The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (31 page)

“Maybe that’s what I need.” She sighed, straightening up. “A little coarseness.”

“Just for flavor,” he agreed.

“Like oregano or rosemary …” she said as he held the door open. She swung her legs out and wriggled forward, holding up her hands. “Help?” she said, smiling at him.

He took her hands, then slid his arm around her waist as they walked up the steps. She turned her face up to him, eyes closed, and said dreamily. “A goodnight kiss, Mahoney?” He laughed and put his lips lingeringly on hers. “Mmm,” she said, “very, very nice.”

“I’d better see you to your apartment, Doc,” he said as she yawned and leaned against him. “It’s been a long night.”

“So it has,” she agreed. And then with a sunny smile: “And such a fun one. I haven’t had such a good time in years.”

“I’m glad,” he said, taking her keys and unlocking the door.

Brad Kane’s Porsche was parked half a block up the street. He leaned forward, his eyes boring into them as they walked together into the building.

He took a Gitane from the almost empty pack and lit it, dragging deeply. He knew which apartment was hers, and he watched her windows, groaning with despair
as the lights finally came on. He stubbed the cigarette out viciously. He had seen Rebecca behave just that way so many times: giddy, flirtatious, leading men on. She was just like his mother after all.

His eyes fixed on her window, he leaned forward, tensely, watching, waiting.

Phyl kicked off her shoes and walked toward the kitchen. “Coffee?”

Mahoney shook his head. “Why not just have a glass of water, Doc, and then go to bed? You’ll feel like a new woman in the morning.”

She heaved a happy sigh. “I kind of like the woman I am right now, Mahoney.”

“Good.” He walked over and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “You know what?” he said seriously.

“What?” Her eyes were very blue and innocent.

“You really are a very pretty woman,” he said, smiling as he turned and walked to the door.

“Thanks, Mahoney,” she called after him. “For tonight.” He waved as he closed the door behind him.

She was smiling as she sauntered into her bedroom, shedding her clothes as she went. And she was still smiling as she instantly fell asleep. With her makeup on. Something she hadn’t done in years.

Mahoney had noticed the black Porsche 938 parked half a block away when he drove past earlier. The cop reflex had noted that it was the only car on the no-parking street and there was a man in it, and he had wondered automatically what he was up to. It was still there, and as he climbed into the Mustang and switched on the ignition, he saw the Porsche’s lights go on. He waited for the guy to take off and pass him so he could grab his number and run a check on him, just in case he was up to mischief, but instead the Porsche backed up a half block and made a quick right down a side street.

Mahoney shrugged; he was off duty, and besides, he wasn’t really up to tackling villains in expensive
Porsches tonight. The guy was probably some pricey private detective making a bundle staking out an erring wife or husband. What the hell, it was none of his business anyway.

24

J
ulie hurled herself into the swimming pool after Scott, sending an avalanche of water over Poochie, who pranced along the edge, barking warnings at them.

“Silly old dog,” she yelled, scooping more water over him, shrieking with delight as he shook himself in a wild flurry of droplets. She shrieked again as Scotty hauled himself out of the pool and then jumped back in almost on top of her.

She went under and came up laughing and choking, searching for Scotty to get her revenge. She waved eagerly at Bea, who was sitting by the pool, watching them. She thought Bea was the prettiest woman ever, and she had already decided she wanted to be just like her when she grew up.

Bea had laughed when she’d told her. “I’m not sure that’s possible, sweetheart,” she had said. She always called her sweetheart, and Julie liked that. Nick called her Jules, and she liked that, too. “I think from the photographs I’ve seen you are going to look just like your mom. And that’s a compliment, Miss Julie, if ever there was one, because your mommy was a very pretty lady.”

Oh, she was
, Julie thought fervently, leaning her chin on the curved edge of the pool and letting her legs float out behind her. Mom was just the prettiest of all. She thought how much her mommy would have liked the blue skies and sunshine. Her mother had hated those cold gray Ohio winters. Julie loved it here, and she knew Scotty did, too. The only thing was he kept reminding her that it was only temporary, “like a vacation,” he said. “One day they’ll send us back to Ohio and we’ll end up in foster homes after all.”

“No, they won’t,” Julie said stubbornly, but she was still scared.

Scotty said, “Course they will. They are not our relatives. We are nothing to them, Julie. Just a couple of kids they are looking after. Guardians, that’s all they are.

But she still didn’t want to believe it. And she didn’t want to go back home because there was no home anymore. Besides, she didn’t want to leave Bea.

Something told her Bea was different. She was hurting, too; Julie sensed it. And she liked that little sneaky feeling of warmth creeping into her own heart again, into her life. Sometimes hours went by without her thinking of what had happened.

Julie fastened her eyes on Bea. She didn’t ever want to let go of her.

Bea thought Millie must have known her better than she knew herself, she had fallen so neatly into her new role. She was watching the children hurling themselves tirelessly in and out of the water. They had been doing it for hours. Every now and then they turned and splashed Poochie, making him bark and dance on his hind legs with excitement.

The whine of a lawn mower came from somewhere in the front of the villa, and the new Portuguese housekeeper’s shrill voice fought with the squawk of the green African parrot Scotty had begged Nick to buy last week when they went to the pet store to look for a
couple of parakeets. The man in the store had said that it was a talker and that it knew half a dozen songs, but it had remained stubbornly silent for the first five days until the dog barked at it and it suddenly cursed in fluent French.

