The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (11 page)

“There’s such an enormous gap in her life, you see,” Phyl said, “and that’s what terrifies her. The background to her existence just isn’t there. All those details that go to make up a person: the parents, the sisters, brothers, cousins. The schools and college, cheerleaders and football games. She doesn’t know what her life was like. She says it’s driving her crazy, and so mostly I think she is pushing it away and living for the moment. And tomorrow they are off to Paris.”

“Sounds good to me. Better than moping around your apartment waiting for her memory to return. Or the murderer to try again.”

Phyl’s eyes widened. She sounded frightened as she said, “You don’t really think he will?”

“What can I tell you?” Mahoney lifted his hands, palms up, helplessly. “Except we’ve drawn a blank on all our inquiries and the case is now officially on hold. Stashed in the unsolved mystery file. The consensus is that it was a random killer on the loose. They figure anyone could have been a potential victim. It just happened to be Bea.”

“And is that what you think?”

Phyl looked so scared Mahoney wanted to put his arm around her, to tell her it was all right, that he would find the killer; he would work it all out, and she
need never be afraid again. But he couldn’t promise any of those things.

He said, “No, I don’t agree. I think this was a purposeful and knowing murder attempt. The guy knew Bea, and for some reason he wanted her out of the way. What I have to find out is why. And unless Bea regains her memory, I’m afraid there’s not much hope.

“Detective work is fifty percent slog and fifty percent intuition,” he added bitterly. “You get so you can feel who the villains are, even when they are cloaked in normality. Straight, decent-seeming folks, just like you and me. But the famous Dr. Forster must know better than anyone what goes on in people’s minds. In those deep, dark recesses. Things that are hidden behind good looks and charm and expensive clothes. The wife beaters, the child abusers, the murderers. They are all just folks, like you and me.”

“Speak for yourself,” she retorted. “And let me know what nice, good-looking, charming young man tried to kill Bea. And why!”

“I’m not giving up,” he said. “I can promise you that.”

Mist was wreathing ghostly tendrils down the road as they drove home. Phyl closed her eyes, leaning tiredly back against the cushions. “Now tell me the limo wasn’t a good idea, Mahoney,” she murmured.

“It wasn’t a good idea, Doc,” he obliged, and she groaned.

“I’m still waiting for it,” she added.

“What’s that?”

She rested her head against his shoulder, and he smiled tenderly, staring straight ahead at the lighted towers of the city.

“The poetry quote, of course. I’ve never known you to miss an opportunity. Or to be lost for words.”

“You’re right.” He thought for a minute and then said, “How about this?”

“Byron,” he said.

“I know.” She had opened her eyes and was looking at him.

“Corny, maybe, but appropriate. It was meant as a compliment to my hostess, who is as beautiful as the night.”

Her eyes were smiling at him in the dark. “Thank you, Mahoney,” she whispered.

“Franco, please.” He read the meaning in her eyes, and he patted her hand tenderly.

The limo drew up in front of her apartment building, and Mahoney jumped out and raced around to open the door for her before the chauffeur had a chance. He looked at her, lying back against the cushions. There were violet smudges under her eyes, and her lipstick had worn off. He thought she looked like a tired young girl. He took her hand and walked her up the steps to the door. “Go get some sleep.”

He bent his head and kissed her lightly on the cheek, breathing in the scent of her. “Thanks, Doc, for a memorable evening. It was fun.”

She nodded. “You make me laugh, Mahoney. I like that.”

He grinned. “It goes with the job, ma’am. We are only here to serve.”

“Then you can serve me dinner. Next time.”

“Yes, ma’am. You’ve got it, Doc. Anytime you say.”

She watched him walk to the car. He turned and looked back at her, and she said quietly, “And thank you, Mahoney, for listening to me. And for all you have done for Bea. I know if anyone can find the murderer, you can.”

He made a mock salute as he quoted:

“Shakespeare,
Richard the Third.
”

She rolled her eyes heavenward in mock despair as she waved good-bye, but he saw she was smiling again as he closed the door.

The limo driver flinched when Mahoney told him to drop him at the old City Jail.

“Just wanted to see if you were awake,” Mahoney said, grinning. “Make it the Police Department.”

“Same building, isn’t it?”

“It might even be the same place!”

He just wanted to check Bea’s file one more time. He was sure there must be something in there that held a clue to the secret.

11

M
illie and Bea were staying in the Chanel suite at the Paris Ritz and had spent the previous days at the couturiers on the Avenue Montaigne, ordering Millie’s fall wardrobe, as well as in the Left Bank antiques shops, generally buying up a storm. Millie simply bought anything she fancied on the spur of the moment and usually regretted it later.

“The truth is, dear girl, that my father manufactured plumbing fixtures in Pittsburgh, as his father did before him,” she said. They were sitting in the Ritz bar a few nights later, enjoying a drink before dinner while Millie checked out the patrons to see whom she knew.

“That’s how I can afford all this,” Millie confessed. “Daddy made himself a tidy fortune, before the accident at the plant that killed him. He was still a young man, and he left my mother an even younger widow, with a four-year-old daughter and a great deal of money. Mama was a shy woman, without many friends, and it was a solitary life for a child.” She sighed, reflectively, sipping her Campari and soda. “Maybe you’re better off not recalling your childhood, Bea. It might turn out to have been as disappointing as mine.”

