'Now, months later, she disappears.' Holly frowned. 'And your friend who sometimes provided security for her disappears as well. What happened two weeks ago? What's going on?'
'I don't think it happened two weeks ago.'
Holly didn't move for a moment. Then she straightened.
'I think it happened on the yacht,' Buchanan said.
'What happened? I still don't-'
'The photocopies of the recent articles you gave me don't reproduce the pictures very well. But this page from yesterday's Washington Post has clear photographs. A shot of Maltin at his news conference. A recent shot of Maria Tomez during one of her infrequent public appearances. Dark glasses. Concealing hat.'
'Tell me what you're getting at.'
'It looks like Maria Tomez had some work done on her jaw line. It's just a little different. And the ridges on her collar bone are a little different,' Buchanan said.
'A nose job's one thing,' Holly said. 'But changing a jaw line? Altering ridges on a collar bone? That's major reconstructive work.'
'Exactly,' Buchanan said. 'This last photograph. I don't think it's Maria Tomez. The more I look at it. the more I'm sure it's Juana impersonating her.'
7
'But how is such a thing possible?' Sounding frustrated, Holly drove rapidly along the busy expressway. Headlights blazed in the opposite lanes. 'Sure, Montgomery had a double in the Second World War. Movie stars use doubles all the time. These days, theatrical makeup is so realistic that actors can believably change their appearance. But Montgomery wasn't showing up at society charity benefits. As far as the movies go, cameras can play a lot of tricks. This is different. We're talking about a critically acclaimed opera singer. I don't care how good the makeup was, no one could imitate that once-in-a-generation voice.'
'But Juana didn't have to,' Buchanan said, still frozen by the implications of what he'd discovered.
Holly steered quickly around a truck and drove faster.
'The newspaper articles are emphatic,' Buchanan said. 'Maria Tomez retired from performing after she finished the cruise on Drummond's yacht. She went into seclusion in New York, except for brief public appearances, none of which involved singing. In some of these articles, she complains about having had pneumonia, about recurring laryngitis. The reporters note that her voice was hoarse. Since that's the one thing Juana couldn't have faked, she removed the problem by pretending to have problems with her voice. Otherwise, both women are Hispanics, with the same general build and facial characteristics. Maria Tomez kept changing her appearance in gradual ways, after all, so if Juana didn't look absolutely like her, it wouldn't have attracted attention. It would have been just another case of how Maria Tomez continued to change. As long as Juana's special makeup guaranteed that the similarities far outnumbered the differences. How many people know Maria Tomez intimately? Her ex-husband, whom she refused to see. Her other business contacts, whom she shut out after she retired. Her entourage, which she apparently changed after the cruise. Alistair Drummond, who continued to see her after the cruise and accepted her as Maria Tomez. We're talking about a woman who guarded her privacy to begin with. All Juana had to do was take a few phone calls from time to time, complain about a cold, appear briefly in public, get her picture in the paper, and no one would suspect that she wasn't the person she pretended to be.'
'Except you.' Holly steered around another vehicle, squinting from the glare of headlights. 'You suspected.'
'Because I had a reason to suspect. Because I'd seen the makeup room in Juana's house. Because I became more struck by Juana's resemblance to Maria Tomez as I looked at the photographs. Juana was on my mind, so I made the connection. What she did was brilliant. I can't get over what a genius she was at impersonating. I could never have done the equivalent.'
'The question is, why?' Holly said. 'Why did Juana impersonate her?'
'One common denominator is Alistair Drummond. The retirement, the need for seclusion, came after the cruise on Drummond's yacht. Drummond accepted Juana as Maria Tomez, and it was someone working for Drummond who paid Frederick Maltin to stop talking to reporters about his ex-wife. The disappearance. I think I understand,' Buchanan said quickly.
The tone in his voice made Holly shiver. 'What?'
'There were two disappearances.'
'Two?'
'It wasn't Maria Tomez but Juana who disappeared a few weeks ago. Drummond's doing his damnedest to find her. Why? Because if I'm right, nine months ago Maria Tomez never got off Drummond's yacht. That was Juana, and Drummond doesn't want anyone to know about the switch.'
Holly clenched the steering wheel. 'What in God's name happened on that yacht?'
8
LaGuardia Airport. To get there, they'd used Holly's car rather than a taxi because after checking out of the Dorset, they didn't want to attract attention by leaving her car in the hotel's garage for an indefinite period. At the airport's parking ramp, however, it wasn't unusual for cars to be left for quite a while.
They'd been forced to rush. They had needed luck with reservations and traffic. Nonetheless they'd managed to get two tickets on the last flight out of LaGuardia for Miami, and although they got to the boarding gate with only seconds to spare, that didn't matter. The point was, they were on the plane.
During the flight, both were too tense to sleep. They had no appetite. Still, they ate the lasagne the airline served, needing to maintain their strength.
'Your itinerary. Cancun, Merida, and Fort Lauderdale,' Holly said.
'I've never admitted to being in any of those places,' Buchanan told her.
'But the rest aren't in doubt. Washington, New Orleans, San Antonio, Washington again, New York, now Miami and points south. All in two weeks. Hanging around with you could be exhausting. And this is normal for you.'
'Better get used to it.'
'I think I'd like that.'
Back at the Dorset, Buchanan had wondered if the home port for Drummond's yacht would be the same as the city where Drummond's corporate headquarters were located. Knowing that all large vessels were required to file a float plan indicating the length and itinerary of an intended voyage, he had phoned the coast guard in San Francisco. However, the officer on duty told him that the yacht was based somewhere else - they didn't have a float plan for it. Buchanan had then phoned the National Association of Insurance Underwriters at its main offices in Long Beach, California. Eight p.m. east-coast time had been five p.m. west-coast time. He made contact just before the office closed.