The Villa Mimosa had come back to life, and Bea only wished Millie could be there to see it. The old brooding feeling had disappeared, and now it was filled with light and the sound of children’s laughter and squabbles, with music, squawking parrots, and barking dogs. There were Rollerblades on the terraces and bicycles in the hall and a scatter of toys and T-shirts and beach towels, as well as the aroma of something good cooking in the kitchen.

Scotty and Julie Renwick were behaving more like normal kids again, though there were nights when she went in to tuck them up and found them huddled together in Scott’s bed, with the tracks of tears on their innocent sleeping feces. She would carry Julie back to her own bed, and the exhausted child would lift her heavy eyelids and give her a direct searching gaze that struck to her very soul. She knew Julie was looking to see if it was her mother kissing her good-night.

“It’s only me,” she would whisper, and the little girl would sigh deeply, half choking on a sob, as she stuck her thumb comfortingly in her mouth. She gripped Bea’s hand tightly, and Bea would stroke back her damp hair and sit quietly until the child finally fell into the deep sleep of exhaustion.

Scott never cried in front of Bea, but sometimes she would watch him disappearing up the hill toward the grotto. She would see his small, crouched figure, perched on the rocks, staring out to sea, and she’d guess he had sought solitude to cry away his pain.

She and Nick were doing their best to make life normal for them. They had established a routine with a French tutor for an hour each morning. Then they went to the market in Cannes or Nice or Antibes and
maybe had lunch in one of the cafés. Later, after a rest, they went to the beach, or swam in the pool, or Nick would take them out in the little boat he had bought for putt-putting around the harbor.

In the fall they would begin school, and by then Bea hoped they would be better able to put the past behind them and be ordinary kids again. Meanwhile, they were still fragile and unsure of their new way of life.

Bea felt a world away from sudden death in a ravine, from murder and a lost past, from no-person to someone with an identity. And she thanked Millie every day for her new life. But the terror of not knowing who she was and why someone had wanted her dead still haunted her. She would wake from some troubled dream that she was falling down into that neverending dark tunnel and almost think she had the answer. But when she blinked herself awake, sweating with fright, it was gone.

Poochie pranced over to her, backside and tail wiggling enthusiastically. Poochie had been a godsend. The kids adored him. The dog looked at her, its intelligent brown eyes shining with joy at the surprise of still being alive. “We’re survivors, you and me, old boy,” she said, rubbing its curly head affectionately.

She thought of Nick, out searching for the elusive bank vault with Nanny Beale’s secrets, and she almost hoped he wouldn’t find it. At this peaceful moment, life seemed perfect just as it was. She had her home, the children, and Nick. She was afraid of the past. She did not want to know about that other young woman who was her. She felt safe as Bea French. Her attacker could never find her here and finish the job he had failed at before. It was only on those long, restless, lonely nights she wasn’t so sure.

The children called for her to come on in the pool, yelling with delight when Poochie leaped in after her, paddling around with a bewildered grin on his funny face.

They were playing a wild game of water volleyball, shrieking with laughter, when the telephone rang. Bea climbed from the pool to answer it.

“Nick?” she said, smiling.

“How did you know it was me?”

“It’s simple. Nobody else calls. At least not at this time of day. Are you coming over for supper?”

“I’ll be there about seven. Can we have dinner alone tonight? Without the kids, I mean. I need to talk to you.”

“Sure. They eat at six anyway. They’re always starving by then. But what do you want to talk about?”

“I found it, Bea. Nanny Beale’s safe deposit. We were right. There were other documents. I’m bringing them with me. I want you to read them.”

As she put down the phone, Bea thought he had sounded ominously quiet, not the least bit triumphant at his find. She wondered what was wrong.

When Nick arrived, the children swarmed all over him, begging him to go for a bike ride or Rollerblade with them along the terraces or run down the hill to the sea.

“Let’s go fishing,” Scotty yelled excitedly.

“No, let’s ride our bikes to the very top of the hill and then coast all the way down,” Julie shouted louder.

“Not tonight, guys.” Nick ruffled Scott’s shaggy hair and gave Julie a bear hug and shooed them affectionately from the room. “I’ve got to talk to Bea about something.”

They ran off to chat with Jacinta in the kitchen. Nick looked at Bea.

“It wasn’t easy to get hold of this,” he said, taking several manila envelopes from his briefcase. “I must have conned my way through fifty banks, pretending I’d made a mistake every time they looked suspiciously at me because the key didn’t belong to them. I gave them this phony laugh and said, ‘Silly old me, I’ve got
so many of these, I always forget where I’ve put things.’”

Bea smiled. “Until the final one.”

“Until I finally have what we were searching for.” He put the papers in front of her. “This is Marie-Antoinette’s letter to her son, Johnny. And I can tell you it makes harrowing reading.”

Bea looked doubtfully at him, “Do you really think we should be doing this?” She felt as though they were intruding into a dead woman’s secrets, into private things she might never have wanted other eyes to see.

“I certainly do. For your sake and mine. You believe there is a link somewhere here with your past. And I want to solve this mystery for my book. It all happened long ago, Bea. We’re not hurting anyone reading this.”