The Spook Lights Affair (13 page)

“For the sake of my reputation, and my partner’s, of course.”

“And what have you found out so far? Nothing, I’ll wager.”

“More than you might think.”

“But not what happened to her body.”

“No, not yet.”

“Incompetent as well as negligent.”

Sabina swallowed a sharp retort. “I should think you and your father would want to know why Virginia did what she did, as well as the whereabouts of her remains.”

David St. Ives said nothing. He rolled the cheroot between his fingers, snipped off the end with a gold cigar cutter, and fired it with a flint lighter.

“The answer may have something to do with Lucas Whiffing,” Sabina said. “That is why I’m here, Mr. St. Ives. To ask what you know about him and his relationship with your sister.”

“I know nothing whatsoever about that good-for-nothing whelp, except that my father forbade her to see him.”

“You’ve never had any dealings with him?”

“Never laid eyes on the man.”

“So you have no idea of how he and your sister met.”

“None. Virginia never mentioned it to me.”

“According to Lucas Whiffing, they met by happenstance when she stopped into F. W. Ellerby’s sporting goods emporium one day. But that has turned out not to be the truth.”

“Well? It’s not surprising his sort would lie.”

“I’d like to know why he lied. And why you’ve just compounded his lie with one of your own.”

The young man scowled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do,” Sabina said. “You do know Lucas Whiffing because she met him through your acquaintance with him.”

“What? Who told you that?”

“Who told me isn’t important.”

“The devil it isn’t because
he’s
the liar, whoever he is.”

“The person had no reason to lie.”

“Nor have I. A man in my position does not hobnob with a common clerk. Nor invite or allow such an individual to keep company with his sister.” He drew angrily on his cheroot, blew a stream of smoke in Sabina’s direction. “I don’t care to listen to any more of your preposterous notions, Mrs. Carpenter. I’ll thank you to leave my office at once. We have nothing more to say to each other.”

Sabina complied, returning to the anteroom. There was no doubt in her mind that David St. Ives was as much of a liar as Lucas Whiffing. But why? What was the connection between the two of them and why did David, at least, want it kept secret? It might be because he was afraid of his father finding out he was responsible for the liaison between Virginia and Whiffing, but that didn’t explain his relationship with the “common clerk.” Or why his eyes had flashed with anger at the mention of Whiffing’s name, and why he’d referred to him as “a good-for-nothing whelp.”

She waited half an hour for a five-minute audience with Joseph St. Ives, and wished she hadn’t by the time she left him. She had thought she might be able to reason with him, convince him to give her time to finish her investigation, if not to cancel his plans for a lawsuit, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. He was too upset over his daughter’s evident death, too furious over what he termed Sabina’s “criminal negligence.” He hurled invective at her in a voice that lashed like a whip. If she had been a weak woman, she might have fled from his wrath in tears. As it was, she bore it stoically and without comment, and left his office with her head held high and her dignity intact.

12

SABINA

It was after two o’clock when she entered the agency offices for the first time that day. John had been there before her, she discovered when she sank wearily into her desk chair. His note and the attached business card on her blotter had not been there on Saturday.

Barnaby L. Meeker, Western Investment Corporation.
Your services required on matter of bizarre nature. Please communicate at your earliest convenience.
Cryptic handwritten words of the sort that would usually have stirred John into an immediate follow-up. He must have been in a hurry to have left her to deal with Mr. Meeker.

She had no desire to consult with a prospective new client, even a prospective new client with an impressive sounding business name and offices on Sansome Street, but neither was there anything more she could accomplish on the Virginia St. Ives investigation this afternoon. She sat for a time, to gather herself, and then once again picked up Barnaby Meeker’s card.

Western Investment Corporation was on the city telephone exchange; the number was printed on the card. Sabina placed a call. Barnaby Meeker was evidently a highly placed member of the firm; less than thirty seconds after the call was answered and she gave her name and asked to speak with him, he was on the line.

“I’ve been waiting to hear from you, Mrs. Carpenter.” He sounded harried, as if his day had gone no better than hers. “I left my card before nine this morning.”

