Full Disclosure

by Beverley McLachlin

  “Miss Truitt, Carmelina has prepared a small repast. After, whether we like it or not, we must attend to our business.”

  * * *

  WE DINE ON VITELLO TONNATO and a green salad that Carmelina—now clad in a dark wrap dress—brings to the glass table. Her cleavage, as she leans to serve Trussardi, glows golden in the candlelight.

  I purse my lips, focus on the food. Something in the sauce—anchovies perhaps?—elevates the chilled veal from banal to exquisite. “This is excellent,” I say.

  “Classic Italian dish,” Trussardi replies. “But I must admit, Carmelina does it well.”

  It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it. “What else does Carmelina do well?”

  “Enough, Miss Truitt.”

  I accept the reprimand. “Sure. My apologies.”

  No point in prematurely offending him, I think. But I know one thing for certain—if Cy finds a way to get Carmelina on the stand, it will not be good for Vincent Trussardi’s chances.

  After dinner, we move to the fireplace, where Carmelina has set espressos on a low table near the suede banquette. “How did you and Laura meet?” I ask, finally getting to the reason I’m here.

  “I don’t know if I want to think about it. Don’t know if I can.”

  “You must.” I know all the jargon: get beyond denial, get beyond grief. But jargon doesn’t get the job done.

  “Very well.” Eyes half closed, he begins. “I was looking for someone to help me catalogue my Haida collection. A friend in the department of anthropology recommended one of his graduate students—Laura. I contacted her; she seemed interested. I lived in a penthouse downtown at the time, and she came to see the collection. She fell in love”—a bitter downturn of lip—“in love with the collection. I hired her.”

  He stares into the fire. “She visited almost every day. At first I hardly saw her. I gave her the keys, and she came and went as she pleased while I went about my own affairs. It was a hectic time. I was focusing on rebuilding the business, traveling a lot. Then one day I came back from I can’t remember where and I turned the key in the lock and there she was.” He looks up. “Sitting among my baskets and boxes on the floor of my living room. She was wearing jeans with a T-shirt and sneakers. When I entered, she started and flushed, and her hand went to her face to push a strand of hair back.” His voice breaks. “And—and I fell in love.”

  “Just like that?” I probe. “I mean, I’ve done my research. You’d had other women in your life. Quite a few.”

  “Dalliances, affairs, infatuations. But not love.”

  “Until Laura?”

  He turns away. “Yes, until Laura.”

  Something in the way he answers makes me wary. “Please go on,” I say.

  Trussardi clears his throat. “I courted her madly. Took her to dinners and shows, flew her to L.A., Palm Springs, and New York. Bought her paintings and jewels. It wasn’t an easy conquest, but ultimately, she succumbed. Her family was against our union. But in the end she agreed, and we were married in a small Catholic ceremony.”

  “How did she feel toward you?”

  “Did she love me, you mean? No, she fell for my baskets, but she never fell for me the way I did for her. She always held something back, a core of reserve I tried to pierce.” He sighs. “Without success.”

  “You were married for some time. Was it a happy marriage? Did you fight? Were there other people in your lives?”

  He takes a long time to answer. “I’ve already told you, sometimes her do-gooding drove me mad. I suppose I was jealous, upset I wasn’t enough to fill her life. But I told myself to accept it—no—to admire it. She was born to privilege, beautiful, rich, entitled, but she refused to accept that entitlement. She insisted on doing what she could to alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate. But then . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “She had an affair with the architect who designed this house, Trevor Shore.” He looks at me bleakly. “I told the police about it in my statement. I failed to mention it to you earlier, at your office.”

  “You should have. You agreed not to hide anything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  My mind clicks back to the day of the funeral. “The architect. Was he the man outside the church?”

  “So you noticed. That was unfortunate. Their affair—meaningless while it lasted—ended long ago.” His mouth sets in a hard line. “Bad taste, running after the hearse.”

  I need to ask about Shore, find out what the police—what Cy—knows, but Trussardi loops back to the house, to the beginning.

