Jo Goodman (7 page)

"That's right," Mercedes agreed.

"It doesn't make sense," Berkeley objected. "I told you that Graham Denison was dead
and
you could find him in San Francisco?"

"It made sense enough to our husbands," Jonna said. "They're with Mr. Shaw right now arranging for your passage and enough funds to support your investigation for six months."

Berkeley reached over the high arm of the settee and placed her cup and saucer on the end table. She stood quickly and was immediately light-headed. She swayed on her feet before she reached for the brocade arm to steady herself. With the ease of a wraith, Berkeley passed the arms that were outstretched to help her. With a light, silent tread she hurried toward the parlor's pocket doors. Pushing them open she barged directly into her husband's chest.

Anderson's arms secured her with the strength of iron bars. "What is this?" he said, his manner patiently jovial. "Why, you're out of breath, Berkeley. Has something frightened you?" He looked over the crown of his wife's pale hair to where Jonna and Mercedes stood. Neither woman was entirely successful in schooling her features. "I see," he said slowly. "I take it they told you."

Berkeley drew back as much as she was able and raised her face. "I begged them, Anderson. It really isn't their fault."

Mercedes and Jonna looked away guiltily, caught their husbands' disapproving glances, and looked to opposite sides of the parlor.

"Why am I not surprised?" Decker said, advancing on Jonna. He carried the lacquered box under his arm.

Jonna gave him a sour look that deepened the dimple at the corner of her mouth. That made him grin at her.

Colin escorted Anderson and Berkeley back into the room. Mrs. Shaw was every bit as upset as her husband had predicted she would be. He had warned them privately that Berkeley would want no part of going to San Francisco. Seeing the proof of it now eased the last of Colin's concerns. He couldn't be sorry that Mercedes and Jonna hadn't kept the information to themselves.

"It's all been arranged," Colin told Mercedes. "In three days Mr. and Mrs. Shaw will travel on one of the Remington packet ships for San Francisco. We will receive regular reports of their progress from the Remington clipper masters who dock there. We've agreed upon an amount that will keep them in comfort, even at prices in San Francisco, for six months. If there is a satisfactory conclusion to the investigation, then there will be an additional reward."

Berkeley felt her husband's large hands tighten on her waist. She couldn't help herself. She had to know the terms from the Thornes. "In what way will this business be satisfactorily concluded?" she asked.

It was Decker who answered. "Proof that Graham Denison is dead or that my brother Greydon is alive. It may be that one outcome will make the other impossible." He paused. "Or it may not."

Berkeley simply stared at him. He could not know the consequence of what he had just said.

Decker opened the black-lacquered case and held it out for Berkeley to see. Three earrings lay on the bed of velvet now. "You've handled all of them," he said. "Choose again. This time carry Greydon's earring."

Berkeley drew a sharp breath. "You can't be serious. You'd trust us to take your family's heirloom to San Francisco?"

Decker's blue eyes narrowed as he considered her thoughtfully. "I trust you to make the right decision, Mrs. Shaw. This is the final test."

Chapter 2

August 1850

San Francisco was rising out of the ashes. Grey Janeway stood just outside his canvas tent and watched the construction going on across Portsmouth Square. One of the workers, a man on a scaffold two stories above the square, saw him and shouted a good morning. Grey raised the cup that was holding his shaving cream in a half salute. Acknowledged, the man returned to work on the intricately carved sea goddess that embellished the front of the Phoenix like a ship's figurehead.

Grey brushed lather on his face and then applied himself to removing it with a newly sharpened razor. Using a cracked hand mirror, he concentrated on not cutting his own throat while the symphony of construction offered its peculiar musical accompaniment. Long planks of lumber slammed together as they were unloaded from a wagon. Hammers pounded out the percussion. The steady breeze off the bay whistled through the boards. Copper, brass, and lead fittings reverberated as they were struck and molded by the pipe fitters.

It was not only in Portsmouth Square that the construction had reached a fever pitch. It was happening all over as the city raised new storefronts, gaming halls, warehouses, and homes. Montgomery Street. Pine. Washington and Kearny. Grey Janeway was grateful he liked the sound of all the activity because there was no getting away from it. That lack of an escape route was one of the reasons he had put up his tent right on the square, directly across from where his new gambling house and hotel was being erected.

His suite of rooms in the Phoenix had been finished more than a week ago, but Grey elected to wait until the entire structure was completed before he moved in. The mirrors he'd ordered from London still hadn't arrived, and he was expecting a shipment of draperies and linens from Boston. He was luckier than other owners, he realized, because his orders were late. He hadn't been a quarter done rebuilding after the May 4 fire when most of San Francisco, including the shell of his new establishment, was leveled by another fire on June 14.

On both occasions the rubble was cleared away as soon as the embers cooled, and the gaming houses, the lifeblood of Portsmouth Square, rose again like the bird of ancient myth. It was after the second fire that Grey decided his gambling palace was better described by the name Phoenix than Pacific Queen.

So he changed it. In San Francisco there was always the tantalizing possibility of something better coming your way. The great fires had a way of eliminating all evidence of the city's previous mistakes. Personal ones as well. Reconstructing a life here could be accomplished with almost as much ease as putting up a new building. No one remodeled or improved. They re-created.

There was no other place better suited to Grey Janeway than San Francisco.

