The Secret of the Villa Mimosa Read Free Page A

searching the ravine for herpurse or any other clues, I guess. But as far as I know, she’s still just plain Jane Doe.”
    “Maybe they’ll run her picture in the newspapers,” Phyl suggested, still thinking of the mother, not knowing her child was so near death. Surely a mother’s touch, the sound of her voice, just her presence in the same room would help. Suddenly it seemed terribly important to find her, to bring her here.
    “There won’t be any pictures,” the nurse said. “Not the way she looks. Even her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.”
    Phyl sighed regretfully as she thanked her and turned away. It was foolish to become so involved; she didn’t even know the young woman. Still, she hoped she made it through. Forgetting all about the focaccia sandwich, she drove slowly through the traffic to the Medical Center at UCSF.
    Later she saw her private patients, and for once she found herself losing her concentration. She was relieved when her last patient failed to show at seven, and it wasn’t until she was driving home that she remembered she hadn’t eaten a thing all day.
    No wonder you were losing it
, she admonished herself, because she felt guilty that she hadn’t given her all to her patients. She swung the car onto Sansome, turned again on Embarcadero, and found a parking spot right in front of Il Fornaio.
    As usual, the restaurant was jammed. “I could seat you at the bar, Doc,” the hostess said. Phyl often dropped in after work when she was too tired to think of fixing supper at home, and everyone there knew her well. “There’s a quiet corner where no one will bother you.”
    The hostess showed her to a seat at the far end of the bar and handed her a menu. Phyl ordered a glass of red wine. A copy of the
Chronicle
was lying on the counter. It ran a picture of the rescue scene at Mitchell’s Ravine on the front page. WOMAN’S BODY FOUND INRAVINE, was the headline. She read it, surprised, but then remembered that at first everyone had thought the girl was dead. Probably tomorrow, unless something more important took over the news, the paper would reinstate her in the land of the living. Unless, by then, she
was
dead.
    She toyed with her pasta, thinking about going home to her empty apartment, remembering it was her thirty-seventh birthday. On an impulse she ordered a glass of champagne and then almost instantly regretted it. A birthday celebrated alone was not a real birthday.
    She flicked through the newspaper, stopping at an enticing travel article about Paris. “Paris.” The very word sounded full of promise: springtime and chestnuts in blossom, café tables under the trees, and walks by the Seine. A handsome man in your bed, sharing cups of hot, strong coffee the next morning … The stuff of dreams on a rainy San Francisco night.
    She sighed wistfully again. She recalled vaguely there was to be a psychiatric conference in Paris later in the year. Maybe she would find time to attend. Feeling better, she called for her check, powdered her nose, and added a flash of Paloma red to her lips.
    The woman sitting next to her turned and smiled as she got up to leave. Her red hair swung around her shoulders, and Phyl thought with a pang of sorrow of the girl hovering between life and death in intensive care at the San Francisco General.
    She called the hospital from the car. The neurosurgery had been successful, but the girl was in a coma. The doctors were still not sure about brain damage. It might be a while before they knew, one way or the other.
    Tears spilled down Phyl’s cheeks as she drove slowly home. She was remembering things she did not want to remember, things that as a good psychiatrist she had tried to put behind her: the fear and the guilt and the grief … And now, because of a brutalized redheadedgirl lying in a hospital, they had all come flooding back again.
    Fool
, she told herself severely.
You’re a damn fool, Phyl Forster.

3
    T he girl was hurtling through a dark