by Lee Goldberg
Terry shook his head. "Forensics show the surgery was recent, that it was done within the last five years."
Mark hadn't told Terry that, but it was true. The agent was clearly basing his assumptions on Stuart Appleby's autopsy.
"So what?" Chester said.
"Your wife lied to you," Terry says. "Doesn't that mean anything?"
"Someone just killed her," Chester yelled. "Do you think I give a damn right now whether she lied to me about when she had her nose job? Why aren't you out there looking for her killer instead of trying to smear her?"
Mark noticed a tiny plastic file box on the kitchen counter engraved with the word RECIPES. He opened it. It was stuffed with clippings torn out of magazines and recipes written on index cards. He began to sort through the papers.
"Don't you want to know why she was killed?" Terry asked.
"You're not going to find that out talking to me," Chester said. "Or accusing her of a crime she couldn't possibly have committed."
Stuck amid all the other recipes in the menu box, Mark found a postcard folded in half. He unfolded it. There was a color picture of seared swordfish in a roasted macadamia nut—lobster butter sauce on the front, the recipe for the en tree on the back.
It was recipe card from the Royal Hawaiian restaurant. There was no note. Just the address of the restaurant and, in smaller type, of Roswell Imaging, the printer.
"Do the names Stuart Appleby, William Gregson, or Jason Brennan mean anything to you?" Terry asked.
Chester shook his head.
"What about Danny Royal?" Terry asked. "Ever heard of him?"
"No," Chester said. 'What do they have to do with what happened to Stella?"
"Five years ago your wife lived in Las Vegas and her name was Diane Love," Terry said. "She got together with Appleby, Gregson, and Brennan, kidnapped an eighteen- year-old girl, buried her alive, and ran off with a four- million-dollar ransom."
"My wife would never do that," Chester said.
"The crime happened five years ago, about the same time Stella got herself a brand new face," Terry said. "Think about it."
"No, you think about it," Chester said. "Take a look around. Stella's a mother, a terrific mother, with two wonderful kids she loves more than anything. Stella couldn't harm someone's child. Don't you see? She couldn't possibly be the person you're describing."
"You're right. Five years ago she wasn't Stella Greene, loving wife and mother," Terry said. "She was Diane Love, kidnapper and killer."
"You're making a horrible mistake," Chester said, his voice cracking.
"Have you ever met your wife's family?"
"Her parents are both dead," Chester said. "She has no other living relatives."
"Uh-huh," Terry said. "Doesn't that strike you as un usual?"
"That's your evidence?" Chester asked incredulously. 'That she was alone in the world?"
"We have more." Terry said when, in fact, he didn't. At least not yet. Until the forensic anthropologist worked up a rendering of what Stella's face looked like before the surgery, everything they had was strictly circumstantial. But neither Mark nor Terry doubted they had the right woman. Neither did her killer.
"Then let's hear it," Chester said. "Because you haven't said anything yet that makes the slightest bit of sense."
"Have you ever been to Hawaii, Mr. Greene?" Mark asked gently.
Chester twisted around in his seat, noticing Mark for the first time. "No. What does that have to do with anything?"
Mark held up the recipe card to show the picture of the seared swordfish entree. "I was wondering where you got this."
The only one who seemed to react to the card was Terry Riordan, who smiled with satisfaction. The FBI agent now had one more piece of evidence, albeit circumstantial, with which to make his case.
"I don't keep track of where Stella gets her recipes," Chester said, then turned to Terry accusingly. "Now you're investigating what she cooks? What's the matter with you people? Have you gone insane?"
"It came from the Royal Hawaiian restaurant, Mr. Greene," Mark said. "It was owned by Stuart Appleby, one of the other fugitives. Your wife has called him on several occasions."
"It's a coincidence." Chester saw the doubt in Terry's eyes. "You don't understand. She loves experimenting in the kitchen. She likes to try unusual recipes, even though she screws most of them up. I don't mind, but it drives the kids nuts. They'd be happy eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese every day. You know what Kenny told her once? She should ask Mrs. Kraft for recipes, because there's a lady who really knows how to cook."
