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

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.