The Art of Love: Origins of Sinner's Grove (8 page)

Gus almost laughed at the irony of it: Mattie had walked away from
him
. No doubt she’d left that part of the story out of the conversation with her landlady. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a bucketload of pricks who abandoned their women just like she described. And he had a sick feeling that with gold fever hittin’ a high pitch in the Klondike, that story was gonna play itself out a hell of a lot more in the days to come. He tried softening his tone. “Mrs. Partridge, I can sure appreciate your concern, but I can also assure you that I mean Mattie no harm. I been up in the gold fields and miss my family. So if you could just tell me where to find them, I’ll be on my way.”

The woman took a moment to size up his intentions; apparently he passed muster—barely—because she pursed her lips and walked over to a small wooden writing desk by the window. She opened the top drawer and took out a slip of paper whose words she copied onto another sheet. She handed it to him and he read “Double J Ranch, Temecula.” Gus reached into his wallet and pulled out a hundred dollar bill, an amount that would have paid for Mattie and Annabelle’s lodging for well over a year. “Thank you for taking good care of them,” he said.

Mrs. Partridge looked at the sum and nodded slightly before putting it in her apron pocket. “You take good care of them and don’t you be leavin’ them anymore,” she admonished.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Good day to you.”

After leaving the rooming house, Gus headed over to Albermarle Street where he found Mrs. Clements’s dressmaker’s shop. An older woman was hard at work on a treadle sewing machine. She looked up at the sound of the bell jingling on the shop door.

“Mrs. Clements?” Gus inquired.

The woman stood and smoothed her skirts. “Yes, sir, may I help you?”

Gus took off his hat (which he’d forgotten to remove at the rooming house and which might have helped his cause with Mrs. Partridge if he had). “My wife, Mattie Wolff. I understand she worked for you last year?”

Mrs. Clements smiled. “Yes. She was quite a good seamstress. I was sorry to let her go.”

“When was that, ma’am?”

“Oh, round about last October, I believe it was. My business had slowed to a trickle and I just couldn’t keep her on. It darn near broke my heart too. She and that sweet baby of hers and all. I knew she needed the money. She said you were workin’ the gold fields. That right?”

“That’s right. I just came out on the
Portland
.”

“Ah,” she nodded. “That explains the fancy duds. You must have hit some pay dirt, then.”

“Some,” he said.

“Well, I heard she went down to southern California with the young lady who lived next door. They turned out to be good friends.”

Gus pulled another hundred out of his wallet and handed it to the woman, who looked surprised as hell. “Thanks for giving my wife employment when she needed it,” he said.

When he left the dressmaker’s, Gus hailed a hackney and went straight over to the train station to book a ticket for Los Angeles the following day. As luck would have it, the railroad had put in a spur to Temecula, so he reserved a seat all the way through. He headed back to the Madison Hotel where he was due to have dinner with C.J. and Ethel. They were expecting Mattie to be with him and it was going to be damn embarrassing to tell them he had to go all the way down to Los Angeles to fetch his wife. But it had been so long that a few more days wouldn’t matter, he told himself. In the meantime, he’d talk to C.J. about an idea he’d had regarding using steam to melt the permafrost. Maybe they could work together and manufacture some kind of contraption that would speed up the digging process.

Then there was John Anderson. He was thinking John might want to partner with him in some business that supplied the miners who’d surely be heading back up north. By the looks of the crowds on the waterfront, the demand for those goods—and the means to transport them—was going to skyrocket. He had a lot of ideas and a lot to think about. Maybe it was actually better he had a few more days before picking up Mattie and Annabelle. He told himself that, but he didn’t really believe it.

CHAPTER SIX

T
he Double J Ranch sprawled over several hundred acres in the Temecula Valley, and as far as Gus could tell from the seat of the horse he’d secured to find the place, the Jones family was doing fairly well. It looked like they raised wheat and other crops as well as ran cattle. The man who managed the stables in town had provided decent directions and Gus found the place easily. After tying his horse to a nearby post next to a small watering trough, he knocked on the front door of what looked to be the main residence. It looked more like a Spanish hacienda than a typical farmhouse, but that was the case with many of the buildings in this part of the state.

After several minutes and no answer, Gus walked around the back of the house to see if maybe someone was outside and hadn’t heard his knock. He found a young woman with long reddish-blonde hair working in what looked to be a kitchen garden. She had a basket next to her that was half full of just-picked vegetables—tomatoes and cukes, lettuce and radishes and green beans. Gus hadn’t seen such fresh produce in a long, long time.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” He stayed at the edge of the plot in case she spooked easily. “Uh, Miss Bethany Jones?”

The young woman glanced over her shoulder and scrambled to her feet when she saw him. “Oh. Yes, that’s me.” She wiped her hands on her apron and looked around as if searching for reinforcements. “May I help you?”

“I hope so, ma’am. I’m looking for Mattie Wolff. I understand she moved here with you from Seattle. I’m her husband, Gus.”

The woman stopped moving and stared at him as if he had just dropped his trousers. She took so long to answer that Gus was afraid she’d had a mental fit of some kind. “Ma’am?” he prompted.

Miss Jones closed her eyes briefly as if to collect herself. Finally she spoke. “Uh, um. Mr. Wolff. Why don’t we go inside?” She gestured for him to precede her and waited while he walked up the back steps and into what was the sun porch of the house. “Please, sit down,” she invited, pointing to a grouping of chairs around a small wooden table. “May I get you something to drink?”

