“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.”