I temper my rising frustration. “Mr. Trussardi, we’re not looking for the killer; we’re looking for a reasonable doubt.”
“He had no way of knowing where the gun was, how to get it. He couldn’t have done this thing the way it was done.”
Jeff decides to move the conversation forward. “I interviewed your housekeeper, Mr. Trussardi. What she told me is consistent with her police interview. Mrs. Trussardi had given her the day off. She went to visit friends in Burnaby—her story checks out.”
“And then there’s the dishes,” I say.
“The dishes?” Trussardi asks.
“It’s a bit far-fetched,” I reply. “But one of the police reports says there were two plates, two glasses, and two sets of cutlery in the kitchen sink. Maybe Laura had a final meal with someone—someone who killed her.”
Jeff laughs. “Or maybe she had lunch alone, salad and omelet, a glass of water and a glass of white wine.”
“Laura never drank alone,” Trussardi responds. “And she was pregnant.”
“Still,” says Jeff. “Dishes in the sink? Could be any number of explanations.”
“I agree. It’s probably nothing.” I put my papers down. “Richard, would you review your progress for us?” Progress—the overstatement of the week.
Richard straightens, goes into business mode. “The first task, Mr. Trussardi, is to back up that you were on your boat or at the club at the time of the murder. The waitress confirms you were there for breakfast and went down the pier in the direction of your boat about ten a.m. However, she has no further recollection of seeing you that day. We’ve talked to a number of people who took their boats out. Only one recalls seeing you—a man named Oliver Semple. He says he came up from his boat around five and thinks he saw you heading toward your car.”
Trussardi looks up, eyes guarded. “I know Ollie. Is there a problem?”
“He may not be the best witness. He admits to drinking over the afternoon, so the Crown will try to discredit him. And he only saw your back. But it’s a start. We’ll keep looking.” Richard continues. “Our next line of inquiry concerns your late wife. We’ve been over everything—her diary, her cell phone, the landline to the house—and re-created, as best we can, a picture of her last week or so. With some success—there is nothing in her calls or comings and goings that suggests she was in touch with Trevor Shore, much less met him at the Stay-A-While Motel.”
I unpack what this means. “With luck, we can convince the jury that the blonde Mr. Shore saw that afternoon was someone else—at the very least, we can raise a doubt.”
“The affair was over,” Trussardi says as much to himself as to us.
I don’t tell him that I’ve seen Trevor, that he didn’t deny meeting Laura at the motel. I’ve locked the memory of our supermarket encounter deep in the confidential casket every lawyer keeps. No one knows. Not even Richard.
Richard circles back to the boy. “I know you don’t think this homeless boy could have done it, Mr. Trussardi, but finding him could answer a lot of questions. Can you tell us more about him? Anything that might single him out from the horde of kids that drifts through the streets of this city every day?”
“I didn’t pay much attention. As I told you, he was thin, sick looking, matted blond hair. I remember his eyes, though—skittering around one minute, staring off at who knows what the next. It was unsettling.”
“He was on drugs.” Richard nods. “Maybe he’s the one who delivered them to the house.”
We all look up.
“What drugs?” Trussardi asks, echoing everyone’s thoughts.
“I picked up a street rumor of a cocaine delivery to your residence shortly before your wife’s murder. Could be nothing.” He glances at me. Trust me, I’m onto something.
“That’s impossible,” Trussardi says. “Laura abhorred drugs.”
Richard leans back before moving on. “That leaves Trevor Shore. Who, it seems, has vanished from the face of the earth.”
“The Crown has a bigger problem with Trevor Shore,” I say. “They’ll have to explain why the police failed to interview him and get a statement. Right now, his disappearance is the only thing going for your defense, Mr. Trussardi.”
Trussardi shifts his gaze to the middle distance, like it’s someone else’s life we’re talking about. I nod to Richard—Thank you—and he gathers his iPad and papers. Alicia closes her laptop and follows Richard out. Jeff and I are alone with our client.
“Mr. Trussardi, there’s one more thing we’d like to discuss,” I say.
