Jade

by Jill Marie Landis

  Leave everything to me.

  THE BRICK-LINED path between the carriage house and the service porch of Harrington House was carefully manicured and edged with brightly colored blossoms. Pansies turned their faces skyward to drink in the fall sunshine as Jason Terrell Harrington III stood at the far end of the walk and surveyed its precisely laid herringbone pattern before he stepped onto the rich red bricks. When he did, the sound of the worn heels of his leather boots blended with the lilting jingle of the rowels of his spurs as he walked toward the servant’s entrance to the grand mansion he could now call his own. Three stories high, the place loomed over the surrounding gardens and cast its shadow over the carriage house and long row of stables behind it.

  As he reached the back door, J.T. paused, set down his satchel, saddlebags, and guitar, removed work-hardened leather gloves, and used them to beat the trail dust off his Levi’s and the long duster that flapped around his calves. Then he knocked.

  The summons rang hollow and went unanswered. Matt Van Buren, his father’s lawyer, had alerted him to the fact that the house was unstaffed, the servants dismissed pending the immediate sale of Harrington House. Still, J.T. was not one to walk into an empty house, even if it was his own. He was relieved when no one appeared in answer to his knock. What he needed now was food, a good long bath, and a nap.

  Jason pushed aside the edge of his long duster, reached down into the pocket of his denims, and hooked his finger around the key that would gain him entrance. It had been his father’s home, yet the place held no boyhood memories for him. J.T. had never lived here. Nor, for that matter, had his father, who had built the mansion merely as a showplace little more than a year ago. J.T. had learned as much from Van Buren when the man wrote to inform him of his father’s death and his own subsequent inheritance. J.T. hadn’t mourned the loss of a man he had never really known.

  The door swung wide to reveal a large service porch that opened onto the cavernous kitchen, silent now, but far from cold due to the warm fall sunshine that had burned away the morning fog. The attorney had promised to send around a grocer’s delivery of foodstuffs and assured Jason the wine cellar was still well stocked. Jason was to make himself at home.

  Home? He could never imagine this cold mausoleum as a home, nor this city, for that matter. He had not been out of New Mexico for three weeks, and yet he was already anxious to return. He had come to San Francisco only to settle the estate, sell off his father’s coffee import company, the mansion, and stocks, and then go back home to New Mexico.

  As he looked around the kitchen, he wondered why his father had even built the place, for it was obvious no one had ever used the shining new pots and pans lining the open cupboards. Compared to the crowded, very noisy kitchen at his uncle’s ranch in New Mexico, this one had all the appeal of an empty tomb. As he surveyed the place in the late afternoon light, he tried to imagine his Uncle Cash Younger teasing Aunt Lupita as she bustled about. It was as impossible as trying to picture the ranch hands gathering here for cups of strong black chicory and boisterous talk on cold winter mornings or after the day’s work was through. When his stomach rumbled with neglect, Jason wished he could smell some of Lupita’s tortillas frying on the griddle, instead of the mustiness of a long closed-up house.

  He had lived with Cash and Lupita for fifteen years now, although it seemed as if it were just yesterday that his mother had taken him to New Mexico to live with her brother and his wife. The sterile emptiness of the mansion made him thankful he would never have to live in this showplace his father had built for no apparent reason other than to impress others with his wealth.

  J.T. walked across the deserted kitchen and soon his boot heels and spurs rang out hollowly in the long, wood-paneled hallway. No paintings brightened the walls. The doors spaced at intervals down the hall were all closed, casting the passageway in deep shadow. As he moved along, his saddlebags in one hand, his guitar under his arm and satchel under the other, J.T. took care not to bump his possessions against the close walls. He didn’t think it would do to scar up the place since he was trying to sell it.

  Walking down the darkened hallway was like strolling through a tunnel toward the past, as he pictured the night his uncle had told him the story of his parents’ divorce. He’d been working with Cash, herding wild mustangs into a box canyon when they set up camp for the night. Cash had casually mentioned the rotten hand his sister had been dealt when she married Harrington, and J.T. immediately asked if Cash knew what had happened between them.

  All his mother had ever told him was that she and his father had differences they could not resolve, but that his father was a good man, an upstanding citizen, and that it was because of her that they finally divorced.

  Jason remembered the night as if it were yesterday. The crackling, open fire, the call of the night owl in the trees on the hillside behind them, even the crisp fall air was still as real to him as his uncle’s words.

  “Hell, yes,” Cash had said before he flipped his cigarette into the fire, “you could say it was because of Louisa. It was because your ma wouldn’t put up with his livin’ part-time with his mistress. Harrington wouldn’t give the woman up, either. Not for you, not for Louisa, not for nothin’. Let his wife walk out and take his only son and never put up a fight at all.”

  Since J.T. had taken his mother at her word—that his father had cared about him, that the money he sent to Louisa Younger Harrington’s bank account was for Jason’s upbringing and education, that he felt his son was better off living with his mother—he never wondered why his father had never contacted him personally. When he was a child, he had been able to rationalize that his father was an important man who was just too busy to see him. But once Cash had told him the truth straight out, when he learned that his father had placed his love for his mistress above any feelings he had for his wife and son, Jason’s illusions vanished, and with them went any shred of respect or admiration he might have ever held for his father.

