Secrets to the Grave

by Tami Hoag

  “I have no idea.”

  “You told us you know her really well,” Mendez said. “I barely know the woman at all and I can tell you she’s a narcissistic, racist snob. Homophobic wouldn’t be much of a stretch.”

  Foster massaged the back of his neck, literally trying to rub out the pain that this experience was. “Is there a point to this?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Mendez said.

  “Will we get to it anytime soon?”

  “What about his father?” Mendez asked. “He seems like that kind of macho man’s man who wouldn’t be too pleased to hear his son really doesn’t have his same interest in strippers and hookers.”

  “I don’t really know Mr. Bordain.”

  “You don’t run in the same circles.”

  “No,” Foster said. “Really. Why are you asking me these questions? Why don’t you ask the Bordains? Why don’t you ask Darren? He’s here, isn’t he?”

  “What would make you think that?” Hicks asked.

  “He called me and told me before you brought him down here.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because a bunch of us were going out to dinner. He called to say he wouldn’t make it.”

  “Thoughtful.”

  “Yes. Is that a crime now?”

  “No,” Mendez said. “Did he happen to mention to you that he’s wearing one of your shirts?”

  “What?”

  Mendez ran a forefinger along the breast pocket of his own shirt. “Monogrammed. M-E-F.”

  “There must have been a mix-up at the laundry.”

  “Mmmmm ... I suppose that could have happened. Or maybe you left it at his house the night Marissa was killed.”

  Foster wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. He waited to see where Mendez would go with it.

  “Here’s the thing, Mark,” he said. “We have Haley Fordham’s birth certificate with Darren Bordain listed as being her father.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Why would you say that?” Hicks asked. “If Darren is straight, why wouldn’t that be possible?”

  “Because Haley was already born before Darren ever met Marissa.”

  “He says,” Mendez stipulated. “The problem with Darren’s story is that he doesn’t really have an alibi for the night Marissa was killed, and he potentially has two very strong motives to want her dead. Now, he says he was home alone, which doesn’t help him out. I don’t believe him. I think there’s someone who could corroborate his alibi. I don’t believe he was home alone. I think he was with someone, and he’s trying to protect that person.”

  “If you’re that person, Mark,” Hicks said, “you can clear this up right now and everyone moves on with their lives.”

  “Why would you believe me?” Foster asked. “Darren is my friend. I could lie for him. You would have to corroborate my story, and you’ll do that by going around asking everyone I know if I’m gay and if Darren is gay. Since you’re going to do that anyway, I might as well go home now and leave you to your work.”

  “You’re not going to back him up,” Mendez said.

  “He hasn’t told you he was with me,” Foster countered. “There’s nothing for me to back up. And there’s nothing for either of us to gain by me saying I was there.”

  Frustrated, Mendez sat back and tapped a pen against the tabletop. This was what he got for getting into a chess match with a smart guy. It was so much easier with the average stupid criminal.

  “All right,” he said on a sigh. “Then this is going to get ugly, and there’s nothing I can do about that except apologize in advance.”

  “You’ll understand if I don’t accept your apology, Detective,” Foster said, getting up, “if you’re going to drag my name through the mud and jeopardize my career by creating a scandal over something that doesn’t exist.”

  “Yeah,” Mendez said. “I guess it’s easier for you to blame me for that than to accept responsibility for your own choice not to answer my questions or own up to who you are.”

  Foster gave him a cold look through his steel-rimmed glasses. “You don’t have any idea who I am.”

  “No,” Mendez agreed. “And you’ve been keeping that secret for so many years, I wonder if you know the answer yourself.”

  “I live with who I am every day,” Foster said. He turned to Hicks. “If you don’t mind, Detective, I’d like to go home now.”

  “Strike two,” Mendez said, walking into the break room.

  “Go home,” Dixon said. “Tomorrow is another day.”

  “Any word about Anne?”

  “Dennis Farman somehow found their house. He attacked her with a couple of wood gouges he stole somewhere. She’s cut up, but she’ll be fine.”