“Yes?”
“We would like to explore the possibility that the Crown might agree to a plea to second degree.” I think of the photos—the public would never accept manslaughter.
“And what would a plea to second degree get me?”
“Fifteen fewer years in the penitentiary,” I reply.
He draws himself up. His words come out like bullets. “I did not do this. I will never plead guilty.”
Jeff winces.
“Twenty-five years without parole is a long time, Mr. Trussardi.” I lower my voice. “Very likely the rest of your life.”
“I am prepared for that, should we lose.”
“Life imprisonment,” I persist. “Easy to say, hard to live.”
“Would you take this deal if you were innocent, Miss Truitt?”
“Maybe,” I say, momentarily taken aback—I’m not used to clients questioning me. “The jails are full of lifers who may be innocent.”
“Miss Truitt, I admire you, but I don’t believe you. You are intelligent and determined. And proud, if I’m not mistaken. You would not say you were guilty of killing someone if you were innocent. You would fight it to the end.” He pauses. “And so will I.”
“You’re right, Mr. Trussardi, I would. But what I would do is not the issue. As your lawyer, it’s my duty to advise you what you should do.”
He rises with a small smile and nods. “I appreciate your counsel. But my answer is the same one you would give to yourself—no plea bargain.” He buttons his suit jacket. “Is this meeting concluded?”
“Evidently.”
“When will we meet again, Miss Truitt?”
I stand up. “May I remind you, Mr. Trussardi, that I am your lawyer. We will meet if and when we need to meet for the purposes of your defense.”
“Of course,” he says.
I suddenly realize how silly I sound. No need to be rude, Jilly, just because the client’s a gentleman.
“I’m taking a family holiday in the Okanagan next week. When I’m back, we’ll have that one-on-one we talked about.”
He bows ever so slightly. “I look forward to it, Miss Truitt.”
CHAPTER 23
A FEW HOURS LATER, RICHARD calls. “Jilly, can I come by? News on Trussardi.”
It’s 8:00 p.m., mid-July, and hot. Martha’s just texted me with a long list of things to bring to the lake, and I’m packing. Cradling my phone, I look out my window to the waters of False Creek, where the boats rock gently in the evening breeze. “Sure, Richard, come on by.”
Ten minutes and he’s on my threshold, wearing jeans and a beige shirt. Tonight it’s his fade into the woodwork look.
“You’re working late, Richard.” I go to the fridge, open a beer for him, pour myself a cold glass of Riesling. “So what’s new on Trussardi?”
He takes a deep breath. “I know where Trevor Shore is.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere in Brazil, it seems. He copped a flight to Rio the other day.”
“If you could find out, so could the police.”
“Not necessarily.”
I let it lie. It’s an understanding we have, Richard and I—he gives me the info, I don’t touch the sources. Still, checking on airline records isn’t rocket science. Unless—my mind races—Trevor Shore scored a fake passport and used a false name.
“If we know what they know—fine. If we know what they don’t know—even better. We can
present the court with the flight records, make them look like they trained their sights on Trussardi and overlooked the real killer. Or, if they tried and failed, we make them look incompetent. Win-win.”
Richard nods, takes a drink.
“Keep digging into what he did in Vancouver before he left, Richard. Anything you can find that shows Trevor Shore was right under their nose and they let him get away. We need to beef up our cops had tunnel vision defense.”
“Gotcha.”
“Let me tell you my news,” I say, setting down my glass. “The paternity test results came back just as I was leaving the office. Our man’s the dad.”
“More good tidings. Could it be he’s telling the truth about the murder?”
“As I keep saying, Richard, all we need is a reasonable doubt.”
I stretch out on my orange chair and survey the sneakers at the end of my jeans. The world is looking slightly brighter.
“I appreciate this, Richard. You’ve done an amazing job. But I should let you go. Your family awaits.”
“I know.” He puts down his half-finished beer and moves toward the door. “By the way, Keltey, the girl with the locket?”
I look up. “I’d forgotten.”
