A Race to Splendor (40 page)

Early that evening, after the workers had departed and Loy and Shou Shou returned from visiting friends in Chinatown, Amelia finally had a moment to herself to sit down, enjoy a cup of tea, and scan the
Call
.

The front pages were filled with accounts of the ongoing wrangles over the political fate of Mayor Schmitz and Abe Reuf, as well as the continuing efforts of Rudolph Spreckels and the men from the Treasury Department to bring them to justice.

Dismayed by several stories chronicling the pair’s legal maneuvering to escape culpability for their sins, Amelia turned the page. For a long moment, she stared at a banner headline on the upper right portion of the society page.

MISS
KEMP
TO
BE
THE
BRIDE
OF
JAMES
DIAZ
THAYER

She blinked several times, wondering if she were hallucinating. The short article announced that the engaged couple planned to wed on the evening of July 4, 1907, “marking the triple celebration of their nuptials, the grand opening of Mr. Thayer’s new establishment, the redesigned Bay View Hotel, and the nation’s 131st birthday.”

J.D.’s to marry Matilda Kemp in
three days
?

Before Amelia could recover from the shock of this announcement, a knock reverberated on the kitchen door, which she ignored. Her gaze was glued to the newspaper headline, her mind and body frozen.

The pounding intensified, eventually summoning Loy from his room. The young man cast Amelia a perplexed look as he opened the door.

“This is for Miss Bradshaw,” barked a voice Amelia didn’t recognize. “See that she gets it. Tell her it’s very important.”

Loy bowed politely, closed the door, and deposited a large envelope next to the newspaper, retreating to join Shou Shou in their room once again. Still stunned by the newspaper announcement, Amelia absently unfastened the envelope’s flap and withdrew a raft of thickish paper. After peering at the first sepia-toned image, she looked away.

The night she and Angus had rescued J.D. from the brothel in China Alley surged back with a rush. She recognized that filthy bed. The torn bed sheet. J.D.’s clothing bunched around his ankles. She could almost smell the opium and cabbage and urine.

She realized instantly that these lewd photographs were meant to shock her—and they did, but not because of their content. She had already witnessed this scene of degradation. The photos were staged, of course, since J.D. had said he was certain it had been Kemp’s men who had kidnapped, drugged, and beaten him that night. The pictures were also meant to disgust her—which they also did—but only because of the way they had been obtained and maliciously distributed into her hands. Perhaps the day’s news of J.D.’s “betrothal” to Matilda Kemp was part of some larger scheme of Kemp’s? The announced nuptials certainly would explain J.D.’s avoidance of her lately.

Amelia noticed a scrap of paper sandwiched between the photographs.

Copies for Miss Amelia Bradshaw:

Study them well. You will be photographed the next time you take this scoundrel to your bed.

The note was unsigned.

Was it a potent threat from Ezra Kemp or merely a bluff? Could J.D. himself be the author, hoping to make it her choice to end their relationship, leaving him free of any claims she might make on the Bay View Hotel?

Both Kemp and J.D. were consummate poker players, she reminded herself. How could she possibly determine what was truly going on?

Amelia sat quietly for several minutes, absorbing the vicious warning and the fact that someone was trying to blackmail her into acceding to his wishes. If she filed a complaint with the authorities about this blatant attempt to intimidate her, her accusations would surely go unheeded—considering the rampant bribing of the San Francisco police force—and she would needlessly expose her private life to public scandal.

She rose from her chair and began to pace in front of the brand new, gleaming kitchen stove. Finally, she strode toward the newspaper she’d tossed aside and scooped it up, along with the envelope and its filthy contents, and threw the entire lot on to the fire in the hob. Random thoughts drifted through her mind while she watched the flames curl the edges and reduce it all to ashes.

One thing was certain: J.D. was no angel. She had long assumed there had been a seedy underbelly to his former life as a professional gambler and employer of comely Chinese women. Indeed, there was obviously some basis for his reputation as the black sheep of his family.

But this! Even assuming the photographs were phony and the engagement was forged under duress, all of San Francisco now knew J.D. and Matilda were engaged to marry.

And Amelia?

