2 The Spook Lights Affair

by Marcia Muller

  Farther south, where the Park and Ocean railway line terminated, a Civil War vet named Colonel Charles Daily made his home in a shell-decorated Realtor’s shed. An entrepreneur, Daily had bought three cars and rented them at five dollars each—one to a ladies’ bicycle club known as The Falcons—and also opened a coffee saloon. Others, Meeker and Whiffing among them, bought their own cars and had them towed into various configurations in the vicinity. A reporter for the Bulletin had dubbed the place Beachside, but residents preferred Carville-by-the-Sea and the general public shortened that to Carville.

  Quincannon had been there before, on an outing with a young woman of his acquaintance who had not been averse to spending two rather amorous nights in a car that belonged to one of her relatives. She had since moved to San Jose, but that had been after the end of their brief romance; she had been a mere dalliance for him, as he no doubt had been for her. The only woman he had ever pined for, blast it, was Sabina. Even if the glorious day should come when she succumbed to his blandishments, it would be much more than a dalliance for both of them. Of that much he was certain.

  Carville had grown since his last visit. Most of the structures built from the former cars were strung close together east of the highway, a few others spaced widely apart among the seaward dunes. Most seemed to be more or less permanent homes—single or double-stacked cars, some drawn together in horseshoe shapes for protection against the wind, and embellished by lean-tos and fenced porches. A few would be part-time dwellings—clubhouses, weekend retreats, or rendezvous for lovers. The whole had a colorless, windblown, sanded appearance that blue sky and sunlight did little to brighten. On days and evenings like this one, it was downright dismal.

  The coffee saloon, a single car with a slant-roofed front portico, bore a painted sign: THE ANNEX. Smoke dribbled out of its chimney, to be snatched away immediately by the wind. Behind it was a corral and carriage barn where some local residents chose to keep their animals and equipage. Quincannon pulled the buggy off the road under the portico, affixed the weighted hitch strap to the horse’s bit, and went inside.

  It was a rudimentary place, with a narrow foot-railed counter running most of its width. There were no tables or benches or decorations of any kind. The smells of strong-brewed coffee and pitch pine burning in a potbellied stove were welcome after the long, cold ride from downtown.

  The counterman was a stooped oldster with white whiskers and tufts of hair that grew patchily from his scalp like saw grass atop the beach dunes. Quincannon sensed from the man’s demeanor that he was the garrulous type, hungry for company, and this proved to be the case.

  “One coffee coming up,” the oldster said, and then as he served it in a steaming mug, “Colder than a witch’s titty out there. My name’s Potter, but call me Caleb, ever’body does. Passing by or visiting, are ye?”

  “John Quincannon. Visiting.”

  “Ye don’t mind me asking who?”

  “The Barnaby Meekers.”

  “Nice folks, Mr. and Mrs. Meeker. Pretty little daughter, too. You a friend of theirs?”

  “A business acquaintance of Mr. Meeker.” Quincannon sugared his coffee, found it still too potent, and added another spoonful. “How far is their home from here?”

  “Not far,” Caleb said. “Take the branch lane seaward about fifty yards south, then the first left-hand fork. That’ll be Seashell Lane, though it ain’t marked as such. Can’t miss the Meeker place—biggest collection of cars out that way, and their name’s on a sign close by.”

  “I understand the Whiffing family also lives here.”

  “That they do. More well-to-do folks helping to put Carville on the map. You know them, too?”

  “The son, Lucas,” Quincannon lied.

  “Ambitious lad,” Caleb said. “Sports minded and a mite rascally, but then so was I at his age. How do ye happen to know him?”

  “Through mutual acquaintances. One is David St. Ives.”

  “St. Ives, eh? Related to that girl disappeared off the Heights, isn’t he?”

  “Her brother. Has he ever come visiting Lucas?”

  “Not to my recollection.”

  “How about Bob Cantwell or Jack Travers?”

  “Nope, never heard those names.”

  Quincannon described the two men. Caleb shook his head at each description; if either or both had been in Carville, he hadn’t seen them. “How come you’re askin’ about these gents?”