“My apologies for the delay, Mr. Meeker. My partner and I have both been out of the office and I’ve only just seen your card.”

“Yes, well, I’m glad you called. I would rather not have to consult with another detective agency.”

“May I ask why you chose us?”

“All the flap in the newspapers about the incident at Sutro Heights. I believe your version of the events.”

“Thank you, but I—”

“They bear a certain similarity to my predicament, you see.”

“I’m afraid I don’t. A matter of a bizarre nature, your note said?”

“Strange happenings in the fog. Ghostly illusions—the phrase one of the reporters used to describe what you witnessed. The beach near my home has been plagued with such unexplained phenomena and my wife is frankly terrified. I want you to get to the bottom of what is going on.”

“Where exactly do you live, Mr. Meeker?”

“Carville-by-the-Sea.”

Carville. He now had Sabina’s full, undivided attention. “What sort of ghostly illusions?”

“I would rather discuss the details in person, if you don’t mind. I would come to your offices, but I have an important meeting at two o’clock. Could you come here immediately? If not, a meeting later this afternoon will do.”

The Sansome Street address was only a short distance from the agency. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she said.

*   *   *

According to a discreet sign on its door, Western Investment Company dealt in railroad and mining stocks. It was a fairly small operation, with a pair of clerks and three inner doors to private offices occupied by the firm’s president and two vice presidents. The fact that Barnaby Meeker’s name was one of the latter two confirmed his highly placed position with the company.

Sabina gave her name to one of the clerks and was immediately ushered into Meeker’s private office. He turned out to be a short, fidgety man of some forty years, the owner of an abnormally large head perched atop a narrow neck and a slight body. A tangle of curly brown hair made his head seem even larger and more disproportionate. He invited her to sit down, but instead of sitting himself, he lighted a fat and rather odorous cigar without asking her if she minded and then began to pace about restlessly with the aid of a cane topped by a black onyx knob carved in the shape of a bird. The cane was necessary because something was amiss with his right leg that caused a slight limp.

“Yes, Mrs. Carpenter,” he began without preamble, as if continuing their telephone conversation after a short pause, “an apparition of unknown origin. I’ve seen it myself, three times.”

“Near your home in Carville-by-the-Sea.”

“In a scattering of abandoned cars nearby, that’s correct. Floating about inside different ones and then rushing out across the dunes and suddenly disappearing.”

“Are you saying that a group of abandoned horse-traction cars are haunted?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Meeker said, “or at least I didn’t until this past week. Now I’m not so sure. After what I’ve seen with my own eyes, my own eyes, I repeat, I am no longer certain of anything.”

“This apparition fled when you chased after it?”

“Both times I saw it, yes. Bounded away across the dune tops and then simply vanished into thin air.” Meeker stopped pacing and thumped the ferrule of his cane on the floor for emphasis. “Well, into heavy mist, to be completely accurate.”

“What did it look like, exactly?”

“A human shape surrounded by a whitish glow. Never in my life have I seen an eerier sight.”

“And it left no footprints behind?”

“No impressions in the sand of any sort. Ghosts, if they do exist, would hardly leave footprints, would they?”

“I suppose not.”

“The dune crests were unmarked along the thing’s path of flight,” he went on, chewing the end of his cigar as he spoke, “and it left no trace in the cars—except, that is, for claw marks on the walls and floors.”

Sabina had begun to wonder if Mr. Barnaby Meeker might be more than a little eccentric. John would no doubt refer to him as a rattlepate. And no doubt scoff at his story. She could just hear him saying, “Glowing apparitions, unmarked sand, claw marks on walls and floors … balderdash! Confounded claptrap!” And yet, were those fog-shrouded things really any stranger, any more seemingly impossible, than Virginia St. Ives’s apparent death leap and the disappearance of her body?

“Have others in Carville seen what you have?” she asked.

“My wife, my daughter, and one of my neighbors. They will vouchsafe everything I have told you.”

“The neighbor wouldn’t be a member of the Whiffing family, by any chance?”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“But you do know the Whiffings?”

