Free The Secret of the Villa Mimosa by Elizabeth Adler

who needed a job, it’s you. You look as though you could use a good meal.” She shook a Marlboro from a crumpled pack. Ignoring the elaborate gold lighter on the table next to her, she took a book of dime store matches from her pocket and lit it. She waved out the match, inhaling with the ardor of a true nicotine addict.
    She examined the soaked young woman dripping onto her Chinese silk rug. After a flurry of coughing, she said sarcastically, “What’s Phyl into these days besides psychiatry? The Animal Rescue Service?”
    Sticking her chin in the air, Bea turned and squished indignantly back to the door. “I think I had better go.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake!” Millie flicked ash exasperatedly into a large crystal ashtray already overflowing with lipstick-rimmed butts smoked down to the filter. “You can’t live with me and be touchy. Take off your coat and those ghastly wet shoes, and sit down. Here. By the fire. Come, tell me about yourself.”
    She flung Bea a smile of such genuine warmth and roguish charm, half apologetic, half mischievous, that Bea found herself doing as she was told. Millicent Renwick was that kind of person she was soon to discover.One minute you adored her; the next you couldn’t stand her. One minute she was good; the next she was horrid. Just like the litle girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead in the children’s poem.
    Bea obediently slipped off her soggy shoes and her wet coat and put them on the marble hall floor, where they wouldn’t ruin anything. Then she returned to the library and sat cautiously on the edge of a gold brocade sofa.
    Millicent’s curious eyes, dark as black currants, met hers. “Well?” she said expectantly. “Phyl told me the bare bones of the story, but not all of it.”
    “There’s not much to tell. There was an accident. Although the police think maybe it wasn’t. They think someone tried to kill me.” Bea lifted her wet hair from her brow to show the scar running into her scalp as she told Millie the story.
    “I’m fine now,” she said reassuringly, anxious for the job. “The only thing is… I don’t remember any of it. And I don’t remember who I am.”
    “And the police didn’t help?”
    “No one of my description has been reported missing. No one came looking for me. No one seemed to care whether I lived or died. Except Phyl. And Detective Mahoney, of course.”
    Millie dragged thoughtfully on the last of her cigarette, then stubbed it out amid the heap of butts in the crystal ashtray. “Well, well, a woman with no past.” She stared at Bea and then smiled and said cryptically, “The perfect companion for the woman with no future.
    “You can start immediately by fetching me another pack of ciggies from my room. And then we shall have some tea. Tell the Filipina in the kitchen, Earl Grey for two. And not too strong this time or I’ll kill her. And sandwiches. Smoked salmon and egg salad. Finger sandwiches, no crusts; she knows the way I like them.And then get on the phone and order me up a new butler. I don’t like answering my own doorbell.”
    She glanced at her enormous diamond-studded watch. “And after that it’ll almost be time for the first glass of champagne.” She rolled her eyes heavenward and grimaced. “God, why at my age do I think a glass of bubbly taken before the sun is over the yardarm is the first step on the path to decadence? When I don’t give a damn about decadence. And anyway, it’s not alcohol that’ll kill me; it’s these blasted ciggies….”
    Bea moved into the grand fourteen-room apartment overlooking Central Park. Her pretty blue and white room was next to Millie’s palatial suite. “Near enough to yell if I need you,” Millie told her cheerfully. She was sitting on Bea’s bed, watching her unpack, passing critical comments on each garment as she hung it in her closet.
    “Mmm, not one for color, are you, dear girl?” she said witheringly, eyeing yet another neutral-toned linen