Josiah's Treasure

by Nancy Herriman

  “I snuck out.” Minnie’s grin dimpled her cheeks. “I had to know if we’d got the shop. I couldn’t concentrate on stacking tins of meat, knowing you were down here today, fighting for us.”

  “Here is your answer.” Sarah held out the two sets of keys and jingled them. “We have the shop.”

  “Oh, thank goodness!” Minnie leaped into Sarah’s arms and hugged her tight, knocking her hat askew. “That’s wonderful!”

  “It is wonderful, and an incredible relief.” Sarah extricated herself from Minnie’s grasp and dropped the keys into her reticule. “What do you say . . . chocolate macaroons from Engel-berg’s Bakery as a treat?”

  “It’ll have to be quick, if I’m to make it back to the grocery before my pa returns from his lunch. Don’t want him to find me gone.” Minnie’s voice conveyed her dread.

  “Then quick it shall be.”

  Buoyant, Sarah planted one hand atop her hat, clutched Minnie’s arm with the other, and strutted down Montgomery.

  “Miss Charlotte will be pleased about the shop,” Minnie said as they paused at the intersection, waiting for a cable car to collect its passengers and make the turn, clearing the roadway.

  “Lottie never doubted I would be able to convince Mr. Pomroy to lease us the space.” But then Lottie had endless faith, far more than Sarah could ever claim. Enough to convince her father to invest in the shop against his lawyer’s wary nature.

  “I never doubted, either, Miss Sarah,” said Minnie, her nut-brown eyes full of trust.

  Sarah’s heart constricted. I will never let these girls down. Not a one. “Thank you.”

  “ ’Welcome, miss,” Minnie replied with a dimpled smile. “What’s next?”

  “Tomorrow I plan to go to the storefront and make a list of any necessary repairs.” A lengthy list already existed in her head, but she had been too superstitious to commit it to paper. “Then I’ll make down payments on the equipment we need—first and foremost the lithograph press—take you and the others to see the space, and begin tidying and organizing. In a week, the first of our supplies should arrive. We can start to move in then.”

  “That’s so exciting, I think I’m gonna burst!”

  “Please don’t, because I need you whole,” Sarah teased.

  The cable car clanged up the road, and they hurried across the cobbles.

  “I predict Whittier and Company Custom Design Studio will be a roaring success,” Minnie proclaimed with a dramatic wave of her forefinger. “Because if anyone can do it, you can, Miss Sarah.”

  “If anyone can do it, we can.” Sarah squeezed the girl’s arm. “Remember that.”

  Minnie giggled and Sarah joined in, the sound of their carefree laughter snatched by the breeze swirling along the street, carried off with the fog lifting into the blue, blue skies. Their spirits lighter than a bubble floating.

  And hopefully not, thought Sarah with a shiver, just as fragile.

  Two

  “According to the city directory,” the hotel clerk spread his fingers across the pages of the book and pointed, the freckles dotting the backs of his hands looking like splashes of orange paint, “he’s listed as having an address on Jones Street, sir.”

  Daniel squinted at the entry, upside-down from his vantage point across the waist-high desk. There he was. After all the months Daniel had searched, he’d finally located the man. In a San Francisco directory, owned by every hotel in the city, plain as could be.

  “This directory’s over a year old, though. We haven’t received the latest, so I can’t guarantee the address is still current,” the clerk added, apologetic for any shortcomings exhibited by the Occidental Hotel. “Might have moved on by now. Folks around here come and go like ants on a hill.”

  “It’ll do for a start.”

  Slowly, Daniel spun the directory on the smooth walnut surface until the entry was right-side up. He traced the print with his thumb as if the contact of his skin on paper would verify the reality of what his eyes saw. The noises of the hotel—the chatter of guests lounging on the plump furniture, the tinkle of the piano meant to entertain them, the rattle of the elevator arriving on the ground floor—became a distant buzz. All Daniel noticed, his entire concentration, was focused on two words. Josiah Cady, in wavy typeset. He was still alive. Daniel had started to wonder.

