THE WALKWAY FROM THE SIDEWALK to Deborah’s house is constructed of perfectly positioned stones that fit into each other like puzzle pieces. That, as well as everything else I see when she opens the door, screams money. From the beautifully buffed wood floors, probably something exotic and doomed from the rain forest, to the scent of fresh roses in profusion arranged in a crystal vase on a small table in the hallway, I see a world that will always be out of my reach. I am suddenly furious. I don’t really understand why. I’m not a covetous person. But some of Peter’s bile from last night seems to have left its mark on me.
The Oriental carpets must be genuine and quite valuable, but to my untrained eye they’re more or less the same as the machine-made ones Peter and I bought secondhand at a yard sale. Same colors, same patterns. Although when I examine them more closely I can see the delicacy of the woven flowers, the subtlety of the colors. I hope to find the obviously pricey furniture uncomfortable out of pure spite, but I sink into an armchair that I would happily trade for our lumpy bed. Money very well spent. Oil paintings on the walls, mostly portraits of peculiar-looking men and women, but they must be by artists worth collecting. Nothing else would do, for this house.
Deborah is dressed in a simple blue sheath, and even though the July day promises to be a hot one for the Northern California summer, she is wearing stockings. And despite the fact that I would have pegged this as a shoes-off-at-the-door house, she’s wearing shiny black pumps with modest one-inch heels. Our shoes are always left in a jumble at the front door, not because, as in this house, the floor or carpets need protecting, but because both Peter and I hate shoes and take them off as soon as possible. Bare feet in the house, always. We even divide up the people we know into shoe-wearers and barefoot-goers. Deborah is clearly a shoe-wearer of the extreme kind. She probably puts them on straight out of the shower.
Deborah offers me an iced tea, which I accept because I’m thirsty, and then instantly regret it when I see her triumphant air as she carries the glass into the room. It is complete with a fresh lemon slice and long-stemmed iced-tea spoon—who keeps special iced-tea spoons on hand but the super privileged? Of course she brings nothing for herself to drink. Somehow she has seized advantage by going to the trouble of serving me. Not that she didn’t have it already. I am in her territory, after all. I am her plaything. I take the glass, but look around, unsure if I can put it down on the exquisitely polished oak coffee table. She sees me searching, but makes me ask.
“Do you have a coaster?” I finally say when the silence goes on too long. “Indeed,” she says immediately, and pulls one out of a drawer in the table and puts it in front of me. Power games. Bitch.
“Now, what can I do for you?” Deborah asks me. She crosses her hands in her lap, seemingly quite at ease.
“You’re sure about not wanting your attorney here?” I ask as I turn on my recorder.
“Quite sure,” she says. I don’t urge her to reconsider. This chick knows what she’s doing.
“For the purposes of the record, I need you to state where you were the night of Dr. Taylor’s death,” I say. “Especially between the hours of 6:47 PM and 7:50 PM.”
“That’s easy,” Deborah says and smiles. “I was at my Women’s Auxiliary meeting in Menlo Park. We met at the vice chair’s house. Usually we convene here but I had asked to move locations as I wasn’t feeling well, and I was worried I might have to cancel the meeting entirely. If it were at Gail’s house it could go on without me.”
“From what time to what time?” I ask. I know she’ll have the right answer.
“The meeting lasted from 6:30 to 8 PM, and I stayed an extra hour to work on some numbers we needed to turn in to the finance committee the next day,” Deborah says. “I got home around 9:15 and was home for the rest of the evening. I’m afraid I don’t have a witness from that time on, but my committee members can validate my earlier presence.”
I ask for the names and numbers of her committee cohorts, but know they’ll hold up. Even if this woman did commit murder, she’d have everything so carefully plotted that I’d never smoke her out.
“Tell me who might have wished your husband harm,” I say next. How lame.
She lifts her hands and holds them out, palms up, in the classic sign of bewilderment. “Besides one of the other wives, in a jealous fit? I can’t imagine. Although I think they’d want to murder me, if anyone.”
“Why is that?” I ask.
“Well, as the legal wife, I was certainly in the way,” says Deborah, as if speaking to a two-year-old. I feel my face growing warm.
“But both MJ Taylor and Helen Richter claim they had no clue about the other, or about you,” I say. “Are you saying you don’t believe this?” I’m genuinely curious.
“Although Helen is the more intelligent of the two, even MJ should have had enough brains to figure out something was wrong,” Deborah says.
“So you are saying that they knew,” I say.
Deborah sighs, gently, “Either that, or they were highly motivated to believe in the fantasies John fed them,” she says. “I’m inclined to believe the latter. Everyone has their vulnerable points, and John was especially good at finding them.”
She says this casually, with a touch of scorn, as if everyone should know these things. But I’m determined not to be bullied.