“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.