  “I bought this piece of land a long time ago—something I picked up in a side deal on a transaction. Normally I didn’t share business matters with Laura, but we found ourselves driving by on a Sunday afternoon, and on a whim I took a detour and showed it to her. She stood in the pines and looked out over the ocean. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘the view is amazing. We should build here, live here.’ I could refuse her nothing; she was my beautiful pet. So we built the house, and along the way, Laura decided we should make it a proper place to showcase our collection. But apart from approving the plans, I had little to do with this house.” He waves his hand around the room. “Everything you see is her doing. A remarkable achievement, don’t you think?”

  “Undoubtedly.” I cast my eye over the room. “It’s stunning. But getting back to the affair—was she in love with the architect?”

  A harsh laugh. “She didn’t fall in love with him. She got caught up in the aesthetics of the enterprise, and he was part of it, just as she had with my baskets and boxes. It all blurred together—her infatuation with the design and building of the house, and the man who was creating it.”

  “How did you feel about their affair?”

  “Obviously I didn’t like it. Things hadn’t been perfect between Laura and me, but I still wanted her and hoped that we could make the marriage work.” He buries his head in his hands for a moment. “I got it into my head that if we had a child, things would be better between us.”

  “You said the affair was over. Is it possible that she was still involved with Shore until recently?”

  “No—that’s what was so bizarre about his demonstration at the funeral. They had broken it off last fall. They’d been quarreling for some time. He wanted her to divorce me and marry him, but she was beginning to wonder what she had seen in him.” He gives me a wan smile. “The house was built; the attraction faded. One night she came home, face streaked with tears. There was a bruise under her eye.” He stops, looks up. “Do you think he could have killed Laura?”

  A violent lover desperate to keep the relationship alive. Perhaps we can make something of that, I think. Maybe even parlay it into a reasonable doubt. I lock it in my mental filing cabinet and push on.

  “He may have had a motive,” I say. “What happened next?”

  “I held her and comforted her. Told her we should give our marriage another try, that we should have a child.” He shrugs. “To use the banal vernacular, we reconciled.”

  “Was it still that way when she died?”

  “Yes. In fact, I had reason to believe that she was pregnant.”

  I sit back. More good news. What man anxious to have a child would kill his pregnant wife?

  “Had she seen a doctor?”

  “I don’t think so, but she told me she thought she was pregnant.”

  “So, no one else knew? It’s just your word?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Not great, but presumably the coroner took blood—maybe it will reveal pregnancy.

  “Did Laura’s charity work involve her with dangerous people?” I ask, changing course.

  He ruminates, eyeing the orange and black etchings of the Riopelle on the far wall. “She used to bring homeless kids to the house, give them a bath and a meal, and hope it would make a difference. Once . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Once she brought a boy back. Sick, spaced out on drugs. She must have picked hi
m up off the street somewhere, brought him home to clean him up and get him into new clothes. She was going to take him to a psychiatrist, but he ran away.” He pauses. “I thought, Good riddance—he scared me. But he kept coming back, like he was fixated on her. The gardener told me he would find the boy lurking outside the house.”

  Another suspect if Trevor Shore doesn’t pan out. “Do you know his name? How we can find him?”

  “No, I don’t know his name, and the chances of finding him are slim to none. There are hundreds like him on the streets and under the bridges.”

  It’s growing late, but there is one more area I need to explore.

  “You said you were sailing the day your wife was killed? All day?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I came back around five in the afternoon, put the boat in the slip at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club.”

  Of course, I think, the oldest yacht club in town.

  “I came home and found the body. You know the rest.”

  “Are you sure no one saw you at the club?” I ask.

  “I had breakfast at the club. There’ll be a record of that.”

  Not good enough, I think. Cy will argue that he could have gone for breakfast and decided not to take the boat out, or taken it out and returned early enough to kill his wife. “What about later?”

  “I’m sure someone must have seen me on my return. There were people around. But I can’t remember anyone in particular.”

