Fare Play by Barbara Paul

everything?” At the back of her mind, a thought was born: He could have told me all this over the phone .
    Holland had both hands on her shoulders now. “This morning I sent Zoe Esterhaus over to talk to Bowman’s neighbors. She found one neighbor who’d been especially friendly with our missing lady. The neighbor says Bowman moved back to her hometown—Lansing, Michigan. The last she saw of Bowman, she was waving goodbye from the backseat of a cab.”
    â€œNo forwarding address.”
    â€œRight. Bowman said she’d be staying with relatives until she found a place and then she’d write. But she won’t.”
    Marian stood up to escape from those hands. “You checked airlines.”
    â€œRight before I called you. No Rosalind Bowman or Laura Cisney on any flights to Lansing. Or to anyplace else. But we already know she never left New York. She was here in this office on Friday.”
    â€œAs Laura Cisney.”
    â€œProbably a name she concocted in the elevator on the way up. If she has another identity established, it won’t be in the name of Laura Cisney. No, she’s been too thorough to reveal her new identity that casually.” Holland smiled wryly. “What she’s done has been to commit an act of symbolic suicide. She’s killed off Rosalind Bowman and written finis to the life that Rosalind Bowman lived. It’s as if she’d died.”
    â€œThe lady doesn’t want to be found,” Marian said with a nod. “But why hang around here if she wants to start a new life elsewhere?”
    Holland cocked an eyebrow. “Perhaps the lady had one more account to close before she left,” he suggested.
    Marian nodded. “Oliver Knowles. Did you find any connection between the two of them?”
    â€œNot even a trace of one. And believe me, we looked.”
    Marian believed him. “Yet somehow Knowles had a big enough impact on her that she abandoned everything and everyone she knew in her life … and hired your agency to follow him before she made her final escape. What do you suppose she wanted to do? She wouldn’t have had him followed if she’d already hired a hit man.”
    Holland agreed. “But whatever she had in mind, she’s probably gone now—now that Knowles is dead.”
    â€œI suspect you’re right. Anyway, this does tell us that Knowles was not the simple toymaker he appeared to be.” She picked up the folder containing the information Holland had gathered about Rosalind Bowman. “May I take this?”
    â€œOf course.” A sardonic smile. “Well, Lieutenant, am I now off the hook with the NYPD?”
    â€œOh, Holland, you were never on the hook,” she said with a laugh. “I’m grateful for all your help. Thank you.”
    He got a glint in his eye. “So, are you willing to admit there are things a private agency can do that the police can’t?”
    There it was: the sore spot that never quite healed. “I’ve always admitted that,” she said mildly.
    â€œYet you chose to stay with the police rather than work with me,” Holland said tightly. “Saint Murtaugh dangles a lieutenancy in front of your nose and you go for it without a second thought.”
    â€œOf course I went for it,” Marian said a little less mildly. “It’s what I’ve worked toward all my adult life. I never told you I’d join your agency.”
    â€œNo, you never did. I offered you anything you wanted —and you turned me down.”
    â€œAnd you’re never going to let me forget it, are you?”
    He was silent a moment, and then said softly: “You betrayed me, Marian.”
    â€œ What ?” She was astounded. “I betrayed you?”
    â€œI thought I had finally found one person on this earth I could trust,” he said. “But you turned away from me at the moment I needed you the most.”
    Marian was furious.