A dark look passed over Chester's face. He glanced from Mark to Terry, then stared at a point somewhere beyond the kitchen, the house, and the world closing in around him. They were quiet. The only sounds came from the shuffling of FBI agents moving through the house and the steady hum of the refrigerator.
"She can't be dead," Chester said, his eyes glazing over, his voice dropping to a whisper. "This can't be happening to us."
Mark felt terrible for Chester Greene and his family. It was only going to get worse for them before it got better, and even then it wouldn't be much of an improvement. The unspeakable betrayal, the unanswered questions, and the lasting pain would linger with the Greenes forever.
There was no joy for Mark in finding Diane Love. Not now. Not this way.
The crime that Appleby, Gregson, Brennan, and Love committed five years ago had just claimed three new victims.
Mark set the recipe card on the table in front of Terry Riordan and walked out of the house.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Adele Urich, the suspect in Hawaii, voluntarily submitted to an X ray to reveal whether she'd had major plastic surgery done to her face. She hadn't, which ruled her out as their fugitive. It was no surprise to Mark Sloan or anyone at the FBI. They knew Stella Greene was Diane Love. The question now was how to find Jason Brennan and William Greg son before Roger Standiford's hit man did.
The next day moved slowly as evidence was sorted at the FBI's temporary field headquarters, two adjoining rooms at a low-budget motel off the I-70, a few miles from Keystone.
It frustrated Terry that the FBI wouldn't even pop for a decent room at the Keystone resort, but even the cheapest rates were well above the approved daily spending limits. Terry tried to get an "FBI discount" from the desk clerk, who looked at him like he had a third nostril or something. He then appealing to her sense of patriotism and justice, and got back a bunch of drivel about it being "high season" and them being at "full occupancy," which he didn't believe for a second. The clerk and her entire staff could look forward to being audited by the IRS.
Mark Sloan didn't care what their accommodations were. He would have felt cold and frustrated and uncomfortable wherever they were staying. The crime scene unit turned up nothing at the murder scenes. So far, agents hadn't found any anything unusual about the Greene's finances, nor any obvious indications that Stella had been in contact with Gregson or Brennan.
Claire Rossiter arrived the previous night and was hard at work on her computer sculpture of what Stella looked like before her surgery, but there wasn't much suspense surrounding her work. They all knew what the face would look like. The only person Rossiter's rendering would shock was going to be Chester Greene. Once the picture was done and could be compared to pictures of Diane Love, any hope Chester had that the FBI was making a big mistake would be lost.
Agents Flannery and Witten were still in Hawaii. Terry had deftly convinced them there was little they could accomplish in Denver and that there was far more valuable work for them to do on the island. The key clue could still be in the financial paper trail, he told them. You can't go wrong following the money. It works almost every time.
Perhaps it did, but Mark didn't think it would in this case. Then again, he had no idea what would. He'd already used up the one clue he had: the note on the recipe card. When he'd discovered another Royal Hawaiian-recipe card in Stella's kitchen, for an instant he'd felt rel
ief, certain they'd have another anagram to decipher that would lead them to the other fugitives. But when he unfolded the recipe card and saw that there was no note written on it, his heart sank.
They were back to zero.
Still, it bugged him that she had a Royal Hawaiian recipe card. Did she save it for Appleby's phone number and address? If so, why did she only have information on him and not the other fugitives? And if she did have information on how to reach Gregson and Brennan, where was she hiding it?
Those questions in turn raised others in Mark's mind.
Why did Appleby bother to encode and save contact information on Diane Love in his safe-deposit box and not the others? Then again, Appleby might have. The encoded information about how to contact them might have been among the clues lost when the hit man torched Appleby's house and restaurant.
At least Mark could find some solace in the fact they got to Greene's house before the killer could cleanse that home of any clues, too. Not that it was helping them now. If the clues were there, so far Mark had missed them all.
