Fatal Friday

By Elizabeth Cameron

Another thriller from noted writer Elizabeth Cameron.

This novelette brings intrigue, mystery, and suspense in this fast moving and riveting story.

Like other works by this author, don't read this in the dark alone! ! !

Kim Claremont, assistant to a famous plastic surgeon is approached by a long time friend, to perform facial reconstruction. Explaining that she is terminally ill with cancer, the waiting list is not an option. Kim, caught in a deadly trap of substance abuse, has a plan to free herself of her habit and the man who is responsible for it. But the plan leads her to the edge of murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elizabeth Cameron
• Release date: Jan 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310164422

Elizabeth Cameron

Elizabeth Cameron is a known artist having published many non-fiction books as well as a syndicated newspaper column.Retirement has enabled her to concentrate on her true love of suspenseful and mysterious novels.

Book preview

Until the Last Friday

Elizabeth Cameron

Copyright 2012 by Elizabeth Cameron

Smashwords edition

CHAPTER 1.

If I had even glanced out my office window I might have seen the shadow of someone standing in the camouflage of shrubbery at the edge of the medical clinic. But I hadn’t. I was alone; the staff had long gone home for the day. And instead in the quiet of the office, I had taken my Thursday inventory of medications I would reorder in the morning as precisely and accurately as I had been doing for the last year and eight months. Eight months ago though, the inventory had changed. Before then a specific medication had gone into my shoulder bag and the next day upon reordering the tally again matched what we had on hand. Eight months ago the circumstances had changed from dangerous to disastrous.

I finished the inventory and turned to review the charts of the two patients who were scheduled for Dr. Bernini’s skilled hands tomorrow morning.

Neither one was the least unusual. A countess from some minor European monarchy and from Hollywood’s aristocracy – an Emmy Award winning matron of the screen. Both had suffered from the encroaching hands of time that had reduced the most elite of spas and the most expensive cosmetics to uselessness. And so to this clinic here in Palm Springs and into the magical hands of Dr. Arturo Bernini were they being delivered.

Both patients had been interviewed by the doctor and then meticulously examined with photos taken before and then digitally altered to show the final results. No-one could deny the man was a genius. But plastic surgery is a field not without cut throat competition. It was Dr. Bernini’s unique transformation and recovery methods that had brought him to the pinnacle of success – the only plastic surgeon to whom the wealthy, the famous and the vain became his most willing if not desperate candidates.

Like most if not all cases, tomorrow’s patients I’d already met. After Dr. Bernini had done their medical examination, their psychological review and discussed their expectations and results, I had to merely complete the paperwork and make arrangements for their twenty-four hour follow up care.

So with the inventory completed, I gathered my shoulder bag from the locked file drawer of my desk, went to the very back of the offices to the pre-op room and then the operating room, gave them a quick glance and turned out the lights. Next came the dispensary and supply room. I turned out those lights. Then past my own to Dr. Bernini’s office. Only a small desk top task light spilled a soft puddle of light as it habitually did. Finally I moved to the front office and reception room. All of its quiet but plush elegance glowed sumptuously in the indirect lighting. I turned down the rheostat. Then I headed for the side entrance. Not once in all the windows in all the rooms I had just entered or left did I look out to catch a glimpse of the figure still standing in amongst the shadows, still waiting.

CHAPTER 2.

There was security, of course. The Arturo Bernini Clinic was a medical clinic and therefore an enticement for drug addict break-ins though in fact it held only a fraction of the drugs usually found in other medical facilities. I set the alarm system, checked that it was armed and then locked the door and tested the knob, double checking that it too was secure. I glanced at my watch. 7:00 PM. As if on cue the dark Ford Crown Victoria car with Stanford Security boldly printed on its side was completing its drive by and would do so in another two hours. A police patrol car would also do a drive by once or twice during the night. All routine.

But none of the security reduced my apprehension. Yes, staff members leaving medical clinics were sometimes taken as hostages to gain access to a medical building but that had never caused me concern. Mine was personal. And for the umpteenth time I cursed myself for my stupidity. My utter dumb-assed blind stupidity! How I could have been so naïve to be attracted to him in the first place!

Tony Bianca, Pharmaceutical representative for the Algersyrius Corporation. Tall, British, sophisticated, good looking, and charming. Very charming. And tragically, for a man