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 upstairs 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.”
“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 yesterday’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.”
“Were Carmelina and your brother . . . involved?” Maybe Laura wasn’t the only one stepping out.
“How you pry, Miss Truitt.” A tight grimace. “I suppose it’s what you lawyers get paid to do. How would I know what Vincent was up to?” Her voice drops. “Let’s just say such conduct would not be against his principles—or his custom.”
“Let me ask you frankly, just between you and me: Do you think your brother murdered Laura?”
“Of course,” she says. “Who else would have done it?” She shakes her head grimly.
How can she be so sure? I wonder. “Perhaps it was her ex-lover, the architect,” I offer.
“That milquetoast?” Her laugh is derisive. “No, it was Vincent. In his mind, Laura had betrayed him. He couldn’t live with that.”
“But why now? I mean, the affair was over. According to Vincent, they were reconciled, hoping for a child.”
Her hands grip the arms of her chair for a moment, then unclench. “Maybe she told him something new, something that infuriated him. For all his hollow core, he’s capable of considerable rage, my brother.”
Her words quash any hope she might be useful at the trial. Raquella is determined to sink him.
“This interview is at an end, Miss Truitt.”
“Let me at least take the cups to the kitchen,” I say. She waves me down, but I already have our cups on the tray with the teapot. “No trouble.”
I pass through a corridor in the direction from which Angela appeared, find the kitchen—a spotless, modern affair—and park the tray on the granite counter. I risk a quick look around. There’s not much to see beyond the usual kitchen things—appliances, a brass bar cart—except, in the corner, a niche with an elevator. I cross to it. One direction. Up. So the apartment is not as separate from the house as Raquella pretends. Maybe Laura designed it so she could come down to visit Raquella whenever she pleased. Or so that Raquella could go up. Or someone else.
Raquella has wheeled in after me. “You may take your leave, Miss Truitt.”
She swivels, and I follow her back to the living room.
“One more thing,” I say, remembering what Vincent said about Laura. She took my sister, Raquella—in a wheelchair and beset by demons—and gave her a reason to live. “The picture I’m getting is this, Miss Trussardi. You were bitter and depressed, confined to a wheelchair, cut out of the family business, and ignored by your brother. Then Laura comes along and everything changes. She picks you up and gives you a reason to live. Makes a place for you in her life, in her house. You say the two of you were incredibly close. And yet you can’t tell me what was happening between her and Vincent, what was going on in her mind or in her life? Something doesn’t add up.”
The wheelchair takes a sudden lurch toward me: I jump out of the way. “Get out. Now,” Raquella rasps. Anger? Pride? Or maybe fear? But why?
“Thank you, Miss Trussardi,” I say, and find the door.
At the corner of the walkway, I turn. Raquella sits in the sun, face of stone. I give her a smile. You can’t scare me. Off this case or anything else.