She had known nothing. Whatever was going on, J.D. hadn’t been willing to share it with her or warn her before the news was printed in the paper. That spoke volumes as far as Amelia was concerned. Her sense of privacy—not to mention her pride—had been incinerated just as surely as the photographs she had burned.

Another wave of loneliness swept over her, as though she were standing on the headlands when a swift, summer fog descended on an otherwise sunny day. Turning her back on the fire burning brightly in the kitchen stove, she resolutely locked the hotel’s doors, doused the lights, and abandoned the kitchen. Many facts were missing in this puzzle, but she was too disheartened to seek any answers tonight. In her small bedroom, she undressed in the dark, gaining comfort that the eminent Julia Morgan declared her erstwhile protégée’s new hotel was beautiful. That was something at least.

Shivering, Amelia slipped beneath the chilly bedcovers.

The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer I lived in San Francisco…

Her thoughts drifted aimlessly as she drew her knees to her chest for warmth. Life seemed at that moment a rather solitary journey for so many that drew breath.

Each in our own narrow cot
, she mused, despair settling on her like a shroud.

J.D. had not returned to the hotel nor had he prepared her in any way for the shocks she’d received this day. So, who was her true adversary, she wondered with a sudden, sharp stab of fear? Who had placed her in such grave, personal danger? The note alluded to her sexual liaison with her employer and threatened to ruin her in the public’s eye. Whoever was trying to intimidate her obviously had the power and the knowledge to do exactly that.

She slipped her hand between the mattress and the bedsprings and felt for her revolver. Its cold metal gave her very little solace and for the first time since she was a child, she cried herself to sleep.

***

J.D. stood at the door of the stone and timber estate and pounded the brass gargoyle doorknocker against the metal plate.

“Mr. Kemp is not at home,” a manservant informed him. He rubbed his fingers on a napkin, obviously summoned from his supper. “He left this morning and is not expected back from inspecting his forest on the Russian River until tomorrow.”

“And Miss Kemp?”

“She went down to her studio after dinner, sir,” the housekeeper informed him. “Miss Stivers too. Working on a new sculpture, they tell me. Didn’t want to be disturbed, they said.”

What a stroke of luck,
thought J.D., quickly adjusting his plan of action. “I’ll just be on my way then. Please tell Mr. Kemp and the young ladies that I came to pay my respects before returning to San Francisco. Good night.” It was best the manservant reported that J.D. had called at Kemp’s house and returned directly to the city.

“Certainly, sir. And congratulations on your engagement.”

Without responding, J.D. waited until the front door closed, then swiftly skirted the house and headed down the leafy path that led to the small stone building at the bottom of the garden. The tall redwood trees ringing the perimeter of Kemp’s property cast the ferns and rock outcroppings into even deeper shadow under the evening sky. The only sound was of the rushing creek that added to the landscape’s forest-like surroundings.

A leaded window at the front of the cottage was flung wide, and a glowing lamp provided J.D. with a clear view inside the studio. Low voices, barely intelligible, drifted toward him. He paused, transfixed by a startling sight framed by the window ledge. For a moment, it almost seemed as if he were staring at a portrait in an avant-garde gallery or atelier like those Amelia told him were everywhere in Paris.

In the middle of the room, on a stone pedestal, rested a torso made of clay, gray in color and slick with moisture. Not three feet from it, Emma Stivers knelt on a velvet-draped riser—her nude body a mirror of the statue.

Matilda Kemp was also kneeling, also nude, though her lanky hands and arms were dripping with liquid clay that she was reverently applying—not to the surface of her work of art—but to the alabaster skin of her school chum.

J.D. experienced a wave of deep embarrassment, an overwhelming sense that he was viewing something primitive, something private whose obscenity was not in the act itself, but in his watching it. Yet he couldn’t pull his eyes from the scene.

Matilda’s movements were full of poignant dignity as she scooped handfuls of moistened clay and lovingly stroked Emma’s breasts, her arms, her neck.

“Oh yes…” moaned Emma Stivers. “Oh
yes
, my darling Tilly…”

J.D. determined to leave and shifted his weight in order to reverse his direction. His moving shadow must have caught Matilda’s eye, for the woman suddenly looked up past Emma’s naked shoulder and directly toward him, his white shirtfront a beacon in the gloom.