  I’ve found you at last, Josiah. Dear old Pa. The scoundrel who had gone to strike it rich in the gold fields never to return or ever send a dime home, leaving his family without the proper means to survive. Daniel felt heat surge, and he curled his fist atop the open book. He had found him, just as Daniel had promised his mother on her deathbed he would, had promised his sisters. An answer to a prayer, if he ever prayed. Which he didn’t. Not any longer.

  “You’ve come a long way to unearth the fellow,” observed the clerk, filling the dead silence. He glanced at Daniel’s fist then shot a nervous look at his fellow clerk, helping another guest at the far end of the main reception desk. “All the way from Chicago, eh?”

  Daniel uncurled his hand and willed himself to relax. He would save his anger for when he met Josiah face-to-face. “Yep.”

  The clerk exhaled his tension and smiled. “One of the fellows who work the dining room says the train can get here from Illinois in just five days. Is that so, Mr. Cady?”

  “I can’t tell you, because I didn’t come directly.” No, he’d been traveling since October, poking through every godforsaken mining town between here and the Rocky Mountains, across wind-swept wastelands and craggy snowcapped mountains, searching for traces of the man who had been more in love with gold than with his family. “Where is this address on Jones Street?”

  The clerk released a low whistle. “Up Nob Hill, sir. One of the best parts of town,” he explained when he realized Daniel didn’t recognize the name.

  “Folks are rich up there, then.”

  “Lots of them sure are. Real estate investors, businessmen . . . gold speculators. Wish I’d had the nerve to go mining.” A wistful look crossed his boyish features. “Why? The fellow owe you money?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Thirty thousand dollars, based on Josiah’s final telegram. His father’s take of the profits from the small gold-mining company he and a partner had run. Daniel kept the telegram, faded and deeply creased, in the inner pocket of his coat. Read it over and over again, a reminder of what Josiah owed Daniel and his sisters back in Chicago. Cold, hard cash. Enough to set himself up in business and build that fine house he had promised to Lily and Marguerite. Because, the Lord knew, he and his sisters weren’t looking for a father’s love anymore. “How do I get to Jones Street from here?”

  “Go north two blocks and catch the California Street cable car. That’s your best bet. Only costs a nickel and the views up there are first-rate. You can see right across the Golden Gate, you can! I take my sweetheart on the Clay Street cable line all the—”

  “Is it far?” Daniel interrupted the man’s enthusiastic praises.

  He shook his head. “Five, ten minutes at most, Mr. Cady.” “Good.”

  Without being asked, the clerk scribbled Josiah’s address on a scrap of paper and handed it to Daniel. Tucking the note in his pocket, Daniel headed downstairs and out of the hotel. At the street corner, he had a clear view of the city cloaking the sandy hills until every square inch seemed to be covered by pavement and buildings. Up there, among the jumble of dusty streets and bay-windowed houses, church spires, and telegraph poles, Josiah lived in comfort and security. Oblivious to the surprise he was about to receive.

  Daniel secured his hat on his head and stepped off the curb. Five, ten minutes at most to get to Josiah. Not long, but long enough for Daniel to decide exactly what he intended to say to him.

  “I forgive you, Father” was not on the list.

  “I did it, Mrs. McGinnis,” Sarah announced to the empty entry hall, her voice echoing off the curving staircase. Out of habit, she brushed fingertips across the solitary painting hanging above the de
milune table tucked against the wall. A painting she’d done of her family farm, a watercolor almost as wispy as her memories of the place, the gilt frame rubbing bare down to the wood where she touched it all the time. “Mrs. McGinnis!”

  Rufus, their orange tabby, jumped down from the padded chair that was his observation post on the second-floor landing, his claws tapping rapidly across the floor. Sarah stripped off her gloves and threw her hat onto the table. It bounced against the floral wallpaper along with her discarded reticule, the keys inside releasing a satisfying clink. “Mrs. McGinnis?” Sarah peered at the empty dining room, the darkened front parlor to her right.

  The housekeeper, wiping her hands on her apron, bustled through the kitchen doorway at the far end of the dining room.

  “There you are,” said Sarah.