  “Jesus,” Mendez muttered. “She’s the only person on the planet who ever tried to do a kind thing for him. Where’s the little shit now?”

  “In restraints at Mercy General. Apparently, the little Morgan girl was at the scene and clocked him a good one in the head with a fireplace poker.”

  “Way to go, Wendy.”

  “He’ll be transferred to the juvenile detention center as soon as the doctor clears him to go,” Dixon said. “As far as I’m concerned he can rot there until he’s eighteen.”

  Mendez shrugged his sport coat on and headed for the door. “Be sure to tell them to hide all their matches.”

  86

  Dennis lay in his hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling. He couldn’t move his hands because he had been tied to the bed. His head felt like a pumpkin that had been bashed with a baseball bat.

  Stupid Wendy Morgan. He’d show her one day.

  He would show them all.

  It wasn’t like he’d never been hit in the head before. One time his dad had knocked him in the side of the head with a beer bottle and he had gotten half knocked out and started puking and everything. He’d had a ringing in that ear for two weeks after.

  Miss Navarre hadn’t come to see him. He hoped that meant he had killed her and she was dead now. That would mean he had killed two people, and he wasn’t even a teenager yet. Nobody was ever going to mess with him again. He felt like a pretty tough guy thinking about that.

  Then he thought about what would happen next, and he didn’t feel so tough, after all. He wouldn’t be sent back to the hospital on account of he had tried to burn it down. He would be sent to juvenile detention, and no one would ever come to see him. Ever.

  Nobody wanted to help him. Nobody would ever care how he felt or what he thought ever again. He had killed the one person in his life who would have done those things—Miss Navarre.

  He had no one. No one at all. And he never would again. He was rotten and bad and good-for-nothing like his dad had always said. And not one person in the whole world cared. He was all alone.

  For the first time in a long time, Dennis Farman cried himself to sleep.

  87

  “So, what’s this all about, Cal?” Bruce Bordain asked.

  He was irritated and making only a half-hearted effort to conceal it. The blindingly white smile had been downsized. There was certain tension in his body. He hadn’t appreciated having a deputy interrupt his breakfast for a command performance at the sheriff’s office.

  “You couldn’t just pick up the phone and talk to me?” he said to the sheriff. “I’ve got a plane to catch before noon.”

  “We’ll try not to keep you, but this is a conversation we don’t want to have over the phone, Bruce,” Dixon said, leading the way back from his office, past the detectives’ squad room.

  “Do I get a heads-up as to what this is about?” Bordain asked. “I don’t like surprises unless they’re twenty-two with big tits and jump out of a birthday cake naked.”

  “Well,” Dixon said, opening the door to interview room one and motioning Bordain in, “then it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re not going to like this one.”

  “And you’re bringing me back here to the dungeons for this?” Bordain said. “Should I have
brought my attorney with me?”

  “I don’t want someone walking into my office while we’re having this conversation, Bruce. If you decide at some point that you’d be more comfortable with your attorney present, you’re free to call him.”

  The last remnants of the bullshit smile faded away. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “Have a seat,” Dixon offered.

  Bordain took the chair facing the door with his back to the wall. Dixon took the seat at the end of the table. Mendez took the seat with his back to the door, but turned the chair sideways.

  “Bruce,” Dixon began. “I asked you the other day how well you knew Marissa Fordham—”

  “And I told you, well enough to have a conversation.”

  “How intimate would that conversation be, Mr. Bordain?” Mendez asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you asking me if I was screwing her? You think I was screwing my wife’s pet artist right under her nose? Do you think I have a death wish?”

  “We’re more interested in the year prior to when Milo began sponsoring Ms. Fordham,” Dixon said.

  “In 1981,” Mendez specified. “You would have met her in Los Angeles. Her name was Melissa Fabriano then.”

  Bordain didn’t even blink. “Never heard of her.”

