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

She was his wife, it developed, given name Lucretia. Her handshake was as firm as a man’s, her eyes bird-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 eaten one too many sacks full of lemons. And she was not pleased to meet him.

“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 a ghost, nothing. If it isn’t, Mr. Quincannon will find out what’s behind these... will-o’-the-wisps.”

“Will-o’-the-wisps? On foggy nights with no moon?”

“Whatever they are, then.”

“Your neighbor believes it’s a genuine ghost,” Quincannon said. “If you’ll pardon the expression, the incidents have him badly spooked.”

“You saw Mr. Crabb, did you?” Meeker asked.

“I did. 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 profession, for another. No licit profession, I’ll warrant.”

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

“Jared, you mean?” Her mouth turned even more lemony. “Another good-for-nothing.”

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

“Well? Do you deny it?”

“I do. He’s yet to prove himself, that’s all.”

“Never will, I say.”

The Meekers glared at each other. Mrs. Meeker was victorious in the game of staredown — as she would be most times they played it, Quincannon thought. Her husband averted his gaze and said to Quincannon, “Come inside. It’s nippy out here.”

The end walls where the two cars were joined had been removed to create one long room. It seemed too warm after the outside chill; a potbellied stove glowed cherry red in one corner. Quincannon accepted the offer of a cup of tea and Mrs. Meeker went to pour it from a pot resting atop the stove. He managed to maintain a poker face as he surveyed the surroundings. The car was a combination parlor, kitchen, and dining area, but it was like none other he had ever seen or hoped to see. The contents were an amazing hodgepodge of heavy Victorian furniture and decorations that included numerous framed photographs and daguerreotypes, gewgaws, gimcracks, and what was surely flotsam that had been collected from the beaches — pieces of driftwood, odd-shaped bottles, glass fisherman’s floats, a section of draped netting like a moldy spiderweb. The effect was more that of a junkshop display than a comfortable habitation.

“Your son isn’t home, I take it,” Quincannon said. The tufted red-velvet chair he perched on was as uncomfortable as it looked.

“Thomas is a sergeant in the United States Army,” Mrs. Meeker said. “Stationed at Fort Huachuca. We haven’t seen him in two years, to my sorrow.”

Meeker said, “Thomas is our eldest son,” and added wryly, “my wife’s favorite, as you may have surmised.”

“And why shouldn’t he be? He’s the only one who has amounted or will amount to anything.”

“Now, Lucretia,” with bite in the words this time. “The way you malign Jared is annoying, to say the least. He may be a bit wild and irresponsible, but he—”

“A bit wild and irresponsible? A bit!” The teacup rattled in its saucer, spilling hot liquid that Quincannon barely managed to avoid, as she handed him the crockery. “He’s a young scamp and you know it — worse today than when he was a kiting youngster. Up and quit the only decent job he ever held just last week, after less than a month’s honest labor.”

Quincannon cocked a questioning eyebrow at his employer.

“It was a clerk’s job downtown, and poorly paid,” Meeker said. “He’s a bright lad, he’ll find a more suitable position one day...”

“You won’t live long enough to see the day and neither will I.”

“That’s enough, Lucretia.”

“Oh, go dance up a rope,” she said, surprising Quincannon if not her husband.

Meeker performed his puffing-toad imitation and started to say something, but at that moment the door burst open and the wind blew in a young man swathed in a greatcoat, scarf, gloves, and stocking cap. His lean, clean-shaven face — weak-chinned and thin-lipped — was ruddy from the cold. Jared Meeker, in the flesh.

His parents might have been two sticks of furniture for all he had to say to them. It wasn’t until he opened his coat and yanked off his cap, revealing a mop of ginger-colored hair, that he noticed Quincannon. “Well, a visitor. And a stranger at that.”

“His name is John Quincannon,” Mrs. Meeker said. “He’s a detective.”

The last word caused Jared’s eyes to narrow. “A detective? What kind of detective? What’s he doing here?”

“Your father hired him to investigate the supernatural. Of all things.”

“...Ah. The ghost, you mean?”

“Whatever it is we’ve seen these past two nights, yes,” Meeker said.

Jared relaxed into an indolent posture as he shed his coat. Then he laughed, a thin barking sound like that of an adenoidal seal. “A detective to investigate a ghost. Hah! That’s rich, that is.”

Quincannon said, “I have had stranger cases, and brought them to a satisfactory conclusion. Are you a believer or a sceptic, lad?”

“I believe what I see with my own eyes. What about you?”

“I have an open mind on the subject,” he lied.

“Well, it’s a real ghost, all right. Likely of a man who died in one of the cars, or in a railway accident. Couldn’t be anything else, no matter what anybody thinks. You may well see it for yourself, if you’re planning to spend the night.”

“I am.”

“If it does reappear, you’ll be a believer too.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Jared grinned and loosed another bark. “A detective. Hah!”

Alone in the parlor, Quincannon smoked his stubby briar and waited for the hands on his stemwinder to point to 11:30. The Meekers had all retired to their respective bedrooms in the end cars some time earlier, at his insistence; he preferred to maintain a solitary vigil. He also preferred silence to desultory and pointless conversation. There were ominous rumblings in his digestive tract as well, the result of the bland chicken dish and boiled potatoes and carrots Mrs. Meeker had seen fit to serve for supper.

The car was no longer overheated, now that the fire in the stove had banked. Cooling, the stove metal made little pinging sounds that punctuated the snicking of wind-flung sand against the car’s windows and sides. As 11:30 approached, he checked the loads in his Navy Colt. Not that he expected to need the weapon — the Carville ghost seemed to have no malevolent intention, and no one had ever succeeded in plugging a spook, in any case — but he had learned long ago to exercise caution in all situations.

It was time. He holstered the Navy, donned his greatcoat, cap, scarf, and gloves, and slipped out into the night.

Icy, fog-wet wind and blowing sand buffeted him as he came down off the walkway. The night was not quite black as tar but close to it; he could barely make out the shed and corral nearby. The distant jumble of abandoned cars was invisible except for brief rents in the wall of fog, and then discernible only as faint lumpish shapes among the dunes.

He slogged into the shelter of the lean-to. The two horses, both blanketed against the cold, stirred, and one nickered softly at his passage. He removed his dark lantern from beneath the seat of the rented buggy, lighted it, closed the shutter, and then went to the side wall and probed along it until he found a gap between boards. Another brief tear in the fog permitted him to fix the proper angle for viewing the cars. He dragged over two bales of hay, piled one atop the other, and perched on the makeshift seat. By bending forward slightly, his eyes were on a level with the gap. He settled down to wait.