Evelyn groaned and lay face down on the blankets. “Not again.”
“Big cities have killers, Evelyn. What did you expect?”
“A simple vacation,” she said into the bed linens. “A break from my job and your antics.”
“Sorry,” I said without much chagrin. I wiggled beneath the covers. “Do you want to know what I found out?”
She lifted her palms to the sky. “You’re going to tell me anyway, I suppose.”
“Okay, so I decoded this phrase first,” I said, pointing to the sentence in the journal. “I was born with the devil in me.”
“Cheerful.”
“H.H. Holmes wrote it,” I went on. “‘I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.’”
“I might be playing devil’s advocate, but I don’t believe the two occupations compare,” Evelyn said wittily. “Who’s H.H. Holmes?”
“He was an American serial killer,” I replied. “He operated here in Chicago, between 1891 and 1894. History says he built his own hotel above the drugstore he owned. He kept changing architects so no one but him truly knew the interior design.”
“So?” Evelyn prompted.
“So this ‘hotel’ supposedly had hidden rooms, gas chambers, chutes that led to the basement, and a kiln large enough to fry a human body in.”
Evelyn mimed a gag. “Real sicko, huh?”
“Legend has it he lured visitors from the Chicago World Fair to stay at his ‘Murder Castle,’” I explained. “Where he would then dismember them and dissolve their bodies in acid.”
“I’m getting nauseous.”
“I said legend has it,” I reiterated. “There’s a lot of misinformation about Holmes due to yellow journalism.”
“Yellow journalism?”
“Fake news,” I clarified. “Tabloid journalism. Whatever you want to call it. It was all based on exaggeration and sensationalism, because these two newspaper tycoons wanted to outsell each other back in the late 1800s. They hardly ever reported true facts.”
Evelyn caught on. “So no one really knows what Holmes did?”
“Some people say he killed hundreds of people,” I told her. “He confessed to twenty-seven. Later, some of his supposed victims were discovered to be alive. Only nine murders were plausibly confirmed.”
“Do you know what he really did?”
I sucked air through my teeth. “It’s hard to sift the facts out. From what I’ve gathered, he liked committing insurance fraud more than murder, but he certainly enjoyed homicide as a side hobby.”
“Lovely,” Evelyn said. “And this supposed insurance fraud he committed?”
“He studied medicine,” I replied. “Back then, medical schools were in need of cadavers to practice on. Holmes dug up bodies or killed people then sold the corpses to medical schools. It’s probably where he got the idea. Later, he hired women to work for him and took out life insurance policies on them. After he killed them, he collected the money.”
Evelyn pursed her lips. “Is this journal his then?”
“No,” I said. “It’s too new, and I doubt any original journal of Holmes’s would have survived a snowstorm in Chicago. No, this belongs to someone else.”
“What else is in it?”
“It’s all about Holmes,” I answered, flipping the pages of blurred letters. “Whoever wrote this was totally obsessed with him, but the writer believes in the legend of Holmes, not the truth. It reads like a weird diary, like this guy idolized Holmes.”
“Right up your alley,” Evelyn said. “You are an expert in copycat killers after all. How worried do I need to be about this?”
“Women have been going missing in Chicago,” I mused. “Then Megan Hollows turned up dead right outside the hotel. Now, Angelica’s gone…”
Evelyn’s gaze grew intensely focused. “So what you’re saying is I should be very worried.”
I met her eyes. “I’m saying you better be on your guard, especially if any more bridesmaids disappear.”
The following morning, I put on my private investigator pants—also known as my favorite pair of jeans—and set out to gather more information. The first part was easy: start local. I had no proof that Angelica had left the Saint Angel of her own accord, so I cornered a few of the bridesmaids to see if I could find some.
As a treat for agreeing to come to Chicago so far ahead of the wedding, Marie had booked the bridesmaids for a game of—heaven forbid—axe throwing. I tracked down the venue and stepped inside a bar themed with every Canadian cliche the designers could think of. It was all warped wood, buffalo plaid, and stuffed beavers. Country music blared over the speakers, though no one seemed to be enjoying it unless they were several beers in already… at eleven o’clock in the morning.
A chorus of raucous cheers went up from the last bay. I made my way to the end of the throwing stations and found Marie’s bridesmaids, sans Angelica, getting rowdy with their weapons. I watched from the back as Kelani stepped up to the line, raised the axe with both hands behind her head, and hurled it at the bullseye. The axe thudded against the painted wooden board and clattered to the floor.
Kelani let out a string of swears that could have made milk curdle. The rest of the bridesmaids roared with laughter. They shoved another axe into Kelani’s hands, urging her to try again.
“Plant your feet!”
“Don’t take your eye off the target!”
Kelani closed one eye and aimed again. The axe whirled down the bay. The blade slammed into the bullseye and stuck.
The bridesmaids went wild. They pounded Kelani’s back and slapped her butt like a bunch of drunk frat boys. As the server delivered another round of tequila shots, another woman stepped up to the throwing line.
“Hey, ladies,” I said, stepping into their midst. “Sorry to interrupt the fun, but can I—”
“Jacqueline!” Kelani tugged me against her side. The taller girl dwarfed me. My head barely came to her chest. “Did you see me throw? Did you?”
“I saw,” I said. “Great job. Can I ask you