  “Wheesht, lass, stop screeching, I heard you,” Mrs. McGinnis chided, shaking her head. A strand of brown hair escaped from the tidy bun at the base of her neck. “And where else would I be at this hour? Gone for a stroll?”

  Sarah smiled, patting her hair and finding more than a few strands of her own unwound. She jabbed hairpins home. “It is a beautiful day.”

  “And nae time for someone like me to enjoy it.”

  Sarah clasped the other woman’s fingers. They were gritty with flour, strong as bands of iron, chapped from lye. Warmth and support and fortitude all wrapped up in the hands of a servant.

  “I did it,” Sarah repeated. “I have the keys to the storefront and a six-month lease. On my terms.”

  The other woman’s answering grin, the light in her sea-blue eyes, was infectious. When she smiled, she was so pretty that Sarah wondered, yet again, why she had never remarried after becoming a widow. Wondered why she had spent the last six years tending first to a crotchety old prospector and now to Sarah.

  Mrs. McGinnis enfolded Sarah within her arms. She smelled of vanilla and Castile soap. “I knew you would, lass.”

  “I must have been the only one who doubted.”

  “You need more faith.”

  Sarah made no comment; they’d had this conversation before and she did not need to reply.

  “Mr. Pomroy was difficult, but I think he just wanted to challenge me to make certain I was resolute.” She dropped onto the chair against the wall and wiggled out of her half boots, freeing her aching feet. For Mr. Pomroy she had bothered to purchase new ones, as if the sight of buff Dongola leather might have swayed his faltering opinion of her worth. Dollars and cents. A plugged nickel. “I had macaroons with Minnie and then stopped by the storefront on the way back home. The shop is going to need some work to get into shape, but the girls and I can do it. The space should be ready in a couple of weeks.”

  “So quickly?”

  “We have to open the shop as soon as possible and bring in income. Mr. Samuelson’s loan and the proceeds from the sale of Josiah’s land in Placerville won’t pay the bills forever.” Sarah massaged the cramps in her toes and looked askance at her boots. She wouldn’t be buying shoes from that store again. “I can’t wait to show the girls. Cora will love to paint in that second-floor room. The light is perfect for even the most detailed work. And of course there’s a nice area for the lithograph press, and there is even a small corner room for Emma to work on the accounts that is well lit by gas lamps. It’s nearly a miracle to have secured the space at such an excellent price.”

  Mrs. McGinnis rested a hand on her shoulder. “Mr. Josiah would be proud of you.”

  “Yes.” The aching twist she felt in her heart was a constant companion. “He would.”

  The housekeeper dropped a kiss to the crown of Sarah’s head and stepped back. “Change out of that frock afair Miss Charlotte arrives with Anne and Emma for instruction this afternoon. You don’t want paint on yer best outfit.”

  “Lottie . . . I almost forgot.” After a final rub of her toes, Sarah stood. “First, I’d like to spend a minute with Josiah, though. Then I’ll go change.”

  In her stockinged feet, she entered the parlor just off the entry hall. Rufus slunk down the stairs and followed her inside.

  The shades had been pulled against the noonday light, and the room lay dim and quiet. All these months later the sweetness of Josiah’s cigar still lingered, clinging to the drapes and the Turkish rug covering the mahogany parlor table, as unwilling to relinquish the memory of him as she was. Sarah had always tried to shoo Josiah off to his upstairs library to smoke, but he loved to sit in his overstuffed red velvet chair by the bay window and critique the neighborhood happenings. Nobody could convince Josiah to do anything other than what he set his mind to.

  Sarah trailed a hand over the lace-trimmed antimacassar spread across the back of the chair, the indent of Josiah’s weight still visible in the nap of the velvet seat cushion, and felt salty tears rise in her throat.

  “I didn’t want this house and that bit of property, Josiah, if it meant I had to lose you.” The dearest friend she’d had. A replacement for the parents, the family she’d lost.

  If he were alive, he might laugh his gruff laugh at her sentimentality. Right before pain shot through his green eyes. The sight of it, though, would be gone as quick as the spark of a lightning bug, ephemeral. As if the pain had never truly existed.