“Bad news. Turns out her friend died on Pickton’s pig farm. I checked out the victim’s background. She lived in a bed-sit on Main, cheap but respectable. Did some desperate things from time to time to feed her addiction. But it seems she got Keltey off the street and straightened her out.”
Yet another victim, I think. What’s the tally now, forty-three? Forty-four? He bragged in jail he was shooting for fifty. Almost made it.
“Did you contact Keltey?”
“Yes, she’ll be okay. One more thing, Jilly.” He shunts his shoulder against the doorframe. “You know what you mentioned—about your parents?”
“Forget it, Richard. I wasn’t serious.”
“Sure. Still, I did a search. Girls born in the Vancouver General Hospital, October 3, 1983. Just to be sure, I looked a month ahead and a month back.”
“What are you telling me?”
“There’s no record. It’s like you were never born, like you don’t exist.”
“Richard, I have a SIN. I have a passport. I exist.”
“I can see that. And at some point the records must have been there. It’s just that now, they’re gone.”
My stomach clutches.
“Probably just a clerical error,” Richard says. “But clearly the parent thing has been bothering you, Jilly. Enough that you asked me to look into it.”
“I wasn’t serious,” I repeat.
“I worry about you, Jilly.”
“But you shouldn’t. I’m okay. I should never have mentioned it. We have enough mystery on our hands with Trussardi.”
Richard gives me a fierce one-armed hug, and I feel the stubble on his cheek against my hair. “Take care, Jilly.”
CHAPTER 24
FAR FROM MY WORLD OF courtrooms and cases, I lounge with Martha at the end of the dock in Lake Okanagan. I feel the tension seep out of my bones, as I ponder the wake of the retreating boat. My foster brothers and their father, after a desultory lunch, have decided that a thirty-mile trip to Kelowna is an absolute necessity. John halloos from the stern of the boat. I raise my hand in a lazy wave.
“Hope they have enough gas,” says Martha.
“They could power that boat to Kelowna and back on testosterone,” I reply. Martha smiles and returns to her book.
It’s a tradition we have, Martha and I, to choose something from the current bestseller list and bring it on vacation. She’s picked a book by Rachman, someone she knew when he lived in Vancouver, with the ominous title The Rise & Fall of Great Powers. I’ve got Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch.
As she nears the end of her book, I ask, “What’s it about, World War Two?”
“No, a girl—a young woman—finding out who her parents are, who she is.”
“Funny—mine, too. Sort of. It’s a boy, though. He loses his mother in a terrorist attack and falls in love with a portrait of a yellow bird instead. I’m not joking. All while discovering he hates his wretch of a natural father, who, thank God, has just died”—I pat the book—“and finding a new father.”
“The paternity theme. Or can we now say maternity?”
“Nope. Different meaning. Some things just aren’t fair, including the English language. French is better—some really important things get to be feminine.”
We lapse back into our books for a while longer, then put them down and swim out to the sandbar, where we can just stand on tiptoe. It’s pleasant—bobbing in the water, lifting and paddling when a wave comes in. Damon and Trussardi and all the petty woes of my working world melt away.
“Do you ever think about your parents, Jilly—I mean your real parents?” Martha asks unexpectedly.
“No, not much,” I lie.
“I mean, so many people nowadays are trying to find their natural parents. I just wondered.”
“You’re my parents, you and Brock. Besides,” I tease, “no way I could ever trade up.”
Martha laughs. “Thanks, Jilly.”
We languidly swim back to the dock, where I see William, caretaker cum butler, standing on the terrace, waving. “Miss Truitt, telephone. A Mr. Solosky. Shall I tell him to call later?”
I want to say yes, but I can’t. I make my way into the house, perch at the granite kitchen bar as Alfred hands me the phone, disapproval at the intrusion of business into paradise written all over his face.
“Jeff?”
“Sorry to bother you on your holiday, Jilly, but I thought you’d want to know. Carmelina’s in hospital. Took an overdose.”
I digest the news with difficulty. Carmelina, wily, resolute, and strong, trying to end it all? Doesn’t make sense.
