She finished the pickle, and the ache of hunger in her stomach finally eased. “Let’s see if we can get in to visit Oliver—I’d like to talk to him,” she said.
“And then what?”
She tapped her finger down the names on the list. “Let’s start with Ethel Adams. I’ve met her, and hopefully she’ll be willing to speak with me—especially if she’s innocent.”
Grace insisted on paying her own part of the tab, and Theo walked her back to the studio, unlocking the door for her. The fair was lit up in the distance, its palaces awash in a hazy, beckoning glow.
“Make sure to dead bolt the door tonight,” he said, handing her the key.
“I think I saw a paint scraper inside that could function as a weapon,” she said. “An intruder should be more afraid of me.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said.
She hesitated. “Thank you for helping me,” she said.
The hint of his rare, true smile emboldened her.
“Would you like to pay a visit to Miss Adams together?” she asked before she could stop herself. “Tomorrow?”
His eyebrow quirked. “What are you going to do? Ask her if she poisoned Harriet and gauge her reaction?”
“No. But I’m hoping she might have seen something from the other night that will prove helpful. Even if she didn’t realize it.”
“I’ll come by at nine,” he said. He tipped his hat to her. “Good night, Miss Covington.”
She nodded, and as he walked out into the night, she dead bolted the door.
While she washed up for bed, she thought of Oliver, alone, in prison. Grieving. Probably frightened out of his mind.
She thought of Lillie, a prisoner in her own house. Worried sick about her only brother.
Grace changed into her nightgown and sank into bed, hoping that Ethel Adams might have seen something that night.
Grace loved her cousins desperately. But she sensed that this went even deeper than that. It went down to the cracked depths of her, the parts that still grieved how she hadn’t been able to save her brother. So she would fight even harder to save Oliver.
She turned off the lamp, pulled the covers around herself, and tried to get her racing mind to rest.
CHAPTER NINE
MAY 5, 1904
Two Days After the Murder
ETHELADAMS WASset to perform at Festival Hall that evening, which meant, if they had any luck at all, she would be practicing there sometime in the morning.
Grace dressed in one of Lillie’s most expensive high-necked lace blouses and a veiled skirt, examining her reflection in the hazy, full-length mirror in the corner of the studio. She picked a hat with delicate purple flowers and plumes. Because she knew that money talked.
And even more importantly, money gototherpeople to talk.
Theodore looked sharp as well, in his black satin hat and tailored suit. He had the high cheekbones of an aristocrat. He was so handsome, especially when he shed his perpetual look of scorn.
“Sleep well?” he asked as they passed through the fragrant sunken garden on the way to Festival Hall. He walked by her side but did not offer her his arm.
“As well as can be expected,” Grace said, breathing in the cloves mixed with the flowering fringe trees. In truth, she’d had awful dreams. Of Oliver in jail and Harriet in the morgue. Of Walt, reaching out for her with skeletal fingers.
The Cascades misted her skin as they climbed the palatial, curving steps toward the golden and teal dome of Festival Hall. She couldhear a few distant chords of music from deep within the hall, but when she pulled on the doors, they held fast.
Locked.
