Josiah's Treasure (4 page)

“Not until you answer my question.”

“You haven’t asked a question. You’ve made a statement that you are searching for your father, whom I have assured you is not here.”

“Perhaps if I gave you my name, you’ll understand. I’m Daniel Cady. Josiah’s son.” Daniel swept his hat from his head. “And I’ve come to claim my money.”

I
f he had announced he was the King of England, Sarah could not have been more stunned. “That can’t be the truth.”

One dark eyebrow rose above eyes the hue of forest depths or winter’s pine. Eyes that were vaguely familiar.
Daniel
. That’s what he had said his Christian name was. Sarah didn’t recall if Josiah had ever mentioned the names of his children. He had hardly ever spoken of them, so she didn’t think he had.

“Which isn’t the truth—that I’ve come for the money or that I’m Josiah’s son?” he asked in his concise Midwestern accent.

“It’s impossible.” Sarah searched his face, hunting for similarities beyond an eye color that anyone could possess. His hair was trimmed more closely than most men she knew chose to wear theirs, as if he hadn’t the time to bother with whatever was currently fashionable, and his jaw was clean-shaven and free of the thick sideburns that made some men look like stuffed chipmunks. But where Josiah’s face and eyes had been kind, this man’s were hard as glass. And where Josiah’s smile had been ready, never far from his mouth, Daniel Cady looked as if he had never smiled in his life. He and Josiah were about the same size, if she envisioned Josiah as a man in his prime, and when the fellow lifted his eyebrow and tilted his head just slightly to one side, like he was doing now, there was an echo of the man who often looked at her the same way. But an echo did not make him Josiah’s son
any more than the copies she painted at art exhibitions were originals. “You can’t be his son.”

He emitted a sound halfway between a laugh and a choke. “I promise you, I am.”

“You can’t be, because Josiah’s son is dead.”

His fingers crushed the brim of his hat. Somewhat battered, the dark brown porkpie didn’t look as though it could long withstand the pressure. “Is that what he told you? Well, you shouldn’t believe a word Josiah Cady speaks. They’re all lies.”

“You really need to leave.” Off to her right, Sarah noticed Mrs. Brentwood’s servant descending the steps to the street. Ah Mong was only a teenage boy and could hardly protect her if this man decided to become dangerous, a fact that wouldn’t stop him from trying.
Thank goodness.
“There’s nothing for you here.”

She pushed the door against the toe of his boot. It didn’t budge.

“Here. Wait. I should show you this.” He fished around in the pocket of his coat, dusty from traveling, and pulled out a yellowing telegram. “Proof of my identity, if that’s what you need in order to tell me where Josiah is living now. It’s the telegram he sent my family when his gold mine turned a profit in ’75.”

The date brought a rush of memories. Eighteen seventy-five was the year Sarah had first met Josiah at her uncle’s house in Los Angeles. She was fifteen and reluctantly permitted to join the adults at supper.
A special occasion to welcome your uncle’s partner to California
, Aunt Eugenie had lectured,
so you had best behave
. Aunt Eugenie’s heavy lids had revealed her doubts Sarah possessed any inkling of refined manners. Back then, Josiah was a grizzled middle-aged man who laughed loudly and smoked a great quantity of cigars, filling the dining room with his outsized personality. Suffering and misery, mistakes and penance, were still ahead for the both of them.

“Let me see that telegram.” Sarah snatched the piece of paper dangling from Daniel Cady’s hand. The message had certainly
come from Josiah—she recognized the bluster of his words, even in clipped telegram prose, and the news it contained. The year 1875 was also when he and her uncle had made good in the Black Hills, although not as much as Josiah had told his family.

She looked at the man standing in her doorway. Daniel Cady must think she was stupid if he believed an old telegram was any sort of proof. “All this proves is that you obtained a telegram Josiah sent to his family in Chicago. Hardly a birth certificate or a baptismal record.”

The sapphire blue of Ah Mong’s thigh-length tunic caught her attention. Coming quickly to check on her, the boy had reached the middle landing on the steps leading to her house. “Miss Sarah?”

“I’m all right. This gentleman is leaving.” Sarah folded the telegram and handed it to him. “Aren’t you.”

It wasn’t a question, and a muscle along Daniel’s jaw ticked. “Not until you tell me how to reach Josiah.”

