A Race to Splendor (43 page)

Chapter 33

She was spittin’ angry when I saw her, lad, and she didn’t say a word about leaving for France,” Angus declared to J.D., who was sitting behind his new desk in the well-appointed Bay View basement-level office and holding a letter in his hand. “What have you done to the poor girl to make her flee like this?”

“Nothing… lately.” J.D. was far more upset by Amelia’s abruptly departing San Francisco than he was willing to admit to his loyal comrade-in-arms. He extended Amelia’s letter toward Angus. “Read this if you don’t believe me. It’s all very matter-of-fact. She says she’s leaving for Paris immediately—which I guess is today.”

“She’s gone? But I’ve asked the lass to marry me! Two or three times, in fact,” Angus protested, “and, by the way, she never gave me a proper answer on my latest attempt.”

J.D. was unsettled to realize that Amelia had disclosed to him Angus’s first proposal—but not any subsequent ones.

“The first time I asked her,” Angus continued with considerable agitation, “she talked about not wanting to change her life—or mine. She also said she didn’t need any man to protect her or to do what she could do for herself.”

“Well,
that
sounds typical for Amelia.”

“The last time I proposed, I thought it wise to give her plenty of time to think it over. And then this morning, she prattled on about men putting shackles on women and controlling their inheritances and all sorts of other nonsense, before she stormed down the street.
You
must have said something
to her, J.D., to make her go off like that.”

“I haven’t spoken to her today at all, or even yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

J.D. knew full well, of course, at least one reason why Amelia might be furious. She must have read about his engagement to Matilda.

“You didn’t see her at breakfast?” Angus demanded skeptically.

“No, I didn’t. I had a very early appointment this morning and never saw a soul around here. I even left before the work crew arrived.” He retrieved Amelia’s letter from Angus and scrutinized it again. “By the time I returned and opened this, she was gone. She’d already directed Loy to send her belongings to Oakland and officially signed off on everything else here at the Bay View.” He pointed to a sheaf of invoices spread across his desk as proof.

“Well, even if the hotel is finished,” said Angus, scanning the letter addressed to J.D., “you’d think she’d at least say good-bye.”

J.D. silently agreed and wondered, suddenly, if Kemp had made good on his threat to pass around copies of the photographs taken in China Alley. Surely, the man couldn’t have sent such filth to a woman? And even if he had, Amelia wasn’t faint of heart. She’d already
seen
for herself most of what the pictures portrayed.

No, what had probably prompted her abrupt departure was that she felt utterly betrayed by what she read in the newspaper.
And well she should,
he thought glumly. In more ways than she even knew.

J.D. glanced down once more at Amelia’s letter, relieved in one sense that it guaranteed that Ezra could not make good on any of his not-so-veiled threats to do her bodily harm. If he tried to track her down, he and his henchmen would discover she’d taken a train for New York today and would soon be sailing to France.

By this time, Angus was pacing the office carpet. “I can’t believe she’d miss the hotel’s opening and even leave here before making sure everything was ready for its debut—unless she was mighty upset.”

J.D. tried not to flinch under his friend’s steady gaze. He needed a moment to think and, for the first time ever, wished Angus would make himself scarce. His presence was both a distraction and another reason to feel like a cad.

“She’s done everything here that was expected of her,” he said, affecting a shrug. “Her duties are at an end, so she appears to be taking a well-deserved holiday. We’re ready to open ahead of schedule.”

“And are you ready for your wedding, as well?” Angus said, eyes narrowing. “Certainly you haven’t forgotten that event, have you, lad? You don’t think perhaps that Amelia’s seeing that engagement announcement in the newspaper triggered this? It certainly surprised and upset
me
! What in blazes possessed you to do such a ridiculous thing? You’ll never get Kemp out of your life at this rate.”

J.D. kept his gaze glued on the letter lying open on his desk and ignored Angus’s probing question.

“I don’t know if Amelia’s even seen the newspaper. She’s been pretty occupied this last little while. I think it’s just as she said. Her job here is finished and so she’s going to France. There’s nothing mysterious in it at all.”

“But do you have any reason to think that the surprise wedding announcement would have shocked or distressed her?” Angus pressed. “You and she working so closely together as you have?”

J.D. looked up and regarded his friend for a long moment. At length he said quietly, “You know, don’t you? Or at least you suspect?”

Angus peered down at his shoes. “I have to say that I’ve wondered at times if the two of you—”

He fell silent.

“Amelia and I… had become close associates over the months of building the hotel,” J.D. admitted. “Or at least, I thought we had. The night we discovered the trunk buried next door with all the valuables, we celebrated with champagne and I… well, one thing led to another and—well…we’re more than just colleagues.”

Angus held both hands up as a clear indication he didn’t wish J.D. to elaborate.

“I’m sorry, Angus. If it means anything to you, she’d already told me she’d declined your first offer of marriage.”

His friend looked defeated. “She seems to think that if she married, she’d be turned into a domestic slave or something.”

“It happens,” J.D. said with a wry smile.

“Well, maybe this is all for the best. I don’t want to wed a lass who regards marriage as a prison sentence.” Angus declared. He regarded J.D. speculatively. “She probably turned you down too, didn’t she? Figured you’d put shackles on her as well. And then you turned right around and asked Matilda for her hand, just to show her, and Amelia’s pride is hurt. That’s probably why she left.”

“You’re a far more honorable man than I, Dr. McClure. I haven’t even had a
chance
to propose marriage to Amelia Bradshaw—or anything else. I’ve been far too busy fending off Kemp and his hooligans and building this hotel. And besides, I’m supposed to be engaged to Matilda Kemp, remember?”

