Her right hand cradles her coffee mug; her left holds the newspaper open. She stands for a hug. With no lipstick and rimless glasses, Edith looks exactly as I know her to be—earnest, caring, and exceedingly proper. We settle in while the waitress, a teenager in black tights and a white apron, fills my coffee cup.
“I was just reading about you, Jilly,” Edith says. “It seems you’ve had a big win. Congratulations.” She speaks with a cheerful tone. They must teach them that in social work school—Now don’t worry, dear, everything will be all right. Still, she has done me countless favors over the years, including saving my life once or twice.
“I got lucky. But I’m glad we won. Damon is a good kid, just confused. His life would have been hell in prison.”
“That’s what the paper says—the luck part, I mean. Nobody expected an acquittal.” She takes a sip of coffee. “You should take credit where credit is due, Jilly. Who would have guessed you’d become a successful trial lawyer?”
I smile. Social workers see a lot of failures. They should be allowed to bask in the odd success. We order salads. She tells me she’s thinking of retiring soon.
“I saw that movie a while back with Julia Roberts—Eat, Pray, Love,” she says. “Anyway, Julia comes to a dead end in her life and decides to travel. She ends up in Indonesia—I can’t recall what she’s doing there, but there’s a man in the picture. I thought, why not me? I mean, I know I’m not likely to find my personal Javier Bardem, but still I want to travel, meet people . . .”
I study Edith with fresh eyes. It never occurred to me that she might have a personal life; that she might be interested in a man, or a woman for that matter; that she might occasionally long for something other than her pristine townhouse and her job of rescuing abandoned children.
Our salads arrive. I push the mango around in the arugula. “Edith, don’t answer this if you’d rather not, but have you ever had anyone—like a partner, I mean—in your life?”
Her fair skin flushes. “Well, there was someone, actually—a long time ago. Not a marriage, just a liaison. But it didn’t work out.”
I try to imagine my social worker—the soul of middle-class morality—in bed with a man.
“You left him?”
“More the other way around.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “He never loved me, just used me. When he didn’t need me anymore, he left me and married someone else.”
“All these years and I never dreamed,” I say, wondering what Edith had that a man might need and then suddenly not need. “I mean, I’m sorry.” Then brightening, “But you’re right—you’re healthy, attractive; you should see the world. It would do you good. And who knows? Not all men are cads, Edith.”
“No,” she replies. “Mike’s not. You’re lucky to have Mike.”
“Yeah.” I decide not to tell her that Mike’s dropped me. Or that I walked out on Mike. Take your pick. A carapace is slowly forming over my soft, sweet zone of sorrow; I take care not to bruise it with ill-timed confessions.
We talk about the weather—an unseasonably warm spring—about how I guilt myself over my expensive new car, about how I still have the tattoo on my right shoulder that says REBEL in fancy curlicues. Every visit, Edith finds a way to tell me it’s time to have the tattoo removed.
“You always were your own person, Jilly,” she muses. “That’s what got you through.”
“You got me through, Edith.”
“I did what I thought I should. But you always understood, even when you were little, that it’s better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else’s life perfectly.”
“Wow,” I say, smiling. “That’s profound.”
She blushes. “That’s what Javier says in the movie.”
I reach for her hand, and it just comes out, the thing I’ve been thinking about too much lately. “You know who my parents are, don’t you, Edith? You were there from the start.”
“You know I can’t tell you that, Jilly. It’s confidential. Why are you asking now? You’ve never been interested before.”
“Forget it. I don’t want to know.”
The waitress brings the check, and I pay, but before I can begin my goodbye, Edith leans forward. “I read that you’re acting for Vincent Trussardi.” The intensity in her gaze takes me aback.
“That’s right.”
“Please drop his case, Jilly,” she says, voice faltering.
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you why.” She clutches my hand. “But I know things.”
“About Trussardi?”
“About him and his sister.” She stops herself. “Just drop the case, Jilly.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve been warned off a case, but it’s the first time I’ve heard such cautions from Edith. “Why?” I ask again.
“He should never have married her,” she whispers; her hand is gripping mine so hard it hurts. “Don’t do it, Jilly. Drop the case.”
“Edith, what’s going—”
But Edith is up and charging for the door, the strap of her bag flapping in her wake.
Outside, I search for her, no luck. I get in my car, slam the door hard behind me, and give the engine more gas than it needs. Questions swirl in my mind. What did she mean when she said Trussardi should never have married Laura? What’s his sister got to do with any of it? And overarching them all, What’s happened to calm, unassuming, unflappable Edith?
I make a mental note: Visit Raquella Trussardi. The minute she’s back in town.
CHAPTER 14
TWO WEEKS LATER, I PULL up in the forecourt of the Trussardi estate. Raquella Trussardi has been detailed and insistent. While her domain is situated below and a little to the west of her brother’s home, and yes, while the two dwellings are physically connected, they are separate spaces, and I’m to enter according to her instructions.