“No thanks. I’d really just like to see Mattie and Annabelle. Are they close by?”

The young lady sat down across from Gus and looked at the table for a minute before sighing and meeting his eyes. “I haven’t seen Mattie or Annabelle in quite some time,” she said.

The cold sensation that Gus had felt at the rooming house returned, accompanied by an inner alarm that told him something was definitely out of place. “What are you talking about?”

“I—” the young woman started to cough and reached into her apron pocket for a handkerchief. “I’m sorry,” she said after she got herself under control. “I was about to say that Mattie doesn’t live here. Neither she nor Annabelle live here. She—”

“Wait a minute,” Gus said, his voice rising. “I was told that Mattie and Annabelle left Seattle to come down here to live with you. Now where in the blazes is she?”

Miss Jones spoke slowly, as if she were choosing each word one at a time. “You don’t have to raise your voice, Mr. Wolff. I…I will tell you what I know.”

Alarm bells were clanging in his head by now, threatening to drown out the lady’s voice. Gus forced himself to stay put and listen. “Go on,” he said.

“We did leave Seattle together—me, Mattie, and little Annabelle. We took a steamship to San Francisco, where we were to transfer to a train to come down here. Much as you did, I assume?”

Gus nodded. “Continue.”

“Well…” at that point the lady stood up from her seat and held onto the back of the chair. “We…we stayed in San Francisco for a few days and Mattie met a man, a man she said she had known a long time, since before she met you. She…she said she wanted to stay and visit with him for a few days and would follow me down here. But she never did.”

“Who was this man?” Gus asked abruptly. “What was his name?”

“Um…Roger…uh no, Robert. Robert Something. Everton, I think. Robert Everton. She called him Rob and said she had known him growing up.”

“I don’t believe this,” Gus muttered. “So why didn’t she follow a few days later like she said?”

Miss Jones sat down again and reached out to touch Gus’s arm. “Mr. Wolff, when you didn’t come back as promised, Mattie felt very alone. The last word she’d gotten from up there was that several miners had drowned on the same river you were prospecting. She thought you were
dead
. Do you understand?”

“Dead? But why would she think that? I told her in my letter—”

“Mattie received no letter from you, sir. Not the whole time she was living in Seattle.”

It was Gus’s turn to get up. He began to pace the room. “That’s ridiculous. I specifically paid the messenger to deliver my letter as soon as his ship arrived.”

“All I can tell you, Mr. Wolff, is that she knew you would have contacted her if you could, and because you didn’t, it must have meant that, well…”

“… that I was gone and she was free to be with someone else. I get your meaning.” Gus paused to consider his options. San Francisco was on the way back to Seattle. He could stop there, pick them up, and continue on. He would find a way to forgive her. Somehow. “So, where do I find this Robert Everton? Did she leave an address for you to reach her?”

Miss Jones bit her lip and shook her head slightly. “I think he’d been just passing through as well, but I’m not entirely sure. Mattie told me not to worry; she said that she and Annabelle would be safe with him. I assumed at some point I would hear from her again, but I never did. I know this is not what you wanted to hear.”

“No, ma’am, that is not what I wanted to hear.” Gus turned to leave, the significance of what the young woman had told him just beginning to sink in. “Thank you for your time. You can always reach me through the Madison Hotel in Seattle. If you hear from her, I would appreciate it very much if you would contact me.”

“Of course.” Miss Jones walked Gus through the house and let him out the front door. He heard the tinkling of a bell from upstairs, then a faint cry of “Bethany!”

“My father,” she explained. “He has not been well.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, ma’am. Thank you again.”

“Good day,” she said and closed the door.

Gus retrieved his horse and retraced his route back to the town of Temecula. It was a warm summer’s day. The sky was a piercing blue with no clouds to be seen, and the air smelled fresh and earthy, like those vegetables that had just been picked. It was a day for sharing a picnic and a nap near a meandering stream, or havin’ a lemonade while rockin’ on a squeaky porch swing. It was not a day to find out your wife and daughter were gone to hell knew where.

Damned if something didn’t feel square about the whole situation. Even if Miss Jones was right about Mattie not getting his letter, would she really have taken off with some stranger? He caught himself. Not a stranger, apparently. Somebody she’d grown up with. Had she ever mentioned an old friend named Rob? He didn’t remember. And he couldn’t check her childhood home in Seattle because Mattie hadn’t grown up there; she and her ma had come from someplace else. St. Louis, was it? Kansas City? He cursed himself for paying more attention to the way her breasts looked beneath her shirtwaist than the life story she had tried to tell him when they first met.

He pondered his options. He could stay in Seattle and begin the search from there. He could move to San Francisco; maybe he’d uncover some clues. He could…but who was he kidding? He had to get back to the Yukon pronto, and he knew it. Shorty and Porter were holding down the fort, but they needed him. Several more of the claims they’d secured needed to be dug over the winter in time for the spring cleanup. The new restaurant needed to be finished; supplies had to be managed. He simply had to get back.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t continue the search. He’d stop in San Francisco anyway and hire a private investigator. He’d locate that messenger Ed Barlow and he’d look for Mattie and Annabelle. No telling where the trail might lead. He had the money to do it, and what good was it anyway if he couldn’t share it with his family?

With that plan in mind, August Wilkerson Wolff bought a return ticket to Seattle by way of San Francisco, wrapped up his business in the states, and took the first available steamer back to the gold fields.