The Spook Lights Affair (6 page)

A multijointed oath swelled his throat. He bit it back and plunged onward, shaking his head to clear it, using the fence to guide him and heedless of obstacles. Blood trickled warm and sticky down his right cheek, adding fuel to his outrage.

The fog-softened steps veered off to the right, were replaced by scraping sounds, resumed dimly at a greater distance. Quincannon’s mental processes steadied. There must be a second alley that crossed this one through the middle of the block. He slowed, saw the intersection materialize through the gray vapors, and swung himself around into the new passage.

Where, after half a dozen paces, he ran into another wooden fence.

He caromed off, staggering. The multijointed oath once more swelled his throat and this time two of the smokier words slipped out. He threw himself back to the fence, caught the top and scaled its six-foot height. When he dropped down on the far side he could hear Cantwell’s steps a little more clearly. The fog was patchier here; he was able to see all the way to the dull shine of an electric streetlamp on Howard Street beyond. A running shadow was just blending into other shadows there, heading toward the Embarcadero.

When he reached the corner he skidded to a halt, breathing in thick wheezes. Visibility was still good; he could make out Cantwell’s thin shape less than half a block away. He broke into another run, summoning reserves that lengthened his strides; he was less than thirty rods behind when the youth crossed Beale Street. Gaining on him, by Godfrey! Quincannon raced across Beale. But as he came up onto the sidewalk on the opposite side, his quarry once more disappeared.

Another blasted alley, this one dirt-floored, he saw as he reached its mouth. He turned into it with considerably more caution than he’d entered the previous pair. No ambush this time: Cantwell was still fleeing. Quincannon plowed ahead, managed to reach the alley’s far end without blundering into anything. There, he slowed long enough to determine that the footfalls were now fading away to his right, in the direction of Folsom Street. He angled that way, spied Cantwell some distance ahead—and then, again, lost sight of him. And when that happened, his footsteps were no longer audible.

The restless mist was thick-pocketed that way; the side lamps on a hansom cab at the far intersection were barely visible. At a fast walk now, Quincannon continued another ten paces. Close by, then, he heard the nervous neighing of a horse, followed by a similar sound from a second horse. A few more paces, and the faint glow of a lantern materialized. Another, slender wedge of yellow appeared on the right. One of the horses nickered again, and harness leather creaked. He heard nothing else.

He kept moving until he could identify the sources of the light. One came from a lantern mounted on a large brewery wagon drawn by two dray animals that filled the alley, the other from a partially open door to the building on the right—a two-story brick structure with an overhanging balcony at the second level. Above the door was a sign whose lettering was just discernible:
MCKENNA’S ALE HOUSE.

The wagon was laden with medium-sized kegs, which indicated a late delivery to the saloon. There was no sign of anyone human, though he could hear the mutter of voices from inside. He drew closer, peering to the right because that direction offered the largest amount of space for passage around the wagon.

The thrown object came from his left. Quincannon saw it—one of the kegs—in time to pitch his body sideways against the ale house wall. The keg sailed past his head, missing him by precious little, slammed into the bricks above and broke apart. He threw his arm up to protect his head as staves and metal strapping and the contents of the keg rained down on him.

The foamy brew, a green and pungent lager, drenched him from head to foot, got into his eyes and mouth and nose. Spluttering, he pawed at his face and shook his head like a bewildered bull. Once again he heard the pound of retreating footfalls, which impelled him to continue the chase. But in his haste to get past the wagon, his foot slipped on the beer-muddied ground. Down he went on his backside, sliding forward so that he was nearly brained by one of the frightened dray horses’ plunging hooves.

The rear door to McKenna’s Ale House opened as he struggled upright and a pair of curious heads poked out. Quincannon, giving vent now to most of his vocabulary of cuss words, drew and brandished the Navy and the heads disappeared so swiftly that they might never have been there at all. He slid along the bricks, rubbing at his beer-stung eyes. The dray horses were still shuffling around in harness, though neither was plunging any longer. He finally managed to shove past them, stumbled out onto Folsom Street.