“I don’t think so,” Bea said. “I don’t get bad feelings about the past.” She had become used to Millie’s sudden clumsy, probing questions. She knew she was only following Phyl’s instructions and trying to help, but so far without any luck. Except Bea felt completely at home in Paris. The language was her own, just as much as English, and she spoke it so fluently the Parisians paid her the biggest compliment of all by assuming that she was one of them.

Millie waved at an acquaintance across the room. She seemed to know people everywhere they went. She said, “Perhaps it’s because of my provincial Victorianstyle upbringing that I’ve always craved change and excitement. I always adored people and parties and clothes and jewelry. You know how I like tinsel and flash. Well, when I was a girl, I yearned for red silk instead of burgundy plush, I wanted rubies instead of garnets, diamonds instead of opals. I liked the grand hotels where my mama occasionally took me for holidays, with their sparkling chandeliers and sparkling wines fizzing in saucer-shaped glasses. Even when I was very young, I wanted orchids, not tea roses, shiny gold bracelets instead of demure ivory bangles.

“I still remember Mama saying, ‘You must eat up all your potatoes and vegetables, Millicent, before you can have dessert.’” Millie snorted disparagingly. “Is it any wonder I was plump as a pumpkin, as well as short? And you know what, Bea”—she leaned closer and said in a loud, confidential whisper—“I never wore silk next to my skin until I was eighteen years old. After my mother died.

“I had no family, except for a remote cousin in Ohio who never contacted me again after writing to express his regrets, so there was no one to consider except myself.” She signaled the waiter for the check and signed it with a flourish. “But I wasn’t afraid to take the reins of life and gallop the horses myself. No, sir. Not Millie Renwick.

“I inherited the lot, y’know,” she continued in the chauffeured car on the way to Robuchon. “The big house in Pittsburgh that I hated, and all its ghastly Turkey-carpeted, silver-candelabraed splendor. Plus the fifty million dollars that went with it. And let me tell you, Bea, fifty million was a lot of money in the 1930s. Especially for a young girl. I was an heiress. A catch.”

She yelped with laughter at the thought. “I moved out of the house, out of Pittsburgh into Manhattan. Took a suite at the Plaza, hired someone who knew about these things to take me shopping, and bought myself an entire new wardrobe. Head to toe. Everything from the skin out.” She sighed luxuriously, remembering. “And it had to be silk, though satin was nice, too. And I wanted everything in bright colors.

“I had Mama’s old diamonds reset at Buccelatti and bought myself a whole slew of shiny new stones in every color: earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, watches. Then I took myself off to the hairdresser and emerged four hours later a platinum blonde, like Jean Harlow. She was all the rage then, dear girl.”

She patted Bea’s knee affectionately. “For years I never told anyone this, you know. Except Phyl. She said it was good for me to talk it out, so now I tell anyone who’s foolish enough to listen to the truth about me.” She tilted her bright blond head consideringly to one side. “Well, approximately the truth anyway,” she amended.

“But then, dear girl, I began to look around for companionship. And I found it among the polo playing set in Palm Beach. I bought myself a wonderful Addison Mizner gem of a Moorish castle and married a handsome man twice my age, the captain of the visiting Argentinian team. Of course, I didn’t need Phyl to tell me I must have been looking for my daddy. Anyway, he didn’t last long.
No good in bed, dear girl
,” she said in another loud, confidential whisper, making Bea giggle. “Not that I was any good myself, being a novice filly at
the time, but I knew it had to be better than that. Or why were so many people doing it?”

They had arrived at the restaurant, and she wafted confidently inside, shaking hands with the maître d’ and greeting waiters by name.

“I didn’t realize you came to Paris so often,” Bea said, astonished. “Every place we go, they know you.”

“It’s not just my baby blues, dear girl. I’m also a phenomenal tipper,” Millie replied shrewdly. “I can afford it, and it smooths life’s path and makes other people happy, so why not?”

“Money really means nothing to you, does it?” Bea said with amazement.

“Don’t you believe it, dear girl. Money means everything to me. It has bought me a lot of pleasure, and I like to think I’ve been able to share it.”

“Phyl said you were a champion of good causes.”

“Did she now? Then she was talking out of turn. Everyone knows I’m just a frivolous, rich old biddy who fritters her time and money on selfish pursuits. And that’s why we are here tonight,” she said, ordering for both of them because she knew best.

Bea laughed as she looked around the exclusive restaurant. Millie had told her it was one of the best in Paris, and as she tasted each dish, she knew Millie was right. Though how Millie managed to eat and talk nonstop at the same time amazed her.

“After Palm Beach, I moved on to Saratoga and the horse-racing set,” Millie continued. “I was very partial to a flutter on the races. Still am. And that’s where the second husband came from.”

She chewed the stuffed sea bass, remembering. “He was a small man, of course. Had to be in his profession. Though he wasn’t small in the department that mattered. He certainly taught me a thing or two in bed, I can tell you, dear girl. Even if he did treat me a bit like a horse. I always felt he wanted to tack me up—y’know, the saddle and stirrups and the whip—and then afterward
take me out into the stableyard and hose me down: the curry comb and a sack of oats, that sort of thing. Of course it couldn’t last, but then I never expected it to. I wasn’t into ‘lasting.’ After all, I was only twenty-two, and I was still learning my way around life and men.