ON MONDAY, I SLIDE INTO my seat in courtroom twenty. Cy and his ceaseless wiles, Damon lurking in the shadows, and now, before me, Carmelina in the witness box, fighting for her dignity, what’s left of it, and maybe her survival. I approach, offer a smile. You’re in good hands. We’re on your side.
“Ms. Cappelli, I know this is hard for you. I have only a few questions. I’d like you to cast your mind back to the time before the murder. Did you see Mr. and Mrs. Trussardi together often?”
“Yes, most nights, when Mr. Trussardi wasn’t traveling or at some late meeting. When he was away, Mrs. Trussardi would go down to Raquella’s apartment, have dinner with her, sometimes spend the night.” Carmelina turns to the jury. “Raquella is Mr. Trussardi’s sister.” She’s warming to this, recovering a little of her old élan.
“Tell us about how it was between Mr. and Mrs. Trussardi on those nights—most nights, as you put it—when they had dinner together. Would they talk over dinner?”
“Yes, always.”
“What did they talk about?”
“I didn’t really listen, but ordinary things, like how their day had been, the food, that sort of thing.”
“Did they ever argue?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Did Mr. Trussardi ever threaten her or speak badly to her?”
“Never.”
“Did they laugh together, share stories or jokes?”
“Sometimes.”
“So as far as you could tell, Mr. and Mrs. Trussardi got along well?”
“Yes, very well. No opera, like we Italians say.”
“Did they sleep together?”
I half expect Cy to jump up and object that the witness has not been qualified as an expert in this particular subject, but he only scowls at me from his seat. Carmelina blushes but answers the question. “Yes. Housekeepers can tell, you know.”
“They were comfortable together.” Carmelina searches for the right words. “Not kissing all the time, you know, but liking each other.”
Good enough, I think. I change tacks. “I want to ask you, Ms. Cappelli, if you ever saw Mrs. Trussardi crying or upset?”
“Only once.”
“Will you tell us about that?”
“One night—I don’t know when, maybe last fall, Mr. Trussardi was at home. Mrs. Trussardi was out and didn’t come home like we expected. We couldn’t figure it out—her car was there. Mr. Trussardi said she must have gone out with someone and got delayed. Finally, I served him his dinner alone. He had almost finished his coffee when she came in the front door. There’s a little window in the door to the kitchen, and I watched from in there. She had a black eye and blood smeared under her nose. It looked like someone had hit her. She was crying.”
“How did Mr. Trussardi react?” I sneak a glance at the jury. They’re leaning forward, on the edge of their seats.
“He put his arms around her, tilted her face up to look at it. I heard him say, ‘My god.’ Then he yelled to me to get a cold compress. I brought ice and some towels to him, and he wiped her face and held the ice to her eye. Then I took her to their room and put her to bed. Mr. Trussardi came in and sat beside her, and I left.”
“Did he seem concerned?”
“Very concerned, a little angry maybe. Not with her—he was gentle with her—but still he was upset.”
“Did anyone ever tell you who had attacked her?”
“Hearsay,” calls Cy, standing.
But Moulton seems interested. “Let’s hear what the witness says,” he replies.
“No, no one said who hit her. But it could not have been Mr. Trussardi because he was at home.”
A rustle of paper as Kasmirsky makes a note of Carmelina’s answer.
Brava, I want to say. “Ms. Cappelli, you told Mr. Kenge that Trevor Shore would come to the house sometimes.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the last time he came to the house?”
“It was a long time ago. Maybe six months before she died.” Inference: Trevor Shore could have hit Laura.
“One more thing, Ms. Cappelli. You told Mr. Kenge that you went to Mr. Trussardi to see if he was all right the night following the murder. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“And you said you ended up having sexual relations.”
“Yes.”
“How did that happen?”
Cy smirks and in a voice loud enough for the jury to hear says, “I expect the usual way.” I ignore him, wait for Carmelina’s answer.
“I never—he never—meant it to happen. He was always so proper with me. But he was upset, and I was trying to comfort him. I think we both felt terrible afterward. It never happened again. It was two days before the police came to arrest him, and it was like we just went around the house trying not to run into each other.”
“You were ashamed, Carmelina. Did that lead you to do something you might not otherwise have done?”
“Irrelevant,” Cy shouts.
Moulton waves him down. “Objection overruled.”
Karma, Cy.
