“I don’t represent his family,” Randy said. “I represent Bill and his wishes. Nick’s his heir and if Nick doesn’t want the insurance money for whatever reason, I don’t feel compelled to go after it for the estate. There’s plenty without it.”

“If Bill’s family litigates the will, won’t you have to disclose the existence of the policy?”

He sighed. “They won’t sue. I’m settling with them.”

“Last time we talked it sounded like you were going to go the mat.”

“Yeah, well, I calculated what it would cost to fight them and decided it was cheaper to buy them off. They’ll take fifty thousand to go away and renounce any further claims to Bill’s estate. They’ll never find out about the policy.” He grinned. “So Western States gets a windfall. Won’t that raise eyebrows over there?”

“I’m counting on their greed outweighing their curiosity.”

“Good luck, Henry,” he said. “It was a pleasure doing business with you.”

Back at my office, I spread out the contents of Bill Ryan’s case file on my desk. I pondered how to explain to Ruth Fleming why, after implying that Nick had murdered Ryan, the renunciation of the death benefit by Ryan’s estate—of which Nick was sole heir—wasn’t simply further evidence of Nick’s guilt. That’s how it would’ve looked to me. As I’d told Randy Gifford. my best hope was that whatever questions she might continue to harbor about the circumstances of Ryan’s death, the bottom line would win out. That depended on how scrupulous she was. Even if Western States was off the hook for having to pay out the benefit, she might still insist the police should be informed that a potential crime had been committed to make sure she was in the clear. A crime had been committed, but not the one I had imagined. Nick hadn’t murdered Ryan; Ryan had attempted to murder Nick, but Bill Ryan couldn’t be prosecuted so it was all a wash. Life would be easier if I could tell her that, but my hands were tied by my promise to Isabel Trejo.

I picked up the suicide note. Dear Dolly. The Trejos had taken Ryan into their family and yet he felt enough of an outsider to have signed his full name to his suicide note as if they might not know who had written it had he simply signed it Bill. Something drew my attention to the insurance policy which was open to the signature page. I looked at it, then back at the note, then back at the policy. I put the note side by side with the policy and compared the signatures. They were completely and dramatically different.

Ruth Fleming compared the signature on the policy to Ryan’s signature on the last page of his will that I had obtained from Randy Gifford.