A Circle of Wives (33 page)

“You were the brains, and MJ was the stooge,” I begin, and cross my fingers. “You got her in over her head. And she didn’t know what to do.”

“
If
I were to indulge you in your little fantasy,” says Deborah, “I would have to say that you’re making a mistake about MJ. Poor creature. To be thought a murderer! Or, perhaps worse, to have believed it about herself.”

“But surely MJ was there—either with you or because of you.”

Deborah interrupts me. “You’re coming at this all wrong,” she says. “Think logically for once. First tell me: why would MJ want to kill John?”

I am quiet. This is what makes no sense to me. Would MJ want John dead out of anger? Did she find out, somehow, about Claire and about John’s divorce plans? But MJ wasn’t the murderous kind. She would get upset, yes. Perhaps even get physical. But cold-bloodedly plan a murder? No. And then I remember Peter’s text and suddenly I have it.

“Here’s what I think happened,” I say, slowly. “MJ stumbled upon John Taylor’s secret. Perhaps she learned only about one of his other wives. Perhaps she discovered Claire Fanning—who knows? Somehow she realized she wasn’t the only woman in his life. She was devastated. She confronted John Taylor Thursday morning at their home. He admitted it—he was a polygamist, but he wasn’t a very good liar. She kicked him out of the house, told him he wasn’t welcome there any longer. So after his usual shower and breakfast at Deborah’s, he went to Claire and told her he needed a place to stay until he calculated the best way to proceed. Only they fought, too, about when John would make their relationship public. John Taylor was certainly caught between a rock and a hard place. Or should we say four rocks and a hard place? He was vacillating from one moment to the next. On Friday afternoon he checked in to the Westin to get some thinking space. MJ was summoned there via a text sent at 6:45 and immediately went to meet him.”

I pause. “That’s when you come into the picture,” I say. “You murdered John Taylor. And set it up so MJ would provide you with an alibi, and perhaps even take the rap.”

“And how do you figure that?” Deborah asks. She seems amused.

“You yourself went to the Westin sometime before 6:30. Let me do the math and work backwards. You were in Menlo Park at your Women’s Auxiliary meeting by 6:25, and since you needed fifteen minutes to drive there, let’s say you showed up at the Westin at around 6
PM
.”

“And why would I have gone to the Westin?”

“You found out about Claire Fanning—about the fact that John was about to divorce you. My guess is that John slipped up somehow—you’re pretty sharp, it was frankly astonishing that Claire and John were able to fly under your radar for as long as they did. Once the cat was out of the bag, John didn’t really have a chance. You started pressuring him to change his mind, causing him to waver in his commitment to Claire. But I think that John was afraid to admit that—he didn’t want to appear weak in front of Claire. So all Claire knew was that he was becoming less . . . let’s say enthusiastic . . . about their plans. She began hassling him, too.” I stop for a minute to catch my breath and organize my thoughts. “I really feel sorry for the guy,” I say.

Then I continue. “When John disappeared from your radar Thursday afternoon you suspected he was swinging back toward Claire. That was unacceptable. So when he didn’t show up as usual on Friday morning, you called him—and called him. God knows why he picked up your call in the afternoon when he was refusing all other calls—out of force of habit, I assume. And you managed to get him to admit where he was. That would have been easy for you. You knew him so well.

“You went there to meet him—I imagine you told him you simply wanted to ‘talk
.
’
You were there long enough to stick a hypodermic needle filled with potassium chloride into his back. He might have felt the prick, or might not, but in any case the deed was done. And then you left, knowing that MJ would arrive soon—only to find him dead of cardiac arrest.”

“And how did I know that MJ would show up?” Deborah asks.

“Because you called, then texted her, from John’s cell phone. That was your alibi. While at the Westin, you stole John’s phone. You were safely at your meeting by 6:25. Then you excused yourself on some pretense—probably to go to the bathroom—and made a quick call to MJ’s phone, hanging up when she answered. You then texted her that urgent message. John would then be on record as being alive at 6:47, and you’d have an ironclad alibi. MJ would arrive at the hotel, find John dead of an apparent heart attack, and no one would be the wiser. That was the plan, anyway.”

