The Nevada investigator had done some extracurricular digging into Pensky’s background and turned up newspaper accounts of a scandal of major proportions. Two years before, Owen Pensky had been working for the New York Times as a feature writer. He’d already made quite a reputation for himself when he was accused of lifting passages from the work of another journalist. The charge of plagiarism gave rise to an investigation that uncovered evidence that Pensky was also guilty of inventing sources for certain features he’d published. Every article he’d ever written became suspect. He’d been fired and he’d left New York in disgrace. After ten months scrambling for employment, he’d finally managed to pick up work at one of the Reno papers, a low point for a fellow who’d been everybody’s darling such a short time before.

Pete sat back and thought about this unexpected turn of events, wondering what to make of it. It wasn’t necessarily the case that Mary Lee Bryce and Owen Pensky were having an affair. Maybe this was just a matter of two old friends catching up while the one was in town for professional reasons. Whatever the truth, there had to be a way to play it for maximum effect. The first move would be to spread the facts over more than one document. No point in turning over everything at once. It would be a kindness to let Willard digest the discovery by degrees. Pete went through the photographs and selected two from the Reno High School yearbook, the RaWaNe.

As a senior, Mary Lee Jacobs was petite, a redhead with pale brows and an expression that suggested perpetual anxiety. Owen Pensky looked like the typical high school dork—black-rim glasses, bad haircut, his neck barely big enough to hold up his head. In some ways, Mary Lee Bryce and Owen Pensky seemed well suited for each other since both projected insecurity. Pete himself had been an outcast in his teen years, so he didn’t fault either one in that regard. He couldn’t help but wonder if Pensky was dishonest by nature or if he’d taken up cheating to compensate for a lack of self-confidence.

Odd that Mary Lee had ended up married to a man whose coloring was so much like her own. She and Willard were close enough in appearance to be brother and sister instead of husband and wife. Pete wondered how Willard’s unfortunate accident had factored into the overall equation. The wreck that killed his best friend and resulted in the loss of his own leg dated back to his youth, which meant he was already on crutches when he and Mary Lee first met. Some women were drawn to the physically impaired; witness his own wife’s attraction to him.