Grey picked up the towel lying on the stool at his feet and wiped remnants of lather from his face. He examined his chin for nicks, found none, and tossed the towel aside. The mirror he placed more gently on the stool.

Someone yelled to him, and Grey scanned the square to identify the source of the shout. He saw George Pettigrew standing outside the El Dorado, waving miners inside with promises of riches beyond their imaginings. Of course they would have to part with a small fortune if they were ever to reap any riches. George didn't explain that outright, but the miners weren't naive. They knew what to expect inside the El Dorado's rough-hewn walls and behind the muslin curtains. The gaming was run fairly most of the time, and the women were as comely as any in the city. For fifty dollars in gold dust a miner could be shown to one of the small interior rooms that were set off from the main gaming hall. A thin muslin curtain would drop back in place to provide a modicum of privacy for the miner and his lady of the evening. The fact that the encounter lasted about fifteen minutes, and the lady would service a dozen more men before the night was through, really didn't matter. For a quarter of an hour the pan-handlers were able to forget their losses at the table, their sweethearts in Ohio, and their played-out mines.

Grey nodded in George's direction. "Get them while you can, George," he shouted. "When the Phoenix is done they won't step inside the El Dorado."

"That's a fact," George agreed good-naturedly. His teeth flashed whitely in his dark face as he smiled broadly. "Then I come work for you. People can't refuse Ol' George."

"That's a fact," Grey called back. "You come and see me in two weeks."

"Yes, sir. I surely will." He eyed a group of miners beginning to shuffle off to another gaming house and corralled them in. "Right this way, gentlemen. Don't mind sayin' the El Dorado will be happy to let you leave with more gold dust in your pockets than when you came. Just step in—"

Smiling, Grey turned away and opened the flap to his tent. When he had staked this small lot for his tent the other gambling-house owners just shook their heads at his folly. They elected to rebuild fast and add amenities as they became available. At risk was losing customers to the rival gaming hells.

There was nothing wrong with their strategy, Grey thought, but he wanted something that stood a chance of surviving the next inferno. That required more time than the usual three weeks it took to rebuild the city. He also believed there was more than enough gold dust to be scattered around, and that it would still be there when the Phoenix was ready. Proof of it could be found after every fire, when hundreds of tiny gold nuggets appeared under the charred foundations of the gambling houses. The intense heat from the fires fused the dust that miners dropped at the tables while they played. It filtered through the floorboards, and it was seldom recovered except after a fire.

Grey had considered that problem when he started reconstruction on the Phoenix. Carpets under the gaming tables were the answer. The gold dust could be beaten out and recovered. He was expecting his carpets from the Orient any day, along with the mirrors and draperies. He still remained hopeful that he would receive them because his cargo was being carried by Remington clippers.

The bay was littered with ships now. Prior to the discovery of gold two years ago, Yerba Buena Cove was not on the route of most shipping lines. Hudson's Bay Company had given up years earlier after trying to establish commercial trade there. In spite of the accessibility of its natural harbor, there was nothing to draw profitable enterprise or a population. The settlement was tents, shanties, adobe huts, and a Franciscan Mission two and one-half miles southwest of the cove. The few hundred citizens were managed by the Alcalde in those days and they were more aligned with Mexico than the United States. It wasn't until 1847, six months after the American flag was raised in the Plaza, that Yerba Buena Cove was renamed San Francisco, the Plaza was renamed Portsmouth Square, and the nameless thoroughfare along the waterfront was christened Montgomery Street.

The irreverent denizens wondered that God had taken six days to create the world when this city by the bay happened overnight. In a town where a significant fraction of the inhabitants went by nicknames and aliases, the fact that Yerba Buena Cove was now San Francisco seemed fitting and proper. Like most of her citizens, the city herself had a past.

The pace of life in the town was still slow back then. The occasional whaling vessel called at the harbor; there were merchants from the Far East at other times. All of that changed with the discovery of gold in the Sacramento Valley. It didn't take long for the bay to become overcrowded with abandoned ships as entire crews left their decks for the promise of a rich strike. Shipping lines made money bringing the forty-niners to the goldfields, but they could lose it when sailors jumped ship and no experienced crew could be found to return the clipper home.

Grey Janeway was counting on the Remington line to make the deliveries that were promised. As far as Grey knew none of their ships had been abandoned in the harbor. They lost a few of the crew on every call to San Francisco but never every man on board. It cost a lot to ship goods with them. There was a high price for their reliability, but it was no more than the market would bear. The profits to merchants were enormous if they could unload their wares in San Francisco. Where else in the country would someone pay one dollar for an apple or three hundred for a barrel of tea? Washbowls cost five dollars, shovels brought fifteen or twenty, and a good pair of boots required a miner to part with one hundred. Laudanum sold by the drop and a quart of whiskey couldn't be had for less than thirty dollars. Where a loaf of bread might sell in New York for four cents, it cost seventy-five on the Barbary Coast.

Grey shrugged into his shirt, tucked it in, and pulled up his suspenders. He raked his thick hair back with his fingertips, then slipped into his jacket. He noticed that the sun was already beating hard against the roof of the tent. In another hour or so the interior would be unbearably hot in spite of the winds churning up from north and east.

He nudged the pile of blankets covering the canvas floor. Five pink toes were revealed. "You told me not to let you sleep," he said. The toes curled and stretched, but there was no appreciable movement elsewhere. "You'll have a headache, remember? That's what you said."