Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
W ith her journalistic impulses ever more in tune, Catherine acted quickly. Before the afternoon was through, she had an address, and before evening fell, she was stationed in front of an Art Deco apartment building just five blocks from where she and Quentin had raised their three children. There she stood, heart pounding, checking the address twice more on her phone before proceeding to the doorman. The doorman looked respectable in his brown outfit and his low hat. He looked like the kind of man who always said hello to everyone and told them to have a wonderful day—and meant it.
It was the kind of building with apartments that cost upward of thirty million.
Catherine smiled at the doorman. She’d worn a suit jacket, a pencil skirt, and a pair of pearl earrings. She looked the part. “Hello. I’m here to see Rainer and April Fellini.”
The doorman smiled and pressed the buzzer behind him, one that surely buzzed up in the Fellini apartment. “Evening, madame,” he said into a little golden phone. “I have a…” He cast Catherine a look that meant who are you?
“Catherine Copperfield.”
“I have a Copperfield here to see you.” The doorman furrowed his brow. “Very well. Thank you.” He then returned the phone to its cradle and turned to open the door for Catherine. “The Fellinis are in the penthouse apartment. All the way up.”
Catherine found herself in a lobby from another time. A golden clock kept perfect time; royal red velvet sofas lined the walls; beautiful and ornate plants burst in bright greens as though they got more sun down here than they possibly could have. Catherine reached the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor. But when the elevator arrived, there was a traditional elevator operator inside. She wondered if it was for added security—or just to give the old apartment building a touch of old-world whimsy.
The rich really do live differently, she thought, then remembered that she and Quentin were also wealthy. Because she hadn’t grown up that way, it was sometimes difficult to remember that she was now firmly in that camp.
The elevator opened directly into Rainer and April Fellini’s penthouse apartment. The apartment had originally belonged to Stephan, Rainer’s father, until Stephan suffered a major stroke last year and required Rainer and April to move in. Rainer and April had three children, the eldest of whom was a twenty-one-year-old woman named Felicity. Catherine had gleaned this information during three hours of online sleuthing.
Catherine was accustomed to investigating like this. It was the nature of her journalistic work.
But it was bizarre to sleuth with her family’s story in mind.
April Fellini met Catherine in the lobby. She wore a soft linen outfit, and her face would have been beautiful if it weren’t so pinched and sorrowful. She was maybe in her fifties, slightly older than Catherine. She tried to smile.
“Good evening,” she said. “Welcome to our home.”
“Thank you.” Catherine clutched the strap of her tote bag.
Over the phone, she’d said she wanted to interview the Fellini family about Gionnocaro Fellini’s remarkable work in the field of academia prior to his early death. She’d lied to say her book project was about the incredibly dense history of NYU academia and how immigrants from countries all over the world had contributed to it.
They’d taken the bait easily. Everyone wanted to believe their family members were more important to history than they actually were.
“You’re a novelist,” April said, raising her chin. “I always wanted to write a novel.”
“I’m a journalist, actually,” Catherine said. “This is my first book.”
“How exciting.” April sounded distracted. “Rainer is in the living room. Stephan should wake up from his nap in about twenty minutes. We can bring him out then.” She hesitated and wrung her hands. “I’m sorry to say that it’s essential we uphold Stephan’s schedule. He’s getting better, but it’s a slow process.”
“I understand,” Catherine assured her.
Rainer stood when they entered the living room. Although she’d seen photos of him online, Catherine was startled by how much he looked like his grandpa Gionnocaro. Catherine shook his hand. His eyes looked lost.
It feels like I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be, Catherine thought.
“Good evening,” Rainer said as Catherine sat down. “Did you come to the city just for this project?”
Catherine saw no reason to lie more than she already had. “I lived here for many years,” Catherine said. “I raised my children not far from here. Recently, my husband and I relocated to Nantucket Island, and I don’t get back as often as I’d like. This project was a great excuse.”
“How nice,” Rainer said. He cleared his throat. “Tell me. What clued you in on my grandfather? Despite his tremendous background and intellect, he’s rarely mentioned at all in academic papers or academic historical journals. He died before he could make any real impact, I’m afraid.”
“It’s a real tragedy,” Catherine said. She searched her mind for how to explain without giving her game away. “To be honest, my own grandfather was also an immigrant from Italy. He had tremendous skills in his homeland, none of which translated to what he could do professionally here. He floundered for years and then opened a bakery that just barely kept him and his family afloat. That fact forced me to reckon with a clear problem of immigrants here in New York City.”
