Chapter Eight #3
“You’re dining with someone who loves her cousins,” Grace said. “And would do anything for them.”
“Anything?” he asked.
“I didn’t kill Harriet, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said.
“Neither did I, for what it’s worth.”
“Then who did?” she asked, pen poised above the paper.
“Isn’t this a job for the police?” he asked.
“Yes, they’re doing such a fabulous job,” she retorted. “Did you forget that they recently arrested Oliver?”
“To be fair, his actions leading up to last night do make him look like a prime suspect.”
“I know.” She sighed. “That’s why we have to find the police a better one.”
She tapped her pen on the page and examined Theodore’s striking face as he stirred his coffee.
“We were the only two Oliver trusted with his secret,” she said. “Did we do the wrong thing?”
“We couldn’t possibly have known—” Theo said, frowning.
“I know,” she said.
Theo looked away, his jaw tightening. “Before my mother died, she was sick for a week. My father wanted to call the doctor, but she insisted she was fine. I’ve always wondered, should I have called sooner?
” He flexed his hand on the table and let out a humorless laugh.
“I was old enough to know better, but young enough to simply obey. My father says I spend too much time living in the past.”
The past. The clouds that surrounded him. Perhaps they were less the disdain she had marked them for and something more complicated than that.
She knew well what it was like to wish you could go back in time and change things. To save someone you loved.
“I know we can’t change what happened before. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life second-guessing what I did now,” she said.
He nodded. The dark clouds around him seemed to part, and for a moment, Grace felt an enormous sense of relief. He was going to help her. She wasn’t alone. Her nose burned with the threat of tears.
She hurriedly cleared her throat.
“Right. Well. Let’s compare notes, then. Harriet had two strange interactions in the days leading up to her death,” Grace said.
She wrote:
1. The man at the Luchow-Faust restaurant who demanded money
2. The unknown person(s) she met with at the Tunnels the morning she died
“She went to the Tunnels?” Theo said.
“And I told Oliver. That’s the reason why they were publicly fighting in front of everyone,” she said miserably.
“Could numbers one and two have been the same person?”
Grace nodded. “It’s very possible.”
“And then there was that woman following us,” Theo said. “She was there last night.”
Grace’s eyes widened. She wrote down:
3. Unknown woman who was tailing us/Harriet? Who? Why?
She finished her sandwich and began on her soup. “Was there anything else unusual that happened last night? Anything you saw?”
“I’m not sure.” Theodore lowered his voice. “I just keep thinking—what are you supposed to ask when someone is murdered? Who benefited from it? Who would benefit from Harriet being dead?”
Grace wiped her mouth as a new thought came to her. “Ethel Adams, that singer. She was there last night. She had a motive. Beating out Harriet to become a star.”
“But would she really kill Harriet over it?” Theodore sounded skeptical.
Grace shrugged and wrote down Ethel’s name. “It could change the course of her entire life. I’d say that was big enough motive. Especially if she thought she’d lose out to Harriet. What did Copper say to me last night? ‘People are never more driven than when the future’s at stake.’”
She hesitated. “And speaking of Copper…” she trailed off.
“What?”
“No, it’s too silly. You’ll think it’s ridiculous.”
“That’s very likely, but don’t let that stop you.”
“Well… Frannie wasn’t happy with the attention Copper gave Harriet last night.”
“Frannie?” Theo asked. He barked out a laugh. “Frannie Allred?”
Grace scowled at him. “I told you you’d say it was silly.”
“Well, to be fair, you’ve never much liked her.”
“With good reason!”
“That doesn’t make her a killer.”
“Envy is a powerful drug,” Grace said. She ignored Theo and wrote down:
4. Frannie Allred
“Anyone else?” Theo asked, finishing his drink.
“I suppose we should clear ourselves,” she said. She cocked an eyebrow. “Where were you?”
He looked vaguely amused, wiping his mouth, and cocked one back. “I was speaking with my godfather. My father wanted to make sure I was integrating well into St. Louis society, since I insisted upon coming here against his wishes.”
“Your father wanted you to stay in Chicago?” Grace asked.
“He wishes I were more interested in carrying on the family name there, yes. But my mother was from St. Louis, and I’d rather do something more useful with my time than be a gentleman.”
“Window washer?” she asked. “High-rise construction worker?”
“Your mockery is so charming. If you must know, I’d rather be a lawyer.”
“And who is your godfather?” Grace asked.
“Thomas Squire.”
“The robber baron?” Grace asked.
“I don’t think he prefers that term,” Theodore said, delicately folding his napkin and placing it on the table. “He is known for banking and steel, yes. And you?”
“I was with Lillie,” Grace said. “We can vouch for each other.”
Grace racked her brain, visualizing the other guests at the party. She saw Lillie stiffen at the sound of the scream. Harriet’s body, seizing, the froth at her mouth. Earnest, rushing to her side.
“What happened?” he had asked.
Aunt Clove, looking stricken.
Grace froze. What had Aunt Clove told Oliver bitterly only a few nights ago? You’ll marry Harriet Forbes over my dead body.
Grace hid a shudder.
Aunt Clove was driven and could be heartless. But surely she would never resort to murder. Would she?
Grace set her pen down.
“I think that’s good enough for now,” she said.
“So where does this leave us?” Theo asked. “Do we bring this list to the police?”
Grace eyed the uneaten pickle on Theo’s plate. He placed it on her plate without comment. “I already tried to tell them some of this, but it seems they need something more substantial to take me seriously,” she said. “Do you have any connections in the police department?”
“No. But perhaps my father or godfather does.”
She finished the pickle, and the ache of hunger in her stomach finally eased. “Let’s see if we can get in to visit Oliver—I’d like to talk to him,” she said.
“And then what?”
She tapped her finger down the names on the list. “Let’s start with Ethel Adams. I’ve met her, and hopefully she’ll be willing to speak with me—especially if she’s innocent.”
Grace insisted on paying her own part of the tab, and Theo walked her back to the studio, unlocking the door for her. The fair was lit up in the distance, its palaces awash in a hazy, beckoning glow.
“Make sure to dead bolt the door tonight,” he said, handing her the key.
“I think I saw a paint scraper inside that could function as a weapon,” she said. “An intruder should be more afraid of me.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said.
She hesitated. “Thank you for helping me,” she said.
The hint of his rare, true smile emboldened her.
“Would you like to pay a visit to Miss Adams together?” she asked before she could stop herself. “Tomorrow?”
His eyebrow quirked. “What are you going to do? Ask her if she poisoned Harriet and gauge her reaction?”
“No. But I’m hoping she might have seen something from the other night that will prove helpful. Even if she didn’t realize it.”
“I’ll come by at nine,” he said. He tipped his hat to her. “Good night, Miss Covington.”
She nodded, and as he walked out into the night, she dead bolted the door.
While she washed up for bed, she thought of Oliver, alone, in prison. Grieving. Probably frightened out of his mind.
She thought of Lillie, a prisoner in her own house. Worried sick about her only brother.
Grace changed into her nightgown and sank into bed, hoping that Ethel Adams might have seen something that night.
Grace loved her cousins desperately. But she sensed that this went even deeper than that. It went down to the cracked depths of her, the parts that still grieved how she hadn’t been able to save her brother. So she would fight even harder to save Oliver.
She turned off the lamp, pulled the covers around herself, and tried to get her racing mind to rest.