Her sharp cry of alarm positively unnerved him. Matilda sank on her haunches, covered her naked breasts with her arms and began to cry uncontrollably into hands coated with clay. Emma scrambled to her feet and ran behind a screen. For several seconds, J.D. remained rooted to the spot, then spun on his heel, and swiftly began to make his way in the opposite direction, his mind a blur.

“Mr. Thayer!” called a frantic voice behind him. “Mr. Thayer, please come back!
Please
, Mr. Thayer! Wait for me… I
must
talk to you!”

Chapter 31

J.D. heard running steps pursuing him in the darkness shrouding the path. He turned to see Emma, swathed now in a kind of kimono, her hair streaming behind her, a crescent moon shining above her shoulder. He halted and waited for her to catch up to him, totally mystified as to what to say.

“You mustn’t marry Matilda!” she cried. “You
mustn’t
!”

J.D. could think of nothing else to do but to put an arm around the woman’s heaving shoulders and draw her close while she sobbed into his chest.

He patted Emma awkwardly on the back. “Shall we return to the studio and try to sort this out? I’m sure we can find some solution.”

“Yes…
yes
!” Emma gasped. “There is so much you don’t know.”

It took a good five minutes before either woman could speak without becoming tearful again. J.D. decided the best thing to do was sit quietly while Emma and Matilda applied wet cloths to their clay-encrusted arms and necks to wash off the grime.

“Mr. Thayer said he would help us, Tilly!” Emma exclaimed, patting her arms with a towel. “Isn’t that
wonderful
?”

Matilda turned her tear-streaked face toward J.D. with a look of bewilderment that swiftly turned to joy. “Truly, Mr. Thayer? Oh thank God! Thank you
so
much! Oh… I think I’m going to faint.”

Emma swiftly put an arm around her and gave her a comforting squeeze. “No, you’re
not
! Mr. Thayer doesn’t have time for any more of our hysterics.” She addressed J.D. “Did Miss Bradshaw tell you Matilda was fine with your not wanting to marry her? Mr. Kemp, however, put that engagement announcement in the paper anyway. At the Fairmont we told your architect to warn you that Mr. Kemp plans more intimidation and who knows what else?” She gestured to Matilda that she should take a seat on a low footstool nearby.

“Yes,” J.D. replied, “she gave me both your messages, including his latest threats, which I take seriously. In the last raid, several Chinese people were killed. One was a child of seven.”

Matilda’s face crumbled and she began to cry again.

Emma spoke up. “The newspaper announcement just goes to show that Tilly’s father is now completely
fixated
on your marrying her. He sees it as a way of forcing you to share control of the Bay View Hotel. You’ll be married to his daughter, over whom he maintains control, and if anything should happen to you…”

J.D. nodded that he understood Emma’s implications.

“Does he realize, Matilda, that you’d… uh… prefer a woman to a man as your life’s companion?” J.D. inquired politely. There was no point in voicing his outrage over the article in today’s
Call
to these two hapless pawns in Kemp’s game of chess.

“We pray he doesn’t know about us!” Emma answered for her lover with a shudder. “The man has a violent temper, Mr. Thayer. Poor Tilly doesn’t dare tell him anything about how she feels. And he’s growing rather suspicious of me, I fear. We know he’ll risk virtually anything to see her married to you, now that he’s in such trouble with those men who keep calling here.”

Matilda wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Father’s become dreadfully overextended financially. He paid too much for the forests he’s purchased and made too many risky investments down in Chinatown following the disaster. The mayor and Mr. Reuf can’t protect him as they once did—now that they’re under arrest. My father’s even been forced to go back to gambling to try to cover his IOUs. The men that visited here right after the Fairmont opened promised to
kill
Father if he doesn’t pay his poker debts soon.”

J.D. had heard the same rumors. Matilda’s revelations confirmed what his informants had told him: that Kemp was a principal in several new brothels in Chinatown and had huge expenses paying the graft that such enterprises required.

