The Ghost in Roomette Four Read online

  “Okay. I’ll be in the dining room working on my invitations.” Lucy left the kitchen, singing, “A kiss on the hand…” Jill smiled and shook her head. Her sister had taken to singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” ever since her boyfriend Ethan had presented her with an engagement ring in May, right after Lucy graduated from Mills College in Oakland. The song was from the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Jill was looking forward to seeing the recently released movie version featuring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe.

  Jill took a slice of cooked bacon from the plate at the back of the four-burner stove. Then she opened the breadbox and took out a loaf, sticking two slices into the toaster. She looked out the kitchen window and saw Drew, in khaki shorts and a T-shirt, out in the backyard garden. It was July, which in the Bay Area often meant pale gray fog and the need to dress warmly, prompting the quote often attributed to Mark Twain: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Today, however, the weather was warm and sunny.

  Her toast popped up. She removed the browned slices from the toaster and put them on a plate, reaching for the butter dish. Then she carried her coffee and the plate to the kitchen table, covered with an oilcloth print of cherries and pears. She and her mother had canned apricot jam last summer, and the jar on the table was the result. She scraped jam from the jar onto her toast and took a bite.

  The back door opened and Drew came inside. He carried a round metal colander piled with bright red tomatoes and several varieties of squash, from yellow crook-neck to pattypan with their round shapes and scalloped edges, in shades from white to light and dark green. He set the colander on the counter. “Morning, Sis.”

  “Those tomatoes look good,” Jill said.

  “Yeah. I ate one out in the backyard, right off the vine.”

  “I can tell.” Jill pointed. “You have a splotch of tomato juice on your T-shirt.”

  Drew dampened his finger at the sink and rubbed at the red spot near his neck, succeeding in spreading the stain rather than eliminating it. He eyed the plate of bacon on the stove. “Maybe I’ll have a bacon and tomato sandwich, right now. How long before you leave town again?”

  “I’ll have to call and get my schedule. Probably a week, or ten days.” Jill took another bite of toast.

  The phone rang in the downstairs hallway. The ringing stopped as someone answered it. Then Lucy appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Drew, it’s for you.”

  “Okay.” Drew left the kitchen. Jill took another sip of coffee as she reached for the newspaper at the top of the stack. The McLeods had always read newspapers. When they lived in Denver, they took the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post. Now they took the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and the Oakland Tribune.

  Nibbling her toast, Jill looked at the headlines on the front page of the Chronicle. The coming armistice that would end the Korean War was prominent of course, but today a local story took precedence. The American Federation of Labor’s Carmen’s Union, employees of the privately owned transit network called the Key System, was set to go on strike. That was serious, since the system’s network of buses carried passengers all over the East Bay. The streetcars Jill had seen when the McLeods first moved to the area had been converted to buses in 1948, and the rails torn up, a move opposed by many passengers and cities, Jill recalled. The system also ran commuter trains on tracks over the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. When she first started college at the University of California in Berkeley, Jill had lived at home, riding the bus to campus. Later she’d shared an apartment with several other coeds.

  Jill knew from earlier articles that in the past five years, fares had gone up, with routes changed or eliminated. Ridership was down. These days, more people had cars, she supposed. She read through the articles, noting that parking restrictions had been lifted in some areas, and people were forming carpools, as they had during the war.

  She finished reading the newspaper and got up from the table. Lucy was at the dining room table, with her wedding invitations and lists stacked around her. The wedding was scheduled for late September. Sometimes Jill felt a pang, thinking of other wedding plans. She and Steve had scheduled their wedding for August 1950. Instead, Steve went to Korea.

  Now it was Lucy’s turn to plan a wedding. She had shopped for a wedding gown, at stores in the East Bay as well as San Francisco. She had finally settled on a dress and chosen the outfits for the bridesmaids and for Jill, the maid of honor. The church and its hall were already booked for the ceremony and the reception that would follow. Lucy and Ethan were going to honeymoon in Hawaii, sailing for the islands on one of the Matson liners.