  For years he had nurtured an image of his father that had been built on a lie, and there was nothing J.T. hated worse than a liar. Ever since Cash’s revealing conversation, he became angry when he thought of his father and his desertion. His uncle often ribbed him about his unbending idealism and the resultant intolerance he displayed whenever anyone failed to live up to his expectations of them, but his emotional reaction to a deception of any kind was not something he was willing or able to change.

  The long, paneled hallway opened onto a foyer as large as the sitting room back home. Shaking his head, J.T. stared up at the huge crystal chandelier that hung a good twenty feet above him in the high open ceiling of the foyer. A wide, curving staircase that led to the second floor beckoned, so he decided to choose a room of his own before he explored the rest of the place and made himself something to eat.

  Chapter Two

  When the blind lead the blind . . .

  Beware the river’s edge!

  JADE GLANCED around the small but elegantly appointed Barrett library. Bookshelves reached from floor to ceiling, all of them covered with expensive, newly bound books, their leather and gilt spines attesting to the fact that they were more show pieces than treasured well-worn friends. She thought momentarily of her own box of books she had inherited from her grandfather, and knew she would not trade one of them for Reggie’s entire collection.

  “Miss Douglas?”

  Startled out of her thoughts, Jade turned to her companion, Lieutenant Jon Chang, who sat directly across from her in a tall wing chair upholstered in burgundy leather near the fireplace. In a woolen jacket and plaid pants, his low-cut boots polished to a high, gleaming shine, Jon Chang appeared every inch a California businessman—except for the waist-length queue that appeared from beneath his bowler hat.

  “Pardon me, Mr. Chang. I’m afraid my mind has wandered. You were saying?” Exhaustion made it hard to concentrate.

  �
��I’m interpreter for the department’s newly formed Raiding Squad. We work the back alleys of Little China to stem the opium trade. Since your father’s body was found in Little China—”

  “—with a tong war axe in his head,” she completed.

  “I was assigned to the case. Are you familiar with the tongs, Miss Douglas?”

  Jade nodded. “They’re Chinese associations established to address the grievances of their members. But I don’t ever recall reading about Caucasians being involved in their disputes. Do you really have reason to believe my father’s death had anything to do with the tong?”

  “We are not certain. It may be that the murderer just wanted it to appear that way. Do you know anyone who might have wanted to kill your father?”

  Jade recalled what she had told Babs earlier. “My father was not the most ethical of businessmen, Detective. I might have more trouble thinking of someone who wouldn’t have wanted to kill him.”

  Chang’s expression was unreadable. “Certain things have come to light.”

  “Do you mind telling me what kind of things?”

  “On the surface, it seems your father’s last venture involved some sort of gold speculation.”

  “I’m not surprised. He was always involved in one sort of scheme or another,” she said.

  “So I have learned.”

  Jade stood, hoping that if she kept moving she would not feel so sleepy. “I think it may have been my grandfather’s good name and wealth that kept the law from coming down so hard on my father. That, and the fact that no one could ever prove he had actually done anything wrong. Many of the men he duped were too embarrassed to try and recoup their losses. Perhaps someone finally took matters into his own hands.”

  “I have uncovered some most unusual news concerning your father’s death. Miss Douglas.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper covered with Chinese characters. “Do you read Chinese?”

  With a nod, she reached for the small, neatly scripted page. “I read and speak Cantonese, Lieutenant,” she said softly as she looked down at the page of Chinese characters. When his face registered surprise she explained, “My grandfather sent me to Paris to live with a missionary and his family recently returned from Canton so that I could learn from them.” With a wistful smile she added, “I didn’t know that he would not be here to welcome me home again.”

  “I am sorry for your loss.”

  She accepted his sympathy and then concentrated on the slip of paper in her hand.

  Chang explained as she read. “This is a chin hung, a public notice. Originally it was posted on the bulletin wall on Clay Street in Little China. An informant turned it over to me just yesterday.” He paused when she began to read aloud.

  “It is believed that Francis Douglas has abducted one Li Po, venerated wizard of Sin Ngan Hien. Be it known that if any man of any association can remove the barbarian Douglas, we will thankfully pay six hundred dollars. If he only wounds him, we shall pay three hundred. The combined associations shall pay one thousand dollars to the man who discovers the whereabouts of Li Po.”

  Jade tried to digest the meaning of the strangely worded notice. “The tongs advertised to have my father assassinated? Is that what removed refers to?”

  “So it seems.”

  Stunned by the contents of the advertisement, Jade could not imagine the reason why her father would abduct a Chinese from the mainland, but she knew that if he had indeed been guilty of such a crime, money was somehow involved. “I still don’t understand,” she admitted quietly.

  “We are trying to piece together your father’s reasons for kidnapping this old man, Li Po, if indeed this notice is true. At least now the motive for your father’s murder is somewhat clearer.”

