Josiah's Treasure (36 page)

“It’s quite all right.” Sarah took her arm. “I’ve got you. That’s more than enough support.”

Minnie grinned at the compliment. “Let’s go up, then, and show them all, shall we? Because if you’ve taught me anything, Miss Sarah, it’s to face the world head-on.”

“Oh, Minnie.” She smiled back at the girl, so much more confident than when Sarah had first met her. If she lost it all, she had at least achieved some good, which had to be worth something.

Sarah clutched Minnie’s arm and faced forward. “Let’s go.”

Archibald Jackson was the first person Daniel noticed as he entered the courtroom, and the last one he wanted to acknowledge.

He pushed past the reporter, headed for the chair Sinclair was indicating he should take. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Jackson.”

“Well, now, Mr. Cady, that’s awfully unfriendly. Story surprised you, I guess.” He looked around with a smug grin. “Bringing in a crowd today. Don’t expect it to go well for her. None of these folks do, either.”

“Not after those lies you published.”

Jackson lifted his hands. “I’m only the messenger, Mr. Cady, and they’re not lies. Don’t let a pair of fine brown eyes and a trim figure convince you differently.”

Daniel glared in response, but he didn’t know who he was madder at—the reporter, Sarah, or himself for being gullible.

The bailiff restrained Jackson from following Daniel to his seat, forcing the reporter to stay behind the railing and find a spot on the benches reserved for the public. Daniel glanced behind him as he settled into the hard wood chair set aside for the plaintiff and caught Jackson’s smirking wink.

It wasn’t long before Sarah entered the courtroom, the crowd’s murmurs rising on a swell tide. She had come with one of the
girls, Minnie, who hugged Sarah before taking the nearest spot she could to the defendant’s chair. Her lawyer met her at her seat, whispered in her ear. She was pale but composed, nodded a few times. She must be missing Miss Samuelson; Daniel had learned from Sinclair, equally as informed as the waitstaff at the Occidental, that she’d left town. Been forced from town was more likely. The scandal of the story had rippled faster than the circling rings of a pond after a stone had been tossed, and it had ensnared Charlotte Samuelson too. Sarah likely never dreamed her actions would harm her closest friend. In that regard, she’d turned out to be just as thoughtless as Josiah. Maybe that’s why they had gotten along so well—they were two peas in a pod.

Judge Doran entered from a side door, a robust man with a heavy chin and thick sideburns, and climbed the steps to his bench.

Sinclair leaned into Daniel. “I’m not anticipating any problems. Doran’ll sort out the truth and you’ll leave this courtroom very well off, Mr. Cady. Very well off, indeed.”

“That’s what I hired you for, Sinclair,” he said, sourly. The money was what he wanted, wasn’t it? The reason he’d spent months searching for Josiah. Not just to keep a promise to his mother and the girls, but to return to Chicago with gold in his pocket, finally able to give his sisters the sort of social acceptance and respectability that came with lots of cash in the bank. There was no need to feel bad for Sarah. No need at all.

Daniel sat rigid in his chair, his spine pressed against the wood slats, as the proceedings got underway. Sinclair presented Daniel’s affidavits and recounted the circumstances leading up to his challenge of the probate. He submitted that Josiah Cady had left his children out of his will because he believed them to be deceased, a statement Sarah was forced to confirm, which meant they deserved their rightful portion of his estate. Judge Doran nodded and encouraged Sinclair to continue.

“I also submit, Your Honor,” Sinclair proclaimed, tucking his
thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, “that Miss Whittier’s claims upon Mr. Josiah Cady’s estate ought to be reviewed. Especially in light of certain aspects of her character that have brought into question her motives behind tending to Mr. Cady in his final days.”

The courtroom buzzed as loud as an angry hive. Sarah flushed. Minnie leaned over the railing and rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

Judge Doran gaveled the crowd into silence. “Please clarify what you are suggesting, Mr. Sinclair.”

Sinclair scowled as if Sarah were the greatest trickster ever to perpetrate a fraud. “I propose that Miss Whittier coerced Mr. Josiah Cady into naming her the primary beneficiary.”

“Do you have proof of such an accusation?” the judge asked. If Sinclair did, she’d never see a penny of Josiah’s money and probably be required to pay back Daniel everything she’d already spent. “Any witnesses willing to testify?”

“Her association with a thief has been widely reported, Your Honor.”

“She’s no thief!” Minnie burst out.

“Quiet now!” Judge Doran grunted his dissatisfaction and dismissed Sinclair’s accusation.

The rest of the hearing continued without interruption until the testimony was completed. The judge took a short time to consider the petition Daniel had brought.

They stood to hear the verdict. Daniel noticed Sarah sway like her knees had gone weak. Judge Doran cleared his throat and began to read his conclusions.

The result was as ruinous for Sarah as Daniel had figured it would be.

“Look, the others did show up. What did I tell you?” asked Minnie, nodding toward the street, trying to sound chipper.

The girls waited in a huddle at the base of the broad steps—Cora,
radiant as a flame with her red hair; Emma, stern and solid; Phoebe attempting a smile of encouragement, the effort not completely erasing the tension scrunching her shoulders. They were so precious to Sarah. If the judge could simply see the women his ruling impacted, he might have decided upon a different outcome and ignored the story printed—and now reprinted—in the newspapers.

