Chapter Twenty-Three

Angels Camp.” This time Kate said the words out loud as she stared at the letter.

Across from her, Joe cleared his throat. “Why did you just say that?”

“Did Russ ever tell you that’s where he’s from?”

Joe frowned. “He told me everything—from the drunk driving to Folsom to the fire in Angels Camp.”

Kate pointed to the letter. “Don’t you see? The name of their daughter, a place where angels tread...I think Sadie and Jedediah might have settled in Angels Camp.”

He paused, looking thoughtful. “Angels Camp...You don’t suppose...?”

A moment passed as Joe seemed to be trying to connect the dots. The sound of the still-pouring rain could be heard on the roof.

Joe finally said, “There were only three letters, then, from Sadie Penny?”

“Yes,” Kate said. “Underneath the letters are some old tintypes, the images barely visible. Because the stack seemed high, I thought there were more.”

He laughed. “Hey, in my book, three is good. But this Angels Camp connection...”

“The only connection is the town, and maybe it’s too far-fetched to connect any other dots, but I intend to find out,” Kate said. “I’m heading to the Keenans’ right now. I want to find out exactly why they chose to come here when they left California.”

“I’ll follow you there so you don’t have to drive me home.”

As she drove, Kate kept coming back to the big question in her mind: why would Russ Keenan bring his family all the way from a little town in California to a little town in Tennessee? When people relocated, she’d found some of the top reasons were job-related, or maybe family in the area. It obviously wasn’t job-related. Russ could have begun his handyman business anywhere. When his house burned to the ground, memories, heritage, and a connection with family burned with it.

But was it the only connection to his family?

What if Sadie Penny and Jedediah Jones were part of that heritage?

More dots began to connect. Her brain whirled as she devised a plan to see if those dots might be in the right order. She nibbled at her bottom lip, pondering exactly how she would execute it.

Her plan involved only a question—at least for now—but the answer would be all important.

It was dusk when Kate parked in front of the Keenans’ mobile home. Through the rain, she could see Russ in his workshop, but she waited to get out of the car until Joe parked behind her. They exited their vehicles at the same time, their doors slamming almost in unison. Kate held her umbrella over them both, and Joe, cane in hand, walked with her to the workshop door. Joe gave it a rap with the crook of his cane.

Russ opened the door, surprise registering on his face. “What’s happened?” He looked at Joe, pointedly ignoring Kate.

“We’d like to talk to you,” Joe said. “It’s important.”

“Do you want to go inside where it’s more comfortable?” He looked nervous.

“Actually, this is fine,” Kate said. She looked over at the cradle, and Russ followed her gaze.

“Is that what this is all about?” he asked.

“Partly,” she said.

Joe went over to the cradle, removed the cloth, and touched the sides where heavy wood clamps were positioned. “You’ve been working on it.”

“Yes. The original design wasn’t quite right. The guy who made it didn’t let the wood season before he started. As it dried, it twisted, creating a crack down the middle.”

“Why did you say you didn’t know anything about the cradle?” Kate asked.

Russ didn’t speak right away, and when he did, it was in his usual halting cadence. “I’d planned to say that...Joe’s done so much for me, I, ah, wanted to repair it as a gift. But that wouldn’t be true.” He stopped and stared at the cradle, giving it an almost loving look. “Truth is, I wanted to get my hands on it, feel the wood under my hands, work it just like the original carpenter did.”

“Why?” Kate persisted.

“I have my reasons.”

It was time to execute her plan. “Do you know who made it?” Kate asked.

“The back of the headboard says Jedediah Jones, in 1832,” Russ said.

Kate took a deep breath and then said softly, “Your great-great-grandfather?” It was a wild guess, but she wanted to see Russ’s reaction.

Both men looked shocked.

“How did you know?” Russ asked.

“Do you have a chair where I can sit down?” Kate asked. “It’s been a long, long day.”

Russ brought two molded plastic chairs out of a storeroom at the back of the workshop and set them down for Joe and Kate. He returned for another, set it down, but seemed too nervous to sit. He went back to the workbench, and still standing, leaned his back against it. “Now, how did you figure out the connection?”

Kate smiled. “Actually, I wasn’t sure until I saw the look on your face as I said the words.”

His demeanor softened, though when he glanced at Kate, it was apparent he still didn’t trust her. He kept his eyes on Joe as he spoke. “I had to pass the time in prison...” He spoke haltingly, now staring at the floor. “I’d always been interested in the old Victorian we lived in...its history.” He shrugged, still looking down, then again fixed his stare on Joe. It struck Kate that Russ’s expression said he almost thought of Joe as a lifeline.

“It’d been in my family for years.” He bit his lip, looking angry. “Then the fire took it...” He blinked and looked down at the floor again. “Well, no use going there.”

Kate fought the urge to reach out and take his hand. The bitterness was a facade, she could see now. The anger, a protection against the tragedies he’d endured. And probably, most of it was directed at himself for being the cause of so much harm to others, his family included. She breathed a prayer for him as he continued.

“Family legend had it that my ancestors came from a place called Copper Mill around the time of the gold rush.” He turned slightly to look at the cradle for a moment, a faraway look in his eyes, then continued. “For five years, I pored over those genealogy records, searched online, and in the prison library.”

He shrugged again, his lips turned down as if none of this mattered anymore. “When I got out of prison, I hadn’t planned to move here. But after the old family home burned down, I thought, hey, why not.” He let his gaze drop to the floor once more.

