A Circle of Wives (24 page)

“So you believe,” I say.

“Has anyone else even hinted that we had a relationship?” she asks.

She has a point.

“No,” I admit.

I attempt to take back the reins.

“John was with you Thursday and then Friday morning. But why did things come to a head that particular week? What forced the crisis given things have been, if not calm, at least in equilibrium, for some time?”

“We were preparing to make the announcement to the other,” she pauses, “women that Saturday. May 11.”

Now there’s emotion in her voice. It is definitely scorn when she says
other women
.

“How did you think these women would react? Helen Richter is a doctor with an impressive CV,” I remind her. I don’t know why I feel the need to defend the three original wives, but I do. “Deborah was his real wife for thirty-five years, and MJ”—I search for the right words and come up with “MJ is a force of nature.” I’ve ended weakly and know it.

“If one of the wives had been suspicious, that would give you a motive to work with, right?” Claire asks.

“Do you have any reason to believe that one of them did suspect?”

“John was very jumpy Thursday night. He kept checking his phone for voicemail, texts, emails. When I asked him what was wrong, he just shook his head. He told me he was worried. But actually he seemed more scared.”

“Why didn’t he go to work on Thursday or Friday?” I ask her. “Was there anything going on at the clinic that he wanted to avoid?”

“I think he was just overwhelmed. His wives, and then there was this tension with his partners,” says Claire. She says
partners
the same way she says
wives
: with what I now recognize as her trademark disdain. “They wanted to hire more surgeons, expand the cosmetic practice. John was adamant that the clinic stay true to his original vision.”

“So he might have been avoiding them?” I ask. I recall Dr. Epstein’s perfect cool demeanor. I wouldn’t put much past him.

“I don’t know. John canceled all his appointments for both Thursday and Friday,” says Claire. “Highly unusual. More than highly unusual. Extraordinary. Unheard of. I think it showed how anxious he was about the pending announcement on Saturday.”

“Did he pick up anything from either Deborah’s or MJ’s houses?”

“No. He was in hiding.”

“What did he do about clothes?” I ask, testing her. “He didn’t keep any at your apartment, did he?”

“No. He was never there long enough. When I got home Thursday night, he’d been to Macy’s and bought some slacks and shirts, other necessities,” she says. “That way, he would have a few things if it went really bad on Saturday. We were already looking at rental listings for apartments since we couldn’t possibly live in my studio for long.”

I’m at a loss what else to ask. I’m tired and my head aches. I reach out and turn off my recorder. “That’s enough for tonight,” I say. “But I’ll almost certainly have more questions for you.”

“Of course,” she says, gets up from her chair, and leaves the station house, her pale shapely legs flashing in the overhead lights.

I pick up my recorder and turn it on again. “Holy mother of God,” I say into it. “Do we have a situation
now.
”

43
Samantha

I RARELY GO TO STANFORD
MALL
, despite passing it every day on my way to work. It’s full of high-end stores like Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s, and Ann Taylor, alongside the usual Macy’s and Victoria’s Secret. There’s one fast-food joint: a McDonald’s for the rich Palo Alto parents who haul their spoiled children around town in Mercedes and Lexus SUVs. Otherwise, no mall food, no hotdog or pretzel stands, no cheap jewelry stores for teenagers. Once I made the mistake of going into a tea shop. It had smelled heavenly from outside, and they were giving samples of some amazing-tasting pink-tinted tea. I asked for half a pound, thinking Peter would like it. Once wrapped and packaged as if it were a gift for the queen, it was rung up, and my jaw dropped. I had to decline. It was the end of the month, and I didn’t have that much money in my bank account.

Mollie and I walk over to the Macy’s men’s store—and sure enough, easily find Jenna, the saleswoman who helped Dr. Taylor with his purchases. She turns out to be about thirty-five, dressed in the requisite black pants and white shirt, a little overweight, but carrying it well. Her posture is superb, and her outfit impeccable. She screams fashion know-how and good taste. On a different salary, I would take her advice to outfit Peter.

She remembers Dr. Taylor perfectly. “At first, he declined my assistance, but then after wandering around for about ten minutes, he came up and confessed he hadn’t shopped for himself in years,” says Jenna. “I took him for a recent divorcé, perhaps a widower, because he seemed rather sad. He told me he was looking for a couple of serviceable pairs of pants and shirts. His size being on the large side, I had to go to the back room to find items that would fit. He was grateful, easy to please. I actually tried to dissuade him from one of the purchases, I felt it wasn’t exactly flattering, and suggested a pair of pants with a different cut. He said no, bought the other ensembles and left. He seemed to be in a hurry.”

“What about the second Macy’s charge?” I ask, looking at the Amex statement. “Same day, just after he bought the pants and shirts.” The woman shrugs. “He probably had also purchased things from another department,” she says. “Do you have the transaction number? I could type in the code.” She scrolls through a screen. “It seems he purchased something downstairs, in our ‘necessities and accessories’ department.”

“That figures,” says Mollie. “He probably needed pajamas or underwear.”

“So what do we do with this information?” Mollie asks.

“To a large extent, it bears out what Claire says. We know he was staying somewhere close by, although not going to work,” I say. “And that he somehow felt the need to buy clothes rather than stopping by one of his homes to pick up a few things.”

“But couldn’t Claire be lying still?” she asks. “What if he just bought these on a whim? What if he
did
go home? To one of his wives? That Claire, and the wives, all of them, could be gaslighting you. They could simply be lying.”