The fog rolling up from the waterfront was as thick here as Creole gumbo. All he could hear was the ever-present clanging of fog bells. All he could see was empty damp-swirled darkness.

Cantwell, damn his cowardly eyes, had vanished again. And this time there was no picking up his trail.

6

SABINA

She spooned some of the glutinous, evil-smelling food that her cat, Adam, loved into his saucer and set it down on the kitchen floor. Happy rumbles came from the sharp-eared, long-tailed Abyssinian and Siamese mixture; his short golden fur rippled with pleasure as he tucked into his feast.

Better you than I, Sabina thought.

From her small icebox she took a piece of fresh tuna, placed it in another saucer, and set that on the outside porch for old Annie, the homeless woman. Annie would not come for her breakfast until Sabina had left the flat, but she would already be waiting and watching close by.

A cup of morning coffee sat cooling on the counter. Sabina took it to the parlor and sat in the Morris chair there to reflect once more on the bewildering events of the previous night.

After she, Mayor Sutro, David St. Ives, and Dr. Bowers had returned to the Heights from their futile search along the Great Highway, they had enlisted the aid of servants and some of the male party guests in a thorough canvass of the grounds by lantern light. That had also proved futile, as she knew it would. Virginia St. Ives was not to be found on Sutro Heights, just as her body had not been found on the Great Highway. No matter what anyone might think—and there was skepticism among others besides the girl’s brother—Sabina had not been mistaken in what she’d witnessed on the overlook. The ghostlike figure on the parapet, its leap, the scream, the sound of the body tumbling down the cliff—all of that had happened just as she remembered it.

The question of what had become of Virginia’s body was puzzling. But so was the reason for her death leap. The suicide note was ambiguous and offered no hint as to what would compel a lovely, rich post-debutante with the most promising of futures to commit such a drastic act.

Unrequited love was one possibility, a serious illness another. A third was pregnancy out of wedlock.

Adam sauntered in and jumped onto Sabina’s lap. She stroked him absently as he settled down to wash his face and paws.

Would the fact that the girl had been forbidden to see Lucas Whiffing be sufficient cause? It didn’t seem likely. Once her parents returned from Sacramento, they couldn’t have expected Sabina or anyone else to spend days on end watching over their daughter; there were any number of ways she could have continued to keep company with the boy.

Illness seemed just as improbable. Virginia had been too pink-cheeked and clear-eyed, too energetic, to be suffering from a severe malady. There were moments, in fact, when she had seemed to glow.…

Didn’t cousin Callie and her friends describe women who were with child as glowing? Yes, but those discussed pregnancies had occurred within wedlock and in all cases the children were wanted. If Virginia’s glow had been the result of pregnancy, it was probable she and Lucas would have wanted the baby, and as was usual in such circumstances, the St. Ives’s would eventually have accepted their grandchild, if not Lucas as their son-in-law. Virginia would have had no cause to take her unborn baby’s life as well as her own.

But the situation might have been far more dire than it appeared on the surface. If Virginia had indeed tossed her bonnet over the windmill and found herself in a family way, and Lucas Whiffing had refused to marry her, death might have seemed preferable to facing shame and social banishment. She wouldn’t be the first or the last eighteen-year-old girl in trouble to make that senseless decision.

The door chimes sounded.

Now who could that be at this early hour? She set down her coffee cup, brushed Adam off her lap, and went to peer through a parting in the draperies that covered the windows overlooking the street. Two men, one bare-headed, the other wearing a felt slouch hat, stood in the vestibule. She recognized the little chubby one in the derby: Homer Keeps, a muckraking journalist with the
Evening Bulletin
. The other man would undoubtedly be a reporter as well. She might have known that the press would catch wind of the tragedy at Sutro Heights, despite the mayor’s desire that the story not be made public, and come haring to her with a barrage of questions and insinuations.