“Underappreciated,” Rainer said with a sniff. It was clear from his expression that he’d bought what Catherine sold him.
Catherine spent ten minutes asking Rainer and April questions about Gionnocaro’s research; about his time at NYU; about the awards he’d won at the university before his untimely death eight years after his arrival.
Very soon, it was time for the main event. April went down the hallway to collect Stephan. “I know he’ll want to talk to you about his father,” April said. There was a soft glint in her eyes.
Still, something is off about this family. I can’t put my finger on it, Catherine thought.
Rainer and Catherine made small talk while April got Stephan around. It turned out they’d once belonged to the same gym down the road; they both liked the same Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood. Catherine tried to keep a wide berth from mention of her husband. The minute Quentin Copperfield came into the conversation, people were bound to have a different opinion about her.
I just want to be Catherine, the journalist.
April brought Stephan down the hall in his wheelchair a few minutes later. Despite his stroke last year, he was bright-eyed and smiling. April had said his brain worked like a machine these days. The physical therapy had helped a great deal, as had the memory exercises he did with his son and grandson every morning over breakfast. These intimate details almost overwhelmed Catherine. This is a family. It’s not my family, but there’s tremendous love here. How dare I break in and lie to them?
But she had to know the truth.
Stephan took Catherine’s hand and beamed at her. “I hear you’re trying to get my father’s name out there again. I can’t thank you enough.”
Catherine’s cheeks hurt from fake smiling. “He deserves it.”
April set Stephan’s chair up beside Rainer’s and went to the kitchen to fetch glasses of mint lemonade with fresh ice. This left Catherine with the son and grandson of the original Gionnocaro Fellini. A lump formed in her throat.
She forced herself to ask Stephan a few easy questions about his childhood before launching into what she wanted to know. Stephan jumped through them like hoops, and then carried on, saying, “You know, when my father was back in Italy, he was born to a princess and prince and enjoyed a truly stupendous life. Everything he wanted, he could have. Divine food. Full-fat milk during times of war. Dessert after dessert. And of course, all the women were after him because he had this royal title.”
Stephan went on to tell several stories that Catherine had already heard—the one about Gionnocaro Fellini losing his horse in the middle of Tuscany and hitchhiking back to his castle; the one about Gionnocaro Fellini accidentally losing his mother’s ring during a round of poker and having to fight the guy to get the ring back; the one about Gionnocaro Fellini proposing to the princess of Norway, only for her to rebuke him and marry the prince of Sweden at that time.
Of course, Catherine’s grandfather had told her these stories, too. But he’d always told them as though they were his own.
They were identical.
But Catherine could see how thrilled Stephan was to share these stories with her. It was remarkable. Catherine could have finished any of the stories herself because she knew them by heart. But if she had, she would have given herself away.
Stephan, Rainer, and April sat in steady silence after Stephan’s last story. Stephan looked very pleased with himself.
Catherine remembered to say, “These stories are truly incredible. I know they’ll find their way into the book. Thank you so much for sharing them.”
“My father would love that his stories live on like this,” Stephan said. Tears twinkled in his eyes. “He was an extraordinary man. It breaks my heart that I never got to really know him.”
Catherine smiled and cleared her throat. It was time to ask what she’d come here to find out. But she wanted to be delicate.
“Through my research, I learned that there was a question of foul play in Gionnocaro’s death. It sounds like your mother, Dee Fellini, didn’t want any postmortem tests performed. Can you speak to that?”
Stephan’s cheeks went slack. Rainer twitched and scratched behind his ear. Silence fell over them.
But Catherine had come to ask this. She wouldn’t leave before she knew.
Finally, as women always do, April swooped in to save the day. “The family is quite split about that story,” she said.
Catherine raised her eyebrows. “I see.”
“It’s difficult,” Rainer agreed. “Nobody wants to believe anything sour went on. The fact that my grandmother wanted him to be buried immediately speaks to her religious upbringing more than anything else. She didn’t want to hide anything from the police. She was just brokenhearted.”
Stephan hung his head and studied his knees. Catherine’s hands were in fists.
“Do you happen to remember an early nanny you had, Stephan?” she asked. “Her name was Gwen.”