“You can’t reach Josiah.” Sarah felt her nostrils flare as she gulped in air. “Because he passed away earlier this year. After a long illness.”

He reached for the door frame’s support. Fleetingly, his gaze registered his hurt. She doubted he realized how clearly she could see it. “You could have told me . . .” He gripped the wood, his knuckles turning white.

“I am sorry.” Her hand hovered, ready to comfort him. Sarah dropped it to her side. “I am. That was careless of me to just blurt it out.”

He straightened and dragged shaking fingers through his thick, black hair. “Let me come inside, Miss Whittier.”

“There really isn’t any reason for you to come in.”

“I need to sit down. For just a minute.”

Sarah let her hand slip off the door. She was going to trust him, an utter stranger whose green eyes reminded her of Josiah’s. Her willingness went beyond any resemblance to Josiah; it was
her weakness, taking in stray cats and girls whose need flickered like a flame in the dark, or a man whose tailor-made suit had been worn past its respectable worth. She couldn’t help them all, tabbies with crooked tails, young women with bruises and tarnished reputations. She certainly shouldn’t pity him, a man who might or might not be telling the truth.

But she did.

Sarah nodded at Ah Mong, waiting patiently. “Ah Mong, would you come into the house and help Mrs. McGinnis prepare some tea for my visitor?” She raised her voice. “Mrs. Brentwood, I hope you don’t mind if I borrow Ah Mong for a short while.”

Her neighbor scowled at the man blocking access to Sarah’s front door. “Most certainly. Keep him as long as you need.” Meaning as long as Daniel Cady took up space in Sarah’s parlor, recovering.

“Thank you.” Sarah eased the door open. “Come inside, Mr. Cady.”

“You’ve decided to believe I’m who I say I am?”

“I have decided I don’t know what else to call you.”

He nodded and stepped into the hallway, trailing the citrus tang of lime shaving lotion. Ah Mong glared menacingly as he darted by Daniel, which prompted another lift of an eyebrow.

“Is it common to have Chinese working in the house?” he asked, stopping in the center of the entry hall, noting the boy’s hasty disappearance into the kitchen.

“It is in San Francisco.”

“An interesting place.” He slid the brim of his hat through his fingers as he examined his surroundings. Standing there, in the shadowed light of the hallway, he did look like Josiah. Just a bit. Enough to force her to reconsider what Josiah had told her about his past.

Daniel scanned the paneled woodwork and the heavy wallpaper above it, her watercolor of the farm and the crystal chandelier suspended over the curving staircase, the patterned carpet
climbing the treads, seemed even to make note of the polish on the floor. And her pair of discarded boots. Sarah flushed and curled her stockinged toes beneath the hem of her dress.

“Very nice.” His tone was admiring, possessive, and the first tingling of alarm shuddered down Sarah’s spine. If she hadn’t been so stunned by his announcement on her doorstep, so be-mused by her impulsive urge to aid him, she would have realized earlier what his arrival meant to her. And to the girls.

“If you still need to sit, we should go into the parlor, Mr. Cady,” she said, corralling her galloping nerves. If he really was Josiah’s son, alive and breathing, this house and all its contents, the property in Placerville, the deed to a spent mine in Grass Valley she’d rather forget about, even her dwindling bank account could be claimed by him. His very existence could topple her dreams like a nudge to a procession of dominoes.

I will not let that happen.

“Mrs. McGinnis will serve us tea in there, and then you can leave.”

Sarah crossed the entry hall, careful to give him a wide berth. Rufus had returned from wherever he’d been hiding to trot ahead of Sarah, his bent tail held proudly aloft.

“How long have you lived here?” Daniel asked, his scrutiny of the house’s interior continuing as he strolled into the parlor. Rufus, the traitor, happily rubbed against his leg.

“Nearly four years, ever since I left Arizona to work as Josiah’s nurse-companion,” she answered with seamless effort, thankful he was more engrossed in the room’s crown molding than in searching for truth in her eyes. Few people knew she was actually from Los Angeles, a place she wanted to forget more than that mine in Grass Valley. “He and my uncle were friends, and I was glad to tend to him. My aunt and uncle, whom I’d been living with since my own family passed away, were even gladder to be rid of the expense of caring for me.” Though not for the reason most people assumed when she made that statement.

