Secrets to the Grave (20 page)

Comfort her, Mendez thought.

“She’s concerned she might be a target,” Dixon said.

“I’m sure she is,” he said, lighting up. “It’s all about her, isn’t it?”

“You don’t think anyone has it in for her?” Mendez asked.

He laughed. “I’m sure a lot of people have it in for her. She’s not Miss Congeniality. But if she managed to push someone so far they would kill, why wouldn’t they just kill her? Why kill Marissa?”

“Did you know Ms. Fordham?” Dixon asked.

“Sure, of course. She was the daughter my mother never had,” he said sarcastically.

“She was included in your family?”

“Hell, no. A woman with an unknown past and an out-of-wedlock child? Marissa was more like a pet or a Barbie doll. Mother gave her a place to live, made a big show out of being magnanimous and a patron of the arts. But Marissa was never invited to Thanksgiving dinner.”

“What was your relationship with Ms. Fordham?” Mendez asked.

“We were friends. We ran into each other at functions, had a few drinks, had a few laughs at my mother’s expense.”

“Were you ever involved with her romantically?”

“No. Not my type. The bohemian artist thing doesn’t work for me. I’m told I have a political career to consider,” he said dryly. “I should have thought about it, though. Marissa and I together would have given my mother an aneurysm.”

“What about your father?” Hicks asked. “Did he have an opinion about Ms. Fordham? Or about the money your mother spent to support her?”

Bordain shook his head. “The Great Man can’t be bothered with most of what goes on in my mother’s life. He doesn’t care what she does. He lives his own life. They’re hardly ever in residence in the same house at the same time.”

The front door opened then and Milo Bordain locked on her son.

“Darren, what are you doing out here? I called you nearly two hours ago.”

He sighed. “Sorry, Mother. I was tied up in a meeting.”

He very purposefully dropped his half-smoked cigarette on the porch floor and ground it out with the toe of a Gucci loafer.

“Duty calls, gentlemen.”

30

“Nanette Zahn died of multiple stab wounds,” Vince said. “Her death was ruled—get this—a suicide. Her son, Alexander, who was twelve at the time, was taken and raised by a cousin.”

“Wow,” Trammell said. “Do you think the college will give me my money back?”

“Your kid’s on a scholarship. You didn’t pay any money,” Campbell pointed out.

They had gathered in the war room for their end-of-the-day wrap-up and to regroup and make plans.

“The boy was never charged or convicted of anything,” Vince went on, peering down through his reading glasses at his notes. “There was a documented history of child abuse. The mother was severely manic-depressive. She couldn’t deal with her son’s condition—the investigator used the word ‘autism.’ She blamed the boy, ridiculed him, punished him, tormented him. She reportedly locked him in a closet for days at a time and just left him. He was put into foster care on three separate occasions, but was always returned to his mother once she went back on her medication and her moods evened out.”

“What about the father?” Hamilton asked.

“The father was never in the picture,” Vince said. “The mother was known to self-mutilate when she was depressed, so it isn’t out of the question that she might use a knife to kill herself. But I would have expected her to cut herself, not stab herself. It’s extremely rare for a woman to stab herself. She reportedly had three stab wounds to the abdomen.

“Apparently the boy was covered in blood when officers arrived and had sustained injuries consistent with a beating.”

“Now we know why nothing showed up in a routine background check,” Mendez said. “He doesn’t have a record. But he told us he killed her. Where did you get this information?”

“I found out Zahn grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, New York,” Vince said. “As it happened I worked a child abduction up there ten years ago. The lead detective on that case is their chief now. He was in a uniform at the time of Nanette Zahn’s death. He actually remembered the case on account of the boy.”

“What was his take on it?” Hicks asked.

“If the boy did it, it was self-defense. The kid was in a near-catatonic state when the police arrived, and stayed that way for months afterward. No one ever pressed the issue because they knew the family history, and I think they basically felt like the mother had it coming.”

“Where does that leave us considering Zahn as a suspect?” Dixon asked.