Stephan met her gaze. “Maybe. Maybe a little bit.” He frowned. “I seem to remember her teaching me how to ride a bicycle. And maybe there was roller-skating in the park?”
Catherine’s heart swelled. Still, it felt unfair that this stranger had memories of her grandmother that she was never allowed to have.
Did Gwen kill Gionnocaro? Catherine shivered.
“Why do you ask?” Stephan asked.
“I’m just trying to get a clear picture of who might have been in the apartment at the time of his death,” Catherine said.
“My mother, my sister, and I were in the Hamptons. I assume that means our nanny was with us, too,” Stephan pointed out.
Catherine nodded. “But the newspaper article I read said that a staff member disappeared after your father’s death.”
Stephan’s eyes looked far away. It was clear Catherine had stirred up turmoil.
“You know,” April stuttered, “I really think that’s enough, don’t you?” She looked at Rainer hopefully. She clearly wanted him to take over.
Rainer sat glumly with his large hands on his thighs.
“You should talk to my mother,” Stephan said.
Catherine’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline. Dee? Dee’s still alive? It seemed insane.
“She lives in a nursing home in the Upper East Side,” Stephan said. “Her brain is better than mine is. She’ll outlive us all.”
Catherine hadn’t even thought to check on Dee. She’d assumed she was gone.
“Will this sort of conversation bother her too much?” Catherine asked, nervous that Dee was too old to handle it. She didn’t want to barge into a nursing home and demand too much of a little old lady.
Stephan barked with laughter. Even Rainer smiled.
“Grandma is something else,” Rainer admitted. “She can handle just about everything.”
Catherine remembered the photographs of Gionnocaro’s young wife with a grim smile. Like Gionnocaro, Dee had been in academia, as well.
“Maybe she’ll find her way into your book,” Stephan said after a pause. “She was just as brilliant as Father was. But people didn’t pay as much attention. She was a woman in a man’s world, you see.”
“Like me,” Catherine said, closing her notebook. She suddenly needed to get out of there. She needed to breathe fresh air and walk the streets.
Catherine asked to use the bathroom before she left. She didn’t want to go immediately back to her hotel. Besides, she hoped to see a few more photos of Gionnocaro in the hallway.
April said, “It’s the second door to the left down that hall.”
Catherine got up and went to the bathroom. But there were no photographs in the hall save for one of a regal-looking hunting dog.
Catherine washed her hands and re-emerged to overhear April’s tear-filled voice. “I just don’t understand it.”
Catherine stopped short in the shadows of the hallway. Did I cause this? Shame came over her. I shouldn’t have barged in here like this. I shouldn’t have meddled.
“There’s no note in her bedroom?” Stephan asked.
Catherine was worried she’d be caught spying, so she proceeded down the hall and smiled nervously at April. April’s face was streaked with tears.
“Goodness, I’m embarrassed,” April said, hopping up from her chair and guiding Catherine to the elevator.
Catherine was at a loss for words. It was clear, now, that April’s tears had nothing to do with her. Whatever this was about was probably why the family had seemed so glum earlier. Talk of Gionnocaro had distracted them for a time. But it hadn’t lasted.
Catherine braved a last question. “Are you all right, April?”
They stood next to the elevator, waiting for it to come up from floor five.
April pressed her eyes into her sleeve. Her shoulders shuddered. “You said you have children.”
“I do. Three.”
April sniffed. “Our eldest girl, Felicity, ran out on us. She refuses to go back to college.”
Catherine felt frozen with sorrow. She remembered Scarlet, who’d dropped out of NYU when Catherine’s chemo had taken over her life. But this sounded different.
“When did this happen?” Catherine asked.
“She left school before the semester ended in April. We thought it was a breakdown of some kind. We sent money. We begged her to come home. She’s strung us along all summer long. But she still won’t tell us where she is. We even hired a private investigator, but it’s like she’s off the grid. We have no idea what’s happened,” April said. “Every once in a while, she contacts us again for money, and we send it because we’re so worried. But how long can this go on? If she’s really in need of money, she’s using us. Maybe she’ll never come back.” April let out a horrible wail.
Catherine couldn’t help but gather April in her arms. April shook and cried until the elevator appeared. Then she pulled away, fixed her face, and stared at the ground. “Thank you for coming by. Good luck with Dee. She expects you. You’ll let us know when the book is finished, won’t you?”
“I’ll let you know,” Catherine promised. She stepped on the elevator, and then she was gone.