They waited for Sarah and Minnie to descend to the street. Cora was the first to hug her, but the others crowded in until they surrounded Sarah completely, bulwarks against the storms of the world, secure and safe and so much stronger than she felt right at that moment.

“We wanted to come into the courtroom and speak our piece,” Cora explained, once they had squeezed Sarah enough, “but some of us were running late, and the deputy in the hall outside the courtroom didn’t much like us trying to push our way in, once the hearing was underway.”

“You were there for me in spirit.”

“Better to have been there in body, Miss Sarah,” Cora asserted, the color in her cheeks as high as the brilliance of her hair. “So’s we could tell that judge and that Mr. Cady what we thought of him!”

“What did the judge say, Miss Sarah?” asked Emma, always straight to the point. Much like Anne, if she’d been here.

Sarah swept her gaze to take in all the girls, their impatient expressions. “It could have been worse.”

“It was bad enough,” said Minnie, dropping her false cheerfulness.

“How bad?” asked Cora, scowling.

“The judge awarded me five hundred of the fifteen hundred dollars I had left in the bank, and he let Mrs. McGinnis keep the thousand that Josiah gave her in his will.” Sarah rolled her lips between her teeth. “Given that horrible story in the
Chronicle
, Judge Doran said I didn’t even deserve what I got, but since
Josiah had made plain that he intended for me to inherit, he felt obligated to let me have some money. None of the property, though. At least the judge didn’t require that I refund what I’ve already spent on rent and supplies for the shop.”

“Five hundred dollars is a fortune,” said Cora, who couldn’t conceive scraping together ten dollars, let alone fifty times that amount. “We’ll do just fine.”

“It is not enough,” corrected Emma, who had been diligent in learning the shop’s accounts. “We need over five thousand a year to pay our bills. We owe rent to Mr. Pomroy and his partners. Miss Sarah owes us wages, and there are debts and taxes to pay. And if no customers come . . .”

“You don’t have to give me my salary for a while, Miss Sarah,” offered Minnie. “I can do without. I’m still working at the grocery. And the others still have their jobs. We can work part-time at the studio like we’ve been doing. That’ll help, won’t it? You’ll do that, right, Cora? Emma? Phoebe?”

The others nodded vigorously.

“I can’t ask you girls to do that,” protested Sarah.

“You’re not asking,” said Cora. “We’re volunteering!”

Sarah smiled her gratitude.
I love these girls so much. But can’t they see how improbable our future is?

“What of the house?” asked Phoebe.

“I have to leave within a week,” Sarah answered.

Cora fisted her hips. “Quick to throw you out, ain’t he? And I thought Mr. Cady was nice. After saving me from my drowning and all.”

“You thought he was handsome, Cora,” Minnie chided. “Well, handsome is as handsome does, and he’s proven to be a perfect snake in the grass.”

“
Chut.
” With a sharp elbow, Phoebe jabbed Minnie in the side. “There is Mr. Cady now.”

“I don’t care if he hears me.” She raised her voice. “Daniel Cady is a louse!”

“Minnie, that’s enough.” Sarah cast a glance over her shoulder. Daniel and his lawyer had exited the building on the far left side, staying as far away from Sarah and the girls as possible. He didn’t appear to have heard Cora or notice them. They headed for a waiting cab parked at the curb, Daniel’s lawyer, Mr. Sinclair, beaming like a cat who’d lapped the richest cream.

Sarah watched them climb into the carriage and pull away. She would never see him again and never get a chance to ask him if his attentions to her, his seeming concern, had been a pretense. She also would never have the chance to explain to him about Edouard.
Not that he would ever really care.

“I agree with Minnie,” said Cora, entwining her arm through Sarah’s free one. “He is a louse. Come to San Francisco to get rich like every other man in this godforsaken town. And for him to take everything away from you, Miss Sarah, who has only worked hard and wanted to help us, is the rottenest thing I’ve ever heard. He’s worse than a louse.”

She glared at the carriage as it drove Daniel away.

“We’ll forget about him, won’t we, Miss Sarah?” asked Minnie, pulling Sarah in even closer.

“Indeed, we shall,” she answered, forcing her gaze away from the carriage before she did something silly like cry. “We shall forget.”

Carve him out of my heart like he never existed.

“A successful day, Mr. Cady.” Sinclair adjusted his top hat and smiled at Daniel, his teeth vividly white in the dim confines of the hired carriage. “How about a celebratory lunch? I know of a restaurant nearby that serves excellent steak, and a glass of wine or two might be in order, as well.”

“I don’t feel like celebrating, Sinclair.”

“Wait, now. You’re feeling remorse and that is natural, but you and your sisters are the legal heirs and there’s no need to feel guilty over the fact.”

“It’s not every day I’ve ruined someone.”

“You haven’t ruined Miss Whittier.” Sinclair reclined into the shadows of his seat. “If she landed on her feet before, she will land on them again.”

The carriage rolled clear of the curb. Daniel looked out the window, glimpsing Sarah and her girls, huddled together on the sidewalk. He cared for her. But then he’d cared for Josiah, too, and look where loving that heartless good-for-nothing had gotten him.