Josiah's Treasure (28 page)

Her eyes conducted a hasty inspection of Sarah. “Is she a servant of yours run off?”

The woman asked the question as though she’d posed it dozens of times before and expected Sarah to fib in her answer, as well. But the fact she asked suggested Anne was here, at the Christian Women’s Benevolent House, and gave Sarah hope. She’d searched for hours and her feet and back hurt. Almost as much as her heart.

“Anne is a student of mine. I want to help her.” Sarah’s hand slipped across the door, closer to the edge. The woman, stern as she appeared, wouldn’t slam the door on her fingers. She hoped. “Speak to Mrs. Hill about me. Please. My name is Sarah . . . Thayer.” The name Rosamund Hill would remember her by.

Her earnestness must have impressed the woman, because she retreated and beckoned Sarah to enter. “I’ll tell her you’re in the parlor.”

She gestured to her left, to a cramped room crowded with shabby chairs and low padded stools, tables with uneven legs draped with tatted covers to hide the scars in the wood surface below, and hunter-green wallpaper that made the room appear dark even though sun was slanting through the blinds. The faint scent of mold and turpentine cleaning solution drifted into the entry area.

Sarah thanked the woman, who left to fetch the founder of the House. Through the closed connecting door, a whispering arose in the dining room located behind the parlor. The sound of many women’s voices, but none recognizable as Anne’s.

Within moments, Rosamund Hill arrived. She was tall, her auburn hair a pile atop her head that added to her height, and her hazel eyes soft as a doe’s, keen as a hawk’s. When she grasped Sarah’s hand, her bare fingers were strong. Just as Sarah recalled. All of it. Even the smell of the room.

“Miss Thayer. It has been many years.” Her voice was as lush as a mezzo soprano’s. A legacy of her time spent on the stage.

“I was hopeful you would remember me. I’m glad you do.”

“I never forget any of the women who cross that threshold.”

Sarah had been very desperate when she’d crossed that threshold, nowhere else to go and just a few paintings to her name. Before she had found Josiah. “I’m Sarah Whittier now, however. The name I was born with. I’ve shed that other name and that past.”

“Sometimes the past clings to us whether we wish it to or not.” Mrs. Hill’s tone held no condemnation, only understanding. She indicated that Sarah should sit and took one of the chairs across from her, descending with an elegance that belied the ratty nature of her surroundings. “How can I help you, Miss Whittier?”

“One of my employees has fled . . . a difficult situation.” Unaware of what Anne might have revealed, Sarah didn’t dare say too much. “I asked at several other charity homes, looking for her. I should have come here first.”

“Stella says you are asking after Miss Cavendish.”

“She’s here then.” Sarah started to rise. “Can you take me to see her?”

Mrs. Hill waved at her to sit again. “Miss Cavendish is resting. She was very agitated when she arrived this afternoon. She needs sleep more than anything right now.”

“But she’s in danger,” Sarah explained, reluctantly resuming her spot on the chair.

“She is safe here.” Mrs. Hill swept her hand in front of her, a gesture to encompass the house, tucked in a quiet part of the Western Addition, unmarked and unknown except to those who needed it most. “She has explained her situation to me, Miss Whittier. It’s one I’ve heard many times.”

“So you understand why I want to help her.”

“She needs a chance to have some time to herself and not have someone else prodding her and telling her what to do or where to go.”

“I’m only worried for her safety,” Sarah said, defending her actions. But she wasn’t certain she had been paying attention to what Anne truly wanted and needed. Maybe she’d only been thinking about her own needs.

“Her man won’t find her any time soon. But I agree the longer Miss Cavendish stays, the greater the risk.” Mrs. Hill reached across the gap between them. “I will send for you in the morning if she wants to speak with you. I expect she will. And then the
two
of you can decide what is best for her.”

“You have always known the best path to take, Mrs. Hill.”

The woman shrugged off the compliment. “I recall advising you to take that job with your family’s friend. Did that work out as you hoped?”

Sarah’s breath hitched in her throat. “That remains to be seen.”

H
e couldn’t believe his eyes, but there she was. Strolling down the road as pretty as you please like it was some fine spring morning, instead of gray and dank and threatening rain, with a sharp wind whistling off the hills to the west of town. Like she had no cares in the world, another woman with her, the hoods of their cloaks pulled tight around their faces against the wind. Or, in her case, against being spotted. Sure as he was standing there, she didn’t want to be seen. Not by him. Maybe not by anyone.

“Then you shouldn’t have gone out for yer morning stroll, should you have, Annie girl?” he muttered into the wind as a cart rattled past, its driver eyeing him.

Frank clenched his cigar between taut lips and inhaled. It was his last one. He’d miss them. Manuel had gone Jack Tar on him, signing on to a merchant vessel because the “lure of the sea” had finally caught up to him, according to a mutual acquaintance. How sentimental. More than likely he’d run afoul of the cops again. But with Manuel gone, his best source of Havanas had evaporated as quick as fog burning away under a hot sun. If he wanted more, he’d have to buy them. That took money, something he didn’t have much of. And for that, he blamed her. She’d run off before she had finished her end of the bargain, and he still didn’t have that Cady gold.

“I knew you would.” Frank bit down, snipping off a piece of
the cigar end. He spit it onto the ground. But he’d found her. Hadn’t been too hard. After a bit of encouragement, the barkeep at the saloon had guessed where she would be, though it had taken most of the night, a few threats, and the ragged edge of a broken beer bottle to get him to speak up.