  Her mother brought up the subject later that morning, when Jill was helping her put shelf liners in the linen closet near the second-floor bathroom. Lora McLeod had cut several pieces of oilcloth, covered with bright yellow daisies. She had set one piece on the top shelf and was smoothing it into place. “Does it bother you that your sister is getting married?”

  Jill looked at her mother as she handed her another sheet of oilcloth. “Sometimes it does. Most of my college friends are married now, some of them as soon as they graduated. And a couple of Zephyrettes I know are leaving their jobs to get married. So there are weddings happening all around me. It’s bringing back memories of all my plans and preparations.” She paused, then went on. “I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if Steve hadn’t been killed. Or even if we’d gone ahead with the wedding when I wanted to, before he went to Korea.”

  Her mother looked stricken. “Then you’d have been a young widow.”

  “At least I’d have had the experience of being married. Or maybe a baby.”

  “A young widow with a baby.” Lora McLeod sighed. “You’ll get married eventually. Maybe you and Mike—”

  Jill held up her hand. “I know you and Dad like him, and so do I. But I want to take it slowly. I’ve only known him since December. And I’m not ready to leave my job. I really enjoy riding the trains and meeting all sorts of people.”

  “I know you do.” Lora smoothed another length of oilcloth on the bottom shelf. “Someday I hope I’ll be helping you plan a trip down the aisle.”

  Jill was eager to change the subject. She was weary of the assumption that getting married and having a family was the only option for a young woman in her twenties. “I have to tell you something funny, that happened on the train,” she said. “It was at the start of this last run, after we left Oakland. A man came up to me outside the lounge and told me I was perfect.”

  She smiled at the memory. The man who had intercepted her had short sandy hair and hazel eyes, large and penetrating behind wire-rimmed glasses. His tall, muscular frame filled out a well-tailored gray suit. He had boarded the train at the Oakland Mole, traveling in a compartment aboard the six-five sleeper.

  “Excuse me?” Jill asked.

  He leaned toward her and she sidestepped him.

  A wolf, she thought. There was usually one on every trip, the male passenger who focused his attentions on the Zephyrette. In many cases they were married men who removed their wedding rings before boarding the train. Others were single. In all cases, the wolves considered themselves irresistible Lotharios. After two years and more riding the rails, Jill was adept at avoiding those attentions, all the while managing to be polite.

  “No, I’m serious,” the man said. “I’m not making a pass. Please, let me introduce myself. I’m Drake Baldwin, the director. Maybe you’ve seen one of my movies.”

  “I don’t know,” Jill said, somewhat overwhelmed. “What movies have you directed?”

  “My most recent movie was Parker’s Cove.”

  “I did see that. So you’re the director?” He nodded, looking pleased as she told him she had enjoyed the movie, a romantic suspense picture that came out the year before. “What did you mean when you said I was perfect?”

  “I meant—” He took her elbow and steered her out of the corridor as two passengers walked by heading
back toward the sleeper cars. “What is your name?”

  “I’m Miss McLeod, the Zephyrette.”

  “I know you’re the Zephyrette. That’s why you’re perfect.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Let me give you my card.” He reached for the inner pocket of his suit coat and drew out a leather card case, removing one card. He handed it to her with a flourish. She looked it over. Drake Baldwin Productions, with an address in Los Angeles. “I have a new project, a film noir, very dark, a thriller.”

  “Like The Narrow Margin,” Jill said. Now that was a movie she had really enjoyed. The suspenseful thriller had been released in the spring of 1952, starring Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor, with most of the action taking place on a train.

  Baldwin’s smile dimmed a bit when she mentioned the other movie, then his face brightened. “Well, similar, in that both films feature the train. Mine will take place on the California Zephyr. That’s why I’m up here, in the Bay Area. I’m scouting locations. The train, of course. I’m going to shoot in San Francisco, at the Ferry Building. And on the ferry, and at the Oakland Mole. And then the climax, up in Feather River Canyon. I’ve got a dynamite script and I’m putting together a great cast.”

