Josiah's Treasure

by Nancy Herriman

  The pieces fell into place. Anne and her warnings to be careful. Her man who was so dangerous. “You’re Frank.”

  “That I am.” He leaned down. His breath smelled as bad as the rest of him. “And I still want to know where that hidey-hole is. And don’t tell me there isn’t one, because I know the Irishman who put it in.”

  “There isn’t any gold in any ‘hidey-hole.’”

  “I say there is gold. Even that reporter thinks there is, asking all his questions. So I think you”—he jabbed her in the chest with his fist, grabbed the candlestick from her grasp, and threw it across the room, extinguishing the flame—“need to show me exactly where.”

  Pain streaked through Sarah’s ribs, causing her to gasp for air.

  “Search wherever you want. I won’t stop you. I don’t own the house anymore and don’t care what happens to it.” She did care about Josiah’s beautiful house and all his beautiful possessions, but if Frank believed she wouldn’t interfere, maybe he wouldn’t hurt her. “Josiah has a safe in his upstairs study. I’ll take you to it.” She was about to repeat that there wasn’t a treasure inside, but figured Frank wouldn’t believe her any more now than before.

  He thrust his chin toward the staircase and retrieved the lantern. “Lead the way.” When she hesitated to turn her back to him, he tapped the bulge in his coat.

  Sarah hurried up the stairs as quick as her quivering legs would take her, wanting to keep a safe distance from Frank. His boots thumped on the treads, and he grunted when he reached the landing.

  “Maybe I should have a look-see around the other rooms up here too.” He peered into the shadows beyond the circle of light cast by the lantern. The door to her room stood ajar, as did the one to her work studio, the crates hulking shapes in the dark. She couldn’t bear to think of him breaking them open and possibly destroying the contents within.

  “In here,” she said, indicating the study. “The safe is in here.”

  Unlatching the door, Sarah went inside. Frank surged ahead of her.

  Setting the lantern on the desk, he issued a low whistle, admiring the fine furnishings, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “Well, ain’t this a fancy room? Annie told me it was nice here, but she never said how nice.”

  Sarah skirted Frank, hulking in the center of the room. “Let me unlock the safe and show you it contains nothing of interest to you. It’s mostly insurance policies and property deeds. Some account books too.” About a month after Josiah had died, she’d removed the few hundred dollars stored within and taken the money to the bank.

  She dialed the combination and turned the handle.

  “Here.” Frank bumped her aside. “I’ll check what’s inside on my own.”

  He scanned the papers, discarding one after another onto the floor, followed by ledger books and a handful of correspondence he’d kept with Uncle Henry in Los Angeles. The longer Frank’s hunt came up empty, the angrier he got.

  “There’s nothing in here!” The last of the papers fluttered to the carpet.

  Sarah’s heart pounded. She retreated toward the door. She should flee, but how far could she get? “There is no treasure.”

  His face and neck red with fury, Frank lurched over to the bookshelves and tossed book after book behind him. Sarah jumped out of the way to keep from being struck.

  “Nothin’.” With a sweep of his arm, Frank sent an entire row of science journals flying. “Nothin’. Nothin’.”

  “I tried to tell you.”

  “There has to be somethin’.” He turned to the desk and yanked drawers off their runners. “There’s always somethin’. Too much talk not to be.”

  Frank jerked open another drawer, rattling the desk. He swept Grace Cady’s photograph onto the floor. Josiah’s glass paperweight tumbled off the surface and thudded against the baseboard where it cracked. He was ruining everything.

  Sarah rushed across the room and grabbed Frank’s arm. “Stop. Stop it!”

  He slung her off and reached for the center drawer. It crashed to the floor, the locked box landing atop Grace Cady’s photograph. “What’s this?”

  Frank raised Josiah’s leaded crystal inkwell. “No, don’t!” Sarah shouted.

  He smashed the box’s lid. Two bundles of letters, tied with pink ribbons, and a small well-thumbed Bible fell out. Sarah stared. Those were the contents of the locked box?

  “This is it?” Frank cursed and glowered at Sarah. She was trembling so much she feared her legs would collapse beneath her.

  “That’s it.”

  His gaze narrowed. “Well, I think we just need to keep lookin’.”

