: a hoochy-cooch dancer and a hobo pilot.”

“Doesn’t make them murderers,” Nash demurred.

“It will, it will! Keep digging. Find out how a tramp like her hooked a geologist for a husband.”

The marriage license showed that Ruth Marie Slott had married Richard Alan Tenney in front of a Justice of the Peace in Reno thirteen months earlier. A check with coworkers who remembered her from the Miramar revue said that she had met Dick Tenney when a petroleum association had booked the entire showroom during a convention and the dancers were paid extra to circulate among the mostly male guests after the show. Tenney had invited Ruth to dinner, she had accepted, and a month later they were married.

“What a schmuck this Tenney must have been,” Golden groaned. “He should have found himself a nice schoolteacher or librarian.”

But Sam Spear was delighted. “Nice guy falls for tramp, just like I figured,” he boasted. “Now,” he licked his lips in anticipation, “find me out these two answers: One, how long after the marriage was it before Cliff Logan was hired as Eureka Petroleum’s company pilot; and two, what did other people think of the Tenney marriage?”

The first part was easy. Cliff Logan had been hired by Eureka eight months earlier, which was five months after the Tenneys married. The previous pilot had been fired after the wife of a Eureka executive reported that he had fondled her in the company parking lot when she came to pick up her husband after work. The executive’s wife was Ruth Tenney.

As for the state of the Tenney marriage, Nash checked that one out himself. He flew to Reno, drove to Fallon, Nevada, where the company had its headquarters, and made some discreet inquiries of the Tenneys’ neighbors. What he learned, by this time, did not surprise him. Richard Tenney was a navy veteran who had gone to college on the G. I. Bill. He was described as a very low-key, introspective, scholarly type, with thinning light-brown hair. He wore wire-rim eyeglasses, was soft-spoken, thoughtful, even a little shy. Neighbors and coworkers at Eureka Petroleum had unanimously been surprised when he married a vivacious, showy, obviously self-indulgent woman like Ruth Slott. Most acquaintances had predicted that the union would not last six months. Ruth was thought to be far “too much woman” for her somewhat timid husband. A number of wives were known to have begun keeping a close watch on their own husbands in the expectation that it would not be long before Ruth Tenney decided to start “playing around.” There had been a collective sigh of relief when the handsome, dark-haired, virile, and single Cliff Logan came on board as the new Eureka company pilot. It wasn’t long before Ruth began to be seen with him, innocently enough at first, dancing at the company club, on the Eureka bowling team, taking flying lessons in Cliff’s spare time. Richard didn’t seem to mind; he was convinced they were just friends, and he trusted Ruth. Anyway, as a geologist, rocks were his life, not people.

“Are you convinced now?” Spear asked Nash, after reading this latest report.

“I’ve always been convinced there was something improper regarding the claim,” Nash defended himself. “I just couldn’t buy your murder theory. I’ve talked to both of them, Sam, face-to-face. I’m sorry, they just don’t seem like murderers.”

Spear rolled his bulging eyes toward the ceiling. “I’m glad you weren’t on the Ted Bundy jury, Jack.” He opened a file on his desk. “I’ve developed a little independent information that might interest you, my boy. Remember Cliff Logan’s employment record showing him as a pilot for an inter-island commuter airline in Hawaii? To qualify for that job, he had to take training in emergency water landing of small aircraft. He finished first in his class. He knew exactly what he was doing when he set down on Ghost Lake; he knew how to get out of the plane, and he knew how to sink it.

“Here’s something else. I talked with a couple of other Las Reno pilots and they told me that a year before Cliff Logan quit to go to work for Eureka, he had been dating a blond showgirl from the Miramar. She dumped him and married somebody else. It left Logan pretty bummed out for a while. But a few months later, he started seeing a married woman and seemed to come out of it. The married woman was also a blonde.” Spear poked the file with his forefinger. “Same woman, Jack. Ruth Slott Tenney.”

“If they’ve been that crazy about each other for so long,” Nash said, “and were still so crazy about each other that they’d commit murder to be together, how do they manage to stay away from each other now? They’re never seen together anymore. Neighbors around the Tenney home say Ruth has hardly gone out at all since the accident. And Logan’s not even in Fallon anymore; he’s living in Reno, getting therapy for his knee. Phone records don’t even show that they’re calling each other. People who commit murder together keep in touch, Sam. They have to, to make sure neither of them is turning on the other. You taught me that, Sam. But these two have gone separate ways since a few days after the accident.”

“Wrong,” said Spear. “I just got Herman Golden’s latest surveillance report an hour ago. They’ve been meeting at the Top Dollar Motel down at the edge of Carson City. It’s an hour’s drive from Fallon, and an hour’s drive from Reno. They meet every other night, usually between midnight and three. The neighbors don’t see Ruth leave because the neighbors are probably all asleep by then. The surveillance guys don’t know how or when Logan gets down there; they think he might be taking a bus or a taxi from the hospital where he’s getting his therapy — there are a number of exits there and they lose him nearly every day. But he’s usually already at the motel when she gets there about one in the morning. They go into the bar for a drink or two, then head for the room. After two or three hours in the sack, Ruth leaves and goes home so she can be back in before daylight. Logan just stays there the rest of the night.”

