A Circle of Wives (26 page)

So she would die for it.

Would she kill for it?

I bring out Claire’s photograph. She shakes her head and waits for me to explain.

I quail a little inside, but start.

“We have reason to believe that Dr. Taylor intended to marry this young woman, and . . . separate . . . from the rest of you. Start a clean slate with a new wife. A real wife, like Deborah was.”

A long pause.

MJ stares at me, her face impassive. “Well?” she asks.

“Do you understand what I’ve just said? Dr. Taylor intended to leave you. All of you. Supposedly he was planning to break the news on May 11, the day after he was killed. He never got the chance.”

MJ surprises me. Deborah had greeted the news with her usual reserve and stateliness. Frankly, I expected histrionics from MJ. Instead, something crystalizes in her, right in front of my eyes. Is she sitting up straighter? Looking at me more directly? Tensing her jaw? Whatever it is, I honestly have no clue whether MJ had known about Claire. She isn’t descending into hopelessness or panic. She isn’t falling apart, as I would have expected. Rather, she appears resolute. As if she’s preparing to fight a battle.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask her. But she’s shut down, as if she’s closed the door on old adversaries, of which I am one.

MJ begins pulling the flowering buds from the basil plants clumped at the base of the bench. She does so with expert hands, as if snapping off little green heads. A deft assassin, I think, and suddenly feel uncertain. The afternoon is still. No noise except for the drone of bees. The butterflies flitter silently around us. We’re so far from main roads I don’t even hear any traffic noise. I can’t remember the last time I’d been in a place without the hum of cars. I see certain possibilities in MJ that I hadn’t before. A ruthless hardening within. She snaps off another bud and I think again,
assassin.

“Why should this change anything for me?” she finally says, not looking up. “He’d already gone and married someone else, so I was already betrayed once. Why does another betrayal matter?

“It
is
different,” I say. “With Helen, he had no plans to leave you. You still had your life together, your house, your garden. But if he’d gone through with marrying Claire Fanning, you could have been left with nothing.”

“You’re saying I have a motive for killing my husband,” she says, and the air is so charged I actually find myself wondering whether I ‘d put my gun on that morning. Then I think,
crazy.

“Yes,” I say. I see now that any warmth I felt toward MJ was just stupid me wanting to be liked. We are opponents, have been from the start.

“You have my alibi. I assume you’ve confirmed it,” she says.

“Yes, but . . .” I hesitate, knowing that what I’m about to say might be even more unwelcome than the news about Dr. Fanning.

“But my brother has none, right?”

“How did you know?”

“He called me. What did you think, that he would keep it a secret? From me?” She laughs, and it is a harsh sound.

“Don’t think about going after my brother as a suspect,” she says, and it is a warning—a command, not a plea. “You won’t find anything to hold against him except that damn ticket. So my brother is a pothead. You’ll look like a fool in court.” The unspoken phrase was,
even more than you do now.

“I’m tired of going over and over the same stuff,” she says. “You keep hounding me and asking me the same questions.”

“Actually, Claire Fanning is a new topic,” I say, and she turns on me fiercely.

“I told you,
I didn’t know about this so-called fiancée.
And what would I have done if I’d found out? While John was still alive? Why kill him, ha-ha. Seriously, I would have been pissed. Or as we say back home,
really riled.
”
She exaggerates her Tennessee twang.
Reely rawled.
“And after I got over being angry? Then . . . then . . . we would have had a long talk. I know that makes me sound pathetic. But it’s really no different from finding out about the other wives, about Deborah and Helen. My husband’s other women. So what if there was one more?”

I catch movement at the entrance to the butterfly garden. Thomas is here. He comes forward quickly. He is frowning. I see what looks like genuine concern on his face as he sees his sister.

“What’s going on here.
What have you done?
”
he hisses at me as he gets closer. I stand up, and move away from the bench. He takes my place, puts an arm around MJ. She doesn’t shrug it off so much as repel it with the same force that is sending me away.

I quietly make my exit. Two down, one to go.

47
Deborah

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY. I
’
M
fifty-five. I must say, I don’t feel it. I don’t feel
middle-aged.
If I had to choose my age based on how I felt, I would say thirty-five, no older. Still alert. Still physically nimble. And certainly my desire for physical intimacy hasn’t gone away with age the way I would have expected. This is something that John and I talked about, oddly enough, just a couple days before he went missing. We always chatted in the early mornings when he came home, showered, and grabbed some breakfast. I insisted we sit down together, to have coffee at least. “Don’t you miss sex?” he’d asked. We never lost the ability to communicate easily about what others might consider difficult subjects. Well, of course I miss it, I told him. Of course. And then he reached out his hand and tried to touch—no, caress—mine. I was holding my coffee cup. His fingertips brushed across my knuckles. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop myself. I recoiled, so fast I spilled hot coffee on his fingers. The fact is I didn’t want him anymore. Not
him.
Whatever compatibility we’d had in that way was long gone. Replaced by something other than indifference, something darker. Bitterness, perhaps.

John surprised me then. I usually can predict every move. I know that sounds grandiose, but it’s true. Still, that morning I was taken aback when he pushed his chair away from the table. He then very deliberately walked to my chair and stood behind me. I tried to see what he was doing, but he had his hands anchoring my shoulders so I couldn’t move; I could only turn my head, which gave me a sideways view of his rather expansive chest. My cheek scraped against the buttons on his shirt, and I felt his breath on the back of my neck. It was incredibly unnerving. Then he took his right hand and, reaching over my shoulder, placed it on my breast. I immediately slapped it away, of course. But the feel of his hand lingered. He’d managed to give my nipple a slight pinch and I felt that most of all. I was enraged, but the anger was shot through with shame, and if I could have cut off my breast in that moment, I would have. Anything to erase the feel of that unyielding palm, that burning pinch. The brute. The brute. By the time I had composed myself, he was gone, out the door and to the hospital. And good riddance, I thought.