  Grabbing Sarah by the neck of her robe, he hauled her out of the room.

  Daniel pitched the fare to the cab driver and scanned the windows of Sarah’s house, light visible through chinks in the study blinds. She hadn’t gone to bed yet. Thank heavens.

  “Do you want me to wait, sir?” the driver asked, his coat collar snug against his chin. He didn’t look happy about the prospect of waiting in the chilly night air for an intoxicated passenger.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be. Go ahead and leave.”

  The driver touched fingertips to hat brim and drove off. Sucking in the cool air to help clear his head, Daniel climbed the steps. A shadow separated itself from the house next door, turned into a slim boy wearing a blue tunic.

  He loped across the grass separating the two houses. “I am happy you are here, Mr. Cady, sir.”

  “Isn’t it a tad late to be hanging around on porches, Ah Mong?”

  “I heard noise and I think . . . I know that man has come back.”

  “What man?” Daniel asked, his brain not functioning as well as it ought. I’ll never touch another drop of liquor again. “What are you talking about?”

  “That man who broke into Miss Sarah’s house. He is here again.”

  “He’s supposed to be in prison. He can’t be here.” He wasn’t so drunk he’d misunderstood Ah Mong, though. His heart began to race.

  Ah Mong shook his head violently enough to set his braid to swinging. “I saw him. I am not wrong.”

  “But Sarah . . .” He looked up at the house. Were there two shadows in the study? “She’s in there. With him.”

  Daniel rushed the steps two at a time, Ah Mong matching his pace. Daniel pulled off his coat and wrapped it around his fist, preparing to smash in the door glass.

  “I have the key, Mr. Cady. You do not need to break the door.” From deep within a hidden pocket of his loose trousers, Ah Mong produced a key. “Mrs. McGinnis left it with me before she got on the boat.”

  They crept inside. “I don’t have a lantern,” said Daniel, listening for noise. He heard raised voices upstairs and the thud of objects hitting the floor.

  Then came Sarah’s shouts and he didn’t stop to listen for any more. “Get the police, Ah Mong.” He reached for the railing and rushed up the stairs.

  Frank punched the heel of his boot through the crate filled with her paints, splintering wood.

  “This is my studio, my things!” Sarah cried, huddled by the door. “There isn’t anything you’d want in here!”

  “And I think there is!” he spat, slapping her hard across the face.

  She stumbled sideways, dizzy, her cheek burning. He’s going to kill me. I am not ready to die, Lord. Save me. Help me. Please.

  Tears clouded her vision. “There aren’t any nuggets—”

  She didn’t finish the sentence as Daniel charged into the room, launching himself at Frank. Frank screeched, a howl of anger, followed by an explosion, the flash of gunpowder. Searing pain knocking her backward.

  And blackness.

  Twenty-Seven

  The pistol shot was deafening, stunning Daniel for a moment. The intruder gaped at Sarah as she fell backward, her arm grazing Daniel, her head striking the broken end of a packing crate.

  “Sarah!” Daniel screamed, dropping to his knees beside her. He pulled aside her robe. Beneath her rib cage, a stain of re
d spread across the chemise, but she was still breathing. “Sarah.”

  The intruder fumbled with his revolver. The cylinder had jammed. Daniel jumped up and lunged for him, knocking him against one of the tables in the room, the pistol flying from his hand. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

  Ah Mong ran into the room. “Miss Sarah!”

  In the moment Daniel’s attention was drawn to the boy, the intruder broke free from his grasp and staggered toward the doorway.

  “Ah Mong, stay with her.” Daniel gave chase. The man took the stairs two at a time, down through the hallway and the dining room, out the kitchen door into the garden. If I catch him, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.

  Daniel charged out into the pitch-black garden and spotted the man headed for the rear wall. “Stop!”

  He briefly looked back at Daniel and made an astonishing leap, considering his bulk, his hands grasping the top. If he managed to pull himself over, Daniel would probably lose him.

  Daniel grabbed the man’s legs and held. He kicked at Daniel, a boot heel striking him in the chest. Next door, lantern light turned the yard golden and the neighbor shouted.