“Yes, of course I know them. Fine people, James and his wife—forward-thinking like myself in their selection of Carville-by-the-Sea for their residence. Why do you ask?”

“Their son Lucas was a friend of Virginia St. Ives.”

“Was he? Not a close friend, I hope.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The lad is too brash for his own good, or that of any young woman who catches his eye.”

“That sounds as if you don’t approve of him.”

“I don’t. Ambitions above his station and dubious morals. He made advances to my daughter Patricia last year, before I put a stop to it.”

“By confronting him?”

“There would have no point in that. No, I had a stern talk with my daughter. She’s an obedient girl—she has had nothing to do with young Whiffing since.”

Lucas Whiffing seemed to have a penchant for inciting parental objection in his female relationships, Sabina thought. And with good cause, apparently. Not only was he brash and the possessor of dubious morals, but also a confirmed liar.

“But that has no bearing on the matter at hand,” Meeker said, and thumped the floor with his cane as if in dismissal of the subject. “The neighbor who saw the spook lights was E. J. Crabb. He occupies a car not far from the abandoned group where they first appeared.”

“At what time of night do these happenings take place?”

“After midnight, in all four instances. Crabb was the only one who spied the thing the first time it appeared.”

“When was that?”

“Five nights ago, when the first of the week of heavy fogs rolled in. I happened to awaken on the second night and saw it in one of the cars. I went out alone to investigate, but it fled and vanished before I could reach the cars. Lucretia, my wife, and my daughter and I all saw it on Saturday night and again last night—in one of the cars and then on the dune tops. I examined the cars by lantern light and again in the morning by daylight. The marks on the walls and floor were the only evidence of its presence.”

“Claw marks, you said.”

Meeker repressed an involuntary shudder. “As if the thing had the talons of a beast.”

And evidently the heart of a coward, Sabina thought wryly. Why else would it run away or bound away or whatever it allegedly did? It was humans who were afraid of ghosts, not the converse.

“Just what is it you expect our agency to do, Mr. Meeker?”

“Investigate, of course. Find an explanation for these bizarre occurances, paranormal or not. Put a stop to them before word gets out and curiosity seekers and spiritualists and God knows who else overrun our little community. If that happens, residents will begin leaving, new ones will shy away, and Carville will become a literal ghost town.”

Sabina thought he was over-dramatizing the threat, if threat it was, but she said nothing, merely offered a sympathetic nod.

“Carville-by-the-Sea is my home,” Meeker went on, “and if such as these ghostly manifestations are not allowed to interfere, one day it will be the home of many other progressive-minded citizens like myself. Businesses, churches—a thriving community. Why, Mayor Sutro himself has expressed the hope of persuading wealthy San Franciscans to buy land there and build grand estates like his own at the Heights.”

“A noble aim,” Sabina lied. Grand estates built on windswept sand dunes and beach grass? If Adolph Sutro actually believed this, he was guilty of grand folly. More likely, given the mayor’s shrewd business acumen, it was merely a ploy to sell the beach land for large profits.

“I am willing to pay five hundred dollars for a satisfactory explanation of these fantastic goings-on. And an additional five hundred for a guarantee that we will never again be plagued by them.”

“One thousand dollars?” If John had been present, his ears would have pricked up like a hound’s.

“You say that as if you believe I can’t afford it,” Meeker said, bristling. “Would I offer it if I couldn’t?”

“No, naturally not—”

“I suppose you’re unsure because of where I reside. It so happens I am a man of considerable means.” He thumped his stick on the floor for emphasis. “Our firm specializes in railroad and mining-stock investment, as I’m sure you noticed, and I have a substantial portfolio of my own. I make my home in Carville-by-the-Sea because I have always been fond of the ocean and the solitude of the dunes, and because I share Mayor Sutro’s belief in the future of our little community.”

“Please, Mr. Meeker. I have no doubts about your financial position or the veracity of what you’ve told me.”

This seemed to mollify the little man. “Well, then?
Will
your agency investigate?”