  “Well, I wish you the best,” Jill said.

  “But I need you,” Baldwin insisted. “I need a Zephyrette for my California Zephyr movie, and I think you’re perfect for the role. You have the right look.”

  Jill smiled. “The uniform helps. This all sounds very interesting, Mr. Baldwin. I really must attend to my duties right now.” She moved away.

  Baldwin put his hand on her wrist. “Please, give me your phone number, so I can contact you.”

  Not going to happen, Jill thought. She hadn’t completely dismissed the thought that Baldwin was a wolf and this was an elaborate ruse to get her phone number. “If you need to get in touch with me, you can contact the Western Pacific office in San Francisco. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She removed his hand from her arm and walked briskly forward, in the direction of the coffee shop.

  “I still have his card,” Jill said now, as her mother laughed at the story. “So if you get a call from a movie director named Baldwin, he wants to make me a star.”

  ———

  At a quarter to eleven, Jill went upstairs to change clothes before heading to the city for her lunch date. Drew was in his bedroom, playing records on his high fidelity system. A driving rhythm and a woman’s rough voice reverberated down the hall. Her brother had a longstanding passion for the music known as rhythm and blues. Some people called R&B—along with jazz, blues and gospel—race music because the records were recorded by and marketed to Negroes. However, the term rhythm and blues had become more common in the late 1940s. Drew had a huge collection of records, both the old 78 rpms and the newer 33-1/3 rpms. Many of the names were unfamiliar to Jill, but she recognized some of them, such as Big Mama Thornton, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday.

  She went into her own bedroom and took off the dungarees and blouse she’d been wearing. She put on a short-sleeved dress of blue-and-green plaid seersucker. A white linen jacket and white low-heeled pumps completed her ensemble. She gathered up her Zephyrette uniform and looked for the library books she needed to return. They were on her desk, and so was her cat, curled up in a sunny spot. She picked up the books and scratched the cat’s ears.

  As she went back downstairs, she called to Lucy. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Give me five minutes,” Lucy said.

  Jill retrieved the car keys from the bowl on the hall table and went out to the front porch to wait, sitting in the porch swing, with the books on her lap. Agatha Christie was her favorite author, but she had decided to try some other mysteries from the library, including other British authors, such as Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh, who was from New Zealand. As it happened, all three of the books on her lap were by American authors, The Bahamas Murder Case and Murder is the Pay-Off, by Leslie Ford and The Chinese Chop, by Juanita Sheridan. Jill had enjoyed the books and was planning to look for more by the same authors.

  Lucy came out the front door, holding more books, several by Georgette Heyer, who was one of her favorites. There were also westerns by Louis L’Amour and Max Brand, her father’s favorite reading material. Lora McLeod was fond of big fat books, family sagas and historical novels, like those by Edna Ferber. So was Jill, when she wasn’t reading murder mysteries.

  The two sisters walked to the green-and-white Ford Victoria in the driveway, and Jill slipped into the driver’s seat. She started the car and backed it out onto Union Street. On the sidewalk in front of the corner house, two little girls in shorts and cotton blouses, their hair in pigtails, had drawn a hopscotch game on the pavement in yellow chalk. Now they tossed stones and hopped through the squares.

  At Encinal Avenue, Jill turned right. A few blocks down, she parked at the curb and took the uniform into the dry cleaning shop. Back in the car, she drove downtown. A left turn onto Oak Street took her to the Alameda Free Library, at the corner of Oak and Santa Clara Avenue. Jill parked on the street near Long’s Drugstore. She and Lucy walked across the street to the two-story library, which had been built in 1903, with funds provided by Andrew Carnegie. It was a mix of architectural styles, faced with buff brick and with gray sandstone at the basement level. They went up the marble-and-granite steps, where pillars stood on either side of the front door.

