by Tami Hoag
Dixon’s phone rang before he could even think about it. He hit the button marked Speaker.
“Sheriff, Detective Mendez is on line one. He says it’s urgent.”
Dixon punched line one. “Tony, what have you got for us?”
“Are you sitting down?”
“Yes.”
“We showed the photo array to the postal clerks.”
“Who did they ID?” Vince asked. “Bruce?”
“Milo.”
“I beg your pardon?” Dixon said.
“Milo Bordain. The clerk was adamant about it. I don’t know what to say, boss. I’m not sure what it means.”
Vince felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He was halfway to the door before Dixon could speak.
“Where are you going?”
“Anne took Haley to Bordain’s ranch.”
101
“I didn’t know Marissa,” Anne said. “What was she like?”
“She was lovely, of course,” Milo Bordain said as she brought the food out of the picnic basket. Grapes, cheeses, crackers, bread. Haley was on a mission looking for butterflies. Anne kept one eye on her, making sure she didn’t wander too close to the water.
“She was talented,” Bordain said. “So talented, but headstrong. She could have been internationally known, but she lacked the discipline necessary. I tried to guide her, but she wouldn’t always take the best advice.”
“Do you know a lot about the art world?” Anne asked in all innocence.
“I know talent,” she said defensively. “And I know people. I’m very good at putting the right people together to make things happen. This is partly why I’m so disappointed in Cal Dixon. He could have gone places. Now, after the way he’s botched this investigation ...”
“It isn’t over yet,” Anne said, hoping to defuse Bordain’s rising level of tension. “Things could turn in another direction.”
“They had certainly better,” Milo snapped. “Everything I do for this community, and this is the thanks I get? Having my son’s name dragged through the mud?”
“Haley!” Anne called. “Come have something to eat.”
So we can get the hell out of here.
Haley climbed up on the picnic bench, looked at the spread, and announced, “I don’t like this kind of food.”
“This is a very nice lunch, young lady,” Milo said.
“Have some grapes,” Anne suggested.
“No.”
“How about a cracker?” Anne said.
“No! I wanna go play with my kitties!”
“No playing until after lunch,” Milo declared.
Haley got a mad face. “You can’t tell me. You’re not my mommy!”
The look on Milo’s face frightened Anne. “Don’t you talk back to me, young lady! You’ll grow up to be an arrogant little bitch, just like your mother!”
Haley started to cry.
Anne wanted to lash out at Bordain, but something, some instinct stopped her—self-preservation, fear? All she knew for certain was that it was past time to go. Milo Bordain’s behavior was becoming increasingly erratic.
“I’m sorry,” Anne said to their hostess, getting up from the table. She put an arm around Haley, still standing on the bench. “This is just not the day to do this. I think we should leave.”
Bordain arched a brow. “After I’ve gone to all this trouble?”
“I’m really sorry,” Anne said, “but this is a difficult time for Haley.”
“She’s just being a brat,” Bordain said. “If you would discipline her—”
“It’s not that simple,” Anne said.
“I’ve told you time and again—”
“Mommy Anne ...,” Haley whined. “Mommy Anne—”
“Stop calling her that!” Milo shouted.
Haley sobbed.
“Okay, that’s it,” Anne said. “We’re done here. We’re going home.”
“You can’t just leave,” Milo said. “After I’ve gone to all this trouble—”
“Nobody asked you to go to any trouble,” Anne said.
“Isn’t that just like you?” Bordain said. “You’ve never appreciated anything I’ve ever done for you. You’re nothing but an ungrateful little whore!”
Fear went through Anne like a bolt of lightning. Milo Bordain wasn’t speaking to her. Milo Bordain didn’t know her, had never done anything for her. She was talking to Marissa.
Automatically Anne’s eyes went to the picnic table and the knife that had been left there to slice the bread.
“You think you can just leave me?” Bordain said.
“Mrs. Bordain,” Anne said firmly. “Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m not Marissa.”
Bordain wasn’t listening. Her mind had gone to a different place. She took a menacing step toward Haley. Anne drew her back a step on the bench.
“Stop it!” Bordain shouted. “Stop that crying!”
“Bad Daddy!” Haley shouted back. “Bad Daddy! You hurt my mommy!”
Oh my God, Anne thought. She meant it. Haley hadn’t mistaken Milo Bordain for her mother’s killer. Milo Bordain was the killer.
Bordain lunged for Haley with both hands, going for her throat. Haley screamed. Anne swept her off the bench, set her on the ground, and shouted, “Run, Haley! Run for help!”
Terrified, Haley ran a few steps and turned around, sobbing, “Mommy! Mommy, no!!”
Milo Bordain was six feet tall and outweighed Anne by a good fifty pounds. When she grabbed Anne by the hair and slapped her, Anne saw stars. Bordain pulled her arm back to hit her again. Anne dropped to her knees, pulling the bigger woman off balance and loosening her hold.
Bordain fell sideways against the table, sending food and drinks flying. Anne scrambled forward on her hands and knees, grabbed the bench, grabbed the edge of the table as she tried to get her feet under her.
They lunged for the knife at the same time.