Spear smiled one of his nasty little smiles. “Check it out,” he said. “They met last night, they’ll meet again tomorrow night. Hop on a commuter up to Carson City and see for yourself.”

“I might do that,” Nash said.

As Nash was leaving Spear’s office, the claims director added, “Oh, Jack, if you go, don’t put the trip on your expense account. You’ll be doing this to satisfy your own curiosity. Far as I’m concerned, this case is closed and the claim is denied.”

Spear was laughing quietly to himself as Nash closed the office door behind him.

In bed that night in Stella’s modest little apartment, with her face nuzzled into his shoulder, Nash found himself chewing on the inside of his mouth, a habit he had when he was perplexed and troubled about something. Stella noticed him doing it.

“What’s the matter, lover?” she asked lazily. “Didn’t get enough?”

“I always get enough with you,” Nash said. “No, it’s just that I can’t help thinking that Sam is stretching too far to make the Tenney claim a murder case.”

“Why would he do that?” Stella asked. “I mean, dead’s dead. Won’t the company have to pay the death benefit anyway?”

“Not if we can prove by circumstantial evidence that the beneficiary on all three policies conspired with another employee of Eureka Petroleum to kill him. That would void everything. We don’t even need a criminal conviction, either; we can claim fraud in a civil court. Remember how O. J. Simpson was found not guilty in a criminal case but guilty under the same facts in a civil case? Same principle applies here.”

“You think Spear is wrong?”

“Something’s wrong, I just don’t know what. Maybe it’s me.”

“Hmmmm, I doubt that. You’re usually very good at everything you do, in the office and out. Stop chewing the inside of your mouth.”

They lay in silence for a few minutes, the light in the tiny little bedroom very low, not even a sheet covering them, Stella turned toward him with one long leg thrown over between his, one hand across his chest, fingers playing with the short hair around his ear.

“My rent got raised today,” she said after a while.

“Really? How much?”

“Forty a month. I’m going to have to look for something cheaper.”

Nash grunted quietly. “I doubt if you can find anything cheaper. What we probably need to do is move in together. Find something nicer for both of us.”

“Even if we did,” Stella reasoned, “it wouldn’t be all that nicer. It’s not like you earn big money either. What we probably should do is both find better jobs, with bigger companies that pay more.”

“I’d hate to do that,” Jack objected quietly. “I’ve put in a lot of years with California All-Risk. Sam keeps telling me I’m next in line for the claims director job. That would pay me about thirty thousand a year more. We’d be okay once I get that job.”

“If you ever get it,” Stella pointed out. “Spear is the type to keep dangling it in front of you for years.”

Jack sighed quietly and they fell into silence again. Then presently he said, “I’ll be gone again tomorrow night. Back over to Nevada on the Tenney claim.”

Stella sighed also. “Well, if you’re not going to be here, you’ll have to give me a little something to tide me over.”

She began to rub herself against his thigh and brought her playful fingers down from his ear.

Just before noon, two mornings later, Nash walked into Sam Spear’s office with a report file in his hand. The claims director was getting his presentation together for a one o’clock meeting with the company’s officers to make a decision on the Tenney claim.

“Well?” Spear asked. “Did you go up to Carson City?”

“Yes. Came back on the six o’clock commuter this morning.”

“See the rendezvous at the Top Dollar Motel?”

“I saw it.”

“Good, good.” Spear chuckled as he organized his papers. “This will be the biggest feather in my cap yet, getting this claim denied. They’ll probably hang an oil painting of me in the lobby after I retire.”

“Just when do you think that might be, Sam? Your retirement?” Spear feigned a cheerless expression. “If it was up to me, my boy, I’d pack it in right now, turn the job over to you. But after today, the company’s officers probably wouldn’t even consider letting me retire. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they offered me a five-year employment contract, with a guaranteed salary increase every year. And more stock options, too. I think I’ve earned that.” He paused and looked solemnly at Nash for a moment. “You know, my boy, the work I’ve done to get this Tenney claim denied is kind of like that fellow — what was his name, Noel? — who built the ark or whatever it was and saved mankind. I’ve saved this company, Jack. I’m kind of like, what do you call it, a saint.”

“So you won’t be retiring anytime soon, then?”

“Afraid not, Jack. It’s just not in the cards right now. But don’t worry, your time will come. One of these days.”

Sure, Nash thought. One of these days.

“I’ll see you later, Sam,” he said.

“Right. I’ll let you know how the meeting goes.” Spear smiled widely and pointed to the report file in Nash’s hand. “That for me?”

“No, not for you, Sam. See you later.”

Shortly before two, a pale, stunned Sam Spear walked into Nash’s office and dropped heavily into a chair.