“Jilly? Are you there?”
“Yeah. An overdose? Will she be all right?”
“I think so.”
“Do you know why she did it?”
“No, but it seems Cy paid her a visit.”
“Shit, what did she tell him?”
“No idea.”
“How’s Trussardi taking it?”
“Not sure. He waited at the hospital until she came around. Now he’s just sitting in his penthouse looking at his bentwood boxes. And a photo of a young woman with black hair in a flowing white dress. I’ll have Richard keep an eye on him, make sure he keeps it together.”
“His sister, maybe? In the photo, I mean.”
“No, someone else.”
“Should I come back to Vancouver?”
“Nothing you can do here. I realize now I shouldn’t have bothered you. Sorry, Jilly.”
“No, you were right to call. I would have been ticked if you hadn’t. Get Alicia. Tell her to tell Cy I’m seriously pissed off that he didn’t go through me and that I need the statement now. And ask Richard to find out who the woman in the photo is.”
“Sure.” The line hums for a long moment. “Jilly, remember, it’s just a case.”
* * *
THE DAY BEFORE I’M DUE to leave for Vancouver, Brock announces over luncheon hamburgers that he wants to show me the grapes. Though he’s in his fifties, Brock swings lithely into the driver’s seat of a little Kubota RTV—not the noisy kind with big wheels, more like a tiny truck—his cropped salt-and-pepper hair catching the afternoon sun. I slide in beside his angular frame, and we climb the slope to his vineyards. “These are Chardonnay grapes, just put in three years ago,” he tells me as we scan the acreage. “We’re hoping to make a decent bubbly.”
“As in champagne?”
“Yes, but you lawyers won’t let us call it that.” He chides me about being a lawyer, but I know he’s secretly pleased with where I’ve ended up. He needs to win, like me.
The plants march in neatly trellised rows to the top of the hill. As we pass between them, Brock points to the clusters of small green grapes that nestle between the leaves. “Bunching out nicely
,” he says. “Bad year for forest fires—hot and dry—but good for the grapes.” He stops, plucks two tiny orbs from a cluster, hands one to me and bites into the other.
I follow suit, make a face. “Sour.”
“Good. The sugar will develop with the late-summer sun. Like life, wine is all about the balance between the acid and the sugar. This year should be good.”
We move on to a vineyard of Riesling grapes, head down a lane and up another hill to a field of what he tells me is Cabernet Franc. Every once in a while he stops the Kubota and explains how the terroir and the slope and the way the sun strikes the vineyard work together with the plants to make fine wine, and how he helps the process along the way—pruning, dusting, irrigating, and finally, in October, an intense month of harvesting.
“So much work. I had no idea,” I say.
“Yes, I’m hoping to make my mark with a vintage Riesling. I’ve hired a new and very expensive vintner from Germany, just to make sure. Or try to.”
In the shortening rays of the sun, we start back to the house. The boys and their significant others have taken the Suburban to Osoyoos for dinner at the Burrowing Owl. Martha’s BMW is gone, too.
“It’s a crazy business,” Brock says over glasses of chilled Riesling on the west terrace. The phrase house wine takes on a new meaning when you own the vineyard. “You spend a fortune, invest every bit of love and care and intelligence you can muster, and you still may fail. The wine will be drinkable, but not the special, unique elixir that you dream about. The weather, the heat, the je ne sais quoi—or luck—will make the difference between okay and exceptional. You do your best, but the result is out of your control.”
“Sounds a lot like raising kids,” I comment wryly.
“I got lucky in that department.” He stares out over the lake. “With all five of you.”
I give him a side look.
“Yes, Jilly. You know I count you as ours. No escaping. In fact, Martha and I wanted to adopt you legally all along. But there were impediments. Doesn’t matter.”
What impediments? I wonder. It’s not like eligible families were clamoring to adopt me. Nobody ever wanted me, except maybe the Maynes. And why is Brock raising this now, after all these years? I’m about to ask, but something in the set of his jaw tells me not to pursue it. Instead I say, “The imprimatur of the law can be overrated.”
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