Sabina was in no frame of mind for such harassment this early in the day. Quickly she caught up the reticule in which she’d put cousin Callie’s ruined gown and slippers, snatched her jacket from the hall tree—last night’s fog had mostly burned off and the weather would be sunny and mild enough for a light wrap—and hurried through the kitchen to the back door. Down a short flight of steps and she was in the rear yard, which was screened from the street in front by trees and shrubbery. A gate in the black-iron fence beyond the carriage house led to an alleyway that bisected the block. She made her way along there to the next cross street and then downhill. It was still too early to venture downtown; she boarded a westbound cable car instead.

*   *   *

The handsome Victorian Callie French shared with her husband was in the fashionable neighborhood just beyond Van Ness Avenue. Sabina surprised her plump blond-haired cousin by her early arrival, and surprised her even more when she presented her with what was left of the borrowed garments. “My Lord,” Callie exclaimed, “these look as if you were playing outdoor tag instead of attending a ball last night.”

“I was, more or less,” Sabina said ruefully.

She apologized profusely for the damaged garments, but Callie waved it away. “Stuff and nonsense. The gown was too small for me anyway. What happened?”

“It’s a long story. You’ll no doubt read about it in the newspapers tonight.”

“The newspapers? Oh, my! You haven’t gotten yourself in some sort of trouble, have you? And at one of the mayor’s parties, of all places?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, but through no fault of my own.”

“Did something happen with the young woman you were watching?”

“To her, yes.”

“Well?
What
, for heaven’s sake?”

“That is what I intend to find out.”

“Pshaw! You’re being very mysterious.”

“I don’t mean to be. It’s just that I haven’t time to discuss the matter right now—I have an appointment downtown.” Which wasn’t quite true, but close enough to her intention. “I only stopped by to return the gown and slippers and to apologize. We’ll have a luncheon soon and I’ll tell you everything in detail.”

*   *   *

F. W. Ellerby’s bicycle and sporting goods emporium was on Powell Street a few doors off Market. The space it occupied was small—an uptown business district showroom rather than a full-sized store. Its plate-glass front window displayed three bicycles—a man’s, a woman’s, and a tandem—and a small selection of other items artfully arranged to attract the attention of passersby. It had just opened for business when Sabina arrived.

The showroom’s interior was crowded with several more bicycles and a wide range of sporting goods, from firearms to archery and croquet sets to a colorful array of kites. The first employee Sabina encountered was a heavy-set, middle-aged man dressed in a rather garish flower-patterned waistcoat. When she asked for Lucas Whiffing he said somewhat stiffly, “I am not sure if Mr. Whiffing is here today—I’ve only just arrived. Illness or whatever may have kept him home yet another day this week. But I’ll see.”

Mr. Whiffing was there, having apparently just come in himself. The young man who emerged through a doorway at the rear and approached her was more conservatively dressed than his fellow employee, small of stature, and darkly handsome except for a haggard look around the eyes that might have been the result of recent illness or a simple lack of sleep. The smile he wore under a narrow waxed mustache was the boyishly charming sort Sabina instinctively distrusted. It was the first time she had set eyes on him, though he had been described to her by Virginia St. Ives’s mother. Mrs. St. Ives considered him “a slick and devious fortune hunter,” though she seemed never to have met him, either. Whether or not the appraisal was apt remained to be seen.

“Yes, Madam, what may I do for you?”

“My name is Sabina Carpenter.” She presented him with one of her cards. “I’d like to speak to you privately, Mr. Whiffing.”

“I don’t understand,” he said when he finished peering at the card. “A woman investigator?”

“You find something wrong with that?”

“Wrong? No, not at all. What is it you wish to speak to me about?”

“Virginia St. Ives.”

His only reaction was a wry twist to his smile. He seemed not to know yet of the girl’s suicide or the strange disappearance of her body. Nor to have recognized Sabina’s name.

“What about Ms. St. Ives?”

“In private, please. It’s important.”

“Well … Mr. Ellerby doesn’t like employees using his office when he isn’t here, but we can talk in the storeroom.” He ushered her through the rear doorway and into a narrow room lined with well-filled shelves and redolent of leather, rubber, and linseed oil. “If you’d like to sit down, Miss Carpenter, I can fetch a chair—”

“Mrs. Carpenter. No, that isn’t necessary. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you about Virginia St. Ives, if you haven’t already been informed.”