“I, for one, am glad you did,” Joe said quietly. “It was the right thing to do.”

He had been talking mostly to Joe, but when he finally looked at Kate full in the face, she noticed that some of the hardness, the bitterness, had gone from his eyes. For the first time, she wasn’t afraid of him.

“I’ve made such a mess of my life,” he said, turning his eyes away from them both. “I’ve been trying to prove to my family that I’ve got what it takes to care for everyone.” He shook his head slowly, then raised his eyes to Kate’s. “I reacted so harshly to you because I was afraid you’d find out about my prison record...”

“I’ve known all along, and it’s okay,” Kate said gently.

Russ let out a long sigh as if some of the weight he’d been carrying had lifted.

“What I said about the cradle earlier, about my reasons for wanting to work on it,” he said, “I’ll try to explain. Losing my family’s home meant that I really had lost everything. But when we found this cradle and I saw the name on the headboard, well...I didn’t want to share it with anyone else. At least not for a while. Like I said, just to put my hands on the wood that my ancestor whittled and worked has made me feel connected.” He shrugged. “A connection to a place that I can call home...to a family I belong to.”

He leaned back against his workbench, his feet crossed at the ankles. “You still haven’t said how exactly you put this genealogy thing together,” he said to Kate.

Kate nodded. “I’ve just finished reading the journal we found in the cider house vat a little over a week ago. It tells Joe’s family history, but there’s a branch of it that splits off in the early years.” She went on to explain in greater detail the connection with Sadie Penny and Jedediah Jones.

Joe leaned in his chair, resting his hands on the crook of his cane. “Before we go any further, though, can you tell me why you believe Jedediah is your ancestor? Do you have proof? Family records, anything like that?”

“As I said, I’ve heard family stories about the Tennessee-California connection for years. About some land that my ancestor built a cabin on somewhere on Briar Mountain. Legend has it that the land allows only the pure in heart to come there, so my ancestors must have been good folks.”

Joe and Kate exchanged glances.

“We’ve heard about the same place. I’ve looked too,” Kate said. “As near as I can tell, there’s a place off the highway to Pine Ridge, a dirt road that leads to some former building sites. At one time, there was a waterfall. It was dry for years, but after the recent rains, it’s probably running again.”

“There’s a cross,” Russ said. “Seen only in late autumn, or something like that.”

Kate continued, “Abigail Tucker, the writer of the journal, said that it’s visible during the winter solstice, but the light needs to be just right.”

Russ smiled, the first smile Kate had seen cross his face. “I have a family Bible that belonged to Jedediah,” he said. “Most of the family-tree page is missing, but it lists some marriages, births, and deaths. It’s very old and fragile and contains other items: pressed flowers, letters and pastels of some of the ancestors. The letter gave me just enough information to lead me here. Would you like to see it?”

Joe nodded. “Yes, then maybe with the diary and letters I have, we can help you fill in the missing pieces.”

“I’ll be right back.”

He was gone for at least fifteen minutes, then returned to the workshop, looking disheveled and white-faced. “It’s gone,” he said. “I always kept it in the safest of all places, but it’s gone.”

He collapsed into a plastic chair, dropped his head to his hands, and rocked back and forth slightly. “It was the only thing I got out of the fire.” He looked up at them, his eyes red-rimmed. “It meant the world to me,” he said. “Like the cradle, it meant I had roots. Right here. That I belonged. Had family that went back nearly two centuries to call my own.”

Kate’s next question would be hard, but she knew she had to ask it. “What about the brooch?”

He gave her a strange look. “What brooch?”

Kate didn’t know whether to trust the look of innocence in his eyes. “The one that Joe found in the wooden chest before he...was knocked unconscious.”

The handyman’s eyes darkened. “So that’s what you’ve thought all along? I conked Joe over the head and stole some piece of jewelry?” He stood angrily and moved to the workbench again, then turned to face them. The softness in his face was gone.

“I don’t know if someone conked Joe’s head,” Kate said, “but I do know someone took the brooch.” She kept her gaze steady.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Russ said.

Kate stood up and stepped closer to Russ. She’d heard his “I don’t know anything about it” line before. There was another question she had to ask. “What about the recent windfall you’ve come into?”

His eyes were again filled with bitterness. “So that’s what you’ve deducted. You think I stole the piece of jewelry, hawked it—”

“Or sold it to a dealer,” Kate said, “one you found in the book on the value of antiques that you bought from Creekside Books.” Kate felt bad about accusing him, but for Joe’s sake, she had to elicit the truth.

Russ’s lips were set in a thin white line, and his eyes pierced Kate’s. “That book was for my son Connor, for an art-history class he’s enrolled in. He asked me to pick it up for him.”

He stared at her for a long moment before muttering, “As for the windfall, my brother-in-law gave my wife and me a loan. End of story.”

With that, he strode to the workshop door, flung it open, and let it slam behind him.

Kate’s heart fell as she realized what her questions had done to Russ. And that, just as she suspected, he wasn’t alone in the center of the tangled web. She and Joe walked slowly back to their cars. The rain had stopped, and Kate could see the Keenan family through the window of their little home.

Russ placed an arm around Annabel, drew her close, and hugged Molly with the other.

Kate and Joe exchanged glances. In the ambient light from the window, she could see Joe’s eyes glistening with tears.

She swallowed the sting in her throat and breathed a prayer for the family, especially for Russ.