  “We’ve come to find out she spent some time working at Morton’s downtown,” Dixon said, “as a hostess. You’re a steak man, aren’t you, Bruce?”

  “I like a great cut of beef,” he said. “And I’ll admit it: I like a great piece of ass too. But I never laid eyes on Marissa until Milo introduced me to her.”

  Mendez tapped the edge of the file folder against the tabletop and exchanged a meaningful look with Dixon.

  “Have you spoken to your son recently, Mr. Bordain?” Mendez asked.

  “I spoke to Darren yesterday. He came out to the ranch to check on his mother. We had breakfast.”

  “Do you know if Darren had a relationship with Ms. Fordham prior to her moving here?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Darren doesn’t share the details of his love life with me. What is any of this getting at?”

  “We spoke with Darren last night,” Dixon said. “He also denies knowing Marissa prior to her moving here in 1982.”

  “Well I’m glad we’ve cleared that up,” Bordain said, getting up out of his chair. “Neither my son nor I knew Marissa Fordham before she became Marissa Fordham.”

  “The problem with that,” Dixon said, “is that we’ve come into possession of a document that suggests otherwise.”

  Bordain’s eyes went straight to the file folder. He sat back down.

  “Which is what?” he asked.

  Mendez opened the file and moved it across the table.

  “This is a photocopy,” Dixon said. “We have the actual document in safekeeping.”

  Bordain pulled a pair of reading glasses out of the chest pocket of his pale yellow shirt and perched them on his nose. Mendez watched him for any sign of an emotional reaction as he read the document. There was none. Bruce Bordain hadn’t gotten where he was by not being able to play poker.

  “It’s a lie,” he said, and shoved the file back across the table.

  “It’s a pretty convincing lie,” Dixon said, “by all appearances.”

  “It’s still a lie.”

  “Marissa Fordham moved up here with her infant daughter in 1982,” Mendez said. “Your wife began to sponsor her almost immediately—”

  “Milo is an art lover.”

  “—paying her a monthly amount of five thousand plus providing her with a place to live and work. That seems to be the coup of the century according to professionals in the art world.”

  “Somebody has to win the lottery.”

  “And this incredibly lucky young woman also just happens to have a birth certificate naming one Darren Bruce Bordain as the father of her child?” Dixon said. “Are we supposed to believe that’s a coincidence, Bruce? Because I have to tell you, in case you didn’t know it, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.”

  Bordain rubbed a hand across his face and scratched behind one ear, looking off to the side and at the floor.

  “And we still haven’t gotten to the heart of this, have we?” he said.

  “Was she blackmailing you?”

  “That’s not it,” Bordain said. “Come on. Go for the big one, Cal.”

  “Mr. Bordain, where were you on the night Marissa Fordham was murdered?” Mendez asked.

  “I was in Las Vegas the entire weekend.” He pulled his wallet out and withdrew a business card. “If you’d like to speak to my companions for that night, call this number.”

  Mendez took the card and looked at it. Pinnacle Escorts. “Pay up front,” Mendez said, “not later.”

  “Apparently, my son needs to learn that lesson.”

  “You’re going to leave your son hanging out to dry on this, Bruce?” Dixon asked. “I didn’t peg you for that.”

  “He has to take responsibility for his own actions.”

  “Oh, he has,” Mendez said.

  “Then there you have it.”

  “Last night he owned up to being gay.”

  Bordain came halfway out of his chair and jabbed a finger at Mendez. “That’s a fucking lie!”

  “It would be if it wasn’t true,” Mendez said.

  “My son is not a faggot! He’s—He’s—He’s just trying to get out of this!” he said, pointing to the file folder. “It’s his kid. The woman called him and told him she was pregnant. He sent her a check to get an abortion. She didn’t do it. Then she showed up here with the baby. I’m not having my son marry some hippy artist with a love child. He’s got a future to think about.”

  “So you paid her off,” Dixon said. “Does Milo know why she’s writing those checks?”

