Vince took a deep breath, sighed, and rubbed his hands over his face, turning his attention back to Gina Kemmer’s photographs.
He found the first one of Marissa dated 1971. Even as a young teenager she had been striking with her shining dark eyes and her dark hair falling around her shoulders in waves. She was dressed like a hippy in bell-bottom pants with a peace sign hanging around her neck and a leather headband across her forehead. Gina was in a similar getup. The back of the photo read—in schoolgirl handwriting—Missy and Me, Sept. 1971.
They had grown up together. Best friends. Like sisters. School. Boyfriends. Holidays. Trips.
So why the big lie? Why say they only met here in Oak Knoll in 1982? Who would have cared where they had come from? Who would have cared how long they had known each other?
And why had Melissa Fabriano changed her name? Had she just wanted to reinvent herself? Had she been running from someone in LA? Maybe her family hadn’t been as idyllic as the middle-class Kemmers of Reseda.
Maybe Haley’s father had been abusive. Maybe there was no blackmail scheme. Maybe the abusive father of her child had finally found her and put an end to her perfect secret life in perfect Oak Knoll.
Then why wouldn’t Gina have given up his name? She would have been in danger from him too. Why wouldn’t she just give him up?
The door opened and Mendez came into the room with a bag from Carnegie West Deli.
“If there’s a hot pastrami on rye in that bag, I’ll kiss you full on the mouth.”
“No tongue,” Mendez said. “I’m not that kind of girl.”
He set the bag on another table and started dragging sandwiches out of it.
“Finding anything?” he asked, nodding at the photographs.
“More questions than answers, so far. Gina and Marissa go way back. Gina and Melissa, I should say. They go back to seventh or eighth grade.”
“So why pretend they didn’t?”
“That’s my question. If Marissa was running from someone in Los Angeles, came up here and changed her name, who would care if she and Gina knew each other?”
“Maybe Marissa wanted the whole new identity—needed it for whatever reason—but Gina didn’t want to be bothered with living a lie.”
“Maybe . . .”
Vince got up and stretched, picked up his sandwich and breathed in the aroma through the wrapper.
“I gave up pastrami ten years ago,” he said. “At the same time I quit smoking. The big midlife health kick.”
“And then?”
“I got shot in the head and lived. A little pastrami isn’t going to kill me.”
“You gonna take up cigarettes too?” Mendez asked, eyeing his meatball sub for a spot to attack it.
“I’m indulgent, not stupid,” Vince said. “So did Bordain want you fired?”
“No. He invited me to go golfing. He’s nothing like his wife.”
“You liked him?”
“He’s hard not to like. Charming, charismatic, accessible. He’s the guy guys want to hang out with and ladies want to hang on his arm. But he talks about his marriage like it’s a business arrangement.”
“It probably is. It looks like it works out for both of them.”
“That’s not the kind of marriage I want.”
“Mr. Romance.”
“And you’re not?”
“I am, absolutely. Guilty as charged, and happy as a half-wit at the county fair,” Vince confessed. “But not a lot of people get that lucky. Not everybody wants to. The highs are really high, but the lows suck. Middle of the road is safer.”
“Dixon asked him if he had a girlfriend who might want his wife dead. He said he’s learned to make sure that doesn’t happen. Pay now, not later. What do you think that means?”
“Hookers. Cash on the dresser. Cheaper than a mistress.”
“I guess.” Mendez shook his head and sighed wistfully. “The world’s an ugly place, Vince.”
“Not always,” Vince said, picking up a photograph of Gina Kemmer and Marissa Fordham in bikinis on a beach. He looked at the back. “Life’s a knockout in Cabo San Lucas, circa ...”
He stared at the back of the snapshot, turned it over, and stared at the front.
Mendez stopped chewing and talked with his mouth full of meatball sub. “What?”
“March 1982.”
“What about it?”
“Haley was born in May 1982.” He put the photo down and tapped a finger on the very flat belly of Marissa Fordham/Melissa Fabriano. “Does that woman look seven months pregnant to you?”
“Maybe the date is wrong.”
“Why would the date be wrong? Gina learned from her mother to always put the date on the back of the picture. Every photograph on this table has a date written on the back of it. Why would any of them be wrong?”
“But she’s obviously not pregnant.”
“Obviously not.”
“Wow.” Mendez shook his head as if he’d been dazed. “We’re busting our asses trying to find out who Haley’s father is. We don’t even know who her mother is.”
“Who’s the daddy?” Vince said, feeling a whiplash coming on. “Who’s the baby?”
59
“When is my mommy going to stop being dead?”
Anne brought a bowl of tomato soup to the kitchen table and sat down next to Haley on the banquette. Haley had tossed the question out like she was asking the time of day. Matter-of-fact in the way of small children whose lives drift in and out of fantasy. Death was unreal, but a unicorn might live in the bushes outside the house.
“People don’t stop being dead, sweetheart,” Anne said quietly.
Engrossed in her coloring, Haley didn’t even look up. “Yes, they do. They turn into angels.”
“Oh. Well, yes,” Anne said, once again feeling out of her depth. She had no way of knowing what belief system Marissa Fordham had subscribed to or what she had instilled in her daughter. “Then what happens?”
“They go to heaven and fly around, and they come for Christmas, and whenever we need them.” She looked up at Anne then. Some of the blood had left the whites of her eyes, but the effect was still startling. “How come you don’t know that?”
“I do,” Anne said. “I was just testing you. Have some of your soup, sweetie. It’ll feel good on your throat.”
Haley knelt on the cushion of the banquette and leaned over her bowl, blowing on the soup to cool it.
Anne glanced at the paper she had been drawing on. Oddly shaped cats and kittens of all colors ran along the bottom third of the page. She wondered how Vince would feel about having a kitten in the house. Or two.
She reached over and brushed Haley’s hair back to keep the ends from dipping in the soup, and revealed the dark bruises that ringed her throat. They had faded to a mix of blue and yellow. She could almost feel Peter Crane’s hands close around her throat and had to swallow hard a couple of times to push the feeling away. She hadn’t been able to wear anything tight around her neck since, no turtlenecks, no scarves, no short necklaces.
“Where’s your mommy?” Haley asked. She scooped up a spoonful of soup and sipped at it, giving herself an instant tomato-soup mustache.
“She’s an angel in heaven,” Anne said.
“That’s good. Does she know my mommy?”
“Maybe.”
“Where’s your daddy?”
“He lives in a house in another part of town.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s his house.”
“How come you don’t live in his house?”
“Because this is my house. Vince and I are married and this is our house.”
Haley thought about that and ate some more soup. “I would live in my daddy’s house.”