  Chang continued, “Li Po was very old, somewhat worshipped by the villagers of Sin Ngan Hien. He was known as a formidable wizard. We are not even sure the old man ever reached San Francisco. My informants say he was smuggled into the country and then disappeared without a trace.”

  She handed the notice back to Chang. “What would my father want with an old” man?”

  He refolded and pocketed it. “Li Po was a wizard. An alchemist.”

  Jade crossed the room and sank down upon the settee. “An alchemist?” Things suddenly became all too clear as she recalled what her grandfather had told her of the Chinese emperors who always kept a resident alchemist at court. She thought aloud, “A man versed in the ways of ancient alchemy is capable of changing one substance into another. Many claimed they had the power to extend life, some said they could turn lead into gold.”

  And she knew very well what the word gold meant to her father.

  “The last speculative venture your father attempted involved the sale of certificates, shares in a gold mine. He claimed the gold from this mine would prove to be of the highest grade ever found.”

  “So you think the alchemist might have been the key to a gold mine hoax?” It all sounded too incredible to be believed. “You don’t think it’s possible that the old man could really make gold, do you?”

  Chang paused for a moment. Jade watched his expression as centuries of traditional beliefs warred with modem thought. “I believe it is highly unlikely. If anyone could change base metals into gold, then gold would become worthless, wouldn’t it?”

  “Or . . . the man who knew the secret would become the richest man in the world,” Jade said softly.

  Chang nodded. “I see you grasp what might have been your father’s plan. I think Francis Douglas definitely believed in Li Po’s ability—if the public notice is true.”

  “But to kidnap an old man . . . to bring him all the way from China . . .”

  “You knew your father far better than I, who can only guess at answers. What do you think, Miss Douglas?”

  Jade thought about the past, the business discussions she had overheard as her father and his associates sat around a crowded table. She thought about the diamond hoaxes, the silver mines in Nevada that never panned out, the import-export schemes. She thought, too, about the money her father had spent over the years—so much money that he had not only squandered his own funds, but the fortune her mother would have inherited as well. Most of all she thought of the abusive words and the harsh way he had always treated her and her mother.

  She faced the truth without a hint of doubt. “I believe he was quite capable of it, Mr. Chang. I believe my father was capable of anything. But how would the tongs here in San Francisco have learned of Li Po’s abduction?”

  “Word could have reached the port at the same time Li Po did, especially if there were any immigrants or slave girls brought over on the same ship.”

  Jade sighed and wriggled uncomfortably in her borrowed finery. She felt like an over-dressed, long-necked goose. After suffering a round of insistence on Babs’s part, Jade had agreed to wear her friend’s polonaise walking suit for her meeting with the detective. Doreen had styled her hair in an upswept creation that was as unfamiliar to her as her elegant attire. She was afraid that one unthinking move might send hairpins flying or set the uncomfortable bustle askew.

  “It must have been easy for the tongs to find an assassin for six hundred dollars.” She shivered involuntarily. Accounts of the hatchetmen who hacked men to death in the back alleys with meat axes, daggers, and snickersnees were legendary. It was even bandied about that such assassins were said to order wildcat in the Chinese restaurants because they believed it would give them superhuman power.

  Trying to weigh the gravity of this new information and what it meant to her present situation, Jade asked, “What happens now? Doesn’t this explain my father’s murder?”

  “There is no proof that Li Po was abducted. Until we find him, or his remains—”

  “You think my father might have killed him?”

  “All th
e more reason your father was assassinated in return. I should tell you there is little hope of finding the man or men who actually killed your father. The tongs protect their own.”

  Jade thought of the network of opium dens and warrens of Little China, the joy houses filled with slave girls and fan-tan parlors that served as fronts for the brothels. Her grandfather had not spared her sensibilities when he taught her about San Francisco’s Chinese, both the good and the bad. Little China was a city within a city, a world within a world. Her father’s murderer could easily take refuge there forever.

  Jade rubbed her eyes. Lack of sleep had made them dry and itchy. She wondered what the unreadable lieutenant thought of her lack of energy or enthusiasm at this point.

  As if he sensed her fatigue, Chang shifted in his chair and then stood. “I know you must be weary from your journey, so I will leave you now to think over all I have told you. If you come across any of your father’s things that might be of importance, I hope you will let me know. We searched his hotel suite after his death, but found nothing.”

  Together they walked to the library door. As Jade opened it and then followed Chang into the entry hall, they both came to an abrupt halt when they encountered Reggie Barrett on the staircase in conversation with his wife. Both Barretts were so intent that they failed to notice them. Nor did they realize their exchange could be overheard.

  “What is she doing in there closeted with that man?” Reggie demanded, anger all too visible in the veins that strained against the starched fabric of his collar. As always, he was impeccably dressed, his hair slicked down with scented oil. His light eyes and patrician nose added to his undistinguished features. He appeared much the same as Jade had last seen him, except for deepened creases across his brow and the harsh, unexpressive line of his lips.

  Babs tried to placate him. “He’s a policeman, Reggie. A detective. Just calm down.”