Chapter Twenty
Eight Days After the Murder
GRACE WAS SO TIRED.
She trudged out of Sam Whitcomb’s office, away from the fairgrounds and through the quiet, tree-lined streets to the Carter mansion.
She felt the breeze on her face.
How could she go up against an entire society that had already determined Oliver would take the blame? A society that had never given her a second look in the first place?
Had she done the wrong thing by writing the articles?
No. The only way Oliver had a shot was to place a seed of doubt into the minds of the public, rather than let him hang before there was even a fair trial.
She turned her head toward the fairgrounds, its silhouette of palaces, Tyrolean Alps, and roller coasters stark outlines against the sky.
It was a slice to the gut to remember the way that she and Lillie had watched the grounds steadily rise, their hopes and dreams and fantasies building along with it.
They had never been able to even imagine that the fair would bring such horror within its gates.
She turned down Westmoreland Place and knocked on the Carters’ massive front door.
“I need to speak with my aunt,” she told Waters when he answered. “It’s urgent.”
He brought her into the sitting room. She looked at the heavy green curtains, the imperial urns, the ticking brass clock on the mantel. Remembering the way she and Oliver had played in the massive fireplace when it was swept clean each spring.
She was startled when Aunt Clove appeared in the room behind her.
“For someone who was explicitly uninvited to this house, you certainly make frequent appearances,” Aunt Clove said.
She was wearing a tea gown trimmed in ribbons and black satin. There was a slight scent of laudanum. Her face looked haggard.
“They’re seeking the death penalty for Oliver,” Grace said. She choked on the words.
Aunt Clove didn’t flinch. She was a mask.
She played with the heavy rings on her fingers, leveling Grace with an even stare.
Grace stared back.
“You may not believe me, but I’m doing whatever I can to help him,” Grace said. “Do you want to help him?”
The look Aunt Clove gave her in return could wither fruit on the vine. “Don’t act simple,” she said. “It doesn’t suit you.”
Grace took a step toward her.
“You hired someone to follow him.”
“I hired someone to follow that actress.”
“And you must understand how that looks now, given everything that’s happened. Perhaps you had more motive than anyone to make sure Harriet was gone.”
Aunt Clove gestured toward the fringed sofa.
“Sit,” she said curtly.
There was no offer for tea to be called. They both knew what this was. Not a social call, but hostilities edging closer to a declaration of war.
“I would do anything for my children,” Aunt Clove said with precise enunciation. “Anything at all. Except for that.”
Grace sat down on the sofa. “Then why were you having Harriet followed, if not to kill her?”
“I wanted to observe them,” Clove said. She slid into the fringed armchair like it was a throne. “I wanted to know the truth, when everyone around me was intent on deceiving me. What a way to repay me after everything I’ve done. Just look where all that deception has led us now.”
“And what was your plan once you discovered the truth about Harriet and Oliver? He wanted to marry her.”
Clove sniffed bitterly. “I would have done the sensible thing and paid her off to leave him. Not killed her. There’s a difference between being cunning and being a monster, though I know you love to paint me as such in the stories you tell yourself.”
Grace braced herself against the condescension. She took a deep breath. They had danced around this confrontation for as long as she could remember, and it felt good to finally be having it. She leaned forward.
“Why have you always hated us so?” she asked. “My mother? Me and Walt? Harriet? What threat have we ever posed to you?”
“You pose a threat because you are ideas.
Allowing you in our lives was a doorway, opening paths I never wanted my children to walk down.
My children decided that they loved you, and that was the first seed.
Oliver should have felt more misgivings in that initial tug of misplaced interest in Harriet.
He should have known that she was not his future and turned away.
But you, Grace, had already opened the door to loving someone beneath their station.
Walt had already begun walking that path, and it was much harder to turn back.
“So yes. I regret not fighting my husband harder when you were children. That was an enormous mistake. I had to correct it.”
“And now we’re adults,” Grace said coldly. “These are no longer your choices to make.”
Aunt Clove waved off the sentiment. “Spoken like such a child.”
“Have you ever paused to consider why your own children hide things from you, Aunt Clove?” Grace asked sharply. “Do you hope to have any relationship with them at all?”
“Love would not hesitate to take down any obstacle that stands in her children’s way.
Especially when they don’t see the harm it will cause them.
