Chapter Eighteen #2
He frowned. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to? Perhaps sustained a recent head injury?”
She glanced toward the fire escape.
Oliver had told her he once used it to get into Harriet’s room: the first window on the second floor.
“Would you like to climb this ladder instead?” she asked sweetly. “I know how much you enjoy heights.”
He scowled at her.
“Thank you for the typewriter, by the way,” she said. “Now go make Caroline Locke fall in love with you.”
She didn’t miss the flush that rose to his cheekbones as she hitched up her skirt, showing a bare sliver of ankle, and began to climb.
Grace jangled the window open and climbed inside. Closing it behind her, she heard Theo’s knock, and then the distant timber of his voice as Caroline answered the door again. Grace stood in the middle of the room, turning in a circle to look around it.
Harriet’s room had already been thoroughly searched. It was clear by the way things had been pulled out, rummaged through.
There was a twin bed with a faded quilt in the corner.
A clock on the nightstand, and a small lamp.
A bureau, with clothes sorted through and hastily put back, and a rose that was starting to wilt in a vase.
Tucked beneath it was the talent manager’s card.
Grace’s eyes fell on a magazine with starlets on the cover.
A perfume bottle, and a tube of lipstick.
She felt a wave of grief. She was doing this for Oliver, but she was doing it for Harriet, too. She had been a girl with a full life, overflowing with dreams.
Grace looked through Harriet’s wardrobe, at the dresses she had just seen Harriet wear not a week before.
She forced herself to focus and quickly scoured beneath the bed, running her hand between the mattress, opening the drawers of the nightstand and bureau.
Harriet’s nightstand held a small book with her handwriting in it.
Grace fished it out and sank down on the bed.
Tucked inside were old performance programs, notes from Harriet’s grandparents. A write-up in the newspaper about her performance in A Doll’s House.
Love notes from Oliver.
Grace felt conflicted about reading the woman’s private diary, but at the same time—she was dead. She wasn’t coming back. And even from the grave, Grace believed Harriet would want to help Oliver.
Grace flipped through the pages to the back, finding the most recent entries. The last ones Harriet would ever write.
I never want Oliver to think I want him for his money, she had scrawled. I don’t even want him to know I need money—makes things too complicated. No, I need to get it from someone else.
Money—for what?
Grace skimmed through earlier pages, looking for any mentions that might shed light on what Harriet needed money for.
Oliver wants to keep our relationship a secret for a little bit longer, she had written. I’m dying to marry him, but if that’s what he wants, I’ll play along.
Sometimes I think I’ll retire from the stage and start a family.
But the way it feels to perform, to feel the crowd’s applause—it feels like falling in love.
It feels like the way I feel when I’m with Oliver.
I hope I don’t ever have to choose between them.
Although I know his family will never accept me unless I do.
Finally, Grace found an entry dated five weeks back.
Her heart sank.
My theater is in desperate trouble, Harriet had written. If it doesn’t find an investor soon, it will likely go under. I’ve given them everything I could manage to part with myself, because our fates are tied together, Harriet surmised. Should I ask Oliver for help with it? Any of our friends?
With a pang, Grace recognized herself in this, even though it seemed so silly now. Oliver would have loved to help Harriet. Just like Lillie loved to help her. Just like she loved to help Oliver when he needed it. Pride was such a silly thing.
A pebble hit the window.
She looked up sharply.
That was Theodore’s cue. Someone must be coming. Perhaps it was Harriet’s family, there to finish gathering her things now that the funeral was over. Grace hurried to put the diary back. But her gaze caught on something else hidden in the drawer.
It appeared to be a small datebook.
There was another ding of a pebble against the window.
Grace drew out the datebook. It was barely bigger than her palm.
She hesitated, and slipped it into her pocket.
Then she opened the window sash and began to climb onto the fire escape.
“Hurry,” Theo hissed from below. She quickened her pace down the ladder.
She neared the end of the fire escape just as Caroline came around the corner.
Without hesitation, Theodore wrapped his arms around Grace’s waist, pulling her from the escape, as though they were lovers, merely out for a walk.
“I’m afraid I failed your task,” Theodore whispered roughly.
“Nonsense,” she said.
“That was too close, Covington,” he breathed into the curve of her ear as Caroline passed.
“I found something,” she whispered, hiding her face in the hollow just beneath his jawline.
She inhaled his heady scent, and the feel of his hands instinctively tightening around her waist sent a shimmer of sparks down her neck.
She fought against the almost incontrollable urge to kiss along the roughness of his throat, trailing up to the cut of his mouth.
He scowled and swallowed hard, holding her tightly, and the look on his face said he was annoyed at having to be this close to her.
But she could feel his heart beating hard and fast, betraying him through the fabric of his shirt.
She waited until Caroline’s footsteps had faded and Theodore’s grip began to loosen. When he pulled away from her, she felt flushed and bothered. She tried to hide it by fussing with her dress and bringing his attention to the book in her pocket.
“Look what I found,” she said. “It’s Harriet’s datebook.”
They moved to the shade of the elm trees and she riffled through the pages, tracing the days before Harriet’s murder.
“There—” he said, pointing. “The day she met someone in the Tunnels, right?”
“Yes,” Grace said. Harriet had scrawled something down as if she were in a hurry. It said:
Fairgrounds ↓ 9 a.m.—Jenny
“Jenny?” Theo asked.
“No,” Grace said, squinting, bringing her face closer to the page. “I think that’s a P.”
So Harriet had needed money for the theater, and she had gone to the Tunnels that morning to meet a woman named Penny.
A woman.
Not a man.
So either Walt had lied to her, or his source had made up the information to get money.
She fought against the crashing wave of disappointment that threatened to overtake her.
“Do we know someone named Penny?” Grace whispered. Theo met her eyes and want surged through her.
“Harriet’s sister at the funeral,” Theodore said. Without the tell-tale hammering of his heart, he seemed largely unaffected, and she almost wondered if she had imagined it. “Wasn’t her name Penelope?”
Grace nodded. “But why would she need to meet her own sister in the Tunnels?” she asked.
“I think that’s something only Penelope could answer,” Theo said. His pinkie grazed hers with a touch as gentle as a whisper, raising every nerve ending she had.
“Well,” she said hoarsely, “then let’s find out what Penelope knows.”