  “You didn’t stop at the club? Talk to anyone?”

  “Sorry, Miss Truitt. I did not. I was late, anxious to get back to Laura—we always ate at seven thirty. I was looking forward to a shower, a drink with her, a quiet supper at home. I wanted to be with her.” He gathers himself. “I am not a warm man, Miss Truitt, nor a particularly demonstrative one. But that afternoon I felt hope—tenderness, even.”

  I hold his eye, waiting for him to look aside, but he doesn’t. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he’s just a good liar. Lie, I think, but not to me.

  “It’s getting late. I wanted to meet your sister, but—”

  “I’m afraid that is not possible. She is out of the country.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My sister is—how shall I put it—unwell. She is receiving medical care abroad.”

  “I see. She was in her apartment here at the time of the murder?”

  “Yes. She didn’t hear or see anything.”

  “An intrusion. An epic struggle. Gunshots. And she didn’t hear a thing?”

  He stiffens. “Her apartment is entirely separate. And she was listening to music.”

  “Listening to music?” My voice rises. I force it down. “Have the police talked to her?”

  “Of course. She told them just what I am telling you. Didn’t hear a thing.”

  I swallow my frustration. “When will your sister be back?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of weeks. It all depends.”

  “What’s her illness?”

  “It’s—complicated.”

  “Terminal?”

  “No. She’ll be here for the trial, if that’s your concern.”

  “Let me know the minute she gets back. I need to talk to her.”

  “Certainly, Miss Truitt.”

  I stand. “Just one more thing. Before I go, could I see the room—where she died?”

  “The room’s been cleaned. Is it really necessary to see it?”

  “It is. In cross-examination, every detail counts.”

  “If you insist, but you won’t find much.”

  He leads me past a sandstone wall, down a softly lit corridor. He swings a door open, flicks a light switch, steps aside. I enter alone.

  He’s right; there’s not much to see. Whoever cleaned up after the crime scene unit left did a good job. The pale carpet is pristine, the silk duvet spotless, the pillows fluffed and neatly stacked. I cross to the headboard, a lush affair of tufted suede, move a cushion. A small hole marks the place where the bullet lodged. I put my little finger in, move it around. I pull it out and stare at a fleck of dried blood on my nail. Clean, but not perfect.

  Who did this? And why? The besotted architect? The drug-addled boy? Trussardi, driven to madness by his wife’s casual causes and affair?

  Back at the front door, I extend my hand. “See you next week, Mr. Trussardi. And thank you for the vitello.”

  “A pleasure, Miss Truitt, prego.” He says it with conviction.

  I climb into my car and head back to Yaletown.

  CHAPTER 12

  CRAZY,” I TELL JEFF AS we commune over coffee in our diminutive boardroom the next morning. “He sits there and tells me how his wife—his dear, beloved, perfect wife—was having an affair with the architect. So I ask, ‘How did you feel about that?’

  “ ‘Obviously I didn’t like it,’ he says. I mean, really, Jeff. Didn’t like it?”

  “Clearly, you’ve never been married, Jilly. Sometimes you just have to suck it up. It’s called ‘saving the marriage.’ ”

  “You mean you and Jessica?”

  “Don’t go there,” says Jeff. “Just don’t.”

  I give him a look.

  “Sorry, boss—that was out of line.”

  “It’s okay.” His use of boss from time to time is more a figure of speech than a nod to hierarchy, which is fine by me. His face is closed. Guess the weekend away didn’t work.

  Jeff brings us back to Trussardi. “Just because he’s not weeping doesn’t mean he didn’t care. I’d be more worried if he was carrying on.”

  I remember Trussardi’s head in his hands as he told me of the affair. “You’ve got a point,” I say.

  “Thanks. Occasionally I do.”

  I down the rest of my latte. “We need to check out the architect—who is he, what’s his history, you know.”

  “Just what every murder case needs—an alternate suspect.”

