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

“Fuel leak of some kind. The engine just started missing. First thing I thought of was a clogged fuel line, almost like when a fuel valve ices up, except it wasn’t cold enough for that to happen. I knew I shouldn’t be running low, because I had refueled in Boise after Dick and I flew up from Reno—”

“What was the purpose of that trip anyway?” Nash asked. He didn’t really need to know right then, but he liked to interrupt a person’s story in its early stage to see if it would throw the person off.

“Well, Dick was the vice president of leasing rights and the company’s geologist. He was going up to southwest Idaho to get some soil and rock samples from the Hagerman Fossil Beds. He’d had a hunch for a long time that there might be oil under those beds. It was an exploratory trip.”

“I see. Go on,” Nash said.

“Where was I? Oh yeah, the fuel line. I knew I’d started with enough fuel and my gauges didn’t indicate a problem. But about that time, I smelled fuel in the cockpit. I looked around but didn’t see any leakage. Then I felt down beside my seat on the port side and discovered that the fire wall there was cold and damp. Then I knew fuel was seeping out of the tank, very slowly, probably through a tiny crack. It was such a slow seepage that it wasn’t radically affecting the gauges yet. But I knew that sooner or later the fuel gauge would suddenly drop from maybe half full to bone empty. Make a long story short, I was flying over very barren northern Nevada wilderness and hadn’t the slightest idea how much fuel I had left. For all I knew, I could lose power any minute. Then it would have been a crash. At that point, I decided to find a place for an emergency landing, while I still had some power left to control the plane.”

“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.”