“You didn’t return to your relations after he died.”

“I love this city, and I have found a satisfying life here.”

“As an unmarried woman alone?”

“I’m not the only one in San Francisco in that situation.”

Sarah pulled open the shutters of the bay window, sunlight slitting the crimson and cobalt Brussels carpet. Outside, the robust figure of Mrs. Brentwood patrolled the sidewalk. She paused occasionally to rise on her toes and study the windows of the house. The gossip that a strange man—Mrs. Brentwood would undoubtedly embellish the story by mentioning he was good-looking in a dark and dangerous sort of way—had visited the unconventional Miss Whittier would be all over Nob Hill by nightfall.

Sarah set her back to the window. Daniel Cady had moved on to examine a series of watercolors she’d painted, scenes of Golden Gate Park and the beach near Seal Rocks, that hung above the ultramarine brocade settee. Ignored, Rufus had stalked off. “These are quite good.”

“They’re mine.”

He glanced over at her. “You’re a painter?”

“You don’t have to sound so astonished, Mr. Cady. There are many professional female painters in San Francisco. At Josiah’s suggestion, I started selling my landscapes right after I came here, though I prefer to work in miniature.” Why she had explained her preferences to him, she couldn’t fathom. “I intend to open an art studio to showcase my work and the work of my students. Also something that Josiah encouraged.”

“You were fond of him.” He sounded as though he couldn’t comprehend such an emotion.

“He was the kindest man I’ve ever known.” The one miracle God had granted her in a life filled with loss and regret. “He not only employed me, but he gave me a home when I had nowhere else to go. Josiah believed in me and cared for me like a father. Cared more than any of my blood relations ever did.”

Sarah hadn’t meant to tell him that, either, but acrimony was a difficult sentiment to shed. She had proven an utter disappointment to Aunt Eugenie. Her aunt had taken in an orphaned niece, a surrogate for the children she’d never borne, and believed rigid discipline and harsh punishment were adequate substitutes for love.

Daniel’s hat resumed its circuit through his fingers. “He cared about you, did he?”

“Absolutely.”

“Maybe he’s not the same Josiah Cady.”

Sarah’s pulse tripped. If only that were true. “You should sit, Mr. Cady.”

“Actually, I don’t think I will.” He crossed the room, joined her in the center of it. “I want to tell you about the Josiah Cady I knew.”

“He never spoke much about his past.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Small wonder.”

He folded his arms and stared down at her. “Nine years ago he took off to pan for gold, ending up in the Black Hills, bound and determined to become a wealthy man. Not the first time he had abandoned his children and my mother in order to scratch that particular itch. He prospected in the Sierra in 1850 before they married and went to Colorado in ’61. Stayed with us for a while after he returned from there.” He was still looking at Sarah, but his focus had gone someplace else entirely. “When he went to the Black Hills, though, he never came back. Never even contacted us again. The scandal just about killed my mother.
Did
kill my mother.” Daniel’s gaze sharpened. “Nice, caring fellow.”

Sarah wished she had complete faith that Daniel Cady was misleading her. But Josiah, for all his kindness, had always kept secrets.

Just as she had.

“Josiah told me that his wife and children perished during an influenza epidemic. Their deaths were the reason he moved to
San Francisco and never returned to Chicago.” That’s what he’d told her and she had believed him. She had to; she wouldn’t permit Josiah to be so horribly flawed. All the same, she felt queasy. “He loved them dearly and settled here to distract himself from his loss.”

Daniel appeared unmoved. “That’s a nice tale.”

“Listen, Mr. Cady,” she responded, “you’ve told me an interesting and sad story, but it still doesn’t prove you’re who you say you are.”

He tipped his head to one side, understanding lighting his eyes. “You’ve inherited this place, haven’t you? That’s why you’re so interested in getting me to prove who I am. My existence means you could lose this house.”

Rufus meowed and leaped onto the table at her side, bumping his head against her elbow, sensing her anxiety. “I am the owner as far as the probate judge is concerned. I’m not the only one who would need more conclusive proof of your identity than an interesting story.”

“What else did Josiah leave you?”

You can’t have it.
“He spent a lot of his wealth on this house. There is some property northeast of here, in Placerville, but much of the rest, I spent on doctors and specialists.”