Secrets to the Grave

Mendez’s eye finally caught on the manila file folder tucked under Vince’s arm. “What’s that?”

“This?” Vince asked, as if he had forgotten about it. He handed the folder to Mendez. “A little light reading.”

Mendez flipped it open and looked the document over from top to bottom twice, his eyes going wide.

“Ho-ly shit.”

“Yeah.” Vince nodded. “I thought you might say that.”

78

Vince had called to say he would be late again and to go ahead with dinner. Anne brought the girls into the kitchen to “help” and to keep her company.

“What are we having?” Wendy asked.

“Macaroni and cheese—and not the kind that comes out of a box,” Anne said, gathering ingredients from the refrigerator and putting them on the island. “The real deal, like my mother used to make. Haley, do you like macaroni and cheese?”

Haley was on all fours on the banquette, playing with her stuffed cat. “Meow. Yes. Meow. Meow.”

Wendy laughed. “Haley, are you a kitty?”

“Meow. Meow. Meow.”

Anne filled the pasta pot with water and put it on the stove to heat, then cut up an onion and diced it in the food processor.

“Mommy Anne? When can we go and see my kitties?”

“I don’t know yet, sweetie. We’ll wait for a nice sunny day.”

“Will that be tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope it’s tomorrow.”

“Haley, what are the names of your kitties?” Wendy asked.

“Scat and Mittens and Kittywampus.”

“Kittywampus?” Anne said. “That’s a funny name.”

How nice is this? she thought as Haley told a story about Kittywampus. She had grown up in a home that was often filled with tension and sadness and her mother’s desperation to be the best possible wife to a man who deserved nothing of the kind. Anne had tiptoed through that minefield her entire childhood, and unlike Wendy, by the time she was eleven she had wished every day that her parents would get divorced.

This was how a family should be. Enjoying each other. Being together. The picture was only incomplete in that Vince wasn’t there. It didn’t matter to Anne that these girls weren’t her children. She loved having them, getting to know them, figuring out their burgeoning personalities and how their little minds worked.

Life was good.

Until the doorbell rang.

Wiping her hands on a dish towel, Anne went to the front of the house, muttering her too-familiar ritual that she was all right, she was in a safe place, Peter Crane would not be standing on her doorstep.

But Dennis Farman was.

79

“Do you spend much time in Los Angeles, Mr. Bordain?” Mendez asked.

Darren Bordain was nervous and suspicious, and had been from the second Mendez had asked him to come back to the sheriff’s office with him. His first instinct had been to say no, but he had thought better of that when Mendez asked him why not.

Refusing made it look like he had something to hide. He had already refused to let them take his photograph. He had refused to take a polygraph. If he refused to come in to look at a new piece of evidence he might be able to shed some light on, the cops were surely going to think he had something to hide.

“I go down there maybe once a month.”

“Business? Pleasure?”

“Usually some of each. I went to school at UCLA. I have friends there.”

“Did you know Gina or Marissa from LA?”

“No. I told you before: I met them both after they had moved here in—what?—’81, ’82,” Bordain said. “Why are you asking me this? I thought you wanted to show me something.”

“We’ll get to that,” Mendez said.

The closed file folder lay on the table between them. Bordain eyed it like it might open and a rattlesnake would pop out of it and strike him.

“You also told us you never dated Marissa,” Mendez said.

“That’s right. We were just friends. We hung out with the same people.”

“You didn’t find her attractive?”

“Of course I found her attractive. She was a beautiful woman.”

“A beautiful, single, free-spirited woman,” Mendez said. “It’s probably not a stretch to think she wasn’t all that hard to get in bed.”

“That’s insulting.”

“To you?”

“To Marissa. She wasn’t like that.”

“She was a single woman with a child.”

“That doesn’t mean she was easy.”

“And you were never tempted to find out?” Mendez asked.

“No.”

“Even though you admit it would have yanked your mother’s chain if the two of you had gone out.”

Bordain rolled his eyes and shifted positions on his chair for the tenth time. “Just because I can yank my mother’s chain doesn’t mean I always take the opportunity to do it.”

“And last night, when you went home after dinner, did anyone see you?”

“I don’t know. Ask my neighbors,” he said, clearly annoyed. “I thought we went over all of this. I did not run my mother off the road.”

“Hmmm ...”

Mendez pulled the file folder to him, opened it and looked at the document, sighed and closed it again, returning it to its resting place.

“You’re telling me you didn’t know Marissa before Haley was born,” he said.

“That’s right. I’m telling you that, but you don’t seem to be comprehending it.”

“It’s not that, Mr. Bordain. It’s just that I have some documentation here that contradicts what you’re saying in a pretty big way.”

Bordain looked at the file folder but didn’t touch it. Sweat was beginning to bead on his upper lip. He wiped it away, shook a cigarette out of the pack on the table, and lit it.

People always thought they looked cooler and more relaxed when they smoked. The thing they never accounted for before they lit up was that if their hands were trembling even a little bit, with the cigarette perched between their fingers it would then look like they had Parkinson’s disease.

Darren Bordain’s hands were shaking.

“And I have some problems with your explanation of your whereabouts both the night Marissa was killed and