  “Get a doctor!” Daniel yelled, not risking a glance toward Mr. Malagisi. He gave a forceful tug, felt the intruder’s hold on the wood slip.

  “There’s one down the street,” Mr. Malagisi shouted back.

  The lantern light vanished, plunging the garden into darkness. Daniel struggled to hold on to the man’s boot. He shouldn’t be out here. He should be with Sarah.

  Blasted whiskey. He couldn’t think straight at all.

  The man kicked again, this time catching Daniel full on the chin, shooting pain through his jaw and head. He stumbled and let go.

  The man scrambled over the fence, dropping into the empty lot behind. Daniel inhaled, forcing the pain away, and leaped for the top of the wall as well. He missed the first time, but at the second try, he secured a hold. Jerking himself upward, he spotted the man running toward the street just as two police officers, their whistles trilling, brought him to a halt.

  Waves of dizziness churned her stomach. She wanted to throw up. She wanted the pain, the burning pain, in her side to go away. She inhaled and it hurt, and her head felt as though it would cleave in half. Where was she? The space around her was dimly lit, shapes casting shadows. Was she dead? Would her side hurt if she was dead?

  Running feet pounded somewhere nearby. And then someone was sliding hands over her head, her side, her arms.

  “Sarah? Sarah, I’m here. The doctor will be here soon. Rest easy. Don’t move.” The voice was frantic, the touch, brisk. She wanted him to go away because he was making her head hurt worse, making the nausea rise to choke her throat. “Do you insist on running into trouble all the time? First you try to drown, now you go ahead and get shot.” His face came in and out of focus. Dark hair, green eyes. She recognized him, vaguely, but couldn’t recall a name. All she felt was pain and dizziness. “Sarah, stay awake. Say something. You have to be all right. For your girls. For all of us. You have to live because I haven’t given you that wretched thousand dollars yet!”

  “Unh.”

  There were more footsteps, and lantern light that made her recoil. “Mr. Cady!” a woman screeched. “Miss Whittier! Oh my. Oh my!”

  The light wobbled. She wished it would go away too.

  “Mrs. Brentwood, bring the doctor here quickly.” The man bending over her was insistent, and his hand had found a cloth to press to her side. The pain. It was excruciating.

  “He’s coming. Oh. Oh.”

  “Don’t faint here. Go out into the hall,” he ordered. “Sarah. Dear God.”

  His voice, his face grew faint. There were more footsteps, more voices. One, commanding and deep, drew near. “Step aside, young man. I have her from here.”

  Her eyelids fluttered as strong hands prodded. And then she remembered no more.

  Daniel paced the length of the hallway outside Sarah’s room and yawned into his hand. The doctor had chased him off last night, audibly sniffing at Daniel and scowling over his drunken condition. But the doctor wasn’t here to chase him off this morning. Ah Mong had answered the door to a miserable Daniel, glowering over an infernal headache.

  I will never drink again.

  Minnie stepped into the hall, closing the bedroom door behind her. She looked surprised to see him there. “Mr. Cady.”

  “How is she?”

  “Still asleep but less restless, I’d say. Phoebe, who seems to know about these things, says it’s good she hasn’t been feverish.” Minnie glanced back at the door. “But I keep thinking it would be better if she’d just wake up.”

  “Maybe I can go in and check—”

  Minnie put out a hand. “The doc said to keep you out. He said”—a smile flitted over her lips—“that you’re just too ornery and loud. You were a bit drunk last night, Mr. Cady.”

  She didn’t have to tell him. A double dose of headache powders had barely dented his suffering. “He did say she was going to be all right, didn’t he?”

  The smile stuck this time. “Indeed he did. Said the bullet really only grazed her side, didn’t even touch bone, and she’s mostly bothered by her concussion, which is best cured by rest and time. Thankfully, because I would’ve hated the thought of her having to go to the hospital.”

  “That is good to hear.” He gazed longingly at the door over her shoulder.

  “You can’t go in, Mr. Cady. You know, I’d say you need to keep busy. Perhaps you should tidy her workroom and maybe Mr. Josiah’s study too,” she suggested, nodding toward a room at the opposite end of the hall. “That wretched Frank Burke made a mess of everything.”

