Free Treadmill by Warren Adler

“M.” He looked in the drawer where he kept his plastic utensils, and inside his closet. Everything was in its place. He was relieved.
    His growling stomach reminded him that he had skipped lunch, but he decided he would read in order to stick to his schedule. But before he could reach for his copy of The Magic Mountain , the telephone rang.
    He dreaded picking up the phone, certain to bring an unwanted intrusion. He let it ring. Nothing could be gained by answering it. Finally the ringing stopped, but after a short interval it began again.
    Probably Beth Davis , he decided, although she didn’t have his number. Research, he muttered to himself and picked up the phone. It was Runyon.
    “Cooper?”
    “Yes.”
    “Runyon speaking. I’ve got a number for Parrish.”
    “Damn,” Cooper whispered under his breath. Parrish again, bedeviling him.
    “What did you say?”
    “Nothing.”
    There was a long hesitation at the other end of the line.
    “It’s old, but it’s all I’ve got.”
    Runyon gave him the number, which Cooper did not write down. He was silent.
    “That it?” Runyon asked with an air of testiness.
    “Yes.”
    “Thanks for nothing,” Runyon said with sarcasm. Cooper heard the line go dead.
    He knew he had been rude, and felt somewhat badly. The man had just been trying to help. To put it behind him, Cooper tried to read The Magic Mountain . The words swam meaninglessly before him, and he realized that the number that Runyon had given him had embedded itself in his mind.
    In a fit of pique, he picked up the phone only to discover that the earpiece was loose. He hadn’t noticed this during the previous call. He tightened it and punched in the number, hoping that it would be either out of order or would lead to another dead end in his investigation. Either outcome, he decided, would symbolize an end to the matter; Parrish would be over at last.
    “I’m looking for Mike Parrish,” he said when a woman’s voice answered the phone.
    “Who?”
    “Mike Parrish,” he said. Then he spelled out the letters in his name.
    “Please hold,” she said.
    He waited for so long he thought that the woman had hung up on him.
    “We have no ‘Mike Parrish,’” she said.
    “Are you sure?” he asked with some elation.
    “Mister, I just started a week ago, but I have the list in front of me. There’s no ‘Mike Parrish.’”
    “I appreciate your…”
    “One moment please,” the woman said.
    With mounting reluctance, he waited for a few moments, and then the woman came back on the line.
    “I’m connecting you to Mrs. Thompson,” the woman said.
    He waited impatiently as the bland music floated into his earpiece.
    “This is Mrs. Thompson,” a distinctly different woman answered. She seemed older. Before he could say anything, she asked, “You’re looking for Mike Parrish?”
    “Yes.”
    “He disconnected his phone about two weeks ago.”
    “He did?” Cooper said with astonishment. Of course , he thought. It was perfectly logical. The man had probably moved away. As a freelancer, picking up and leaving was a perfectly ordinary occurrence.
    “If I remember correctly, it was his wife who disconnected it.”
    “His wife?” Parrish had told him he didn’t have a wife.
    “She never gave us a forwarding address,” the woman said.
    “Things must have gotten slow for him.”
    “Apparently.”
    “So there’s no way to get in touch with him?”
    “Guess not.”
    “Good,” he mumbled.
    “What?”
    “Never mind,” he said.
    After he hung up, Cooper lay on his bed and mulled over what the woman had told him. He wondered why Parrish had lied to him about having a wife.
    Was it really a lie , he wondered, or simply an evasion? The idea of the lie—if it was a lie—continued to rankle him. The credibility of the lost child story was in jeopardy. Who could he trust? It turned out that Parrish, like Margo, was a liar. What if the lie was out of self-protection?
    He picked up The Magic Mountain and