“They — turned down my recommendation,” he said in disbelief. “The directors — asked me to — to retire.”

“I guess,” Nash said quietly, “they didn’t want the company to accuse two people of a murder that couldn’t be proved.”

“Couldn’t be — proved? What do you mean?”

“I mean Richard Tenney’s not dead, Sam. He’s not at the bottom of Ghost Lake. He was probably never even on the plane.”

“What!”

“This was — never a murder, Sam. It was a big shuffle, all right, but it was just a good, old-fashioned insurance-fraud scam. Tenney was in on it; as a matter of fact, he might even have planned it. One of the things I learned from talking to neighbors and coworkers was that he never liked his job. Snooping around for oil deposits didn’t suit him. He dreamed about going to South America and exploring ancient archeological sites, visiting the ice shelves of Antarctica and looking at rocks that were millions of years old, searching for prehistoric bones in the Himalayas. For that kind of life, a person needs financial independence. The kind of financial independence you can get from two million dollars wisely invested.”

“Two million?”

“Yeah, I figure Cliff Logan was in for half. After all, he took the major risk, crash landing on that lake and all. He put his life on the line so I imagine the four million was going to be cut down the middle.”

“Where did you get all this information?” Spear demanded.

“I investigated the claim, Sam. I kept looking for new evidence. All you did was decide it was murder and focus on that.” Nash tossed a report file across the desk. “It’s all in there, Sam. When you were telling me about Ruth Tenney meeting Cliff Logan every other night at the Top Dollar Motel outside Carson City, you said something that piqued my curiosity. You said the surveillance team lost Logan every day when he went to the hospital in Reno for his therapy. Yet he supposedly got down to Carson City every other night to meet Ruth. So when I flew over there to satisfy my curiosity about their rendezvous, as you called it, I decided to also find out why the surveillance guys kept losing Logan. The reason, Sam, is that Logan didn’t leave the hospital after his therapy sessions. He hung around and played gin rummy with some patients in the hospital recreation room every day. Stayed for the whole afternoon — until his girlfriend, a recently divorced blond nurse, got off shift for the day. Then he left with her, in her car. By then, of course, the surveillance crew had given up and gone home. Incidentally, the blond nurse is the married woman Logan took up with after Ruth dumped him for Dick Tenney. That’s the reason he decided to undergo his therapy in Reno; so they could be together.”

“Well, what difference does all that make?” Spear asked belligerently. “Maybe he’s two-timing Ruth. The surveillance crew in Carson City reports that he was down there meeting her!”

Nash shook his head. “They’re wrong, Sam. Ruth wasn’t going down there to meet Cliff Logan. She was meeting her husband, Dick Tenney. I watched them last night. I can see why the surveillance people down there would mistake Tenney for Logan. Our geologist has a toupee of thick black hair just like Cliff’s now, and last night he was wearing a leather jacket like the kind a lot of private pilots wear. He wasn’t wearing glasses either, so maybe he’s got contact lenses now. Whatever, it was an understandable misidentification, especially since the surveillance people didn’t know what Dick Tenney looked like.”

“But — how did you know?” Spear was aghast. “And how can you be sure? I mean, it was nighttime, dark out—”

“Think about it, Sam. Why was Logan going to the hospital for therapy?”

“Why, his knee was banged up in the emergency landing. So what?”

“So the guy Ruth was meeting at the motel didn’t limp.”

For a moment, Spear stared at Nash with his mouth agape. Then he reverted to his normal behavior and tried to intimidate and bluff. “That doesn’t prove that the man down there is Tenney! It could he anybody!”

“No, it’s Tenney. He and Ruth went into the all-night coffee shop for something to eat before she headed for home. While they were in there, I bribed the night desk clerk with fifty bucks — which I didn’t put on my expense account, Sam — to let me into their room. I picked up the only two drinking glasses that had been used. Herman Golden had a friend of his in the sheriff’s department lift fingerprints from them early this morning after I got back. The prints on one of the glasses match the prints on Richard Tenney’s navy service record. It’s him, Sam. He’s alive.”

An executive secretary stuck her head in the door. “Excuse me, Mr. Nash. The directors would like to see you in the boardroom.”

“Be right there,” Nash told her.

Dismayed, feeling like an accident victim, Sam Spear picked up the report file Nash had tossed across the desk to him. “You had this in my office before I went to the meeting.” It was not a question, rather a dreadful realization.

“I had the original. That’s a copy. The directors have the other one. If it’s any consolation to you, Sam, the Tenney claim will still be denied. The big shuffle didn’t work. The company won’t have to take the four-million-dollar hit.”

“To hell with the company,” Spear said bitterly. “And to hell with you.”

“Sorry you feel that way, Sam.” Nash rose and went to the door. “No rush to vacate your office,” he said on the way out. “I’ll be taking a week off to get married and look for a new apartment. So long, Sam.”

Nash walked down the hall toward the boardroom without looking back.