  Sarah crossed the thick carpet, plush against her toes, to the corner of the parlor where an easel held a painting draped in black crape. She flapped the fabric over the top of the frame. It was the first work he had commissioned from her, a portrait of him seated in his favorite white wicker chair out in the garden. One leg was thrust forward, a cigar clamped in his left hand and a sly, all-knowing smile tilting his mouth beneath his thick, graying mustache. In the portrait, Sarah had been careful to erase the most obvious signs of Josiah’s ill health, highlighting the details of the garden instead. The little fountain bubbled at his back and his roses bloomed all around in dense profusion, a halo of vermilion and gold and salmon. A marble statue of a chubby cherub perched on its pedestal to Josiah’s right, an ironic counterpoint of innocence, he’d claimed, to all the wickedness in his soul.

  He’d bought an elaborately carved walnut easel for the portrait and set it in the most prominent location in the parlor, in the far corner where it was easily spotted by folks entering the room. He would grin at the painting and tell anyone who cared to listen that Sarah had painted it right after she’d arrived in San Francisco. He would insist that she had been the quickest portrait artist he’d ever met and that, for a reasonable fee, she could paint their portraits too. Sarah would find herself blushing from head to toe as their visitors smiled politely and ignored Josiah’s hint. They were there to smoke his excellent cigars and to eat Mrs. McGinnis’s delectable meals, not to commission a painting from a young woman who had an irritating tendency to speak her mind and whose past had never been explained to everybody’s liking.

  “I signed the rental agreement for the shop this morning, Josiah,” she said to the portrait, while Rufus slithered between the easel’s legs, making it wobble. His bent tail, broken in a skirmish that had occurred before she’d rescued him, slapped against her skirt hem. Sarah pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt and swiped dust from the frame. “I think Mr. Pomroy is of the common opinion that I’m foolish for wanting to help the girls, but I won’t let his opinion or anyone else’s stop me. It’s going to happen, Josiah, just as you said it would.”

  She returned the handkerchief to her pocket. It was silly to talk to the painting, but she always felt comforted when she did.

  The doorbell sounded in the hallway. Restoring the black crape over the painting, Sarah looked over her shoulder and smiled, expecting to hear Mrs. McGinnis’s footsteps coming from the kitchen to answer the bell.

  Lottie and the girls were very early.

  “They’re here already, Rufus.”

  They would be so pleased with Sarah’s good news.

  Daniel frowned. It seemed no one intended to answer the doorbell, but the house hadn’t been abandoned. The s
teps were clean and the greenery in the front garden maintained. The cut leaded glass in the double door was spotless, and he could’ve sworn he’d seen movement in the hallway beyond it.

  He took a step back from the front door and stared up at the house’s facade. Ornate didn’t begin to describe the carved frames surrounding each window or the scrollwork flourishes atop the columns supporting the porch roof. At the cornice, brackets curved like the unfurling leaves of a fiddleneck fern and were painted an eye-catching peach shade in contrast to the pale cream of the wood exterior. There were more splashes of peach paint to highlight a detail here, the dentil design there. And only a blind man could miss the massive bay windows projecting from each floor, plus two on the left side of the house, sunlight sparkling off the glass.

  “You did make a profit off gold, Josiah.” Anger rose in Daniel’s throat. “Although I expected a grander house than this.”

  Which made Daniel question where the rest of the money had gone. Undoubtedly into a fat bank account someplace.

  Next door, a middle-aged woman peered through her shutters at him. When he didn’t smile a greeting, she let the wood slats drop back into place. Her house was even more ornate than Josiah’s and a floor taller. Up and down the length of Jones Street stood the signs of San Francisco prosperity, a jumble of turrets and bay windows. A recently erected church, its granite stones solid and sturdy compared to the wood houses surrounding it, towered on a distant corner. Hammers pounded on an adjacent street, another home under construction. Every structure teetered on the edge of vertigo-inducing hills, clinging to the soil as if one false move would send them tumbling into the choppy waters of the bay.

  The neighbor’s front door opened and a Chinese boy stepped onto the porch. Daniel had seen dozens of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, but the sight of another managed to astonish him again.