Chapter Nineteen #2
“A little ironic, that,” Copper said through the side of his mouth, stopping to light his own cigarette with a sardonic grin.
“Ironic? How do you mean?” Grace asked.
“Well, the autopsy showed it was strychnine that killed Harriet, wasn’t it?” Earnest said.
“Yes,” Lillie said.
“And strychnine is often used as a rat poison, right?”
“Right…” Grace said.
“And do you know who just happens to be a former insect extermination salesman? A firsthand seller of rat poison?”
Grace stilled. “Who?” she asked.
Copper grinned, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. “The publisher of the Fair’s Fare. Your very own Sam Whitcomb.”
A deep chill raised the flesh on Grace’s arm. She felt Oliver’s voice come to whisper in her ear: Keep an eye out for someone close to the investigation, she thought.
Sam Whitcomb had been there that night. Supposedly he had been filming. But what if he hadn’t? What if he’d handed the camera off for a brief moment?
She was beginning to hate being suspicious of everyone—of “seeing a devil behind every bush,” as her mother used to say. People were mostly good, weren’t they? Wasn’t that what this fair showed?
They wandered deeper into the gardens. The paper lanterns were dim, and the evening was beautiful. The air seemed fresher here, somehow, and in the distance, someone let out a scream as the roller coaster rumbled down its tracks.
A koi fish flipped in the pond, sending out expanding ripples.
Grace jumped a little, then chastised herself for being so jittery. These thoughts weren’t helpful. She told herself to ignore them when she saw something move in the shadows just ahead.
That was, until Frannie let out a sharp yelp. Her instinctive sound of fear instantly turned Grace’s blood to ice.
“Don’t move,” a voice threatened.
The first thing Grace saw was the knife, gleaming in the moon-light.
And then a man emerged from the shadows.
He wore a mask, but it didn’t hide the fact that his eyes were a piercing green. He was tall and well-built, and dressed completely in black.
Frannie covered her mouth to muffle a scream.
Earnest was quick as lightning. He stepped in front of Lillie and Grace. Copper made a protective move toward Frannie, to shield her, but the masked man held out his knife in a warning to stop him.
Copper put his hands up in a show of surrender.
“Your jewels,” the man ordered. He pointed to Frannie. “Take them off and hand them to me. Now.”
Trembling, Frannie tried to comply, but her hands were shaking too much to unclasp the jewels from around her neck.
Grace looked wildly to the teahouse, illuminated and quiet in the distance.
There was faint music playing in the air, but the fairgrounds suddenly seemed all too far away.
She felt in the dark for Lillie’s hand and Lillie squeezed back frantically.
Frannie finally managed to untangle the jewels from her neck and tossed them to the burglar.
“Now yours,” he said, swiveling to point the knife toward Lillie.
Lillie’s face was white as bone.
“Listen—” Earnest said, stepping forward.
“Shut up,” the thief snapped. Grace tried not to make eye contact with him, but when he turned, she stole a brazen look to profile him.
She waited for him to approach her next, to demand that she give him any jewels she was wearing. Of course, she didn’t have anything valuable on, but he couldn’t know that.
When he whirled around toward Grace, she was ready. But Copper got in the way. He attempted to take the man’s knife, but the man was too quick. “What are you doing?” the thief barked. Copper winced and drew back his slashed hand. It was bleeding.
The thief turned and approached Grace, holding out his knife with Copper’s blood still on it.
He was close enough that she could smell his sweat and her own.
She kept her eyes on the knife, swallowing a sound of fright when he brought it near her face.
But instead of cutting her, he lowered his mouth to her ear.
“Stop looking,” he hissed.
The air around her stilled, so that she almost imagined she could see the dust swirling in the night air, the spring petals falling slowly around her like confetti. And that was the moment when she realized that this was not just a random robbery.
The masked man stuffed the jewels into his bag and as he drew his hand away from her face, she noticed that he had a ring on his finger.
She recognized it.
It was a signet ring, set with onyx.
This was the same man who had threatened Harriet about money at the restaurant.
He disappeared into the night just as a fresh group of revelers turned the corner.
There was a beat of stunned silence.
Then Frannie collapsed on the ground in sobs, her gown spilling around her as she clasped where the jewels used to be around her neck.
“Give me your tie,” Lillie ordered Earnest.
He ripped it off without hesitation and she wrapped it around Copper’s hand to staunch the flowing blood.
Earnest tried to chase after the thief, but by the time he reached the gardens’ exit, the man was gone.
Later that night, Grace pulled the heaviest furniture she could drag in front of the studio’s door. She lit candles and kept the lights blazing and stayed up all night writing.
She composed a draft by hand first, then typed up a second, cleaner draft on the typewriter. Even though they had spoken to the police about the robbery and the officers had promised to look into it, she couldn’t stop shaking.
She finally fell asleep at dawn and woke several hours later to sunlight streaming in through the slats of the windows.
She washed, dressed, and resolutely marched to Sam Whitcomb’s office with the freshly typed pages in her hands.
The clock on the wall said it was eleven o’clock in the morning.
“I was threatened as a result of looking into this. Twice,” she said, thrusting the new article toward him.
Sam Whitcomb looked surprised. He took the article from her and moved his glasses from his forehead to his nose.
“Why threaten me if the right person is in jail?” she asked.
“That’s a very good question,” he said slowly, sitting down to read the article at his desk.
“There is more to this story,” Grace insisted. He nodded, making fewer marks with his red pen this time.
Then he stood and paid her in cash for the article.
“It will run tomorrow,” he said.
“Not to be rude,” she said, counting the money, “but is this it? I’m risking my life for this.”
“You can take your article elsewhere, if you like,” he said, arching an eyebrow. But they both knew he was calling her bluff. The Fair’s Fare was her best chance to get this information out and start to change public opinion.
She glared at him, undeterred.
“Fine,” he said, sighing. “I can’t offer you more money. I have to turn a profit, you know. But as a favor, I’ll show you something else that just came in.”
He hesitated, and her hackles instantly rose when his smarmy nature turned to something almost apologetic. What did he know that she didn’t? Something that made him feel sorry for her?
“There’s a lot of attention on this case,” he said.
“It’s sensational. A beautiful young actress murdered at the beginning of the World’s Fair.
The powers that be need to show they’re in control.
That this was some domestic issue gone wrong, not a serial killer stalking the fair.
For once, this goes much higher even than a wealthy family can pay off.
You can’t imagine the amount of money invested in this exposition.
If it flops, if people are scared of a murderer on the loose and public opinion turns against the fair, the entire city could collapse. ”
She suddenly felt ill.
He flipped over the typecast for tomorrow’s news.
TRIAL DATE FOR ACCUSED MURDERER SET
Oliver. It was Oliver whose trial date had been scheduled roughly a month from now.
Her eyes fell to the line beneath it, and she felt the bile rise in her throat.
PROSECUTION TO SEEK EXECUTION BY HANGING