“We were the only two Oliver trusted with his secret,” she said. “Did we do the wrong thing?”
“We couldn’t possibly have known—” Theo said, frowning.
“I know,” she said.
Theo looked away, his jaw tightening. “Before my mother died, she was sick for a week. My father wanted to call the doctor, but she insisted she was fine. I’ve always wondered, should I have called sooner?” He flexed his hand on the table and let out a humorless laugh. “I was old enough to know better, but young enough to simply obey. My father says I spend too much time living in the past.”
The past. The clouds that surrounded him. Perhaps they were less the disdain she had marked them for and something more complicated than that.
She knew well what it was like to wish you could go back in time and change things. To save someone you loved.
“I know we can’t change what happened before. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life second-guessing what I did now,” she said.
He nodded. The dark clouds around him seemed to part, and for a moment, Grace felt an enormous sense of relief. He was going to help her. She wasn’t alone. Her nose burned with the threat of tears.
She hurriedly cleared her throat.
“Right. Well. Let’s compare notes, then. Harriet had two strange interactions in the days leading up to her death,” Grace said.
She wrote:
1.The man at the Luchow-Faust restaurant who demanded money
2.The unknown person(s) she met with at the Tunnels the morning she died
“She went to the Tunnels?” Theo said.
“And I told Oliver. That’s the reason why they were publicly fighting in front of everyone,” she said miserably.
“Could numbers one and two have been the same person?”
Grace nodded. “It’s very possible.”
“And then there was that woman following us,” Theo said. “She was there last night.”
Grace’s eyes widened. She wrote down:
3.Unknown woman who was tailing us/Harriet? Who? Why?
She finished her sandwich and began on her soup. “Was there anything else unusual that happened last night? Anything you saw?”
“I’m not sure.” Theodore lowered his voice. “I just keep thinking—what are you supposed to ask when someone is murdered? Who benefited from it? Who would benefit from Harriet being dead?”
Grace wiped her mouth as a new thought came to her. “Ethel Adams, that singer. She was there last night. She had a motive. Beating out Harriet to become a star.”
“But would she really kill Harriet over it?” Theodore sounded skeptical.
Grace shrugged and wrote down Ethel’s name. “It could change the course of her entire life. I’d say that was big enough motive. Especially if she thought she’d lose out to Harriet. What did Copper say to me last night? ‘People are never more driven than when the future’s at stake.’”
She hesitated. “And speaking of Copper…” she trailed off.
“What?”
“No, it’s too silly. You’ll think it’s ridiculous.”
“That’s very likely, but don’t let that stop you.”
“Well… Frannie wasn’t happy with the attention Copper gave Harriet last night.”