48
Samantha

SUSAN RELUCTANTLY OKAYED ANOTHER TRIP
down to LA. I insisted that I needed to talk to Helen face-to-face, confront her with the idea of Claire Fanning in person. So here I am on United Flight 42 to LAX, jammed next to a middle-aged older man who started out the flight working on an Excel spreadsheet, but is now playing Spider Solitaire. He swears loudly when he can’t find a solution and has to reshuffle. I find myself thanking God for Peter, who only opens his laptop when he’s ready to bang out another chapter of his dissertation.
Be grateful for small things,
I tell myself. Even if those chapters are slow to come. Peter seems to be making an effort recently. He even packed for me, and when I opened my purse to get my driver’s license out for airport security, I found a bar of dark chocolate with almonds in it. I almost drove home to give Peter a kiss.

When I reach the UCLA hospital, I have to show my badge about ten times. I suppose that means the media are still trying to get through to Helen. I think of Claire.
If they only knew.
Especially if they managed to get a photograph of her. That face would sell a lot of magazine covers.

When I knock on Helen’s office door, it is opened almost immediately by a woman with a blond pixie cut.

“I’m here for Dr. Richter,” I say.

She laughs. “Sam,” she says. “It’s me.” Now I recognize her, but barely. And it’s not just the hair. Helen also appears younger and much less serious—like a schoolgirl, lighthearted.

“Well!” I say.

She ushers me into her office, which looks the same, the comfy chairs, the stuffed animals lying all over the floor.

“More about John?” she asks as she settles into her chair. She pulls a kind of black knitted shawl around her shoulders. It’s too cool; the air conditioner is turned up high.

“I know,” she says, catching me shiver. “We have no control in the offices and examining rooms, and they keep it chilly in the summer.”

Summer. It’s now mid-August. I can’t think of another year where the summer has gone by so quickly, or which I’ve enjoyed less. Usually, Peter and I spend a good deal of our weekends and evenings outdoors at concerts and picnics. But this time all that has seemed to fall off the cliff. Or perhaps I simply haven’t been paying attention due to the slow-moving Taylor case, and Peter hasn’t been reminding me.

“What happened?” I ask, gesturing at her hair.

Helen smiles. “An experiment,” she says. “One that turned out splendidly.” It is only then that I see the slight bump at her waistline. After any number of social gaffes, my rule is to never ask anyone if they’re pregnant unless I see an actual baby coming out. But this time I can’t help myself.

“You’re pregnant!” I gasp. She nods. “Is it John’s?” I ask, then curse my stupidity. Of course it is.

We sit for a moment in silence. Helen doesn’t seem to find the pause uncomfortable, but I am squirming in my chair.

“I thought you had a deal that there’d be no children,” I say.

“We did,” says Helen. “But life had other plans.”

“Did John know?” I ask.

A shadow passes over Helen’s face. “No,” she says abruptly. “I never got the chance to tell him.” She then changes the subject to signal that part of the conversation is over. “That’s not why you’re here. What do you need from me at this point?”

“It’s about John,” I say. “Or rather . . .” I hesitate. “About the situation.” My mind is still reeling.

“Yes?” she asks, but doesn’t really seem interested. She’s looking extraordinarily healthy and happy, almost obscenely so in this room, which is likely viewed as a chamber of death by her patients’ parents.

“Another woman has turned up.” I say, and wait.

She laughs. Whatever reaction I’d expected, this wasn’t it.

“Not another wife,” she says.

“No, but someone who wanted to supersede all of you,” I say. “A fiancée.” Then, curious, I ask, “How would you have felt if John told you he wanted to end the relationship?”

She appears to give my question serious consideration.

“Before,” and she pats her bump, “I would have been devastated. But now? I’m not particularly concerned.”

We sit and look at each other. “And when did you find out you were pregnant?” I ask.

“Not until after John was dead,” she says.

I consider this.

“I don’t believe you,” I say suddenly.

She smiles. “Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to assume I’m the ultimate expert witness in this regard,” she says. I’m struck by the fact that she seems to be treating this like a game.

“Your alibi is the most porous, you know,” I tell her.

“Do you have any evidence against me that places me in Palo Alto? Hundreds of miles from home?” she asks.

“No,” I admit.

“So I must have been particularly clever,” she suggests. For the first time, I find myself actively disliking her.

“A man is dead,” I say. “And one of you three almost certainly did it.”

She smiles again.

“If you can guess who,” she says. “You win the prize.”

49
Samantha

“
TALK TO ME
,
PETER
,”
I
say. “You’ve got three women, no, make that four women, all feeling extraordinarily possessive of the same man.”

I’ve just returned from LA and we’re having a lazy Sunday, of the type that used to delight us, sitting outside in our tiny patch of garden that borders the creek. It’s almost sunset, and the cicadas are starting up but the mosquitos haven’t come out in full force yet. The perfect time in what should be a perfect August afternoon. Yet Peter is mostly absent, playing some game on his phone. Not that I particularly
need
his attention. I’m half reading a library book, and thinking about the Taylor case. But I sense some hostility in the way he’s holding his phone at arm’s length—positioned precisely so it blocks my face.