  “Exactly. He loved her, he lost her—became crazed, violent. Would calm, civilized art collector Vincent Trussardi kill his wife? Unlikely. Would a crazed, in-love, jilted romantic with violent tendencies kill the mistress who threw him over? Perhaps.”

  Jeff nods along with my ramble.

  “I’ll get Richard on it,” I say. Richard Beauvais, our go-to private eye. Best in the business.

  I tell Jeff about the kid Trussardi’s wife brought home, too.

  “Needle in a haystack, Jilly, but no harm asking Richard to look into it, just in case.”

  “Yes, and another thing. Cy. I need to talk to him about the timing of the trial. Not exactly looking forward to that conversation.”

  “He said too much after Cheskey. But he’s still Prosecutor Numero Uno. We have to forgive and forget.” Jeff stands. “Gotta get to 222 Main for a sentencing. Good luck.”

  Alone, I reach for the phone and tap the contact for Richard Beauvais. The ring flips to voicemail. “Richard, I’ve got this case, name’s Trussardi.” I tell him about Trevor Shore and the boy. “See what you can find out.”

  I move on to Cy. There’s some fussing at the other end while the receptionist pretends to be looking for him. “It’s important,” I repeat.

  Finally, he comes on.

  “If you’re calling about Cheskey, I’m not appealing.”

  So he’s still angry. I let it go. “Cy, we need to talk about Trussardi.”

  “What’s to talk about?”

  “Timing. How do you see this playing out?”

  “I assume you want to drag things out as long as you can.”

  “Usually that’s what my client wants. You know that old-fashioned thing lawyers are supposed to do—take instructions from their client?”

  He grunts. “What kind of time frame are we talking about?”

  “My client’s open. But he’s innocent. The sooner this cloud’s lifted and he can get on with his life, the better from his perspective.”

  “Some cloud, some innocence.” Cy snorts. “Tell him to enjoy his bail as long as he can.”

&
nbsp; “How about the preliminary in June, Cy, trial in the fall? Complete the disclosure ASAP.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “As I say, Trussardi’s looking forward to his acquittal. Sooner the better.”

  “You’ve lost it, Jilly. But what do I care? The chiefs are under the gun for court delays, access to justice, yadda, yadda, yadda. We might be able to get a slot for the preliminary this summer. Except I’m busy. Planning a vacation. First in three years.”

  “Feeling a little down after Cheskey?” I shoot back, and regret it. Why am I pushing? Do I really believe Trussardi’s innocent, believe we can win? “Sorry, Cy. We can go fast or slow, either way. If you’re inclined to go fast, it’s just a preliminary—Emily can handle it. Or better yet, cancel it. You may not have a winner, but there’s enough to tell me the judge will send this to trial. Full disclosure is what I’m after.”

  “As you wish, Jilly. I don’t mind cancelling the prelim. And no harm in trying to get trial dates. Might even get me a bonus. My masters in the Ministry of Justice are keen on speeding up the trial process, too. Flavor of the week.”

  “Thanks, Cy. Appreciate it. Let me know what happens.”

  My phone is halfway to the receiver when I hear his voice. “You got lucky on Cheskey, Jilly. But this time, you’re going down.”

  “Whatever you say, Cy. Just call me when you get the dates.”

  CHAPTER 13

  TRAFALGAR’S BISTRO ON SIXTEENTH IS a nice little place on a trendy corner, suburban transitioning to urban. Leafy trees grow between the sidewalk and the street, flowers overflow baskets onto the pavement. Vancouver loves its gardens. Trafalgar’s used to be a place to have pastry and coffee with friends in the morning, but now it serves soups and salads all day. Wine comes if you want, but coffee is still favored. Vancouver also loves its coffee—right up there after the flowers.

  Edith Hole waits for me at a small table in the corner, not far from the window. At fifty-five, she has learned to grab the light when she can find it. Today she is lucky. The clouds that threatened to douse me as I made my ten-kilometer run around Stanley Park this morning have scuttled eastward, and the spring sun shines brightly.