I follow the map I’ve been given to a stone court that looks out on English Bay. Strategically placed urns bright with blossoms frame a suite of modern sculptures—a bit of Brancusi, a couple of Arps, and, silhouetted against a wall of stone, quite probably a modest Moore. Then, fixating on where the door to this palace might be, I trip on a nude of massive proportions—a Botero, I speculate, recalling some tidbit on the arts pages of the New York Times. I turn and assess the massive thighs of stone—damn, this is something else.
A low laugh startles me, and I step back. Raquella Trussardi rolls out from the shelter of a potted palm, black eyes flashing, forefinger fixed on the go button as her motorized wheelchair bears down on me. Joan Baez, I think, remembering photos from my childhood of the slender, black-haired folk singer who enchanted a generation.
“So you like this sculpture, too, Miss Truitt,” she says. Clearly, she is amused, although I’m not sure whether she’s laughing at the fact that I tripped or at my reaction to the Botero.
“Actually, I do. She has—presence.”
“A slight understatement?” Raquella comments.
I decide to take her head-on. “Any description, however eloquent, would be an understatement in the case of this work. Words are simply inadequate to the task, Miss Trussardi.”
Her eyes scrutinize me. “You surprise me, Miss Truitt—in more ways than one. Perhaps my brother had more sense than I gave him credit for when he hired you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
“Miss Trussardi, your brother hired me because he needs a lawyer, and I happen to be in the business of providing the services he needs.”
“Perhaps, Miss Truitt, although I would advise you never to underestimate Vincent.” She pivots her chair in the direction of the house. “Shall we go in?”
I follow her through a broad door that stands open against the warmth of the afternoon—threshold flush with the terrace to accommodate her chair. The low hall gives way to the living room. I halt, blinded. The room is a sea of white sunlight dotted with islands of primary color. It’s not as large as her brother’s salon upstai
rs nor as pristine—photos vie for space on small tables and books are piled everywhere—but what it lacks in grandeur it makes up for in warmth. On the alabaster fireplace wall, an arrangement of red, blue, and yellow stripes that can only be a Newman gently vibrates.
As though following my thoughts, Raquella gestures expansively around the room. “As you can see, Miss Truitt, I am a woman of passion. Many passions. I am interested in so much; I care so much. There is never enough time for everything I want to read or see. I can’t actually do much,” she says, tapping the arm of her wheelchair, “but I manage nevertheless to live a passionate life.”
So much for the unwell sister abroad for medical treatment. Like the Newman on the wall, the woman before me pulses with coiled energy, despite being confined to a wheelchair.
I settle on a sofa near where she parks.
“I expect you want to talk about Laura,” she says. “And my brother.”
“That would be a start, Miss Trussardi. I would also like to talk about what you may or may not have observed the day of the murder.”
She waves her long, beringed fingers. “You will find I cannot be of much assistance, but go ahead and put your questions to me.” As she speaks, she motions to the shadows. A small figure in a dark dress and white apron appears. “Angela, would you be so good as to bring us some tea?”
While we wait, I glance at the photos that stand on every surface—silver frames, black frames, fancy frames, plain frames. On the white baby grand in the corner, one portrait dominates the others—I recognize the smile of Laura Trussardi. Clearly the deceased was important to this woman—that may explain her animosity toward her brother. On the low table to my right sit sports photos showing Raquella in her youth blowing through powdery snow, Raquella arm in arm with an unknown woman on a craggy slope, Raquella on horseback, Raquella cradling a handgun in a shooting competition.
She follows my eye. “Perhaps you don’t know. I was a pentathlon athlete in my day—on my way to the Olympics.” She taps the arm of her chair as her eyes wander through the window toward the ocean. “Until the accident.”
What accident, I wonder. She reads my mind.
“He came out of nowhere, a crazy, out-of-control skier. I flipped, my head hit a rock. The fall fractured my neck.” She closes her eyes, her face a bitter mask. “It was all over.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry. The accident must have been a great shock.”
“Indeed. For a long time I thought my world had ended. Then, while I was still struggling to find the courage to restart my life, my mother got cancer, died within months. Two years later, Papa went. I was alone, on my own. But somehow, I made it through, picked myself up, and decided to make a life of sorts. And so I have.”
“I understand,” I murmur.
Angela returns, offering porcelain cups, and the lavender scent of Earl Grey wafts up.
“Where was Vincent during all this?” I take a sip of tea.
“Floating around Europe, cruising with billionaires, dating starlets, living what they call the good life.” Her tone turns from arch to bitter. “He made a brief courtesy call when I was injured, then promptly fled back across the pond.”
“But when your parents died—”
“Yes, finally, when Papa fell ill, Vincent condescended to come home to check out the family finances. He had no choice—the business on this side of the Atlantic was abysmal. So he buckled down, pulled things out. To my surprise, he did rather well, until he overplayed his hand with the trust company.”
“But he recovered, remade his fortune,” I say.
“I see he’s given you his usual line. But yes, you’re right, he did.” Her mouth sets in a prim line.
I decide to be presumptuous. “Why do you dislike him so?”
“We were strangers from the start.” She reaches for her cup. “He came so much later. I was ten when he was born, but I was older than that inside—smart, competent, athletic. Everything I thought my parents wanted me to be. And then he came along. You would have thought he was the baby Jesus, to judge by the jubilation at his arrival. A son. I realized I was nothing, for no reason but that I had been born with two X chromosomes.” She gives me a long look. “You’re a woman, Miss Truitt—a sometime feminist, they say. How do you suppose I felt?”
