Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe by Lee Goldberg Read Free Book Online Page A

recovered. She gave Mark some painkillers and told him to take it easy for the next few days, but she knew her patient well enough to assume that her advice would be ignored.
    Emily wheeled Mark out to the parking lot, where her Mercedes SLK convertible was parked next to his Ford Five Hundred sedan.
    "I'll follow you," Mark said.
    "I'm driving," she said. "You can come back for your car tomorrow."
    "You heard Dr. Mack. She said I was fine."
    "Yesterday at this time you were unconscious with your head split open," she said. "And I know you lied to Heidi about your vision. You probably see three of me right now. You'll drive when I'm convinced you're okay."
    "You're one tough lady." Mark grimaced and headed towards the passenger side of her car.
    "I'll take that as a compliment," she said, climbing into the driver's seat.
    "How's your driving?" Mark asked.
    "Fast and nimble," she said. "Where to?"
    "You're not taking me home?"
    "I am if that's where you want to go, but I'm sure you have other plans."
    "I thought you weren't part of my crime-solving team," Mark said.
    "I am now," she said. "Besides, I want to keep my eye on you."
    "You're that worried about my concussion?"
    She shook her head and smiled. "I just like the view." Mark wasn't used to someone flirting with him, at least rot that he remembered. He liked it.
     
    The top of the SLK retracted into the trunk with the touch of a button. Twenty-eight seconds later, the car was zipping along residential streets to Santa Monica, staying off the major thoroughfares.
    Mark had forgotten how much he enjoyed driving with the sun on his skin and the wind whipping his hair. He'd forgotten lots of things, but this memory pre-dated his amnesia.
    Until two years ago—four years if he counted the two erased by his head injury—he drove a Saab convertible. The Saab met a nasty fate. Mark was carjacked and the car got totaled. His next car, a Mini Cooper, suffered a similar fate. He'd barely owned the car for a month when an RV collided with it and knocked it off a cliff about a hundred miles from Las Vegas.
    Mark decided his next car would be another convertible, assuming he could find a company that would insure him without charging exorbitant premiums. Perhaps, he thought, he'd married a wealthy surgeon just so he could afford his auto insurance payments.
    Emily pulled up to the curb in front of a tiny Spanish Real bungalow with white stucco walls, arched windows, and a flat roof, the parapet lined with decorative red tiles.
    "I thought we were going to Jesse and Susan's place," Mark said.
    "This is it," Emily said.
    Mark remembered Jesse and Susan living together in what had been Jesse's apartment in Venice. Obviously, they had moved in the last two years.
    The house was small, no larger than twelve hundred square feet, and it incorporated motifs from several Spanish architectural styles. It boasted an arched entryway with a gabled, red-tiled roof and a triple-arched living room window covered with a decorative wrought-iron grille.
    Mark and Emily walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Susan opened the door, and before Mark could speak, she embraced him, wrapping her arms around him, which wasn't easy given her enormous belly.
    "It's so good to see you," she said. "Nobody told me you'd regained consciousness."
    "I'm sorry," Emily said. "That's my fault. You were going through so much yesterday, I didn't want to intrude."
    "I sat here alone, crying. I would have welcomed any intrusion at all."
    "But you sent us all away," Emily said. "You said you wanted to be left alone."
    "Dumb move on my part," Susan said.
    Mark took a big step back from her and looked her over.
    "You're pregnant," he said in astonishment.
    "How did you notice?" She smiled and motioned them inside. "Sometimes I feel like all I am is a belly with legs and blond hair."
    The house was decorated with an eclectic mix of comfortable-looking furniture in traditional styles and of varying ages. None of the