“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.