Deborah appears attentive, nothing more.

“Although the text and the phone call were essential for establishing your alibi, they also opened up possibilities for complications,” I say. “And complications did occur.”

“John didn’t die right away,” Deborah said, nodding. “I must have miscalculated the dosage. Of course, he was a large man. That probably had something to do with it.”

“So when MJ arrived, John was still alive. He let her in to the room, and they immediately begin fighting again. My guess is that MJ got worked up enough to grab John, perhaps even strike out at him, which caused the bruising on his arms. Already not feeling well, John lost his balance and fell, striking his head in the process. But that didn’t kill him. The heart attack that shortly followed did.”

“MJ is partly culpable,” Deborah says. “She’s not the innocent you’d like to make her.”

“No doubt MJ was horrified to see John dead in front of her, and assumed of course that it was her fault. Again, my guess. If she’d stayed calm, called 911, who knows what would have happened. But she panicked and fled.”

“Although not so panicked that she made a call from her cell phone,” Deborah says.

“Yes, she was surprisingly clearheaded about that,” I say. “It’s a little after seven o’clock by then, and that’s when she called Thomas from the house phone in the lobby, so it couldn’t be easily traced. Ironically, he must have just arrived at her house from his ill-advised meeting—and parking ticket—in Palo Alto. She told him to immediately do his dress-up routine, placing her firmly in Los Gatos close enough to the time of death to keep her safe.”

“I wouldn’t have believed that creature would have thought quite as fast on her feet,” Deborah says.

“Not only that, she had the presence of mind not to call Thomas from her cell phone, but to find a pay phone somewhere so there’d be no record of the call. Then, she started calling John and the Westin once she got home, to back up her story that she’d forgotten her cell phone when she went out to run errands,” I say. I’m still puzzled by a few points. “But here’s something I don’t get. If you took John’s cell phone with you, how did he have it on him when he was discovered on Saturday?” I ask.

Deborah smiled. “
If
I were to have planned it the way you’re describing, I would have had to have taken the room key as well. To return and put the phone back in John’s pocket.”

“But what if MJ had simply found John dead, and called 911?” I ask. “You wouldn’t have been able to put the phone back during all the fuss and bother.”

“Again,
if
I were in charge of such an operation, I would have contingency plan upon contingency plan,” says Deborah. “I would have bought an iPhone the same model as John’s phone, and left that with him at the Westin. If I were prevented from getting back into his room to put back his real phone later because emergency responders were there, the police would find the substitute phone and assume it was his.”

“That was risky, though.”

“Yes, as it would have a different phone number assigned to it. But if John had simply died and MJ had found him dead, it would have been ruled a heart attack, no questions asked. There would have been no need to examine the phone or search phone records.”

“So you drove by the Westin on your way home at 9
PM
. Seeing that all was quiet, you slipped into John’s room and swapped out the phones.”

“That sounds plausible.”

“Only you forgot to leave the key,” I say.

“The perpetrator of this scheme certainly forgot to leave the key,” Deborah agrees calmly. She uncrosses her legs. I almost expect her to yawn, she appears so disengaged. “You haven’t told me my motive yet,” she says.

“You had two motives,” I say. “First, you didn’t want to lose your status as Mrs. John Taylor. You’d have had to suffer through what would be the ultimate shame—for you, anyway—a public divorce.”

“Interesting,” says Deborah. “And my second motive?”

“Simple, unadulterated greed,” I say. “You didn’t want the money to dry up. You knew that Claire Fanning and John wanted to start a purely pro bono clinic. That John wouldn’t be able to pay the type of alimony that would keep you in your current lifestyle. And then you thought of that tempting ten-million-dollar life insurance policy.”