  “Of course she knows.”

  “And she’s fine with that?”

  “Milo knows her job. She’s protecting her son.”

  “That’ll be the best spin you can put on the story,” Dixon said. “Darren got a woman pregnant. Boys will be boys. And that definitely proves he’s a boy’s boy. Then the family took the woman and child in to support them. Very magnanimous. Definitely the right thing to do.

  “The problem is, Bruce, the girl is dead.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Bordain said. “I was in Vegas.”

  “With access to a private jet and a bevy of handsomely paid alibi witnesses,” Mendez said. “Is that going to hold up?”

  “Like the fucking Hoover Dam,” Bordain said. “Because it’s true.”

  “And Darren couldn’t have done it,” Mendez said. “Because he was busy fucking his gay lover.”

  A huge vein bulged out on Bordain’s forehead, throbbing. “That’s a lie! You shut the fuck up!”

  “You can’t have it both ways—so to speak,” Mendez said dryly. “Either Darren fathered this woman’s child, got tired of the blackmail and killed her, or he couldn’t have killed her because he was in bed with his boyfriend. Which is it, Mr. Bordain? Which of those is the lesser of evils for you?”

  “You could both take a paternity test,” Dixon said. “Then there’s no question who did what to whom.”

  “Last I knew we had an amendment to the Constitution protecting us against self-incrimination,” Bordain said.

  He stood up again. This time he really meant it. “We’re through here. If you want to speak about this further, Cal, call my attorney. He’s in the phone book under ‘Fuck You.’”

  88

  “If Bruce Bordain did it—or had it done,” Hicks said, “why would he turn around and send the breasts to his wife? Or try to run her off the road?”

  “To make it look like someone has it in for the family,” Campbell said.

  “But it looks like someone just has it in for the wife,” Trammell pointed out.

  They helped themselves to doughnuts if for no other reason than to perpetuate the stereotype. The war room smelled like grease and c
offee.

  “My money here is still on Darren,” Mendez said. “Unless Mark Foster steps up, he’s got no alibi. And even if Foster comes forward, it’s like he said himself last night: ‘So what?’ That’s like uncorroborated accomplice testimony. It’s useless. Why wouldn’t his lover lie for him? Isn’t that part of the job description?”

  “And your mother wonders why you’re single,” Campbell said.

  “Well, come on,” Mendez said. “Really. Wouldn’t you rather have people think maybe you bat from the other side of the plate than have them suspect you of murder? You go to prison for murder.”

  “A pretty boy like Bordain goes to the can he’ll find out all about being a good boyfriend,” Trammell said.

  “Say he thinks he’s Haley’s father—or he finds out that’s been a hoax all along—either way,” Mendez went on. “He kills her and makes it look like some lunatic did it. He sends the breasts to Mom for good measure. Then he tells everybody he couldn’t have done it by admitting to something that’s so scandalous no one would ever think he was lying about it.”

  “Right,” Dixon said. “And who believes Milo Bordain knows about all of this and is just blithely writing the blackmail checks while treating Marissa Fordham like her long-lost daughter?”

  Hamilton issued a low whistle. “These people would make Shakespeare’s head spin.”

  “Tony,” Dixon said. “You and Bill go up to Lompoc with that photo array and add a shot of Bruce Bordain. If one of them sent that box, there’s our killer.”

  “That’s a great plan, boss,” Hicks said. “Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “Shit. How did that happen?” Dixon scowled.

  “What about Gina Kemmer?” Trammell asked.

  “No change in her status,” Hicks said. “The doctors aren’t very hopeful.”

  “Then we don’t have a choice. We need to speak with Milo Bordain.”

  “The problem with that is going to be that Milo Bordain isn’t going to want to speak with us,” Mendez said. “There’s no way her husband will allow it.”

  “She’ll do it if she thinks she can move everyone around the chessboard the way she wants them,” Dixon said. “I’m going to offer her the opportunity to set us straight. I think she won’t be able to resist.”