  After returning the library books, Lucy headed for the stacks to search for more. Jill wanted to read more books by Sheridan and there was another book she was looking for as well. She went to the card catalogs, a phalanx of drawers containing thousands of three-by-five inch cards that catalogued the publications available in the library’s collection. The note cards were used to locate the books, which were shelved according to the Dewey Decimal System. Jill pulled out several drawers in turn, rummaging through cards, making a list. Then she headed for the library’s fiction section, scanning the shelves. Of the Juanita Sheridan books, she found The Kahuna Killer and The Mamo Murders. The author’s fourth book, called The Waikiki Widow, wasn’t on the shelves. Someone must have checked it out. No matter. She chose another Leslie Ford book, The Woman in Black, then moved to another shelf looking for a book by another author, The Uninvited, by Dorothy Macardle.

  Here it was. Jill pulled the book from the shelf. The dust jacket was gray-green, showing a dead tree in the foreground and in the background, two tiny figures, a man and a woman, in front of a lonely-looking house. She had read the book before and she’d also seen the movie version, which had been released in 1944, with Ray Milland, Gail Russell, and Ruth Hussey. She was in high school back then, and she and some of her friends had seen the movie at one of the grand movie palaces in downtown Denver. Jill loved the theme song, “Stella by Starlight.” Now, with all the talk of ghosts she had heard over the last few days, she wanted to reread this chilling tale of a haunted house on England’s Devon coast.

  Jill went to the checkout desk, then left the library and returned to the Ford. She headed for the Park Street bridge that led over the estuary separating Alameda from Oakland, and made her way to the Bay Bridge. She stopped in a line of traffic and when her turn came, she paid the toll taker a quarter. Accelerating, she moved forward, driving over the cantilevered portion of the bridge. Ahead was the tunnel that bored through Yerba Buena Island. This was a natural island jutting from the bay. To the right, on the north side of the bridge was the flat expanse known as Treasure Island. It had been built by filling the land on what had once been called Yerba Buena shoals, a rocky shipping hazard. Landfill constructed the island in the mid-Thirties and it was the site of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair. After that, plans had been in the works for an airport, but the war intervened. In 1942 the island became a Navy base and there were still Navy facilities located on the island.

  The tunnel loomed ahead. Jill drove through it, coming out on the suspension section of the bridge. Below, and to her right,
she saw the impressive Beaux-Arts Ferry Building. Now in San Francisco, Jill took an exit and descended onto the city streets, driving through midday traffic until she reached her destination. She angled the Ford into a parking space on New Montgomery Street. As she got out of the car, a streetcar rumbled by on Market Street. A group of sailors walked toward her, wearing their distinctive white uniforms and Dixie-cup hats. San Francisco was a Navy town. There must be ships in port down on the waterfront. As Jill passed the sailors, she heard a chorus of wolf whistles. She kept walking, then turned and entered the Palace Hotel, where she was to meet Tidsy.

  Chapter Six

  A ghost on the train? That’s a change from the usual run of passengers.” Mrs. Grace Tidsdale waved at the waiter, who hurried to their table. “Another scotch on the rocks, please.”

  They were having lunch in the opulent Garden Court, at the Palace Hotel on Market Street. The hotel had been built in 1909, rising from the ashes and debris of the 1875 original, which had been destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire. The renowned opera singer Enrico Caruso had been staying at the hotel at the time of the quake and famously swore never to return to the City by the Bay. More recently, in 1923, President Warren G. Harding had died in an eighth-floor suite overlooking Market Street.

  When she had arrived at the hotel, Jill had detoured down the hall, so she could take a peek into the Pied Piper bar, which was just off the polished marble lobby near the hotel’s Market Street entrance. The bar was named after the large painting of the same name by artist Maxfield Parrish, based on the old tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The painting showed the piper playing his seductive pipe, luring children away from the town.

  Now she was seated in the opulent dining room. The Garden Court, with its high atrium glass ceiling, marble columns, oriental carpets and tables covered with crisp white cloths, was the height of San Francisco elegance. Woodrow Wilson had hosted a luncheon here in 1919, to drum up support for the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.