Claire breaks into my thoughts. “There’s something else you should know,” she says.
“What?” She is driving the interview, not me. She’s staying two steps ahead while I trail behind.
“I think I was the last person to see John alive. Other than the hotel people and the murderer, of course.”
I snap to and realize that this is a valuable witness, and she is volunteering valuable information. I need to capture it instead of sitting here gaping. Better yet, I have to seize control of the conversation. I scramble through my bag for my recorder, raise it up to get her nod, and turn it on.
“Tell me about that last week, the week he died,” I say. “We know his movements up through Thursday morning. When he left Deborah’s house that morning. After that, no one could trace him.”
“He was with me. We got into a fight. We’d met for coffee before going into the clinic, and I told him off. I felt he wasn’t going to go through with it, that he’d lost his nerve. I threatened to tell Deborah myself. Later he called MJ and Deborah and said he’d been called down to LA. He didn’t go in to the clinic that day or the next, but came to my apartment. He stayed Thursday night with me. And then Friday, when I went home during my lunch break, we got into another argument. We were both tired, it had been a long week. We weren’t faring particularly well in my apartment, which is a small studio with barely enough room for a bed and desk. I left to go back to work, and when I came home he was gone. I didn’t know where, but suspected to one of his wives. I was furious. And that was my state until I read about his death in the Sunday paper.”
“So it was you who called the Chronicle, who spilled it to the press about the three wives.”
Did I see a shadow of shame cross that perfect face?
“Yes,” she says finally. “It was an impulse. I don’t usually act on impulse. And I regretted it immediately.”
I can’t figure out Claire. The rest of John’s women I have more or less fixed in my mind. I see the relationship that each of them had with him, and each one makes sense to me, in an insane sort of way. But not Claire.
I have this theory about people. I can’t think of them as weak or strong personalities, I find that useless in terms of categorization. Under such a system, conventionally, Deborah would be considered the strongest, MJ the weakest, and Helen somewhere in the middle. But I don’t think of MJ as weak; I think of her broad shoulders, her height, and her large hands and intensity. Underneath that scattiness is a real person. The same applies to Helen, and dare I say it, Deborah. Perhaps that’s what I mean. Real people. John Taylor married three real women. He sure knew how to pick them.
But this Claire? I find I’m disappointed by John’s choice. You look at her delicate beauty and you understand why any man might consider pursuing her. But it’s still a disappointment. I’ve built an impression of John Taylor, I realize, and it doesn’t have anything to do with marrying young china dolls less than half his age.
“Do you have a way to prove your relationship with Dr. Taylor?” I ask Claire.
She holds out her hand. An exquisite, and very large, diamond ring is on her fourth finger. At least that’s what it looks like. It could have been just glass given my untrained eye. I have the feeling I’m supposed to ooh and aah at the size. I merely nod. I’ve found that being silent when I’m unsure goes a long way to making people think I’m not as stupid as I feel.
“I wasn’t allowed to wear it in public before,” she says. “Now it doesn’t matter.” She isn’t expressing sadness when she says this. Odd. Her perfect face reveals nothing.
“You could have bought that yourself,” I point out.
“I thought you’d say that,” she says. She opens the small backpack she was wearing and produces a receipt. A credit card receipt for a diamond ring from Haynes Jewelers, in San Francisco. Even I’ve heard of them. $75,000. Paid for by John Taylor on his American Express. Talk about a sugar daddy. Fifty thousand dollars to MJ’s brother Thomas. Seventy-five thousand dollars for a ring to a would-be fourth wife. This boy was leaking cash all over town.
“Do you have any witnesses who can verify what you’re claiming?” I ask.
“Of course not,” she says. “We were keeping things under wraps.”
“No one from the clinic knew?”
“There were the usual rumors,” she says. The disdain is back in her voice. I don’t appreciate disrespect.
“Why usual?”
“I’ve found that office gossip often links me to the men I work with,” she says. Then, interpreting my look correctly, she says, “Falsely.” Then, as if describing her professional qualifications she says, “An attractive young woman in a mostly male field. This sort of annoyance comes with the territory.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say.