“
Why
, I ask again, have you done such a fool thing, Jamie? If you want my penny farthing on the matter—and I’m sure you don’t—I think Amelia Bradshaw fell in love with you, and you with her, and now you’ve gone and made a terrible mess of everything by saying you’ll marry Matilda to placate Kemp! Unless there’s a part of this you haven’t told me, it just doesn’t make sense!”

Before J.D. could craft a response, both men heard the pounding of heavy footsteps and then a loud male voice booming down the hallway.

“You down here, Thayer?”

The two men inside the hotel office exchanged looks that signaled they both were relieved Ezra Kemp apparently hadn’t heard the last of their conversation. When the man himself appeared at the threshold, he gestured toward Angus that he wanted the doctor to make himself scarce and leave the office.

J.D. said, “It seems Ezra here wishes to have a private word.”

“If you need anything, laddie,” Angus said, walking past Kemp, “I’ll be in the back garden having a look at all the plantings Amelia ordered laid out. I was rather partial to roses when I lived in Scotland, but I never have had time for gardening ’til now.” He shut the door behind him.

Kemp wasted no time in getting down to business. “I certainly hope, for your sake, Thayer, that Henry Bradshaw’s scrawny little baggage isn’t the root cause of the recent unpleasantness I’ve suffered at the hands of the Committee of Fifty.”

He eased his bulk into the chair opposite J.D.

“What kind of unpleasantness, Ezra?” J.D. folded Amelia’s note and slid it in a drawer.

“I’ve been removed
from the Committee,” he declared bitterly. “Your own father says Spreckels and the Secret Service want to talk to me. Apparently, you’ve gone and tattled to your daddy and now his friends say they don’t want to buy lumber from me anymore unless I release you from your engagement and stop threatening to bash your head in if you don’t marry Matilda.” Kemp leaned against the edge of J.D.’s desk. “I said to your father, ‘Fine… don’t buy my lumber, but your son is still marrying my daughter.’ I didn’t tell him how I know this, but I’ll tell
you
.”

J.D. shook his head. “Matilda’s marrying me will do you no good because you keep forgetting one thing, Ezra. I’m the prodigal son in the Thayer family. All those fancy folks you want to impress won’t treat you a whit more cordially for linking your name to mine.”

“Forget all that!” Kemp said. “When you marry my daughter, I’ll be one step closer to taking back my stake in this place.”

“And why would I allow that?” J.D. responded calmly. “And besides, you don’t
have
a stake in the hotel. You’ve been paid back in full on your investment in a gambling club that doesn’t even exist anymore. I’ve already delivered funds to repay you for all I owed for lumber supplies on the hotel your thugs arranged to have burned down. The main point is, though, that Matilda doesn’t want to marry me and I don’t want to marry her. You can’t
will
it to happen. The wedding’s off. And I would strongly suggest you stay out of the gambling halls and Chinese brothels, go back to Mill Valley, and keep your head down. Spreckels and those Secret Service men mean business.”

“It
is
that Bradshaw slut, isn’t it?” Kemp demanded, making no pretense of controlling his temper. “Joe Kavanaugh says he thinks you definitely got into her knickers. You’re such a fool! She probably wants from you what I want from you—this hotel. Who knows what her father said to her before he died?”

“You’re wrong. She gave up any claims to the hotel long ago.”

“You figure by cozying up to her, you can keep her from
making
any claims, should she act like her sex, change her mind later, and drag you back into court!”

“I paid Amelia Bradshaw a good salary to build this place and she’s never, in all this time, challenged my right to reconstruct the Bay View.”

“And she won’t, damn her. Because if I even see you and her together—I’ll know you double-crossed your old partner—and I’ll make sure that the next ferry ride she takes will be her last.” Kemp leaned forward again and poked a stubby finger at J.D.’s shirtfront. “You know I can make it happen, so you’d better marry Matilda on the Fourth of July. Don’t forget, J.D, lots of people disappear on the bay. Remember what happened to your own grandfather.”

“He wasn’t pushed by the likes of you. He jumped.”

J.D. stared down at his desktop while he attempted to keep his temper—not to mention a surge of fear—in check. Kemp was perfectly capable of what he was threatening to do to Amelia—and capable of covering it up. The question was, would he bother to send his minions all the way to Paris?

Kemp smiled faintly. “That Harold Jasper, the purser on the
Berkeley,
owes me a few favors,” he said. “All I have to do is say the word and it’ll look
as if
she
jumped. ‘All upset that Thayer diddled her and then planned to marry Kemp’s daughter,’ he’ll tell everyone, including that reporter friend of yours.”

Ezra heaved himself out of the chair and headed for the office door. From the threshold he added, “Like it or not, we’re partners in this hotel again, J.D. And we’ll seal the deal Thursday night at your wedding, won’t we now?”

“How can you be sure you can make the bride do your bidding, Ezra?”

“The same way I can guarantee you will. She wouldn’t want anything to happen to her good friend, Emma, just like you don’t want Amelia Bradshaw to meet with an untimely accident.”

“Jesus, Kemp!” J.D. said, banging a fist on the desk.

“I beat it out of Matilda what’s been going on in that studio of hers,” Kemp exclaimed, his face the hue of claret. “And, by the way—I know
you
know about it too, ’cause I beat
that
out of her as well. All the more reason for the nuptials to take place on the Fourth, as scheduled. I’ll even give you those glass photographic plates for a wedding present. Once you two are married, there’ll be no need for anyone else ever again to see those pictures of you in China Alley, and no one need ever know about my daughter’s filthy little secret.”

“Filthy?” J.D. laughed harshly. “Who’s filthy? You’re the one who invested in a brothel that supplies unwilling virgins and little boys to special customers—a legacy from your harlot mother, I suppose. Or was it that brute you called a father?”

“Shut up!”

“And where
is
Miss Stivers, may I ask?”