I can understand that, but to me, side-stepping would be more like.. 'when he got to the house and saw she wasn't there', which leaves it completely open, or anything other than 'when he returned home that night'? I don't know.. I guess another interpretive thing.
ETA: Also, after letting the world know they are estranged, going through a messy divorce, and that SB may have been upset (or whatever the word was that was used by EM in an MSM article), then I would think it would make no matter for the world to also know that one may have been staying elsewhere temporarily.. in fact.. it would allow the world to know there was a reason why JB didn't bother reporting the fact that his wife was AWOL while her car sat in the driveway for almost 5 days? The fam wants us to not suspect JB, and that would be a good way to talk us into that, perhaps, so why not mention. Well, the reason is because nobody knew, because JB is temp staying elsewhere. But they didn't, so why not?