“A table for three, please,” Grace said. This time, they were seated beneath an umbrella and Grace skimmed the menu—but really, she was glancing over her shoulder every few minutes, searching the throng of humanity beyond the fence of the restaurant’s outdoor seating. There were women in long skirts and fancy hats, children in sharply tailored sailor suits; members of the Philippine Constabulary band and Indian women in gold-threaded saris. Accents and languages wove through the air, intertwining like strands in a tapestry.
There were clusters of pigeons and bits of trash and scattered petals on the walkway.
But there was no Walt.
“Well, perhaps we should go ahead and order,” Lillie said with a forced brightness when they’d turned the waiter away for the third time. “We can pick something out for Walt.”
Grace nodded but worry gnawed at her stomach. Did Walt forget how to find the meeting place? Had something happened to him? Was he blacked out somewhere? Overdosed? Hurt? Too drunk or high to remember the plan?
Her brow knit. Grace’s mind had traveled down these paths so many times. She tried to stop her anxious thoughts from slipping like oil over the well-worn grooves.
“I can see why you love Dr. May,” Grace said instead, sipping her glass of iced tea. The wind blew the branches of a nearby tree and sent shadows spattering across her face.
“I just want to be around her,” Lillie said. “It’s like she has her own gravity.”
Grace agreed. When their food came, she half-heartedly ate her club sandwich and drank her sweating glass of iced tea, and Lillie paid for all of it, and Grace was grateful. She no longer knew when her next meal would be. She would need to find some sort of paying job at the fair if she was going to continue on like this.
She knew she could tell Lillie she was falling dangerously short and that her cousin would happily lend her the money. She knew she had promised Lillie no more secrets. But she’d rather feel the pinch of hunger and keep hold of her pride.
She eyed a bird pecking at a crust of bread, wanting to stall. Just in case Walt came.
“Where would one get rat poison, do you think?” Lillie asked.
“Vermin powders are sold at any drugstore,” Grace said. She knew her father kept them in stock for his restaurant.
She looked one more time over her shoulder for Walt.
“We can meet here again tomorrow,” Lillie said, quietly noticing Grace was upset. “Maybe he’ll come then.” She checked her timepiece. “I have to get back home. We’re going to visit Oliver this afternoon.”
They walked arm in arm to Grace’s studio, the hems of their skirts brushing together, and Lillie hailed a carriage to take her home. Grace kissed Lillie’s cheek and brought out her key to unlock the door.
When she pushed it open, she almost didn’t notice the folded piece of paper at her feet. As though someone had slipped it beneath the door.
She bent to retrieve it.
The message was from Santiago, the young man who worked at the wireless telegraph tower.
She read:
Mr. Parsons has returned to St. Louis and is expected back at work tomorrow.
She crumpled the note in her hand.
She was itching to find out what Mr. Parsons knew, to fill in the gaps between the man desperate for money and what that had to do with Harriet.
Sam Whitcomb’s press office was north of Delmar and overlooked the fairgrounds.
It was impressive, she would give him that: five stories and shaped like an octagon, with American flags gracefully draped from its windows. The building was built on a hill, and before it he had erected a massive, temporary tent city. “Camp Whitcomb,” it was called, with lodging for three thousand people. It had been a brilliant strategy move: subscribers to Whitcomb’s publications could stay there for much cheaper than any of the surrounding hotels.
Grace felt the folded creases of Santiago’s note in her pocket as she briskly walked through the tent city. The tents were almost like cabins, with wooden floorboards and potted plants and electric lights strung along their ceilings. She could hear the distant roar of the crowds at the fair, the brassy sounds of marching bands. There was a hiss of grease as she passed one of the many kitchen tents, and near the showering tent, she smelled the lather of soap.
For a moment, she paused with the prickling sense that someone was following her.
She slowed, then snuck a glance over her shoulder.
There was no one there.
Stop being silly, she told herself.