  “You’ll let me know as soon as she wakes up,” said Daniel.

  “Absolutely. And while you’re at it, can you look for the cat? I can’t find him anywhere! He must have run off in all the ruckus.”

  “He’ll come back. He’s got it too good here not to,” Daniel assured her, pretty certain he was talking about Rufus. And not himself.

  At the end of the hall, Sarah’s studio looked like a whirlwind had struck. Daniel picked a half-finished pencil sketch off the floor. A study of roses so finely done it had to be Sarah’s work. Daniel set the sketch on the nearest worktable, stacked supplies, those that weren’t smashed beyond usefulness, alongside. He shoved bits of shattered packing crates into one corner. At least the revolver was gone, picked up by the police last night.

  The doctor had known right away that Sarah’s gunshot wound wasn’t serious, but when Daniel had seen all that blood, he hadn’t been so certain. He’d thought, instead, that he might lose her.

  Daniel flung a piece of broken slat onto the pile. Frankly, Sarah Whittier was too stubborn to die. As pigheaded as she was, she would bound out of that bed in no time, gather her girls around her, and try to open that shop. Determined to the end.

  And he wouldn’t want her to be any different.

  Daniel put his back to the worktable and stared out the window at another beautiful San Francisco morning. He couldn’t stay here. He didn’t want to leave. But back in Chicago a pair of ten-year-old twins were waiting for him to return home, and Sarah was equally committed to her girls and their futures. Duty. They were both willingly chained to it.

  Daniel glanced across the hallway to his father’s study. Another duty to face in a room that had more to do with Josiah than a carved headstone in a cemetery.

  Slowly, he pushed the door open. The sweet scent of cigar smoke rushed like a tide over Daniel, flooding him with memories. How could the space still breathe of Josiah? He went inside, stepping over a handful of magazines blocking the way. Books and papers were scattered everywhere, and writing implements leaked ink onto the rug. The door to a wall safe hung open, its contents tossed to the ground. Daniel picked up an inkwell, righted the reading lamp that had occupied a corner table, straightened a painting that hung at a crooked angle. Even with the mess, Daniel could see what the room had once bee
n—a recreation of the study Josiah had favored at Hunt House, only smaller in scale.

  The blasted man had left Chicago but taken part of it with him. Just like the lilies in the garden.

  “How dare you?” Daniel asked the space, grabbing up papers by the handful and stacking them on the desk, shoving books randomly onto empty shelves. Josiah couldn’t have cared, he couldn’t have wanted to remember, when seemingly all he’d ever done was try to forget.

  Beneath a pile of correspondence shoved into a corner, a bit of gold winked at him. Daniel picked it up, a lone gold nugget, smaller in size than the tip of his little finger. It must have fallen out of something while the burglar was ransacking the room and gone unnoticed by the man.

  Daniel lifted the nugget to the sunlight coming through the slats in the window blinds. “Not much of a treasure, Josiah. Worth all of twenty dollars, I’d guess.” But enough gold, apparently, to set off a firestorm of rumors and speculation.

  Daniel placed the nugget in the center of the desk. On the floor near the desk’s chair, he noticed a long, flat box with a shattered lid. There were letters within, as well as a tidily wrapped set spilled out onto the floor, the pink ribbon enwrapping them as bright as the day it had been tied. Daniel picked them up. He recognized the handwriting.

  “Josiah.”

  He gathered all of the letters together. Some were written in his father’s scrawling hand, but many others were covered in the neat, even loops of his mother’s penmanship. At the bottom of the box was a faded telegram.

  Settling into the chair, Daniel opened the letters and read, one after the other, reliving the most painful year of his life. But once he got to the telegram, that pain was replaced by an even fiercer anger.

  Daylight was blinding, squashing any desire Sarah might have to open her eyes and try to figure out what she was doing in bed, her head pounding, her side swathed in bandages.

  “Miss Sarah!”

  Sarah pried open an eyelid at the sound of Minnie’s voice. Minnie sprang from the chair next to the bed and leaned over. Her hair curled messily around her face and her dress was wrinkled as if she’d been sitting there a long time. But her face was wreathed in smiles. “Miss Sarah! Oh, thank goodness, you’re awake at last! And never any fever!”