“All of them?” I ask, with my eyebrows raised. Then, without waiting for an answer, “We did check with Deborah’s neighbors, and none of them remembers Dr. Taylor’s car parked in front of the house after Thursday morning,” I remind her. “Ditto MJ’s, although I’m less inclined to think they would notice. The houses are further apart, and there’s more foliage.” Then I shake my head. “I think this goes a long way toward validating Snow White’s story.”

We walk slowly to the car, when we hear someone running behind us. It is the saleswoman from Macy’s. She is out of breath, her chest heaving. “I just remembered something,” she says. “When he was looking at himself in the mirror with the new pants and shirt on, he murmured, half to himself, ‘need to get a haircut, too.’ I teased him a little. ‘A big day coming up?’ I asked. ‘You could say that,’ he answered. He said Saturday. I told him I hoped it was something fun, but he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But quite momentous all the same.’”

44
Samantha

WITH CERTAIN ASPECTS OF CLAIRE
’
S
story now confirmed, I decide to confront the wives again. I settle on Deborah first, since she lives closest. Then I’ll try to catch MJ. Unawares, I hope. I consider what to do about Helen. I want to deliver this particular news in person to experience her reaction firsthand, gauge how honest it is. The sooner I talk to Deborah and MJ, the sooner I can fly down to LA. But there is the risk that Deborah or MJ will call Helen and preempt me.

Of course, I have no hard evidence the wives are in contact with one another. But in my notebook, written at 2
AM
, are the words
Are the girls talking?
Some humming of wires seemed to connect them; they each seemed to have soundlessly absorbed whatever information I had given the others. There was nothing I could put my finger on. I just had the feeling that resources were being shared, defenses mutually bolstered.

Deborah is home. She answers the door, as always impeccably dressed and groomed. I ask involuntarily, “Are you going out?” because of her shoes: boots this time, elegant ankle-length leather ones. Then I remember, she’s a shoes-on-in-the-house kind of gal.

“No,” she says. “Please come in.” She doesn’t actually sigh, but I keep expecting her to. I notice she skirts the edges of the rugs as she leads me into the living room. I deliberately step on them with my sneakers, mud-stained from a bike ride through the hills.

She offers me coffee, but I decline. I won’t let her get the upper hand this time. Today Deborah has adopted a resigned air. Like someone patronizing a small child.

“I was wondering if you know a woman named Claire Fanning,” I say as I sit down. I pull out a photo of Claire that I had grabbed from the station house’s security video camera last night. Even with the poor phone-quality image she comes across as an exotic. The concubine of an emperor.

Deborah shows no reaction whatsoever. “The name sounds familiar, but I’ve never seen this woman,” she says.

“She worked with your husband at the clinic,” I say. “She was doing a fellowship at Stanford, and your husband was her mentor and professor.”

“That may be where I heard the name,” Deborah says. She seems disinterested. “John may have mentioned her. He often talked about his students to me.”

“Claire was more than a student, at least according to her.” I’m watching Deborah carefully for any sign and am reading nothing. Either she is a tremendous actor or she genuinely has no idea what I’m about to spring on her.

“Such as . . . ?” Deborah asks.

“A fiancée.”

“Impossible.” Deborah is emphatic. She is so quick to react she almost speaks before the word is out of my mouth. “John would have said something. He told me everything.”

“According to Claire, they somehow managed without you,” I say. “They flew under the radar by telling you John was in LA a bit more than he actually was. They changed the tickets and the schedules. Not very often. But enough to get involved. Deeply.”

Deborah is unmoved. “It’s impossible,” she says again. “John was not capable of fooling me.”

“There’s more,” I say.

Deborah simply raises her right eyebrow.

“According to Claire, he was going to divorce you, tell MJ and Helen the truth of their relationships, and marry her,” I say. “He was going to announce this on Saturday, May 11. The day after he was killed.”

Deborah is stone-faced. “And what proof do you have other than the word of this . . . medical student?” she asks.

“She has the engagement ring, and the receipt for it, which was paid with John’s credit card.”

“Which card? I pay all the bills. I would have seen it.”

I pull the copy of the Haynes Jewelers receipt and hand it over. Her face falls slightly as she sees the name on the receipt, the account number. “This is not a credit card I know about,” she says, finally.

“Then, perhaps there are some things you don’t know,” I suggest. I get the feeling that I must tread more gently now. Deborah has projected nothing but strength since I first met her, but the façade may crumble if the blow is calculated precisely. I don’t think that coming at her too forcefully will work. Easy does it.

“She also has an explanation for his disappearance before his death,” I say. “According to Claire, he was with her from Thursday morning until Friday lunchtime. They argued both days, and on Friday he left and checked into the Westin. She didn’t know where he went—just that he’d left her apartment. But she was in possession of other facts she wouldn’t have unless her story was true.”

I can see that Deborah’s face is white under her makeup. Her hands are neatly folded on her lap, but I detect trembling.

“In one sense, all this is moot, of course,” I remind her gently. “John is dead. He did not divorce you.”

Silence.

“Still,” I continue, “this provides me with motives that previously I didn’t have.”

Her eyes turn up to my face. She is expressionless again. “You mean me.”

“Yes,” I say.

“And how would that motive work exactly?” she asks.

“Well,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “If your husband really intended to divorce his wives . . .”

“
I
was his only wife,” she reminds me.

“Okay,” I concede. “Divorce
you
, and break the news to the other two that they weren’t really married, that would upset quite a few people.”

“By
quite a few people
you mean MJ, Helen, and myself,” Deborah says.

“No, others too,” I say, thinking of Thomas, but I decline to elaborate.

More silence.