  “A private matter of no consequence.” Quincannon sipped his coffee, then said conversationally, “Strange goings-on out here of late, I’m told.”

  “How’s that? Strange goings-on?”

  “Spook lights in unoccupied cars and vanishing shapes in the dunes.”

  “Oh, that,” Caleb said. “Mr. Meeker told ye, I expect.”

  “He did.”

  “Well, I ain’t one to dispute a man like Barnaby Meeker, nor any other man with two good eyes, but it’s a tempest in a teapot, ye ask me.”

  “You haven’t seen these apparitions yourself, then?”

  “No, and nobody else has, neither, ’cept the Meekers and a fella name of Crabb, neighbor of theirs out in the dunes.” Caleb leaned forward and said confidentially, even though there was no one else in the car, “Just between you and me and a lamppost, I wouldn’t put too much stock in what Mr. E. J. Crabb has to say on the subject.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, he’s kind of a queer bird. Wouldn’t think it to look at him, big strapping fella, but he’s scared to death of haunts. Come in here the morning he first seen whatever it was and he was white as a ghost himself. Asked me all sorts of questions about spooks and such, whether we’d had ’em out here before. I told him no and ’twas likely somebody out with a lantern, or his eyes playing tricks in the fog, but he was convinced he seen the ghost two nights in a row.” Caleb chuckled, revealing loose-fitting, store-bought teeth. “Some folks sure is gullible.”

  “He lives alone, does he?” Quincannon asked.

  “Yep. Keeps to himself, don’t have much truck with any of the rest of us.”

  “Has he been in Carville long?”

  “Five or six months. Squatter, unless I miss my guess. I can spot ’em, the ones just move in all of a sudden and take over a car without paying for the privilege.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “He never said and I don’t like to pry. But I heard young Whiffing say to his father that Crabb’s a construction worker.”

  “Lucas knows him, then.”

  “To pass the time of day with. Seen ’em doing that now and then.”

  Quincannon finished his coffee, declined a refill, asked and was told where the Whiffings lived, and went out to the rented buggy. The Whiffing residence being the closest, just down the road a ways, he made that his first stop. Four cars drawn together in a square and surrounded by sand, sea grass, and gorse shrubs. Elegant seaside living, he thought sourly.

  The stop netted him nothing. The only member of the family at home was Mrs. Whiffing, a thin, birdlike woman. Lucas wasn’t expected for another hour or so, she told him. Was he a friend of her son? Quincannon told her the same half truth he’d given Caleb, omitting mention of Cantwell, Travers, and David St. Ives, handed her one of his business cards, and said that he would be staying overnight at the Meekers’ home. If Lucas came to see him, well and good. In any event his presence in Carville would give the lad cause for wonder and perhaps consternation.

  The branch lane that led to the Meekers’ home was easy enough to find even in the heavy mist. The buggy alternately bounced and slogged along the sandy surface; once, a hidden rut lifted Quincannon off the seat and made him pull back hard enough on the reins to nearly jerk the horse’s head through the martingale loops. Neither this nor the cold wind nor the bleakness dampened his spirits. A few minor discomforts were a small price to pay when he was closing in, as he felt now that he was, on the finish of an investigation and its attendant remuneration.

 
The lane led in among the dunes, dipped down into a hollow where it split into two forks. In that direction, Quincannon could see a group of four traction cars, two set end to end, the others at a right and a left angle at the far ends, like an arrangement of dominoes; mist-diffused lamplight showed faintly behind curtained windows in one of the two middle cars. A ways down the left fork stood a single car canted slightly against the dune behind it; some distance beyond it, eight or nine abandoned cars were jumbled together among the sand hills as if tossed there by a giant’s hand. Pennants of fog gave them an insubstantial, almost ethereal aspect, one that would be enhanced by darkness and imagination. A ghost’s lair, indeed.

  He left the buggy at the intersection of the two lanes, ground-hitched the horse, and trudged through the drifted sand along the right-hand fork. No lights or chimney smoke showed in the single canted car; he bypassed it and continued on to the jumble.

