The Art of Love: Origins of Sinner's Grove (9 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

December 1899

San Francisco

“I
don’t know what to tell you, sir. We were able to track that fellow Ed Barlow and found that he’d been killed in a bar fight. But I’m very sorry to say your wife and little girl seem to have vanished.” The Pinkerton agent laid his papers on Gus’s desk and stood there tapping his fingers on the hat he held in his hands. No doubt he felt like horse manure having to tell his client a thing like that.
Or maybe he thinks I did ’em in
. Gus snorted. He’d asked Mr. Fenton to meet him at his suite at the Palace Hotel with the detective’s final report. Fenton had been searching for Mattie and Annabelle for two long years with nothing to show for it, and the trail had apparently grown stone cold.

Gus tapped a pen on his desk blotter. “What about that Robert Everton character? You’re telling me after all this time you’ve had no leads, no clues, no inkling as to where he might be, either?”

“We did turn up a Robert Everton, sir, but he died of old age back in Cheyenne six months ago. His family had no idea who Mattie Wolff was. They’d never heard of her.”

“Hell and damnation,” Gus muttered. Sooner or later you had to cut your losses. He stood up and shook the detective’s hand. “Well, thank you for your work.” He handed the man a bank draft. “I hope this covers your last round of expenses.”

The detective looked down at the amount; his eyes grew big and he swallowed. “Uh, yessir. I imagine this covers it and then some.”

Gus smiled grimly. “Just don’t spend it all in one place.”

“Sir,” the agent said, looking at Gus with something akin to pity in his eyes, “I just want you to know from all of us at the Pinkerton Agency, you’ve been a good and generous client and we’re grateful for your business. We’re sorry as can be we couldn’t find your loved ones, but we’re still gonna keep our eyes peeled. If anything turns up…anything at all, we’ll be sure to let you know.”

“I appreciate that, I surely do,” Gus said, shaking Fenton’s hand. He saw the detective out, returned to his desk, and poured himself a Jack Daniels. “You’d cost me a couple of sawbucks back in Dawson,” he mused aloud as he held up the glass. He downed it in one swallow.

The anguish he’d felt over Mattie and Annabelle’s disappearance had dulled over time. Early on his fears of foul play had been relieved, since any homicides concerning women had been followed up on. The mystery of their whereabouts had become virtually the only downside in Gus’s otherwise fortunate life.

Two additional years in the Yukon had made him richer than ever. He’d sensed the gold strikes would soon play out on the Klondike and he was right; even now the rush was on to Nome. Shorty was headed that way, hoping he’d win the lottery twice in one lifetime. He and Gus had parted ways as lifelong friends.

But mining had always been a means to an end, and Gus had parlayed his stakes into other winning gambits. He’d gone in with C.J. Berry to market a new method for placer mining using steam and it was already reaping profits. With John Anderson he’d started a mining supply company flexible enough to follow the rush wherever it led. And he and his partner Porter Wilson had moved their restaurant from Dawson City to Seattle and were about to open another in San Francisco. Porter knew good beef when he saw it and could cook up a steak like nobody’s business. It was a surefire formula for success.

Gus was starting talks with other investors to launch a new steamship line to Asia, and he’d bought several pieces of prime real estate in California. No doubt about it: when it came to making money, he’d come a long way from the kid whose family couldn’t afford to feed him.

Once he’d left the north for good, he’d decided San Francisco would indeed make the best home base. It was close to all his business interests, but more important, it was the last place Mattie and Annabelle had been seen. In his more fanciful moments he imagined turning a corner and there they’d be, running up to him, pretty as a picture. At this point, seemed like everything about Mattie and Annabelle belonged to a world of make-believe.

He poured another shot and drank it. The whiskey went down smooth and fired up his insides.

A new century was days away. The world was changing and it was a great time to be alive. Except for one thing: who could he share it with?

Willing women weren’t the problem. Hell, he could bed one right now and wouldn’t even have to pay for it. But finding someone to come home to every night, to make a family with, was another kettle of fish. He’d long since faced the fact that he and Mattie hadn’t been right for each other. But she’d been a good woman and given him a beautiful little girl. Part of him wanted to wring her neck for taking Annabelle away. But the bigger part of him hoped and prayed that wherever they were, they were happy. He held on to that thought with all the strength he had, and braced himself to face the future alone.

PART TWO

The Artist

CHAPTER EIGHT

July 1896

New York

“
A
melia Ruth, what do you think you’re doing?”

Her father’s harsh tone broke Lia’s concentration as she worked to fill in the shading of the charcoal study she’d begun an hour earlier. She closed her eyes and said nothing in the hope that he would go away, but instead he came farther into the library, stopping by the window seat where she was positioned to capture the afternoon light.

“I’m working on a landscape for my drawing class,” she finally responded. “I’m taking advantage of the morning light, you see.”

“What I see is that you’re wasting time on nonsense when you should be seeing Madame LeFever for your fitting. Didn’t you and your sister have an appointment this morning?”

Lia pressed her lips together, willing herself to remain calm. “I cancelled it,” she said. “I think this marriage is, as you would say, ‘ill advised.’” She put down her sketch and turned to him directly. “Father, I don’t think I can do this. Truly. Emma loves George with all her heart, and he loves her. It’s abhorrent for me to marry him when they should be together.”

Her father, dressed impeccably as always, began to pace the room. He was an elegant, small-statured man with dark hair and a substantial mustache, now infused with gray. He rarely raised his voice to either his servants or his daughters, but everyone who knew Richard Monmouth Bennett sensed immediately where they stood in relation to him, which could usually be described as “beneath.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, your sister is already married,” he said. “And even if she weren’t, young George is the last of his line and needs an heir. Emma isn’t capable of providing such, and you are therefore elected to take her place.”

An incipient feeling of despair began its familiar journey from the pit of her stomach up into her throat. She already knew every step in this choreography, but for reasons she didn’t understand, she felt powerless to change the routine. Yet she tried. She always tried.

“Father, doesn’t it matter to you that I don’t love George and that he doesn’t love me?”

“What do you know of love?” Her father practically spat the words. “You are, what, twenty-two? You have no idea what that word means in its deepest, most spiritual, most heavenly sense. And trust me, you do not want to know, for when you lose that love, it is a pain that defies description.”

As if he had struck her, Lia felt the blow. “I know you loved Mama dearly,” she said.

Her father glared at her. “Beyond measure,” he said. “And when Catherine died, a very large part of me, the very best part of me, died with her. You were, I’m sorry to say, inadequate compensation.”

Lia looked down at her charcoal-stained fingers. The sense of shame never lessened. “I know I could never replace her, but—”

“Your mother was a saint, and there was only one thing she ever asked for. You know what that was, don’t you?”

Lia nodded. “To see our family joined with the Powells…but with Emma and George, Father, not with me.”

“Enough,” her father ordered. “The situation…was such that Emma needed to help the family by marrying Hiram. She did her duty, and now you will do yours.” He pinned Lia’s violet eyes with his own dark orbs and delivered the
coup de gr
â
ce.
“You owe this to your mother. It’s the least you can do.”

The conversation ended where it always did, with Lia turning silent. Her father left the room, but before exiting he turned to deliver one more directive. “Madame LeFever and your sister will be here at six o’clock this evening. You will be ready and cooperative when they arrive.”