I sympathize, remembering my own bewildered adolescent rages. Is it more painful to have had a mother who turns away or never to have had a mother at all?
“You must have felt it was very unfair. You must have been angry.”
“Deeply angry. They left him the family business because he was the son. A trust for me—not ungenerous—but still, just a trust, enough for a daughter. I was forced to sit back helplessly and watch him wander back from Europe, dabble in this and that, play with the family fortune.” She leans forward in her chair. “If you must know, Miss Truitt, I dislike him because he is weak.”
The word, delivered in contemptuous tones, surprises me. “I would not have placed him as weak.”
“He possesses a lovely façade—but underneath, he’s an empty man. Life is a pleasure ride for Vincent. Not in the vulgar, carnal sense. My brother pursues only rariefied pleasures—his art, his table, a lovely woman on his arm. Even when he does the right thing, it’s because it fits his image of how he should be. But he doesn’t know what love is, what passion is.”
I remember Trussardi’s moan as he looked out over the ocean. Something doesn’t fit. I take another sip of tea, put the cup down. “He never loved Laura?”
She swivels her chair dismissively. “As if.”
“You disliked your brother, yet you came here to live with him—be near him. I don’t understand, Miss Trussardi.”
“I did not come for him. I came for Laura.” She says the name slowly, like a caress—Low-ra.
“You were friends? You and Laura?”
“You might say that,” she says, drawing herself up. “Laura was kind to me. She was growing unhappy with Vincent, more and more desolate in the wasteland of their marriage. She was lonely. So she took to visiting me in the afternoons. Not here. I lived in a condo in the West End at the time. We’d have tea, just as we are now, Miss Truitt, talk about pictures, her work, the house she was planning. ‘You’ll have a place in it,’ she told me. ‘Separate but near. Then we can visit whenever we want.’ ” Raquella spreads her hands. “What could I say? I let her carry on with her dream.”
Vincent, apart from occasional annoyance with Laura’s causes and upset over her brief affair, described a marriage of sweetness and light. Now dark stains are surfacing. “She wasn’t happy?” I ask, concealing what I know. “There were troubles in the marriage?”
“I cannot say what passed between my brother and his wife. All I know is that she came to visit me more and more often.”
“She never talked to you about her marriage?”
Raquella stiffens. “Why do you ask?”
I decide to confess. “I’m told she had an affair.”
“Laura never loved Trevor Shore,” she says, so low I can hardly hear.
“So you knew about the architect.”
She makes no reply.
I move on. “What about the boy who used to hang around?”
“Laura was always picking up strays—it didn’t mean anything.”
“What was his name?”
She shrugs. “How should I know?”
“Do you know where he lived? Anything about him?”
An annoyed shake of the head.
“You knew Laura well. Did she have any problems? Alcohol, drugs?”
“Ridiculous. Laura’s only problem was that she cared too much.”
“Her causes, you mean?”
“That, too.”
“What else did she care too much about?”
“Propriety,” she says enigmatically.
I want to pursue, but her pursed lips tell me there’s no point. I decide to take a shot in the dark—there is a question that’s been nagging me since yester
day’s lunch. “Do you know Edith Hole?”
I catch the sharp intake of breath before the mask comes down. “I recognize the name.” She stares at me. “I did not expect to like you, Miss Truitt, but I did not expect to find you disagreeable.”
I have touched on a nerve. I ignore the insult. “How was Edith involved with your brother?”
“Some matter a long time ago. Must you pursue every private detail of every irrelevant aspect of his life, Miss Truitt?” she hisses. “Let’s just say she rendered him certain services.”
“What kind of services?”
She turns her head toward the window and the sea beyond. “I have nothing more to say on the subject, Miss Truitt. That pathetic woman has nothing to do with the matter at hand.”
I remember Edith’s figure fleeing the restaurant. She rendered him certain services. Something happened between Vincent and Edith, something so awful no one wants to talk about it. That doesn’t sound like the Edith I know; the Edith I trust is simple, virtuous, beyond reproach.
“The time of Laura’s death is estimated between three thirty and four p.m. on May fourth. Were you here at that time, Miss Trussardi?”
“I must have been.”
“Did you hear anything? See anything?”
“I would have told the police if I had.”
“No cries, no gunshot?”
“No, my house is separate from Vincent’s in every way. Laura insisted on absolute soundproofing. And, as on most afternoons, I was listening to music.” She points to a low cabinet. “I put on something serious, spend an hour or two just listening. Maybe an opera. That day it was Bruckner’s Seventh.”
“How can you remember what music you played and precisely how long it lasted?”
“It’s very long, the Seventh. It had just ended when the police arrived. So I remember.”
“Can Angela verify that?”
“No. Angela never comes on Sunday. It’s her day off.”
“Was Carmelina around? Did she ever come down here?”
“Never. I refuse to have anything to do with that woman. She arrived last fall—little girl from Calabria, out to see the world. Seems to have stalled here.”
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