“Milo Bordain said the victim complained to her about Zahn,” Hicks pointed out.

“Everybody else has said she got along with him, didn’t mind him hanging around,” Mendez said. “I think Mrs. Bordain doesn’t like Zahn. He’s not her kind of people.”

“Vince?” Dixon asked.

“We have to keep him on the list, but he would have had to have had some kind of psychotic break to do what was done to the victim,” he said. “He’s not psychotic. He has plenty of issues, but he’s not psychotic.”

“But he may have killed a woman with a knife before,” Dixon said.

“Yes.”

“If Marissa Fordham had made him angry somehow, said the wrong thing and triggered a memory ...”

“It’s possible.”

“Talk to him again. See how he reacts when he finds out you know about his mother.”

Vince nodded and jotted a couple of notes to himself while Mendez briefed the group on their conversation with Gina Kemmer.

“We should sit on her,” he suggested. “She knows more than she’s telling us.”

Dixon nodded. “I agree. Campbell and Trammell take the first watch. I’ll bring a couple of deputies in to take the second. Tony, Vince, bring her in tomorrow and have another conversation with her. Turn up the heat.

“Hamilton, what did you find in Marissa’s phone records?”

“Her last call was to Gina Kemmer on the evening of the murder,” Hamilton said. “Before that, there was a call to the Bordain residence, one to Mark Foster, one to the woman who runs the Acorn Gallery. Nothing really stands out as unusual. These were all people she knew and had friendships with.”

“And the bank records?”

“There was a regular monthly deposit of five thousand dollars from Milo Bordain, her sponsor.”

“That’s sixty grand a year!” Campbell exclaimed. “Shit! I’m taking up finger painting. Bordain will be looking for a new artist to sponsor.”

“There were deposits from the Acorn Gallery. She had a balance of twenty-seven thousand in her savings, three thousand, two hundred fifty-one in checking. The trust account for her daughter has over fifty grand in it.”

“That’s a lot of dough,” Vince said.

“She had very few living expenses,” Dixon said. “The Bordains own the property she lived on. She had a generous allowance.”

“And if she came from money to begin with—” Hicks began.

“So far, there’s nothing from Rhode Island on a Marissa Fordham,” Hamilton said. “And I haven’t found anything in the state of California for Marissa Fordham predating 1981. So far I’d say she didn’t exist in this state before 1981.”

“Milo Bordain thought she might be running from an abusive relationship,” Hicks said. “She might have changed her name.”

Dixon sighed and rubbed a hand across his forehead. “Great. I’ll call the pathologist. We need to run her fingerprints.”

“Haley was born in May 1982,” Mendez said. “If Marissa came to California before September ’81 then she wasn’t running from the baby’s father.”

“What’s the latest on the girl, Vince?” Dixon asked.

“She’s being released from the hospital tomorrow. Brain function is normal. There may be some permanent damage to her larynx, but she can talk.”

“What’s she saying?”

“She doesn’t remember being hurt,” Vince said. “But we have to be patient. Her memory could come back over time—or it might never.”

“Can we drug her or hypnotize her or something?” Campbell asked.

“You’ll lose a limb trying to get to her,” Vince said. “My wife will have you for lunch.”

“And pick her teeth with your bones,” Mendez added.

Vince grinned, ridiculously proud. “That’s my girl.”

“We need the info if we can get it,” Dixon said.

“If Haley has information to give, Anne will get it,” Vince said. “But she won’t put the girl at any kind of psychological risk to do it. And that’s the way it should be. So the rest of you bums better get out there and beat the bushes for a killer.”

Dixon checked his watch and frowned. “I’ve got to talk to the press. They want me to comment on Milo Bordain’s reward.”

“What’s your comment going to be, boss?” Campbell asked as Dixon headed for the door.

“No comment.”

31

Gina Kemmer paced around her living room like a caged animal, restless and on edge and desperately wanting out. Darkness had fallen outside. She felt as if it were pressing in against the walls of her cute little house, trying to get in and swallow her whole like a monster. She had turned on all the lights in her living room to ward it off.