  From outside there was nothing about any of the abandoned cars to catch the eye. They were or had been painted in various colors, according to which transit company owned them; half had been there long enough for the colors to fade entirely and the metal and glass surfaces to become sand-pitted. Three had belonged to the Market Street Railway, four to the Ferries and Point Lobos Railway, the remaining two to the California Street Cable Railroad.

  Quincannon wound his way among them. No one had prowled here recently; the sand was wind-scoured to a smoothness that bore no footprints or anything other than tufts of saw grass. He trudged back to the nearest one, stepped up and inside. All the seats had been removed; he had a brief and unpleasant feeling of standing inside a giant steel coffin. There was nothing in it other than a dusting of sand that had blown in through the open doorway. And no signs that anyone had been inside since it was discarded.

  He investigated a second car, then a third. These, too, had had their seats removed. Only the second contained anything to take his attention: faint scuff marks in the drifted sand, the fresh clawlike scratches on walls and floor that Barnaby Meeker had told Sabina about. The source and meaning of the scratches defied completely accurate guessing as to their origin.

  When he stepped outside, with the intention of entering the next nearest car, a man appeared suddenly from around the end of the car. The newcomer stood glowering with his hands fisted on his hips and his legs spread, and demanded, “Who’re you? What you doing here?”

  Without replying, Quincannon took his measure. He was some shy of forty, clean-shaven except for a bristly stubble, with thick arms and hips broader than his shoulders. The staring eyes were the size and color of blackberries. The man seemed edgy as well as suspicious. None of this was as arresting as the fact that he wore a holstered revolver, the tail of his coat swept back and his hand on the weapon’s gnarled butt—a large-bore Bisley Colt, judging from its size.

  “Mister, I asked you who you are and what you’re doing here.”

  “Having a look around. My name’s Quincannon. And you, I expect, would be E. J. Crabb.”

  “How d’you know my name?”

  “Barnaby Meeker mentioned it.”

  “That so? Meeker a friend of yours?”

  “Business acquaintance.”

  “That still don’t explain what you’re doing poking around these cars.”

  “I’m thinking of buying some of them,” Quincannon lied glibly.

  “Why?”

  “For the same reason you and the Meekers and the Whiffings bought theirs. You do know the Whiffings?”

  “What’s that to you?”

  “And you did buy your car?”

  Crabb’s suspicion seemed to have deepened. “Who says I didn’t?”

  “A question of curiosity, my friend, that’s all.”

  “You’re damn curious about everything, ain’t you?”

  “It’s my nature.” Quincannon let his gaze rest on the cars for a few seconds. “Ghosts and goblins,” he said then, “and things that go bump in the night.”

  “What?” Crabb jerked as if he’d been struck. The hand hovering above the holstered Bisley shook visibly. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Why, I understand these cars are haunted. Fascinating, if true.”

  “It ain’t true! No such things as ghosts!”

  “It has been my experience that there are,” Quincannon said sagely. “Oh, the tales I could tell you of the spirit world and its evil manifestations—”

  “I don’t want to hear ’em, I don’t believe none of it,” Crabb said, but it was plain that he did. And that the prospect terrified him as much as Caleb Potter had indicated.

  “Mr. Meeker tells me you’ve seen the apparition that inhabits these cars. Dancing lights, a glowing shape that races across the tops of dunes and then vanishes, poof, without a trace—”

  “I ain’t gonna talk about that. No, I ain’t!”

  “I find the subject intriguing myself,” Quincannon said. “As a matter of fact, I’m hoping there is a ghost and that it occupies the very car I purchase. I’d welcome the company on a dark winter’s night.”

  Crabb made a noise like the whimper of a hound, turned abruptly, and scurried away to the end of the car. There he stopped, looked over his shoulder, and called out, “You know what’s good for you, mister, you stay away from those cars. Stay away!” Then he was gone into the swirling mist.

  Quincannon finished his canvass of the remaining cars. Two others showed faint footprints and scratch marks on the walls and floor. In the second, his keen eye picked out something half buried in the drifted sand in one corner—a piece of heavy twine some eighteen inches in length and tied into several knots. One end was frayed in such a way that it appeared to have been broken rather than cut from a larger piece. He studied it for a few seconds longer, slipped it into his vest pocket, and left the car.

