A Circle of Wives by Alice Laplante Read Free Book Online Page A

house is a spotless engine of efficiency. She computerized all the records a full decade before other police departments in the state. Of course, a lot of that has to do with Palo Alto money. But also Susan’s vision. She’s married to the head of Palo Alto’s firefighting division, himself no Skinny Minnie. People like to joke that one of the reasons Palo Alto is such a placid community is that the two of them hate having their dinner interrupted.
    “I’m mostly talking to myself here,” she says. “I’m wondering if this case shouldn’t go to a more seasoned officer. Someone used to handling those ghouls in the media. After that Chronicle nastiness, the media is calling for an official statement. You’d have to write one today and present it tonight or tomorrow morning. You up for that? Or do you want me to pass it on to Grady.” Grady being our only big-city cop, having retired from the Detroit police force before moving west and signing on in Palo Alto as a detective at the ripe old age of fifty. Easy money , he calls it. You can see him trying to stifle a smile when anyone complains about having a bad day. I Googled him once, way back. He was put on administrative leave twice in Detroit for having killed while on duty. The words excessive use of force were used throughout the various newspaper reports. Scary stuff. I tend to tiptoe around Grady.
    Part of me wants to say, sure, why not , throw it to Grady, and let this case go. That’s the quitter in me. Though I’m also kind of hooked.
    “I can handle that,” I say. I try to exude the air of someone competent, yet not foolishly overconfident. Mostly this involves standing up to my 5'4" height and brushing my bangs out of my face.
    “But we know nothing yet,” I say. “Jake sent the body to the pathologist for an autopsy, and he said we won’t have the results for days.”
    “Then tell them that. Keep it short and sweet,” Susan says.
    “Do I mention the bruising? The needle puncture?”
    “Absolutely not,” says Susan. “You speculate about nothing. They’ll press you to say more. They’ll try to get you to say this is murder, whatever. Just stick to the facts, Sam.”
    The facts, I think, not unhappily, are doozies. Although I’m not unmindful of the fact that a man is dead—a man with responsibilities and a family who is grieving—I’m excited to be doing something other than processing theft reports that will come to nothing or investigating break-ins fumbled by pot-smoking sixteen-year-olds. They’re not the cleverest criminal minds. The last one I’d been assigned to, the perp had two of his friends on bicycles acting as lookouts. A couple of kids riding in perpetual circles in front of the target’s home naturally aroused the attention of the neighbors. When we arrived, the perp was trying to get away on his bike with a MacBook in his backpack and two iPhones in his pocket, but not before he’d paused to make a phone call from one of his ill-gotten phones. Like I said, not the brightest criminals in the world.
    “I’d like you to stay on the case,” says Susan, with an air of having made up her mind, “For now, you’re our homicide department, Sam. Use Grady or Mollie as backup. I want daily briefings.”
    “Oh, and Sam,” she calls after me, as I’m walking away, “Find out who tipped the newspaper off about the three marriages. Talk about a shocker! It must have been one of the wives. I’d like to know which one thought it would be advantageous for us to know about the bigamy—I mean, multiple marriages.”
    “The trigamy ,” I quip, and get a smile out of Susan. It makes my day.

9
Excerpt from Transcript
Police interview with
MJ Taylor, May 18, 2013
    [Preliminary introductions, explanations of processes and procedures]
    Samantha Adams: When did you realize your husband had two other . . . relationships?
    MJ Taylor: Not until I read the news of his death. And actually, I only found out about his first wife from