She was cold and had wrapped a heavy sweater around herself, holding it tight in a manner that made it seem as if she were wearing a straitjacket. Maybe she should have been wearing a straitjacket, she thought. She felt like she might go crazy. Her life had gone crazy, no thanks to Marissa.

Every time she thought of her friend, her memory flashed to that horrible picture of Marissa butchered and bloody, lying dead on the floor. The thing was still lying on her coffee table among her more pleasant memories of times past. She needed to get rid of it. She couldn’t have it there. She could imagine the blood seeping out of the photograph and running off it and spreading over the other snapshots of happier times, ruining them.

Her stomach tried to bolt again, but there was nothing left in it to throw up. She went to the kitchen and got a long-handled barbecue tongs out of a drawer. Back in the living room she inched sideways toward the coffee table, trying not to look at the photograph. Hand shaking badly, she tried to catch the corner of it with the tongs, swearing as she knocked it away.

After a couple of tries, she managed to get hold of it. She took it to the kitchen, holding it as far away from her as possible, as if it were the dead carcass of a rat or a snake. In the kitchen, she threw the picture in the trash and the tongs after it, the utensil now contaminated with the evil that had been done to Marissa.

A fresh wave of tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She had never been so scared in her life.

Gina wasn’t the kind of person who went looking for excitement or lived life on the edge. That had been Marissa—always the one with the big plan. That was how they had ended up in Oak Knoll: Marissa’s big plan.

Sure, Gina had been glad to come along. And it had worked out fine. She loved it here. She loved the town and her home. The boutique was doing well. She was satisfied. Life could have just gone on that way forever. The only other thing she wanted was to meet a nice guy—not even a rich guy, just a nice guy.

Everything was ruined now. Marissa was dead.

She pressed a hand over her mouth and tried to swallow the crying, hiccupping, and choking on it. The local news was coming on with the story of Marissa’s murder leading the broadcast. Gina grabbed the remote control and turned the sound up.

First was an exterior shot of Marissa’s house, which had always been one of Gina’s favorite places, so pretty with the porch and the flowers, and Marissa’s fanciful sculptures in the yard. Now it looked abandoned and sinister.

Then coverage went live to a press conference being given in front of the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was telling about the autopsy results. That Marissa had died of multiple stab wounds, and that her daughter was in stable condition in the hospital. He confirmed the earlier reports of a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer. The number for the tip line was put up on the bottom of the screen.

Twenty-five thousand dollars was a lot of money. Marissa would have said it wasn’t, but it was to Gina. It was to most people. The boutique was doing well, but cash flow was always an issue with a business that had to maintain inventory. She no longer had Marissa to help her out. Twenty-five thousand dollars would take the financial sting out of her death.

But she would have to live to collect it.

Gina’s head swam and she had to sit down. The idea that came to her made her dizzy and sick. It was something Marissa would have thought of—something Marissa would have done without hesitation.

The worst they can do is say no.
That’s what Marissa would have said.

But that wasn’t true. Marissa was dead.

Gina closed her eyes and saw the scene from the photograph she had thrown away.

The smartest thing she could have done would have been to pack some things and get the hell out.

But she loved her home. She loved her life here.

She had taken her phone off the hook hours before. Reporters had found out that she had been friends with Marissa. They wanted to interview her. They wanted to ask stupid questions like how did it feel to have her best friend murdered and did she know who the killer was.

Maybe she could sell her story. Maybe that was her leverage.

She muted the television and stared at the sheriff and the number for the tip line. On the coffee table lay the business card the older detective had left for her.

She didn’t know what to do.

She picked up the receiver and punched in the number.

The call went through.

“I need to talk to you ...”

Ten minutes later she was driving down the street, her mind on her mission. She turned the corner at one end of the block just as a plain burgundy Ford Taurus turned onto her street from the other end of the block. In it were two sheriff’s detectives come to watch over her and keep her safe.