“And naturally you’ll keep an open mind in the process.”
Quincannon chose to ignore her mocking tone. He rose, beamed at the cracked filbert, shook his hand with enthusiasm, and said, “Now, to business...”
When Barnaby Meeker had gone, leaving a five-hundred-dollar check, neatly blotted, on Sabina’s desk, she said, “I’m not so sure it was a good idea to take on this case.”
“No? And why not, with five hundred dollars in hand and another thousand promised?”
“We’ve a full plate already, John. Or have you forgotten the pickpocket case, the missing Miss Devereaux, and the Wells Fargo Express robbery?”
“Hardly. You’ll identify the amusement park dip, we’ll find Miss Devereaux, and I have no doubt I’ll locate the Wells Fargo bandits and recover the stolen loot before anyone else can — all in good time.” Quincannon rubbed his hands together briskly and opined, “This ghost foolishness can be disposed of in short order tonight. Fifteen hundred dollars is a handsome fee for a few hours’ easy work.”
“Don’t be too sure it will be easy. Or that it’s foolishness.”
“Of course it is,” he said. “Ghoulies, ghosties, things that go bump in the night. Pure hogwash.”
Late that afternoon, huddled inside his greatcoat, Quincannon drove the hired livery horse and buggy out past Cliff House and Sutro Heights. A chill southwesterly wind blew curls and twists of fog in off the Pacific; the mist was already thick enough to hide the sea from the road, though he could hear the distant murmur of surf and the barking of sea lions. The foghorn on the Potato Patch off Point Lobos gave off its mournful moan at regular intervals.
This was a bleak, lonesome section of the city, sparsely traveled beyond the Heights. As he rattled past the Ocean Boulevard turning into Golden Gate Park, a lone wagon emerged from the jungle-like tangle of scrub pine and manzanita that marked the park’s western edge; otherwise he saw no one. Empty sand-blown roadway, grass-topped dunes, gulls, fog... a blasted wasteland. There were no lampposts here, south of the park. At night, in heavy fog, the highway was virtually impassable, even with the strongest of lanterns, to all but the blind and the foolhardy.
The sea mist thinned and thickened at intervals until he reached Carville, where it roiled in like a ragged gray shroud spread out over the barren dunes. Carville-by-the-Sea. Faugh. Some name for a scattering of weather-rusted streetcars and cobbled-together board shacks that had been turned into habitations of one type or another by filberts such as Barnaby Meeker.
San Francisco’s transit companies were the culprits. When the city began replacing horse-drawn cars with cable cars and electric streetcars, some of the obsolete carriages had been sold to individuals for ten dollars if the car had no seats, twenty dollars if it did; the rest were abandoned out here among the dunes, awaiting new buyers or to succumb to rust and rot in the salty sea winds. A gripman for the Ellis Street line had been the first to see the nesting possibilities; in 1895, after purchasing a lot near the terminus of 20th Avenue, he had joined three old North Beach & Mission horse-cars and mounted them on stilts above the shifting sand. The edifice was still standing three years later; Quincannon had passed it on the way, a lonesome sight half-obscured by the blowing mist.
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, Barnaby Meeker among them, bought their own cars and set them up in the vicinity. A reporter for the Bulletin dubbed the place Beachside, but residents preferred Carville-by-the-Sea and the general public shortened that to Carville.
Quincannon had been there before, once on an outing with a young woman of his acquaintance, once on the trail of a thief who had used the ragtag community as a temporary hideout before taking it on the lammas to San Jose. It had grown since his last visit over a year ago. Most of the structures were strung close together along the highway, a few others spaced widely apart among the seaward dunes. Most were 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 were part-time dwellings — clubhouses, weekend retreats, or, by reputation, rendezvous for lovers. The whole had a colorless, windblown, sanded appearance that blue sky and sunlight did little to brighten; on days like this one, it was downright dismal.
The coffee saloon, a single car with a slant-roofed portico, bore a painted sign: The Annex. Smoke dribbled out of its chimney, to be snatched away immediately by the wind. Quincannon pulled the buggy off the road in front, 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 seats or decorations of any kind. The smells of strong-brewed cofee 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 immediately that he was the garrulous type hungry for company and this proved to be the case.
“One coffee coming up,” the oldster said, and as he served it in a steaming mug, “Colder than a witch’s hind end 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. The boy’s a mite rascally, but then so was I at his age. You a friend of theirs?”
“A business acquaintance of Mr. Meeker.” Quincannon sugared his coffee, found it too strong, and added another spoonful. “Strange goings-on out here of late, I understand,” he said conversationally.
“How’s that? Strange goings-on?”
“Ghost lights in cars and vanishing spooks in the dunes.”
“Oh, that,” Caleb said. “Mr. Meeker told you, 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, except the Meekers and a fella name of Crabb. Neighbor of theirs out there in the dunes.” Caleb leaned forward and said confidentially, even though there was no one else in the car, “Just between you and me, I wouldn’t put too much stock in what Mr. Crabb says on the subject.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, he’s kind of a queer bird. Wouldn’t think it to look at him, as strapping as he be, but he’s scared to death of the supernatural. Come in here the morning after he first seen the will-o’-the-wisp or 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, but he was convinced he seen the ghost two nights in a row.” Caleb chuckled, revealing loose-fitting store-bought teeth. “Some folks is sure gullible.”
“He lives alone, does he?” Quincannon asked.
“Yep. Keeps to himself, don’t have much truck with any of the rest of us. Only been living in Carville a couple of weeks or so. 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.”