“You’ll never prove this,” says Deborah. “Never. It seems to be, as you said, nearly the perfect crime. And if John had died right away, before MJ arrived, it would have been perfect, since without the trauma marks the police wouldn’t have suspected a wrongful death. MJ would simply have found John dead of a heart attack. End of story.”

“But I don’t think that’s necessarily the important part,” I say.

“How do you figure that?” Deborah asks.

“You’re not exactly walking away from this with a sweet deal,” I say. “You’ve lost your husband. From what you say, you’ve lost your family as well. And your social standing in the community will never be the same. In fact, you’ve lost all round. And one of the things that really gets to me is that you took the life of a good man. A flawed man, yes, but a good one nevertheless.”

Deborah makes an ugly noise, so ugly I can’t be sure it came from her.

“But what really hurts about this case is poor MJ,” I say. “She suffered the most. She had a conscience. She wouldn’t have gotten any enjoyment from her house or garden after John’s death. She was doomed from the minute she walked into that hotel room. You let her think she killed another human being, and for that, if nothing else, you deserve to be punished.”

“She took my husband from me,” says Deborah. “It all started with her.”

“The polygamy thing was your idea,” I say. “MJ was an innocent bystander.”

Deborah shrugs. “I have no pity for her.”

I am done. No more to say. I get up and leave Deborah sitting silently.

Once outside the house I pull my phone out of my pocket and click the
record audio
button to off. Even if it’s not admissible in court, Susan and Grady will be most interested.

70
Samantha

LATE AGAIN
.
I LET MYSELF
softly into the house, tiptoe around as I get a glass of water from the kitchen, and head for the bedroom. But here I stop. The bedroom door is open—Peter always closes it when he goes to sleep, he claims it reduces road noise although I’ve never noticed a difference. The bed is still made, is empty. Where could Peter be? He’s never out past 10
PM
on a weekday—at least, not without me.

I have no doubt it’s a signal, a message, that Peter can’t deliver any other way. I feel momentarily chilled because I’ve told him jokingly that I would probably find out he no longer wanted to be with me by coming home to find his possessions gone, and I’d never hear from him again. A vanishing. I try not to rush, but still stumble in my haste to get to the closet. His clothes are gone. I go back to the living room and finally see the tactical omissions, the gaps in the bookshelves, the holes in the stacks of CDs and DVDs, his favorite blue blanket gone from the sofa that we would huddle under on cold winter evenings. Peter has flown.

I sit down, unsure of my emotions. Am I relieved or distressed? This has been coming for a long time. What does this leave me with? Fantasies of a dead doctor. Hopes of someday finding with one person what John Taylor needed four women to satisfy.

I open my laptop and begin writing a report of my conversation this afternoon with Deborah. I stop, thinking of the three wives. Two, now, since MJ’s passing. Each of them, each of
us
—for now I consider myself one of the sisterhood—left alone, ultimately. But despite my sorrow for MJ, it is Helen I think of as I sit here. It’s a surprisingly cool night for September, so I go searching for a sweater, then return to my laptop. Yes, it’s Helen who haunts me now. Devoting her life to sick kids, building an independent life, then being
surprised by joy
. That phrase again.

And what is left to me?

The shell of an amicable but less-than-nourishing relationship—and the fear that it was as good as I can expect to get.

I drift off to sleep and begin to dream almost immediately, a lucid dream in which I know I’m dreaming but am powerless to wake up.

I am one of John Taylor’s cases, lying on the operating table, the anesthesia rendering me helpless. “When you ain’t got nothing you got nothing to lose,”
John Taylor says to me, and I vaguely recognize the quotation from another master of the double negative. I am immobile, but conscious. Dr. Taylor is going to make an example of me; I am starting out with a normal face and he is going to sculpt me into something else. Something better. My life is in his hands. He is now by my side of the operating table, his face as benevolent as in his teaching videos. “This is what you deserve,” he says, and begins cutting.