It had been very clever of them not to offer Dr. Bowden an outright bribe. I was sure the bill he’d sent had been stiff, and they’d paid it just as they would have under normal circumstances. That had reassured the doctor. And since his practice wasn’t flourishing, they’d thrown him a big bone.

“With a setup like that, why’d you move to Dallas?” Manfred asked. Again, I wouldn’t have gotten into that, but again, I’d underestimated the doctor’s elasticity.

“It was my wife. She couldn’t stand Clear Creek,” he said. “And I’ve got to say, no one there got along with her, either. We were having some real wars at home. About six years ago, I got to talking to a doctor I’d never met before at an AMA meeting. He had a practice in Dallas. He told me his office was coming empty, did I want to take over the lease. It was at the previous price, much lower than new tenants were paying. And he’d throw in the equipment, too, because he was going overseas to a new job at an American consulate in Turkey or somewhere like that.”

Could he really not see how set up that had been? It was like someone attaching a string to a dollar bill and then setting it out on the sidewalk, so he could drag it away and get a passerby to follow the path of the money.

“Jeez Louise,” said Manfred. He almost continued, but fortunately he decided to keep his mouth shut.

“Thanks,” I said, after I’d tried to think of more questions to ask. “Oh, did someone else come here this morning, asking about Mariah Parish?”

“Ah . . . yes, as a matter of fact.”

Why the hell hadn’t I thought to bring pictures of the Joyces with me? I’d done well so far, for someone who didn’t know squat about being a detective, but this was a huge mistake I’d made.

“Who was he?”

“Said his name was Ted Bowman.”

Oh, not that that was anything like Tom Bowden, oh, no.

“And he wanted . . .”

Tom Bowden looked troubled, or rather, more troubled. “He wanted to know the same things you two wanted to know, but not for the same reason.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It was like he already knew the whole story. He just wanted to know how much I knew about who was involved.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I had no idea who the man who brought me to the house was, that as far as I could tell, the last time I saw the baby she was fine, and that I’d never talked to anyone else about that night.”

“And he said?”