One of them struck the end of the handle and the knife spun out of reach.
Anne dashed around the end of the table and lunged for the knife again.
Bordain threw herself halfway across the table and grabbed the knife, blade first, cutting her hand. An animal roar tore up out of her chest, not of pain but of rage.
Haley was screaming and screaming. Anne could see her in her peripheral vision, out of harm’s way. But then the little girl came running.
“No!! No!! Don’t hurt my mommy!!”
Bordain wheeled toward her, the knife clutched in her bloody hand.
On the wrong side of the table, Anne grabbed the first thing that came to hand—a loaf of French bread—and swung it like a bat, hitting Bordain in the side of the head, diverting her attention from Haley.
“Leave her alone!” Anne shouted, not knowing if Milo Bordain could even hear her. The woman’s eyes were like flat pieces of colored glass. Her face was twisted grotesquely as she came at Anne with the knife.
Anne ran around the end of the table and leaned down to scoop Haley off the ground, the only thought in her mind: Run!
Already wounded herself, she was going to pick up thirty pounds of wiggling, screaming child and try to run.
It never occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to do it.
She never felt the knife slice her side as she grabbed up the girl and ran.
The buildings of the ranch seemed so far away. It seemed like her feet pounded the ground but gained no ground. In the distance, she could see the deputy running toward them, but not getting any nearer.
She could hear her own breathing, the air rasping in and out of her lungs. She could hear her feet thudding against the ground. And in the far, far distance she thought she could hear a siren.
She didn’t dare look back.
Then suddenly something hit her shoulder from behind and she was falling.
Trying to shield Haley, Anne twisted as she fell, hitting the ground with her shoulder. At the same time, the deputy planted himself and shouted for Bordain to drop
the knife.
She didn’t.
“Drop the knife!” the deputy shouted.
Milo Bordain looked at the knife in her hand, some kind of terrible realization dawning.
“Drop the knife!”
Slowly her fingers peeled away from the handle. The knife fell to the ground. Bordain fell to her knees, emotions tearing through her. She opened her mouth to cry, but no sound came. She curled into a ball, her broad shoulders heaving as she sobbed silently.
Trying to suck in some air, Anne pushed herself up onto her knees. Haley flung herself into Anne’s arms, crying and crying.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
“It’s okay!” Anne panted, holding her tight. “We’re okay! We’re all right. It’s over.”
And then, somehow, Vince was there, holding them both, and they were safe.
102
“No one was supposed to get hurt,” Gina began. “We never meant for that at all. We were trying to do something good, really. It was all supposed to work out for the best for everybody, but most of all for Haley.”
“Let’s start at the beginning, Gina,” Vince said. “Tell us about you and Marissa.”
They had gathered in her hospital room—Dixon, Mendez, Hicks, and himself. She was strong enough for it now.
She would be sent home in another day or so, though her ordeal was far from over. Her ankle would require more surgery and physical therapy, and would probably always be a reminder of what she had gone through.
For now, though, the more superficial of her physical injuries had begun to fade from view.
“At the very beginning,” she started, “Marissa—she was Melissa then—she and I became friends in the seventh grade. We lived in Reseda. I had a normal family. Marissa grew up in the foster care system.
“Her mother was killed in a car accident when she was eight, and her father became an alcoholic and couldn’t take care of her. It was really sad. He died when we were seniors in high school.”
“So family was probably really important to Marissa,” Vince said.
“Yes. She loved to hang out with my family, and she was always taking care of the other kids in the foster homes she lived in. You didn’t know her, but Marissa was the kind of person who would just open up her heart and draw everyone in—especially little kids. She always said she was going to have a big family of her own one day.”
Vince offered her a tissue and patted her hand. “I wish I could have met her,” he said. “It sounds like she was a very special person.”
Who had also perpetrated blackmail and fraud, he knew. But then people were never only one thing.
Gina nodded and struggled for a moment with her emotions.
“So the two of you stayed friends through school and then ... ?” Mendez prompted.
“We both got jobs, got fired, got other jobs. But we always stuck together. I only had brothers growing up, and Marissa didn’t have anybody, so we became each other’s sisters.”
“And by 1981, where were you?” Dixon asked.
“We were living in Venice near the beach. I was working in downtown LA in the garment district. Marissa was a starving artist. She would sell her paintings at the beach on the weekends, but she worked as a hostess at Morton’s steakhouse to pay the rent. That’s where she met Bruce Bordain.”
“And they got involved ... romantically?”
“Marissa got involved romantically,” she corrected him. “I don’t know. Maybe it was because of her not having a dad or whatever. I mean, Bordain is old enough to be her father, but she really liked him. He made her feel special. He bought her gifts, took her places. He gave her the whole song and dance about not being in love with his wife, and how they didn’t even live together.”
“But it was just a passing thing for him?” Vince said.
Gina nodded. “She was just a toy for him. And then she got pregnant and that was the end for him. She called him and told him, and a few days later she got a check in the mail from him to go get an abortion.
“Can you believe that?” she said, disgusted. “ ‘Go take care of it,’ he said in his note. Like it was nothing. Like, like she was having a wart removed. Then he stopped returning her phone calls.”
