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“Cruthers.”

“Miss Cruthers, we at Barrow and Sons sell the finest cuts of stew meat in the Midwest.” I’m at your service the next time you’re in Minnesota. His smile returned, along with—oh God, there it was again, that hypnotizing indentation under his eye. “For a few pennies, you’ll feast like a queen. What can I get you?”

“How is your daughter?” Maggie couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth. She hadn’t even known they were there, plotting their escape.

Theodore froze entirely, one hand on the towel at his shoulder. “My daughter?”

Too late to not be incandescently mortified now. “As I recall, you have one.” The baby had lived. The mother had died and the baby had lived. She was fairly certain. Oh God, please don’t let me have asked after his dead daughter.

“She is quite well, thank you for asking. Toddling around with no fear, which is, ironically, terrifying. She’s almost two, so it’s taken her a little longer than usual, but she got there in the end.”

Thank you, Lord.

“Miss Cruthers, what brings you to Roslyn?” Maggie snapped back to attention, leveling her gaze at him. His mouth was quirked up, no dimple in sight, and he was cocking his head to one side. A curl of hair had fallen across one eye. Her pulse thudded in her wrists.

“My brothers and I have moved here.” She stepped closer to the counter. “We’re leasing the old photography studio on Bailey Street. Can I get a pound of the stew meat?”

“Certainly.” He turned and opened an icebox near the door he had appeared from, pulling a clean metal scoop off the wall and dipping it in. He dumped two scoopfuls into a paper bag and tied it shut with twine from a spool next to the scoop. “I myself was in Madison on a business trip,” he supplied, unnecessarily. “My brothers and I wanted to see different shops around the Midwest, you know, see how we compare. Thought it would be a laugh to go all together. It can be difficult, working with family, but of course you know that.”

“Indeed. Surely that’s more than a pound,” she said, taking the sack from him.

“On the house,” he said, winking. “Now we’re square.”

He had not been able to eat a false conversation with his dead wife so the equality of the exchange was up for debate, but Maggie didn’t think it would be prudent to point that out.

“You’re at Jensen and Porter’s old spot, then?” Theodore asked, wiping his hands on that bloody towel. She frowned.

“Yes, we just got in yesterday.”

“You and your brothers.”

“That’s right.”

His arms crossed again and he leaned against the wall. “Are they the men you, ah, worked with?”

Maggie felt herself stiffen. “Yes, that’s them.” A vague sense of panic climbed her spine, the familiar fear for Tom and Bridgers swelling in her chest. She knew what could happen to men like them if they were found out, and the idea paralyzed her. “Why?”

He smiled. “Just asking. Have you had any problems with ghouls?”

The change of topic hit Maggie like a slap to the face. “Ghouls?”

“Oh, yes.” Theodore balled up the towel and tossed it into a basket on the other end of the store. “You know it’s haunted, I assume?”

I knew sheets could be haunted, she thought, alarmed. “Oh?”

“Oh, yes. Due to what Jensen and Porter’s specialty was.”

She was losing track of this conversation. The man should come with a map. “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you.”

He approached the counter and dropped his arms down, bracing himself next to the register and leaning forward. “The pair’s bread-and-butter was post-mortem.” He winked. Again. She was so distracted by it that the information didn’t sink in for a moment.

“Post-mortem photography?” She recoiled. “Surely not. That’s … repugnant.”

Theodore shrugged. “I suppose it’s easier to take a picture of a corpse than a living person. Less moving around. At any rate, that was what they were known for. Families brought the bodies into the studio and one of them—Jensen, I think—got quite good at propping them up to look life-like. Then the family would just cart the body away again for burial, with a souvenir to remember them by.” His smile was bright, a ray of sun breaking through this bizarre, macabre tale.

“This is all very morbid,” Maggie said, clutching her package of stew meat. She glanced at it, silently apologizing to the cow. She imagined its loved ones hadn’t the opportunity to pose its dead body for a photograph.

“Not for you, surely.” He dipped his head, and Maggie felt her cheeks heat. “Perhaps you can ask them to leave. Move onto the light and all that. What with your gift for, er, talking to them.”