All of this was music to J.D.’s ears.

“And he thinks that once you and I are married,” Matilda continued tearfully, “short of disposing of you, he can force the sale of the Bay View to raise the needed funds to rid him of the creditors threatening to murder him.”

“So the bully is being bullied,” murmured J.D. He knew what Matilda and Emma didn’t: that even if he paid off his debts to Kemp with cash raised from the gems he’d found in the trunk, the man still lusted after the respectability that came with owning one of the city’s finest hotels.

Matilda’s cheeks again were stained with tears as she told him woefully, “By my marrying you, he can get rid of me as well. He says I’m only an embarrassment to him and as ugly as my mother!” She pressed her handkerchief to both eyes.

“You have to understand something, Mr. Thayer.” Emma clutched her own handkerchief tightly. “Something quite… unpleasant. Tilly’s grandmother was a… soiled dove up in the gold country. Poor Tilly never even knew who her grandfather was, other than he was an illiterate blacksmith. Her father is terribly ashamed of this, especially now that he frequents your world, Mr. Thayer. He’s actually… quite mental about it all.”

Matilda clutched Emma’s newly washed arm. “Yes! He’s positively
obsessed
by the notion of having me become ‘one of the Thayers,’ as he’s always saying. Thinks that people like your father and the Stanfords and Huntingtons will count him one of their own and forget about his lowly origins. I feel rather sorry for him sometimes.”

“Oh, Tilly, you poor darling, don’t be ridiculous!” Emma exclaimed. “None of that excuses his dreadful behavior toward you and your mother!”

“But I suppose it does help explain it, doesn’t it?” Matilda implored, wiping her eyes. “My mother once told me that his own father beat him unmercifully when he was a boy. She said we had to make allowances.”

“No one
ever
deserves to be abused like that, Tilly,” Emma scolded. She turned to address J.D. “Mr. Kemp is terribly cruel to Tilly, and he allowed his own wife to die because he couldn’t be bothered to fetch a doctor in time. If he suspects that we—”

“I don’t think he’s overly fond of women, period,” J.D. intervened, remembering tales Ling Lee had shared with him about her life in China Alley. “Dogs that have been kicked as pups often become vicious when full grown, you know.”

“I know,” Matilda murmured. “It’s horrible. He’s hurt so many people—”

“We’re going to run away,” Emma broke in, her voice filled with determination. “Now that you know… everything… perhaps you’d help us?” she added hopefully.

J.D. was taken aback by the young woman’s candor. “Where would you go?”

“Just away,” Emma said defiantly. “We’ll decide once we are safely gone from here.” She reached over and tapped Matilda on the shoulder. “Tell Mr. Thayer what else you overheard.”

“Father said just yesterday that he might do something terrible to that nice woman architect who works for you.”

“Miss Bradshaw?”

J.D.’s entire body tensed, as if to absorb a blow. Kemp’s threatening note hinting he suspected Amelia and he were lovers… and now his move to make this bogus engagement to Matilda public without J.D.’s even knowing—until he read it in the paper today—that her father put the announcement in the
Call
—all this news meant Ezra’s actions constituted more than just another bluff.

“That horrid Jake Kelly and somebody named Kavanaugh were here recently. I heard the second man say that you’re perhaps… well… fond of her, and if you are—my father thinks that by threatening her life, he’ll force you to do what he wants—marry me to get the upper hand at the Bay View, using my share as your wife as leverage to take the hotel away from you.”

Or have me killed and get it all…

“
Are
you… fond of Miss Bradshaw, Mr. Thayer?” Emma asked.

J.D. paused. “I have a great deal of respect for Amelia Bradshaw.”

“That’s not the thrust of my question, sir,” Emma countered, eyeing him steadily.

“I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I spoke in public of such personal matters, Miss Stivers.” He was relieved when his cool reply prompted her to lower her gaze.

J.D.’s thoughts shifted to Kemp. A desperate man will play his last card if he thinks it will help him win the game—and the lord of this Mill Valley manor was clearly getting to the desperate stage. Given Kemp’s previous actions, it wasn’t far-fetched to think that his ultimate plan might, indeed, include arranging the tragic demise of his new son-in-law, thereby giving Kemp immediate, total control over the prized real estate at Taylor and Jackson. It had been known to happen before.

