Donna Andrews: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007

“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.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“He never said. Mr. Meeker’s boy Jared says he’s a construction worker, but seems to me he don’t go nowhere much during the day.”

“Jared Meeker knows him, then.”

“To pass the time of day with. Seen ’em doing that once.”

Quincannon finished his coffee, declined a refill, and went out to the rented buggy. The branch lane that led to the Meekers’ home was two hundred rods further south. 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 for a fifteen-hundred-dollar fee.

The lane led in among the dunes, dipped down into a hollow where it split into two forks. A driftwood sign mounted on a pole there bore the name Meeker and an arrow pointing along the right fork. In that direction Quinncannon 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, eight or nine abandoned cars were jumbled together among the sand hills as if tossed there by a giant’s hand. Thick tendrils of fog gave them an insubstantial, almost ethereal aspect, one that would be enhanced by darkness and imagination. A ghost’s lair, indeed.

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

From the 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 Cliff House 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 claw-like scratches on walls and floor that Barnaby Meeker had alluded to. The source and meaning of the scratches defied accurate guessing. He stepped outside, with the intention of entering the next nearest car — and a man appeared suddenly from around the end of the car, stood glowering with his hands fisted on his hips and his legs spread, and demanded, “Who are you? What’re you doing here?”

Without replying, Quincannon took his measure. He was some shy of forty, heavily black-whiskered but bald on top, 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 Artemus Crabb.”

“How the devil d’you know my name?”

“Barnaby Meeker mentioned it.”

“Is 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 Meeker bought yours. You did buy yours, didn’t you?”

Crabb’s glower deepened. “Who says I didn’t?”

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

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

“It’s my nature.” Quincannon smiled. “Ghosts and goblins,” he said then.

“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! Ain’t no such things as ghosts!”

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

“I don’t want to hear it, I don’t believe none of it,” Crabb said, but it was plain that he did. And that the prospect frightened 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,” 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 said something that sounded like “Gah!” and turned abruptly and scurried away. At the end of the car he stopped, looked over his shoulder, and called out, “You know what’s good for you, 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 drifted sand in one corner — a small but heavy piece of metal with a tiny ring soldered onto one end. After several turns in his hand, he identified it as a fisherman’s lead sinker. He studied it for a few seconds longer, then pocketed it and left the car.

Before he quit the area, he climbed up 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 tears 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 wail.

He walked for some ways, examining the surfaces. There was nothing up here to take his eye. No prints, no mashing of the grass or gorse to indicate passage. The steep slopes that fell away on both sides were likewise smoothly scoured, barren but for occasional bits of driftwood.

Wryly he thought: Whither thou, ghost?

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 the buggy up the lane, Barnaby Meeker came out to stand waiting on a railed and slanted walkway fronting the two center cars. A thin woman wearing a woolen cape soon joined him. Meeker gestured to the lean-to and corral, where an unhitched wagon and a roan horse were picketed and where there was room for the rented buggy and livery plug. Quincannon debouched there, decided he would deal with the animal’s needs later, and went to join Meeker and the woman.