Chapter Twenty #2
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood. Grace watched as he subtly paid for their lunch on the way out.
“Lillie,” Grace said. “Is there any way Oliver’s lawyer can get us a complete list of the guests who were present at the Glass Ball on the night of Harriet’s death?”
Lillie nodded. “I’m sure he must have one. I’ll see if he would be willing to make a copy for us. But—” She hesitated. Grace knew what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth.
“I’m not stopping. We have to keep trying,” Grace said. “For Oliver.”
“We will. You’ve been stubborn and strong-willed for as long as I’ve known you, and I love you for it. But, Grace—I can’t lose you in the process.”
“Let’s go to the baby incubators on the Pike,” Earnest gently interrupted. “Figured Lillie might like to see something medical.”
“Yes,” Lillie said, standing. “I would.”
They made their way toward the Pike, where they found the baby incubator exhibit in a large, flag-topped building with two U-shaped columned floors.
It was situated next to Cairo and cost twenty-five cents to enter.
They stepped inside a crowded, narrow room with white-capped nurses tending to premature babies in twenty-four metal boxes with glass windows.
Grace peered inside the first incubator, at the baby’s small, rosebud mouth. It was twisting, writhing its little legs. Flies were buzzing around the incubators, some even caught inside of them.
“Step right up and see how this little mite, Jack, weighs less than three pounds!” a male announcer exclaimed. “The baby incubator is truly the highest attainment of human achievement. These weaklings hardly stood a chance without this intervention.”
Some of the babies were listless, their cheeks flushed. They stared out at Grace with glassy eyes.
Lillie began fanning herself.
“It’s too hot in here,” Lillie said, her voice rising in panic. She waved down one of the nurses. “Excuse me, but this child looks like it needs help.”
“I can assure you that Mr. Bayliss has taken care of everything,” the nurse said curtly.
“Is he even a doctor?” Lillie shot back.
Grace felt that familiar panicked feeling of not being good in a medical situation, and she began to walk backward, tripping on someone as she made her way out of the exhibit.
She passed the shop where she could buy a soap baby souvenir, and then through the exhibit’s themed café.
She didn’t start breathing normally again until she was out in the sunshine.
She found a bench beneath an awning toward the end of the Pike, where they held reenactments of the Great Galveston Flood of 1900.
She pulled out her small notebook and revisited her original suspect list.
This—this she could do.
Her breathing steadily slowed. She stared at the names on the page.
There was the robber who had first discussed money with Harriet and then threatened Grace to stop looking into the case.
He was the prime suspect in her mind. Had Harriet borrowed money from him to help save her theater?
Had he been there at the Ball that night?
Grace didn’t remember seeing him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
And what about Harriet’s sister Penelope? Why had Harriet met with her in the Tunnels?
There were the Gatewoods, the betrayed family with a possible revenge motive against Oliver himself, but Grace no longer thought of them as prime suspects.
She could almost definitively say it wasn’t Aunt Clove, or Vera Lackey, the woman who had been following them.
The publisher Sam Whitcomb had been there at the party that night, but he had supposedly been filming, hadn’t he?
Earnest Allred was definitively on camera, holding the drink with his bandaged hands, not putting poison in it.
Who else had been there that night?
Lillie had been at Grace’s side, arguing with her in the ladies’ room.
And then there were Frannie and Copper. What about Frannie? Why had she lied about the message that had been left for Earnest and Grace? Was she merely being a thorn in Grace’s side or was it something more sinister than that?
There was something Grace was missing.
Then there were any of the other guests—fifty, a hundred more—who had been present that night, who would show up on the list Lillie would get from the lawyer. And of course… Theodore.
She instantly began to banish the thought as ridiculous, but a small piece of it caught like a tangled ribbon in a branch.
She let her mind wander toward it. Theodore Parker.
Present at all these events that were burned in her mind.
The Winter Ball, where he disparaged her so cruelly, only to turn up later and begin to change his tune just as everything began to disintegrate around them.
She paused, feeling a growing numbness. He was the only person who was there all three times.
The only other person who knew the truth about Harriet and Earnest. He had been present for Earnest’s explosion, when he fell out of the sky.
Then Theodore had led them to the restaurant, when the thief had found and threatened Harriet.
He had been there at the Ball on the night when she was killed.
But he was conveniently away when the thief found them in the Japanese gardens to rob and pressure them.
Grace shook her head. This was silly. She had forgiven Theodore for that horrible night back in Chicago—she hadn’t realized it until that moment, but she had. At least almost all of her had.
He seemed so different now from the dreadful person she had first met. Still prickly, yes, but also strangely thoughtful, to the point of deeply caring. Had he changed in such a short time? Which Theodore Parker was the real one?
This was ridiculous. He had tried to help her every step of the way, hadn’t he?
Look out for someone who is involved in the investigation, Oliver had warned.
She couldn’t believe she was actually suspecting that Theodore had played a hand in Harriet’s murder.
She brushed the thought away. She would not think about it any longer.
She was about to walk on when Earnest suddenly came out of the baby incubator exhibit. But this time, he was without Lillie.
He looked furtively over his shoulder.
“Grace,” he said in a low voice. “Can we talk?”
Grace cringed a little. She quickly shut her notebook, where his name had recently been crossed off the pages.
Things were still slightly awkward between them, and it reminded her again how stupid she was to be suspicious of Theodore.
After all, look where that had gotten her with Earnest. But he seemed to have softened toward her, as if he had forgiven her accusations.
Perhaps after the scare they had experienced last night, all could be put behind them.
She nodded and smiled.
“Of course,” she said.
He gestured toward the notebook that she had set on the bench beside her.
