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

“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.

The Extortionately Dear Departed by David Williams