Chapter Three
Two Days Before the Murder
THE NEXT MORNING, they ventured to the Pike.
It was a one-mile stretch of amusements that ran from the Plaza of St. Louis to University Way, and by nine o’clock it was already teeming with people.
Grace took Lillie’s hand, and they walked beneath Lillie’s parasol past the towering German Tyrolean Alps.
The restaurant situated beneath its snow-covered peaks sat twenty-five hundred guests at a time and served over eighty kinds of wine.
There were bazaars with merchants shouting, advertisements for gladiators battling in Ancient Rome, a mosque from Constantinople, an Irish village featuring a reconstruction of the Blarney Castle.
They followed a family chatting in Arabic and two men arguing in French and settled on breakfast in Cairo.
The café was set in the morning shadows beneath the balconies and striped awnings of a brick street teeming with fairgoers, camels, and monkeys.
Oliver ordered them ful medames and flatbreads called aish baladi, and they drank black tea with fresh mint leaves, poured out of a teapot with a tall spout and served in clear glasses.
Grace sipped her tea, taking note of the flavors so she could recount them to her father later.
To her right, someone rode by on a caparisoned camel, holding an umbrella, and it was almost impossible to believe that she was in the heart of St. Louis.
“I had no idea Harriet and Theo were courting,” Frannie said to Lillie, delicately selecting a date from the china. She wore kid gloves, and her hair was pulled up in a pompadour. The brooch at her neck was so overlarge it looked almost as if it were strangling her.
Grace snuck a subtle glance at Oliver. “I think it’s brand-new,” she said warily. “Probably nothing serious.”
“Careful, you’ll start to sound jealous,” Frannie said, smiling with a little too much teeth.
Oliver squeezed Grace’s knee under the table, and she bit back a snort.
Earnest’s blond hair was curling in the morning humidity.
His woolen suit probably cost more than a month of meals at her father’s restaurant, Grace thought.
He caught her eye and smiled, relaxing back in his chair.
“This tea is good enough to make me wonder if something’s in it.
Does anyone else almost feel intoxicated? ” he mused.
“Speaking of which, Grace, how is your brother?” Frannie asked under her breath. She dabbed her napkin on her mouth, eyelashes fluttering.
Grace’s hand froze around her glass. Oliver stiffened next to her, but a brass band had begun to play on the street and no one else had heard the slight.
“Frannie, I was looking forward to seeing the lions and tigers later,” Oliver said, throwing his napkin on the table in her direction, “but thanks to you, I’ve already had my fill of cattiness today.”
Frannie made a sound, taken aback by Oliver’s brazenness, and Grace would have laughed if an image of Walt hadn’t flooded into her mind. He’d been gaunt the last time she’d seen him. She felt the way her chest had squeezed, as though she hadn’t been able to catch her breath.
When she was a young girl, Walt had made elaborate slides for her doll Sanders from the baking pans in their father’s kitchen.
Once, he had constructed a luge that stretched all the way from the kitchen down to the entrance of the dining room.
Sanders had shot across the floor so fast that it had nearly tripped Johnny, the dishwasher, and Walt had rushed to steady the tower of dishes just before they crashed to the floor.
Grace and Walt had laughed until they were dizzy.
“Walter, I think you’re destined to be an engineer,” their mother had quipped, and Grace remembered the way the sun had caught around her shining face like a halo.
Now Grace’s gaze slid to the Ferris wheel in the distance, and she felt a dull surge of anger.
Her brother had been meant for so much more.
“How did they make these intricate buildings so quickly?” she asked to get the image out of her mind. She practically had to shout to be heard over the clanging commotion on the street.
“It’s staff,” Earnest said, reaching out to stroke the carved quoin beside his chair. “Plaster and fiber and paste. Like papier-maché. It will come down as easily as it went up.”
“All style,” Theo said, stroking the tie at his throat. “No substance.”
“I know some people like that, too,” Grace said airily.
Theo was just about to say something back when Frannie let out a gasp.
“Earnest!” she said.
A gush of bright, red blood was running from Earnest’s nose.
He reached up to touch it with his hand, as if surprised.
“You’re bleeding!” Frannie cried.
“I recognize that, Frannie,” he said calmly.
Drip. It fell from his nose to the tablecloth, where it bloomed like a grotesque flower. Or a bullet hole.
Hurriedly, Grace pulled a handkerchief from her pocketbook and handed it to him.
His fingers brushed hers as he took it.
“Blast,” he said, holding the handkerchief to his nose. “This hasn’t happened to me since I was a kid. I’m so sorry.”
