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.”