He spent most of the day going through the Greene's family photo albums, hoping to spot something among the people they met and the places they went. There was a nice picture of the Greenes grouped around Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, all smiles. Maybe it was Gregson in the mouse costume. Or Brennan. Or Amelia Earhart.
Mark slogged through more photos, then went through Stella Greene's jewelry, clothing, and books, hoping some thing would jump out at him.
Terry Riordan was obviously hoping that would happen, too. He kept staring at Mark, as if waiting for him to leap up and scream "Eureka!" at any moment.
Mark had a lot of faith in his unconscious mind to assimilate and sort random bits of information like pixels, and he knew that it often took time for a clear picture to emerge, but he couldn't help feeling he was falling behind in the race. The killer was out there pursuing the same targets and having a lot more success at it.
It wasn't until late afternoon that a break finally came their way. Mark got a call from Amanda on his cell phone. She'd traced the breast implant to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, Dr. Morris Plume.
Five minutes later, Mark Sloan and Terry Riordan were on their way to Denver International Airport to catch the first available flight back to L.A.
That day Roger Standiford received a fax from Denver. It was a copy of an article clipped from the back page of the local newspaper. The story was about the murder of a ski instructor named Stella Greene on the slopes of Keystone, Colorado.
The article said the FBI was investigating the homicide, but a spokesman for the Bureau wouldn't comment on their involvement in the case. The victim, according to her coworkers, was a popular instructor at the resort for the past five years.
The fax was followed, almost immediately, by an E-mail request for the balance of funds owed on Diane Love. A photo, showing Dr. Mark Sloan and an FBI agent outside the Summit County coroner's office, was attached to the E-mail.
Standiford wired the funds to the hit man's account. If Mark Sloan was in Keystone, Diane Love was surely dead.
Two of the people who'd killed his daughter had been punished, but Roger Standiford wasn't feeling the joy or satisfaction he thought he would.
It didn't matter what he felt. What mattered was that Stuart Appleby and Diane Love wouldn't be feeling anything anymore.
Then again, he wasn't sure they ever did.
Dr. Morris Plume's clinic was near the corner of Olympic and Robertson, as far south as he could possibly go and still call himself a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.
His offices were on the second floor of a two-story office building that had been built in the late 1980s and looked like a Rubik's Cube with underground parking.
The waiting area had the requisite aquarium and a selection of in-flight airline magazines. The most recent copy was six months old. The only interesting reading material Mark found, as he and Terry waited for the doctor, was a slick, colorful brochure listing all the procedures available to patients.
If it wasn't for the pictures of nearly naked female models, the brochure could have been mistaken for a restaurant take-out menu. Each procedure was listed like an entree, with glowing descriptions of the wonderful results followed by the cost. Tummies could be tucked, noses crafted, pecs endowed, foreheads lifted, eyelids firmed, ears tweaked, buttocks enhanced, and lips swelled. Breasts could be lifted, shaped, enhanced, firmed, sculpted, augmented, contoured, and reduced. Dr. Plume also offered BOTOX injections, Cymetra injections, fat injections, collagen injections, and thorough dermabrasion.
The brochure promised "everything for a new you," and Mark couldn't argue with that. Dr. Plume had certainly fulfilled the promise for Diane Love and, Mark guessed, the other fugitives, as well.
Mark slipped the brochure in his pocket as Dr. Plume stepped into the waiting room to greet them. Dr. Plume was a fit man in his midthirties who had apparently sampled just about everything on his own menu. His face was unnaturally smooth, his forehead tight, his nose sculpted to a slender point. He seemed extremely alert, his eyes wide, his ears pointed like a hound's. His chin was prominent and so were his cheekbones, his broad smile revealing two rows of gleaming, perfectly white teeth.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting," Dr. Plume said, shaking their hands. "I was just finishing up a tricky mastopexy. What can I do to help the FBI?"
"Do you recognize these people?" Terry opened a file and extracted a sheet with pictures of the four fugitives on it. He handed the sheet to Dr. Plume, who glanced at it quickly and gave it back to him.
