Grace scowled, rolling up the paper. “So that’s a no, then?”
Sam Whitcomb sneered. “This is what you’ve brought me? A woman who may or may not have been following Harriet, whose name you don’t know, and a sketch that could be of any number of the tens of thousands of women at these fairgrounds?”
He stood, as though dismissing them.
But Theodore remained sitting, his fist flexed on the table.
He spoke slowly, his derision matching Sam Whitcomb’s own.
“We have a mysterious woman who tailed Harriet Forbes multiple times in the days just prior to her death,” he said, his handsome jaw twitching as he counted on his fingers. “A verbal threat was made to her about money, with some sort of message she was expected to deliver to someone else. Then, Harriet Forbes secretly met with someone in the Tunnels, all in the days leading up to her death—which I think we can all agree is unusual for a woman of her stature. There’s a bigger story here than a mere romantic tiff gone wrong.”
Whitcomb leaned back in his seat, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “I’m listening.”
“Anyone could have put something in her drink besides Oliver Carter,” Grace said. “All we know for certain is that it was someone at that party.”
“Andyouwere the only one filming that night,” Theodore said.
Mr. Whitcomb templed his fingers. “The trouble is, I’ve already watched the film from that night and shared it with the police. It doesn’t show much of Miss Forbes’s death, or anything that could exonerate Oliver Carter. It cuts to Miss Forbes right when she’s dying and then ends.”
Grace hesitated. “Could we see it anyway?”
Mr. Whitcomb’s lips parted in an amused smile. “I don’t think so.”
“What if we could give you something in return?” Grace asked.
“Such as?”
Theodore began shifting in his seat, but Grace shot him a look.
“What if I wrote an article about this for you?”
Whitcomb’s smirk deepened. “You’re hardly unbiased.”
“That’s the point. It will be an inside scoop detailing all the things we think the police missed. What we are doing to prove Oliver’s innocence, because we believe that the police got it wrong. Which means therealmurderer is still out there.”
She watched as a calculating gleam entered Whitcomb’s eye. It was the sort of thing that would stoke public fear and sell out his newspapers, and they both knew it.
He stroked his chin and studied her. “Your ilk doesn’t usually want to be associated with my newspaper.”
That was true. If she thought Aunt Clove was angry with her before, this might be enough to turn her murderous.
But everything Grace would write was the truth. And it might help Oliver.
“I don’t live my life by what other people think of it,” she said.
It was a half-truth that she hoped might become whole someday, and she saw the quirk in Theodore’s eyebrow that, in some lights, might almost be mistaken for admiration.
He gave her an encouraging nod.
“So you agree to write up a piece for exclusive publication in theFair’s Fare?” Sam Whitcomb asked. “You will raise enough questions in the minds of the public to sell papers and possibly force the police to take another look.”
Grace answered without a second thought. “I’ll do it.”
Whitcomb smiled and rose. “Let’s take a look at that film, then.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GRACE HAD SEENonly one moving picture in her life before, and it was hard not to gasp when the scenes from the Libbey Glass Ball reappeared on the projection screen like a living memory.