The two women turned a corner. He’d lose track of them if he didn’t follow. Lose his opportunity.

He pushed away from the lamp pole, a bitter smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and discarded the stub of his cigar. “I knew you’d go soft and want to protect that Whittier woman in the end, Annie girl. You’d better be thinkin’ of your own protection now.”

It
was
him.

She inhaled, so abruptly, so loudly, that the woman at her side noticed.

“What is it, Anne? Have a stitch?” Hester asked.

“Um . . .” How could she answer? With the truth? Hester should understand, though, like most of the women at Mrs. Hill’s. The women who’d suffered from men. But to admit Frank had found her would be to admit just how foolhardy she’d been to suggest to Hester that they go for a stroll, her tiny attic room becoming too much to bear, like a prison cell even if it was a warm and safe prison cell. She’d felt trapped inside that house, anxious and sweaty. Afraid of this very moment.

And she’d gone out, only to walk right into her worst fear.

“It’s my man,” Anne replied, her pace already so quick that Hester, with her shorter legs, could hardly keep up. “He’s behind us.”

She wanted to look back, but she sensed that any acknowledgment of his presence would encourage him to chase her down like a coyote on a jackrabbit.

“Then let’s run back to the house,” Hester suggested, starting
to pant. “If we cut through here we can get back quickly. We might even lose him.”

She pointed out an alleyway, narrow between a scattering of wood houses, sloppy from an overnight rain.

Anne’s heart pounded. What choice did she have? She was a jackrabbit and he, a coyote. The chase was underway whether she liked it or not.

She grabbed Hester’s hand. “Go! Now!”

“I believe you do have mail, Mr. Cady.” The desk clerk poked around in the wall of cubbyholes, each one marked with a brass room number plate, withdrawing two envelopes, one the distinctive muted yellow of the Western Union Telegraph Company. “Here you go. The telegram was delivered just this morning. I was going to bring it to you over breakfast, if you hadn’t stopped by.” He beamed over the high standards of customer service extended by the Occidental Hotel and handed the mail to Daniel. “And a Mr. Sinclair was here right before you came downstairs. He said he would meet you in the dining room to discuss important business.”

Not the sort of company he wanted to share breakfast with, but the lawyer would be unavoidable. “Thank you. Perhaps you can send someone to tell Mr. Sinclair I’ll be with him shortly.”

Daniel stepped out of the way, dodging a pair of men headed for the bar at the rear of the ground floor. Not even noon, but there was never a bad time to drink in San Francisco, as far as some folks were concerned.

The first envelope bore the postmark of a Chicago area postal office and one of his sisters’ handwriting on the outside. Daniel smiled. He could readily envision Lily or Marguerite—as twins, it was hard to tell the difference in their penmanship—bent over the secretary desktop in the Grays’ sunlit front parlor, all seriousness. The girls, mostly Lily, had written often, the letters
catching up to him at odd times and in odd places, some never catching up at all. Notes about their studies or the latest happenings at the Grays’ house. Sometimes even snippets of gossip about the Hunts, which Lily would manage to wheedle out of Mrs. Gray and never hesitate to share with Daniel. He could hear her voice in his head, soft and certain, trying not to sound worried or hurt that she and Marguerite felt isolated and lonely without him around to cheer them. The trip, though, had been necessary. Even at ten, they both understood that the best future possible was the goal. His driving, unrelenting goal.

Or had it been revenge, plain and simple?

With a faint frown, Daniel tore open the envelope and skimmed the contents. Lily started with news that the Grays’ flower gardens were in full bloom and that their King Charles spaniel had born puppies. That she and Marguerite had been invited to a party at a wealthy neighbor’s, a thrilling and unexpected treat. Daniel reread the line. Maybe Chicago society had already heard he would be returning with assets sufficient to erase the distasteful memory of Josiah Cady. Money could smooth over even the worse offense.

Frown deepening, Daniel finished reading the letter. Lily closed with a solemn remark about the shock of learning that their father was deceased and that she and Marguerite were praying for his soul, as well as praying for Daniel’s safe and speedy return home. There were no further words of grief and no indication how the Hunts felt about the news, if they’d even heard about Josiah’s death yet. When they did, they would most likely be pleased and relieved. Archibald Jackson had hazarded a guess that they were embarrassed to have been stuck with Josiah as a son-in-law.
Mortified
would have been a more accurate word.

The tinkle of a piano got underway in the bar as Daniel ran a thumb through the Western Union Telegraph Office envelope. It had come from his grandfather.

D—

Have been contacted by reporter from the Tribune. Wants interview about J, whom Grays have informed me has passed. Apparent rumors about gold. Trust you are taking care of story at that end.

A. Hunt

Daniel crumpled the telegram and shoved it into his pocket alongside the neatly folded letter from his sister. Archibald Jackson’s tentacles spread far and wide in his goal to dredge a story out of a rumor about a stash of nuggets. Far enough to reach Chicago.

Pulling in a breath, Daniel climbed the stairs leading to the second-floor dining room. He would take care of Jackson later. Right now, he had to deal with Sinclair.

The lawyer had been shown a central table, an honor usually reserved for long-term guests of the hotel. He must have thrown Daniel’s name around in order to snag it.

“Cady, over here.” Sinclair muscled his rotund frame out of his chair and signaled to him. “Hope you don’t mind an early morning intrusion, but I need you to look over some papers for the hearing on Monday.”