  Before he quit the area, he climbed to the top of the nearby line of dunes. Thick salt grass and stubby patches of gorse grew on the crests; the sand there was windswept to a tawny smoothness, without marks of any kind except for the imprint of Quincannon’s boots as he moved along. From this vantage point, through intermittent rends in the curtain of fog, he could see the whitecapped ocean in the distance, the long beach and line of surf that edged it. The distant roar of breakers was muted by the wind’s moan.

  He walked for some ways, examining the surfaces. There was nothing here to indicate passage. The steep slopes that fell away on both sides were likewise smoothly scoured, barren but for occasional bits and pieces of driftwood.

  Sardonically he thought: Whither thou, ghost?

  21

  QUINCANNON

  The Meeker property was larger than it had seemed from a distance. In addition to the domino-styled home, there was a covered woodpile, a cistern, a small corral and lean-to built with its back to the wind, and on the other side of the cars, a dune-protected privy. As Quincannon drove up the lane, Barnaby Meeker came out to stand waiting on a railed and slanted walkway fronting the two center cars.

  Quincannon drew the buggy to a halt abreast of him, hopped out, and joined him. The thin woman wearing a woolen cape who emerged from the car at this point seemed less impressed with Quincannon than his client was; her gaze remained cool and her mouth downturned as Meeker introduced her as his wife, Lucretia. Her handshake was as firm as a man’s, her eyes animal-bright. She might have been comely in her early years, but she seemed to have pinched and soured as she aged. Her expression was that of someone who had an unhealthy fondness for persimmons.

  “A detective, of all things,” she said. “My husband can be foolishly impulsive at times.”

  “Now, Lucretia,” Meeker said mildly.

  “Don’t deny it. What can a detective do to lay a ghost?”

  “If it is some sort of ghost, nothing. If it isn’t, Mr. Quincannon will find out what is behind these … manifestations.”

  “Will-o’-the-wisps, you mean.”

  “Do will-o’-the-wisps moan and shriek like banshees?”

  �
�The wind did that. Plays tricks sometimes.”

  “It wasn’t the wind. And it wasn’t will-o’-the-wisps, not on a succession of foggy nights with no moon or other light of any kind.”

  “Your neighbor Crabb believes these sightings are genuinely supernatural,” Quincannon said. “If you’ll pardon the expression, the incidents have him badly spooked.”

  “You’ve seen him, then, have you?”

  “I have. Unfriendly gent. He warned me away from the abandoned cars.”

  “Good-for-nothing, if you ask me,” Mrs. Meeker said.

  “Indeed? What makes you think so?”

  “He’s a squatter, for one thing. And he has no means of support, for another.”

  “According to the counterman at the coffee saloon, Crabb told Lucas Whiffing he was in construction work.”

  “The Whiffing boy.” Her persimmon mouth puckered even more. “Sly and irresponsible, that one.”

  “Now, Lucretia,” Meeker said, not so mildly.

  “Well? Do you deny it?”

  “He has never been anything but pleasant and polite to us.”

  “Yes, but only on Patricia’s account. You know that as well as I do.”

  “That is of no consequence now.”

  “Isn’t it? With him still living as close as he does?”

  Quincannon asked, “Patricia is your daughter?”

  “Our youngest child,” Meeker said.

  “Not even eighteen yet,” Mrs. Meeker added. “And the Whiffing boy nearly six years older. If she’d lost her head when he came sniffing around her like a cur in heat…”

  Her husband thumped his cane and drew himself up like a puffing toad. He said with a sharp bite in his tone, “Now that’s enough. I mean it. Mr. Quincannon’s interest is in the manifestations in the cars and on the dunes, not in matters of a personal and private nature.”

  This was not necessarily true, but Quincannon made no comment. The Meekers were glaring at each other—a game of staredown in which she would be victorious most times they played it. His guess proved correct when Meeker lost his puff and averted his gaze.

  “Leave your horse and buggy with ours,” he said to Quincannon, “and come inside where it’s warm.”