Chapter Nine #2
Grace was undeterred. “But did you get a good look at him? Could you describe him? Or recognize him again if you saw him?”
“I didn’t get a good look at him. And I don’t know his name.” Ethel hesitated. “But I can tell you who he was with.”
Grace held her breath. Ethel reached for Grace’s notebook and wrote down a name.
“Glen Perkins? Parkins? He works with the De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company. He wanted me to come and sing at one of their events next week. I spoke to him earlier that night, and I believe he left with the man who approached Harriet.”
She turned the notebook around. “Find Glen Perkins, and he can tell you the identity of that man.”
Grace felt a match spark of hope.
“Thank you, Miss Adams.”
“Call me Ethel, Gretchen.”
Grace smiled at Theo and gave Ethel a bow of gratitude.
“You better nail that note tonight, Bonita, or I’ll have your hide,” Ethel hollered toward the stage. “Let’s take it from the top. And then I need a hot tea and a nap.”
“Well, Miss Covington,” Theo said, leaning to whisper in her ear. “I think you just got our first lead.”
Grace and Theodore were making their way through the verdant pathways of the sunken gardens when they ran into Earnest and Frannie. They were sitting on one of the many benches, chatting with Copper beneath the shade of Frannie’s parasol.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Copper said, noticing them. “Care to join us?”
“We’re off on an errand, I’m afraid,” Grace said. She met Earnest’s eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“Like life has walloped me this week,” he said. “Figured some fresh air at the fair would do us all some good.”
Although perhaps by this point, we should all stay away, Grace thought.
“Where are you going?” Frannie asked. She directed her attention solely at Theodore.
“We have someone to speak with at the telegraph office,” he said. He squinted, shading his eyes from the sun. “Someone who might know something about Harriet’s death.”
Earnest stood. “You’re investigating?” he asked. “I’d love to join you. I have some thoughts of my own.”
Frannie harrumphed, crossing her legs. “I couldn’t be less interested in this and think it’s all a terrible show of judgment,” she said.
“Go ride some rides and have some fairy floss,” Earnest said, waving his hand.
“What the lady wants, the lady gets,” Copper said, offering Frannie his arm. She simpered, turning her back on them. “It’s not that we don’t care,” Copper said, throwing an apologetic look over his shoulder. “We just have different ways of showing it.”
Grace found herself between Theodore and Earnest as they turned toward the De Forest telegraph tower, which rose like a beacon in the distance, capped by a waving American flag.
News sellers everywhere were hawking special edition copies of the Fair’s Fare. A few policemen were approaching the newsstands and appeared to be trying to shut down their operations. Grace caught the headline as they passed.
AUTOPSY RESULTS PENDING OVERDOSE OR… POISON?
There was an image of Harriet’s lovely face on the front.
Then beneath it read:
PROMINENT MEMBER OF ST. LOUIS ELITE ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF MURDER
Tears pricked Grace’s eyes as she hurried past. People were lining up to buy the papers like they did to try ice-cream cones and iced teas.
Her stomach soured at the gleeful way they consumed the gossip, made even more delicious by the featuring of someone rich.
She felt an admonishment to herself, because of course she had participated before, too.
But now it was Oliver, and Lillie, and yes—even Aunt Clove.
Why were people so awful to one another—particularly among the classes?
Why did they root for each other’s downfall? Why must it—
“Why must it be so tall?” Theo groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose, looking up at the telegraph tower. Its wood structure was a lattice that stretched three hundred feet in the air. A box of glass windows glittered at the observation point.
Earnest laughed, but it was without cruelty.
“You stay, Parker,” Earnest said, gently touching his arm. “Grace and I can handle this.”
They left him behind and entered the line, then rode the elevators up to the 110-foot platform of the wireless telegraph observation office.
The elevator opened into a room made of glass walls surrounding wooden desks, switches, and boxes of cylinders.
It smelled like crisp paper and a hint of copper.
There was a clicking sound as the dispatchers sent wireless messages to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the St. Louis Star.
“Step right up and try it!” one of the uniformed workers encouraged the crowd.
“Send messages across the fairgrounds and then go retrieve them yourself!”
Grace stepped closer to the windows overlooking the emerald, manicured strips that spilled over the grounds below, the streetlamps set like neat pins amid the lagoons and canals, the sculpted cupolas perched atop the ivory buildings.
The Ivory City stretched on and on. The people below looked so small, walking the strip of the Pike.
She could glimpse a bird’s-eye view of Jerusalem, a massive holy city surrounded by walls that contained replicas of the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre’s jewel-blue rotunda.
Grace walked the periphery of the telegraph room, and in the distance, she glimpsed the Philippine Village, with young boys diving for coins in the lakes.