"Nope, not offhand," Dr. Plume said. "I see so many faces in here."
"They would have come in five years ago." Terry took another sheet out of his file and held it out in front of the doctor. "Two of them left looking like this."
The sheet had pictures of Stuart Appleby and Diane Love as, respectively, Danny Royal and Stella Greene. Dr. Plume's smile faltered a bit at the edges.
"We traced the serial numbers on her implants back to you," Mark said, exaggerating the truth just a bit. "We know you worked on them."
"Yes, I recognize these two," Dr. Plume said. "I have a better memory of my own work. An artist remembers his paintings, not the blank canvases. Perhaps if you showed me what the other two look like now, I might remember them."
"That's what we're here to find out," Terry said. "We want to see the files on all four of them."
"I wouldn't know where to look."
"We'll start at A and work our way through," Terry said.
"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," Dr. Plume said. "I promise my patients strict confidentiality. I treat a lot of celebrities who wouldn't like their cosmetic histories revealed. I'm sure they'd mount a vigorous legal challenge against any effort you made to ransack my files."
Mark doubted Dr. Plume had any celebrity clients, but it would still be difficult to get any judge to sign off on a blanket search warrant of all the files.
"Besides, you say these surgeries were done five years ago?" Dr. Plume said.
"Yes," Terry said.
"That's a shame," Dr. Plume frowned, which wasn't easy, considering how tight his cheeks were. "Those files are long gone."
"Gone," Terry said flatly, narrowing his eyes.
"We had a flood."
"You're on the second floor," Mark said.
"We had a leak in the roof one particularly rainy week end. The entire office got drenched," Dr. Plume said. "We lost hundreds of files."
"You better hope the insurance company confirms that," Terry said.
"I didn't inform the insurance company," Dr. Plume said. "I knew it wouldn't be covered so I paid for the repairs myself."
"Who was the roofer?"
"It was so long ago, who remembers that kind of thing?" Dr. Plume let his voice drift off. "You know how it is."
"What I know is that you gave new faces to four fugitives wanted for kidnapping and murder," Terry said. "That makes you an accessory."
"I'm fully licensed to perform plastic surgery on anyone who wants it, and I am under no obligation to run back ground checks on my patients," Dr. Plume said. "Now, if you will excuse me—"
Dr. Plume started to go, but Terry grabbed him by the arm.
"Have you ever had a butt enhancement procedure?"
"No, I haven't."
"Then it's your lucky day, because you're about to get one, courtesy of the FBI. We're going to put a man outside your building on permanent and obvious surveillance, taking pictures of everyone who comes and goes from this office. We're going to scrutinize your tax returns, interview your patients, and go over your entire life with an electron microscope. And that's just for starters. We'll be on your ass night and day until we get what we want."
Terry released Dr. Plume, who seemed to have lost a little of the color underneath his tanning-parlor complexion. Without saying a word, the doctor turned his back on them and scurried back into his office.
"I'm sure they weren't the first wanted felons he's worked on," Mark said.
"So am I," Terry replied. "We'll crack him, it's just a question of when."
Mark shook his head. "No, the question is whether Brennan and Gregson will still be alive when we do."
The late-night FBI surveillance of Dr. Morris Plume's office was inconvenient for Wyatt, but at least they did him the courtesy of making themselves obvious about it. The two agents were parked in a Mercury Grand Marquis sedan across the street from the building, drinking Starbucks coffee and casually watching the building.
Wyatt drove up the alley behind the building in a Pacific Bell service truck he'd stolen earlier that afternoon. He got out, wearing a PacBell uniform and utility belt, pulled a ladder off the side of the truck, and propped it up against the building.
He climbed the ladder to the roof, disabled the alarm system, and picked the lock on the access door. Two minutes later, he was standing in Dr. Plume's office, staring angrily at three hefty bags filled with shredded files. He opened a bag. The paper was like confetti. Dr. Plume had invested in a very good shredder.