Matilda reached for J.D.’s hands and clutched them tightly. “Please, please, Mr. Thayer, help us! He has people watching me every time I walk off the property. This studio is the only place where he leaves us alone. It was my mother’s sanctuary, and he couldn’t
stand
her. Emma and I dream night and day how we can get away from here—”

“I wouldn’t attempt to run away just now,” J.D. intervened.

“But—”

“My advice is that you remain quiet and stay clear of him as much as you can. I promise you, I’ll think of something.”

Emma looked from her friend to J.D. Then she blurted, “What if you actually
married
Tilly?”

“What!” screeched Matilda.

“No! Hear me out,” Emma said excitedly. “What if you, Mr. Thayer, wed Matilda on the Fourth of July, as the newspaper says you will, and then Tilly and I have a Boston Marriage—and
you’ll
be free to do as you pleased.”

“Pray tell me, Emma,” J.D. asked with the first glimmer of amusement he’d experienced all evening, “what is a ‘Boston Marriage’?”

“Two respectable women who love each other live together as ‘friends’ in the eyes of the world.” Her pretty features were alight with excitement. “It’s done all the time in Massachusetts. You, of course, as Tilly’s supposed husband, could live your life as you wished—with Miss Bradshaw, if you wished—and Matilda and I could stay in your hotel, shielded from Mr. Kemp, and eventually we two could travel and—”

J.D. shook his head. “Ezra would still do his best to make my life miserable, and Miss Bradshaw would remain in danger as well.”

Crestfallen, both women said, “Oh.”

“But I will take it under advisement as a possible interim solution,” J.D. said, turning an idea over in his mind. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

He rose from his chair and made his farewells, his mind brimming with thoughts of the day’s amazing turn of events. He had only a few cards of his own left to play and not much time to play them.

Marrying Matilda just might have to be one of them.

***

The next morning, just after five-thirty, Amelia lay in her narrow bed and concentrated on her list of remaining chores scheduled that day. The newspaper headline announcing J.D.’s engagement and the photographs of him in China Alley clicked through her brain like pictures in a stereopticon.

Her plan was to simply take J.D. aside this morning and ask him about the newspaper article and demand to know what on God’s green earth was going on. She would discover, once and for all, why he continually found himself in a tangled web of intrigue and conflict, a way of life that unnerved and repelled her.

A man with J.D.’s sordid history was not some rakish figure in a romantic novel, she reminded herself. She’d known that fact full well the night she’d allowed him to take her to bed. Until just recently, he’d seemed a trustworthy collaborator during the long, hard months they’d built the hotel together. Yet, in actual fact,
whose
word could be counted on—other than her own?

After all, he and Kemp had maneuvered her father into betting his supposed stake in the hotel. Before she’d seen the engagement announcement, she’d allowed the briefest fantasy to flit through her mind of a continuing association with J.D. in the management of a hotel they both prized unashamedly. She’d never daydreamed about marriage—given her unhappy experience with Etienne—but she’d gone so far as to imagine she and J.D. might truly become lovers and working partners.

But in reality, there had always been a part of the equation with J.D. Thayer she didn’t understand. He’d told her quite directly he was not used to sharing his thoughts or decisions with anyone. What if he’d kept things from her that would make her detest him? What then?

The clanging of the first cable cars coming out of the restored brick barn lower on Jackson Street jolted Amelia into awareness that she mustn’t tarry. Her mind was a blackboard with a hundred conflicting calculations scrawled all over it. Even if J.D. didn’t want to wed Matilda, the fact remained that Kemp’s men had killed Foo and tried to rape Amelia in her bed—or worse. So why would a decent man have anything to do with such a repulsive sort of person as Ezra Kemp—let alone go into business with him in the first place or even
consider
marrying his daughter?

As Grandfather Hunter used to say, “Look at a man’s deeds, lass, not his stated intentions.” But when it came to J.D., he’d neither stated his intentions toward her—honorable or otherwise—and rarely had his deeds revealed his true intentions.