It was impossible to believe that soon, all of this would be gone. A brilliant matchstick whose flame drew the world close, and then snuffed out.
Through a partitioned window she saw another room, where a great spark appeared to accompany each signal sent through the air.
She cocked her head at Earnest, then raised a gloved hand to knock.
The man who answered looked annoyed. “Yes,” he said through a bushy mustache.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said. “But it’s urgent. We are looking for someone named Glen Parkins. We need to speak to him.”
He scowled. “There’s no one here by that name.”
Earnest appeared at her side and Grace stopped the door from closing with her foot. “Perhaps it’s Perkins?” she asked.
The man shook his head and shut the door roughly in her face.
Grace’s cheeks burned. She took a step back, and Earnest gently touched her elbow.
Had Ethel invented someone? Made up a story and sent them on a wild goose chase?
Just then a young man in a cap tapped her on the shoulder. He was Latino and had a baby face, with the barest beginning of a mustache. “Ma’am. I couldn’t help but overhear,” he said. “Do you mean George Parsons?”
“Yes!” Grace said, turning on her heel. “Yes, that must be who I mean.”
“There’s a George Parsons who works here. But he left town. Had a family emergency.”
“Thank you. Did he say when he would return?”
“I think the boss expects him back on Friday.”
That was three days away.
“Could I leave my name and a way to get in contact as soon as he returns? It’s really urgent we speak with him,” Grace said.
“That’s a good idea,” Earnest said. “Let’s leave him my address. It’s a little more permanent.”
“What’s your name?” Grace asked the young man as she pulled out her notebook for a piece of paper.
“Santiago.”
“Thank you so much for your help,” Grace said.
Earnest wrote out his address and handed it to Santiago. “As soon as you can.”
She kept waiting for Earnest to offer to pay him, but he didn’t. He smiled at Grace and took her by the arm.
She stole a look over her shoulder as they made their way to the elevator. Santiago was slipping Earnest’s address in his pocket.
A sixth sense was making her feel as though something weren’t quite right.
Grace followed Earnest into the elevator, but at the last minute she stepped out.
“You go on,” she said, as the doors were closing. “I forgot one thing.”
She opened her purse. She had only a few dollars left. She hesitated.
Then she made her way back to Santiago. “For your trouble,” she said, handing him a dollar. “And… could you send the message here, too? Just in case.”
She wrote down the address to the artist’s studio.
“Thank you,” she said, and hurried back down to the ground to join her party.
Lillie was dressed in a silk day dress when Grace stepped into the Carters’ foyer later that afternoon. There was barely any color in her face. Her dress spilled around her in panels of embroidered flowers, while real ones were placed elegantly in her hair.
Lillie never cared what she looked like, unless she was really sad. And then she did it to cheer herself.
The sight of her in her fancy dress, sitting alone in the dim parlor, made Grace’s heart fissure, a thousand delicate cracks.
“It’s good of you to come,” Lillie said bravely. She rose to greet them.
“Where’s Frannie?”
“She couldn’t make it,” Theo lied. “Though she wanted to.”
In truth, when they had met up with Frannie and Copper again outside of the Pike’s “Creation” ride, she had forbidden Earnest to go to the Carter house.
“It isn’t good for you to be seen with them,” she said, pulling him aside. “Why do you do this? Put our family name at risk?”
He had jerked his arm away. “People remember who was there in their time of need. She was there for me. I’d like to be there for her.”
But Frannie looked nervous. “Society will turn on them,” she said. “You’ll see.”
Copper steered Frannie away from Earnest. “I’ll see her home,” Copper whispered.
“Better you than me,” Earnest said angrily.
When he turned back to the group, he had muttered, “Is it possible to love someone and dislike them all at once?”
“It’s more common than you’d think,” Theodore said, catching Grace’s eye with a dark smirk in a way that she was horrified to discover made lightning strike through her body.
She did not look at him again until they were standing together in the Carters’ parlor.
“You were at the fair?” Lillie asked, looking at them in confusion. Unable to imagine that they could go and have fun, when her world had abruptly stopped turning.
Grace stepped forward and took her hand.
“We’re looking into Harriet’s death,” she said quietly. She met her cousin’s red-rimmed eyes. “Anything that might exonerate Oliver. We have a few leads. And we’ll go visit Oliver tomorrow. Would you like to come?”
Lillie’s gaze rose to meet Grace’s. “My parents can’t know,” she whispered.
“Has that ever stopped us before?” Grace asked.
Flushing, Lillie reached out for Theodore’s hand, too. Looking surprised, if not a little confused, he stepped forward and took it, so that they formed a broken chain of sorts. They just needed Oliver there to complete it.
And for the first time, standing in the fading light, Grace felt a fierce swell of belief that this small, unlikely group might actually do it.