“Please, don’t apologize,” Grace said. “Just take care of yourself.”
“Oh, no, I insist—doesn’t every lady like a little blood with her breakfast?”
Grace laughed. “No. But I do love a man who can keep me guessing,” she said.
“I’m mortified.”
He was suddenly so shy and embarrassed, and she found it charming. She would take a man like this over a pompous ass like Theodore any day.
“Just keep holding pressure,” Lillie said, moving to help him. “Yes, like that. There you go.”
“Thank you,” Earnest said, looking up at her. “This is very kind of you.”
“Lillie, darling, I had no idea you were good with blood,” Oliver said.
Lillie’s eyebrow faintly twitched.
“One of us has to be good in an emergency,” she said breezily. “And it certainly isn’t going to be Mother. Or you.”
“It’s true, I faint dead away at the sight of blood,” Oliver said. “And I inherited that trait straight from her. That and her adorable little nose.”
“Earnest,” Frannie hissed. “Are you quite under control now?”
Her face was flushed, and a dark part of Grace was pleased that the attention Frannie had tried to direct toward Grace’s brother had suddenly shifted to her own.
“You might want to put your head between your legs, dearest brother,” Lillie said to Oliver. “You’re looking a little green.”
“Nothing a little breakfast ice cream can’t fix,” Oliver said, tossing enough money on the table to cover the entire bill. “My treat, Earnest. Perhaps a cold ice-cream headache will fix that nosebleed right up. Onward!”
Earnest stood, the nosebleed abated. He clutched Grace’s handkerchief at his side, still offering apologies.
She tried not to notice the way that crimson had darkened the delicate monogram her mother had stitched into the hem, creeping along the ivory lace like an ominous shadow.
Under the striped awning of the cart, Grace insisted on paying for her own ice cream.
She felt Theodore Parker’s imposing stare, with his perfectly tailored three-piece suit, gloves, and cane. Her cotton and lace dress might have belonged to Lillie, but her treat was rich with cream and a hint of peppermint, and it tasted even sweeter knowing that she had bought it herself.
“Miss Covington,” he said flatly.
“Mr. Parker,” she said, eyebrow arching.
The morning sun was growing hot, and Grace felt a trickle of sweat beneath the lace of her high collar as a magician passed by in a parade, handcuffed and trapped in a cage with a live tiger. The tiger hissed, saliva dripping from its mouth.
“Ah, look! A reenactment of the night we first met,” Theodore said.
“It must have made quite an impression on you,” Grace said. “I hardly remember it at all.”
“Touché,” he said with something almost bordering on amusement. “Just don’t forget your spoon,” he added under his breath, his eyes smoldering.
“It’s the future, Mr. Parker, haven’t you heard?” she said. “I won’t even need one.”
As the parade cleared, she saw a discarded newspaper on the ground and stooped to retrieve it.
Her face burned a little upon the realization that no one else in their party, save maybe for Harriet, might even think of picking up a trashed newspaper from the street.
They would simply buy a fresh one. She smoothed it out quickly, trying to cover her faux pas as she caught up with Lillie.
It was a gossip rag called the Fair’s Fare by Sam Whitcomb.
“Look!” she whispered to Lillie. They put their heads together to scour the salacious rag as they navigated between the throngs of the Pike, smelling saffron and sweat and perfume, weaving around vendors selling sweet milk, freshly brewed iced tea, and loaf cakes for 10 cents apiece. “Harriet’s in it!” Lillie said.
“‘GIRL ABOUT TOWN HARRIET FORBES SEEN WITH RECENT ST. LOUIS TRANSPLANT AND THE CITY’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR,’” she read. “‘Marked by birth in more ways than one, he’s reportedly worth almost $70K a year.’”
“St. Louis’s most eligible bachelor? Hmph. I resent that,” Oliver said.
“What utter trash,” Theodore said with disdain, his port-wine stain deepening. His jaw was stark and handsome, his face somehow even more striking when his eyes were like fire.
“The news is out now,” Lillie teased.
Theo shot Oliver a look of daggers, and Oliver responded with a subtle, sheepish shrug.
Surely this charade could come to an end now, Grace thought. Lillie’s keen eyes glanced between Theodore and Oliver, always picking up on everything. She was sharp and she knew something was up.
“And look—he claims someone from the Cinch was spotted going into the Tunnels,” Oliver said.
“The Cinch?”
“The business leaders of St. Louis,” Earnest said. “The politicians don’t run the town. They do.”
“What are the Tunnels?” Lillie asked.
Oliver and Earnest exchanged an uneasy look. “Nothing the ladies need to know about.”