“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.”