“I saw the article you wrote. And it got me thinking.”
She moved so that he could take the seat next to her.
“All of these things that have been happening. First, the plane I’m in explodes.
The police say they think it was just an engineering failure, sure.
But then Harriet dies. And then we get mugged and threatened.
And the thing is, Grace, I just keep thinking about how I’m the one who handed Oliver the glass.
But someone put the poison in the drink when it was with me.
“What if they thought I was the one who was going to drink it?”
Grace turned toward him in surprise.
“You think that poison was meant for you?” she asked, aghast.
“Perhaps someone was trying to kill me when the plane exploded. And then”—his eyes grew wide—“after the balloon sabotage didn’t work, maybe they tried a second time. Maybe I was the real target all along.”
It was an angle she hadn’t thought of before. And yet she should have. It made so many of the pieces fit together. What if she had been looking at it the wrong way round this entire time? What if Harriet was never supposed to be the one dead?
What if the real target had been Earnest?
“But who would want to kill you?” she asked.
She stood as Lillie came out of the exhibit, and Earnest shot Grace a look that he wanted to stop talking.
“That was atrocious,” Lillie said furiously, marching toward them. “They clearly have no business taking care of those babies. It’s inhumane.”
“I’m sorry, but I need to go meet Walt,” Grace said, standing. “I told him I’d be at the restaurant to see if he had any updates.”
“All right,” Lillie said hesitantly. She turned to Earnest.
“Shall we go to the Philippine Village?” he said. “It’s supposed to be huge. It would take us all day to see, at least. You should come meet us afterward, Grace.”
“Sure,” Grace said, nodding. “Hopefully with good news.”
She turned the corner, still dazed by what Earnest had said, and almost ran into a small electric autobus, packed with riders.
“Watch it!” the driver barked.
“Sorry,” she said. She hurried on into the Pike, chastising herself for letting her imagination get away from her.
That was when she saw a familiar silhouette.
She stopped short.
It was Theodore Parker.
Theodore Parker, who had told her less than an hour ago that he had to leave to meet with a family friend.
But instead, he was at that very moment emerging from the dark shadows of the Tunnels.
Grace hid behind a column, her heart hammering.
What was happening?
Why would Theodore lie to her?
She turned slowly.
Should she confront him?
By the time she peered out from the column, he was gone.
She adjusted her hat, taking a few deep breaths, and went to wait for Walt.
Surely there was some way to explain all of this, she thought.
But the truth was sinking through her as she waited and he didn’t come. She was too hot. The crowd around her was pushing, the music from the marching bands too loud.
Theodore Parker had gone into the Tunnels.
Was it possible that he was the person Harriet had been meeting that morning?
She sat on a bench just outside the restaurant, feeling vaguely nauseous. She left briefly to get some water, then came back and resumed watching. But it was soon apparent that Walt wasn’t coming.
After forty minutes, she gave up and began walking toward the Philippine Village.
She had just crossed over Arrowhead Lake into the village’s walled city when she heard a familiar voice. It was beastly hot and thick with humidity, and the water shimmered. Divers were plunging into the lake looking for pearls. Junks dotted the water, and the grounds were thick with banana trees.
“Grace!”
She turned.
“Grace,” Lillie said, hurrying toward her. Her face looked pained. “It’s Walt.”
She grabbed Grace’s hand and together they pushed through the masses heading to see the village’s Model School, the sea-shelled windows of the Women’s Building, the Agriculture Building made from bamboo and nipa.
Walt was sitting amid the crowds on the street in front of the Samal Moros’s stilt houses. He was like a stone set in a river, making the people part around him. Earnest was beside him, looking distinctly uncomfortable.
Earnest leapt to his feet as soon as he saw them.
Grace could tell before she knelt beside him that Walt was drugged out of his mind, drunk, and incomprehensible.
A policeman was eyeing them on his patrol of the grounds. He slowed his walk, keeping them in his sights.
“It’s a zoo,” Walt said, gesturing toward the Philippine Village exhibit. “Can’t you see? They put them out here for display just like the animals. They’ve ranked them, for God’s sake. It’s wrong.”
Grace said, “Please come with me.”
He pulled his arm away.
“Dammit, Grace. Stop trying to save me,” he slurred. “This is my choice.”
We’re adults now, she had told Aunt Clove that morning. These are no longer your choices to make.
She heard Aunt Clove’s voice echoing in her head. 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.
“You’re destroying yourself,” she said, a heavy lump rising in her throat. “And you’re destroying me, too. I want a choice in that.”
She knew she wasn’t physically strong enough to force him to do anything. She felt so helpless. She wanted to scream.
Lillie and Earnest stepped away to give her some semblance of privacy, even though this meltdown was happening amid the most crowded fair in the history of the country.
Is this rock bottom? she wondered desperately. Will he even remember we had this conversation?
She changed tack and turned her voice to soothing. She gently touched his arm. “Walt,” she said. “Did you find anything for Oliver?”
“I was supposed to find something for Oliver?” he asked. His eyes were dull.
Her heart sank. She felt something crumble within her.
“I can help you,” she said fiercely. “Please. Let me help you.”
She cried then, the tears bursting forth from somewhere long-buried.
They were streaming down her face, mixing with snot.
People were staring. St. Louisans in long skirts and oversized hats.
Bagobos wearing beads and knee pants and carrying bolos.
Visayans in puffed white blouses with sleeves.
Bontocs in cloth sashes and bead necklaces.
She was making a scene in front of them all. She didn’t care.
Walt looked at her with a cruel disdain brought out by the drugs, the brother she once knew now so far away she couldn’t reach him anymore. He shoved her aside, staggering to his feet, and bent to snarl in her ear, “No.”