Carmelina wipes her eye with a delicately embroidered handkerchief, looks at Cy. “Mr. Kenge came to ask me about my relationship with Mr. Trussardi. I didn’t understand. I thought it was the law that I had to answer him. So I told him everything. I felt so guilty. I went home and took pills, too many pills.” Her voice drops. “I wanted to kill myself. I woke up in the hospital, and I was angry. I wanted to die.”
The jury is leaning forward, captivated by the story of the simple girl gulled by the wily prosecutor. Moulton frowns at Cy. Perfect.
“Thank you, Ms. Cappelli. You have been most helpful. I have no further questions.”
Justice Moulton glances at the clock. “Court will rise for the morning adjournment.”
“I CALL EMOND GATES,” CY intones.
On day two of the trial, a young homicide detective explained how he went out on a limb to find anything that might help solve Laura Trussardi’s murder.
“I combed the records of all the motels and hotels in West and North Van to see whether anyone related to the case had checked in recently,” he testified proudly. “That’s how I found out that Trevor Shore had used his credit card at the Stay-A-While Motel just days before the murder.”
Now, days later, Emond Gates steps smartly into the witness box to finish the detective’s story. His dark skull shines in the overhead lighting, and his eyes beam like twin flashlights. He looks about the courtroom with interest, noting how things are arranged. At Cy’s prodding, he takes us through what he can.
“The man—Trevor Shore—paid in advance for room 208. A half hour later, I saw a blond woman in a trench coat go straight to the room without checking at the desk. She was pretty; elegant, even; and wore expensive clothes.” He wants to say it was Laura Trussardi, but Cy and Emily have told him he can’t. “Two hours later they left the room together,” he says. “I saw them kissing goodbye in the parking lot before she got in her car.”
Vincent Trussardi’s mouth sets in a hard, unforgiving line, before he rights himself and recovers his usual composure. Jeff takes the cross and he’s good. He doesn’t touch the evidence that the man who registered at the desk was Trevor Shore—a credit card is a credit card. Instead, he homes in on the blonde. “Lots of blondes come by the motel?”
“Yeah, every day.”
“A lot of them look alike?”
“I guess you could say so. You know, with peroxide hair and face-lifts and Botox, you don’t know what you’ve got anymore when it comes to a woman.”
Jeff gives the witness a conspiratorial smile—I know what you mean—and then closes in for the kill. “All you know, then, is that one of the thousands of blond women wandering North Vancouver that day may have—and we’re not even sure about that—spent two hours with Trevor Shore?”
“Uh,” Gates stammers. “I guess that about sums it up.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gates.” Jeff sits down with an elegant furl of his gown. Across the aisle, Cy stares stonily ahead.
TWO O’CLOCK AND WE ARE back and waiting. The jury is in place. I sneak a surreptitious glance in their direction. The angry mood of the day before has lightened. Our foreman, Kasmirsky, is focused on the far wall inscrutably, but a couple of jurors in the second row—the dockworker and the accountant—are whispering. A grin cuts the accountant’s face, and he gives the dockworker a knowing wink.
They’re discussing motel trysts. Emond Gates may have shored up the motive Cy needs, but Laura Trussardi—to the extent the jury believes she was the woman at the Stay-A-While Motel—has come off tarnished.
Emily comes down the aisle in an anxious flurry of black, leans to whisper something to Cy. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I know something’s wrong.
“Bring the judge in,” Cy tells Marion. The clock on the back wall stands at precisely two twenty.
Cy pushes himself to his feet as Justice Moulton mounts the low stairs and takes his place behind the glowing ash bench. “Mr. Kenge?”
“My Lord, the prosecution’s next witness is a police officer. I regret to inform you that although he was subpoenaed for this afternoon, he has not arrived. He’s on his way from Seattle as we speak. He was there on police duties.”
Seattle? Then I remember Cy’s party and the undercover cop who gave me a drink. What’s Cy up to?
Justice Moulton’s fist hits the leather surface of the bench with a soft thud. “Mr. Kenge, did I hear right? It costs a great deal of money to run this court, and you are asking me to stand it down for the better part of an afternoon. Surely you have another witness you can call.”
“I regret I do not, my Lord.”
“Very well, you leave me no alternative but to adjourn.” He swivels to the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you stand dismissed.”
“It’s a show,” says Jeff as we head for the basement. “Did you see Cy’s smile? Gave the judge a chance to dump all over him, nix any suggestion of pro-Crown bias. They understand each other, the judge and Cy.”
I should tell him he’s crazy, but it makes sense. Cy’s out to win. Just like me.