“Did she have the abortion?” Vince asked.
“It was terrible,” Gina said. “She didn’t want to. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to keep the baby. She wanted Bruce to love her. The stress literally made her sick. Then she miscarried and everything went wrong. She started hemorrhaging. I thought she was going to die!”
“That’s when she had the hysterectomy,” Dixon ventured.
Gina nodded. “It was worse than if he had killed her. Having kids was Marissa’s biggest goal in life.”
“She took it hard,” Vince said. Marissa would have been twenty-three years old at the time. Young, with no family to fall back on, working as a hostess, and her knight in shining armor had set off a series of events that had utterly destroyed her fantasy of a perfect life.
“So where does Haley enter into this?” Mendez asked.
“Once a week we both volunteered at a women’s shelter in Venice,” Gina said. “We met this girl our age. She was pregnant. She called herself Star, but we never knew her real name. She said she came to LA to become a movie star, but changing her name was as close as she ever got.”
“And the father of her baby?” Vince asked.
“We never knew. I don’t think she knew. One day she’d tell us it was her drug dealer, and the next day she’d say he was a struggling actor or a big-shot director.
“Star would talk about getting rid of the baby, having an abortion. Then she would decide she wanted the baby, and she would talk all this crazy talk about how she would raise the baby and have a really nice apartment and buy the baby everything. But she didn’t have any money. I mean, get real. She was a homeless drug-addicted prostitute. She didn’t have any way to support herself, let alone a baby.
“It bothered Marissa a lot. She was afraid of what Star would do to the baby, how she might have it and throw it in a Dumpster, or have it and drown it in a toilet. Or maybe she would sell it. Marissa said she had read about people selling babies to pedophiles and sick stuff like that. I didn’t even want to know that could happen!”
“So Marissa came up with a plan?” Vince said.
“She said, what if she got the baby and told Bruce Bordain it was his. The timing worked. He has tons of money. What would it be to him to pay for raising a baby? Nothing. And he should have been doing it anyway, for Marissa’s baby.
“The baby would be taken care of and so would Marissa. She would be able to concentrate on her art. She would have the child she always wanted. It would be good for everyone.”
“Except Bruce Bordain,” Mendez pointed out.
“Well ... neither one of us felt very sorry for him.”
“So Star had the baby and what? Marissa just took her?” Hicks asked.
“No, no. It wasn’t like that,” Gina said. “They made a deal. Marissa would pay for Star’s drug rehab and prenatal care for the baby. There would be one payoff when the baby was born, and Star would have the birth certificate made out the way Marissa wanted.”
“So it was like a private adoption,” Vince said.
“Basically. Marissa sold everything she owned and took a second job to do it. She couldn’t let Bordain see her because of course she wasn’t pregnant. So she had to quit her job at Morton’s. She told her boss she was quitting because she was pregnant, knowing Bruce would ask when she wasn’t there. She got a job at a seafood place in Santa Monica and worked days at a boutique.
“She waited until right before Haley was born to call Bordain and tell him she was having the baby. He sent another check, but he told her he didn’t want to hear from her again.”
“So she moved to Oak Knoll,” Mendez said.
“She knew his wife lived here part-time. It was the only place the Bordains had a home that we could afford to move to.”
“It was an adventure, Marissa told me,” she said, rolling her eyes at the ultimate understatement. “I thought, why not? We decided we would take some of the money Bordain had given her and money that I had saved, and start the boutique.”
“And this is when Marissa changed her name?” Mendez asked. “About the time you moved up here?”
“Right before. She didn’t trust Star not to change her mind and show up one day and want Haley back. So we made up the whole story about her being from Rhode Island, and being cut off from her family—like a heroine from a Sidney Sheldon novel or something. It was kind of exciting.”
“So, you both moved up here,” Dixon said. “Bruce Bordain couldn’t ignore Marissa if she was here right under his wife’s nose. Did he ever question that he was the baby’s father?”
“No,” Gina said. “I thought he would. I thought he’d want some kind of blood test or something, and then we’d be sunk. But the money mattered less to him than if Marissa would have made a big public stink about it—or I guess I should say it mattered more to Mrs. Bordain. The whole support-the-artist thing was her idea.”
“Let me get this straight,” Mendez said. “Marissa went to blackmail Bruce Bordain, and his wife came up with a plan that kept her in their lives?”
“Creepy, huh?” Gina said. “But I guess in a weird way it was a control thing over her husband, you know? And she really got into it.
“She treated Marissa and Haley like they were her pretend family or something, like they were life-size dolls or something. Even though Marissa was an artist, Milo decorated their house the way she wanted it. She designed the art studio—how crazy is that? She would tell Marissa what to wear to events, and if Marissa didn’t do it Mrs. Bordain would have a fit.”
“How did Marissa feel about that?” Vince asked.
“She said that was a small price to pay, and so what if Milo wanted to dress her up? She kind of liked the game playing, seeing what she could get away with—the people she had as friends, the men she chose to date. She would only let Milo have just so much control and no more.