Your mother, on the other hand, was selfish and shortsighted.
She thought only of her own happiness. I make my choices by thinking generations ahead.
” Her voice dropped to a lower register. “Even if they cost me.”
“You forfeit your own choices to take someone else’s,” Grace said, trembling with fury that this insufferable woman dared to call her mother selfish. She stood to go. “I don’t think that’s as honorable as you think it is.”
Aunt Clove rose to match her. “Is it not love to set someone up for their best possible chance at life?” she challenged, seething. “Even at great cost to yourself ? When you have children one day, you’ll remember me. You’ll remember this conversation. And then try to tell me differently.”
She exited the room with great, self-righteous dignity, and glided up the stairs.
There would be no convincing Aunt Clove that she was wrong.
And yet, Grace knew at that moment that Harriet’s death was not ordained by Aunt Clove.
Aunt Clove gained nothing from this. She would never have had a murder orchestrated so publicly, especially when it could so easily point to Oliver, dig up sordid information, and embarrass the family name.
The stakes were entirely too high for Oliver and for the Carter family.
They got caught in the crosshairs of whatever else had happened here.
As Aunt Clove climbed the stairs, wrapping her arms around her rib cage like she was protecting a gaping wound, Grace quietly brought out her notebook and crossed her aunt’s name off the list.
Grace felt the way the time was slipping away, the shadows of an impending night lengthening for them all, even though the floral clock showed that it was barely after noon.
She sat with Lillie, Earnest, and Theo for lunch in the Flight Cage restaurant across from the caged aviary in Forest Park.
It was a huge structure built by the Smithsonian Institute with a dome fifty feet high.
Inside, swans and herons swam in ponds, and they glimpsed peacocks between ferns as they sipped iced tea and ate Waldorf salad.
“Have we all mostly recovered from the terrible shock of last night?” Lillie asked them.
“Hardly,” Earnest said.
“What happened last night?” Theo asked quizzically.
“We were jumped,” Earnest said. “Mugged.”
Theodore grew quite still.
“Are you joking?” he asked, turning abruptly toward Grace. As if expecting to see a mocking smile on her face.
She shook her head.
“Frannie and Lillie had their necklaces stolen. Copper was slashed with a knife. And I was threatened to stop looking into Harriet’s murder.”
Theo was silent, his eyes darkening. His fist curled on the table.
“Someone threatened you?” he asked Grace.
She shook her head irritably. “He should know it had the opposite intended effect. Fear only fuels my stubbornness.”
“Did you go to the police?”
“Of course,” Lillie said. “They took down a report, but they don’t expect to recover the jewels.”
“They also seemed eager to keep the incident quiet,” Earnest said. “It can’t look good for the fair.”
That’s exactly what Sam Whitcomb said, Grace thought.
“This is crazy. Perhaps it’s time to stop investigating this,” Theodore said.
Grace frowned at him. “Why would you say that?” she asked.
“Grace—” Theodore said, exchanging a look with Lillie.
“No,” she said stubbornly. “I’m going to push even harder now. What happened with Penelope?”
Theo sighed. He had hardly touched his salad. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and said, “I tried to find her all morning, but she’s gone.”
“Gone?” Lillie asked.
“She left after the funeral. She lives in Chicago.”
“Can we find a telephone number for her?” Grace asked. “An address?”
She sensed a strange feeling from Theo. The shadows swept across his face, caressing them. He seemed distracted.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll keep looking into it.”
“They probably aren’t very happy that you’re stirring things up right before the big dinner with the president,” Earnest said. “You told your father you’d go, didn’t you, Theo?”
Grace tilted her head. She’d read about it as she’d scoured the papers—one of the biggest events of the fair, happening the day after tomorrow—but she hadn’t realized they were all going. Once again, she felt the pinch of time.
She was running out of threads to chase. And when that happened—what would she do?
Oliver would be lost. Thrown in jail to rot, or worse. And there would no longer be any good reason for her to stay.
“I haven’t felt much in the mood for fancy dinners as of late,” Lillie said grimly.
“That’s exactly why you must go,” Earnest insisted.
Theo glanced over his shoulder more than once.
“I have to go,” he said.
“Where are you off to this afternoon?” Lillie asked.
“Meeting a friend of the family,” he said.
But he didn’t meet her eyes.