When I arrive, it’s almost over except the taking away of the body. MJ lies on her bed dressed in a kind of blue sparkling sari that dips over the edge of the bed like a brilliant blue waterfall. She has makeup on, too. And jewelry. She went out dressed as a bride.
“Was there a note?” I ask the officer in charge. He nods and hands it to me, encased in a clear plastic evidence ziplock. I read it, then approach Thomas, who is sitting in the corner of the living room, his face in his hands. When I get near him, he raises his head, and—honest to God—I’ve never seen such utter despair on a human face.
“Without her, I’d be dead, or close to it,” he says before I have a chance to open the conversation. “I would have ended up a meth addict or worse.”
“I’m sorry to have to ask you questions right now,” I say, as gently as possible. When he just looked at me, I added, “Did you read the note your sister left?”
He nods his head in the affirmative, then buries his face in his hands again.
“What does it say to you?” I ask. I consider putting a hand on his shoulder, I suppose that’s the natural instinct when you see a wounded animal—to comfort. When he didn’t answer, I said, “Much of it seems awfully abstract. Do you know what was troubling her?”
Thomas just shakes his head.
“Thomas, did she kill John Taylor? I’m asking you a direct question.”
He doesn’t reply.
“Thomas?”
He finally speaks, slowly. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore.”
“What are you saying?”
He gets to his feet. “I’m not talking to you without a lawyer,” he says.
62
Deborah
SO THAT MJ CREATURE IS dead. And that brother of hers has practically admitted that she killed my John. For once I feel pity for that woman. She suffered. And I’m surprised to find that I’m actually glad she had six years with John. Six apparently happy years. She filled a hole in his life that I never knew existed. The thought of John as her housekeeper and chief gardener will amuse me for a long while to come.
May God have mercy on her soul.
63
Samantha
THOMAS GIVES HIS STATEMENT THE day after MJ’s body is discovered. And it’s a doozy.
According to him, MJ had somehow found out that her husband was not in LA as he had told her. She somehow found out that he was at the Westin. How she discovered these facts Thomas couldn’t say. But she’d called Thomas Friday evening, May 10, very agitated. The time was approximately 7 PM. As per his previous statement, he was already at MJ’s house, waiting for her to return. She told him that she needed his help. She instructed him to go into her closet and get the long blond wig that resembled, at a distance, MJ’s own long graying locks, bought for a Halloween party in which Thomas and MJ had dressed up as each other. MJ gave Thomas explicit instructions that he was to put on her clothes, and—complete with the wig, one of the more conspicuous hats from her wardrobe, and sunglasses—immediately make the rounds of the grocery store and drugstore. And to get himself noticed. He dutifully knocked over the cereal display at Trader Joe’s, bought some toiletries at Walgreens, and then returned to Walgreens via the drive-through window for MJ’s prescription. All as instructed. Then they met back at MJ’s house at 7:45, where Thomas put his own clothes back on and she insisted they dine at a local restaurant. “We must be seen there,” she had said.
Thomas swears that he didn’t know what it was about at the time. MJ had merely ordered a vodka and tonic from the waiter—a very unusual move on her part—and refused to say anything else. It wasn’t until Sunday that Thomas heard about John Taylor’s death.
“It would have been perfect. No one would have known,” Thomas says during his statement. He begins to cry. “MJ didn’t have to kill herself.”
“Her conscience decided,” I say, not unsympathetically. “But why would you agree to do this, if John Taylor was going to be your golden goose? Weren’t you expecting money from him?”
“I didn’t agree!” he says, sitting up straight. “I knew nothing!”
“You didn’t ask why you had to dress as your sister? I have a hard time believing that.”
“Of course I did!” he says. “She simply said she needed to be in two places at the same time. And I trusted MJ. Unconditionally.” Here he began to cry again.
“Do you know why she did it?” I ask. “Why she would want to kill John Taylor?”
Thomas gives a sort of defeated half shrug. “She must have found out about the other wives,” he says. “That’s the sort of thing that would set MJ off.”
“No idea how?”
“No idea.”
And that is pretty much it. MJ Taylor, RIP.
But I’m not satisfied. They take Thomas away. And I return to my desk and begin filling in the paperwork for a new subpoena to examine MJ’s phone and email records for the week before her death.
64
Samantha
SUSAN CALLS ME INTO HER office.
“What is this?” she asks, waving my request for the subpoena.