The Ghost in Roomette Four

by Janet Dawson

  “Thanks.” Jill leaned back in the chair. “I wonder if there’s any way to get a look at Mr. Randall’s autopsy results. Do you know someone who works at the Alameda County Coroner’s Office?”

  Her father fixed her with a stern look. “Since December, you have encountered three dead bodies, and two murderers, all on the train. That’s more than your share, Jill, unless you’re a police officer. I’m beginning to wonder if this Zephyrette job is a bit too adventurous for a daughter of mine. Are you sure you don’t want to come back to work for your old dad, as his office receptionist?”

  “I should think your current receptionist would have something to say about that.” Jill’s voice took on a placating tone. “Now, Dad, you’re exaggerating. I just happened to be the one who discovered those bodies. It’s coincidence, nothing more than the luck of the draw.”

  “A strange sort of luck.” He sounded skeptical. “I wonder what your cousin Doug, the gambler, would say about your luck, and those odds.”

  “You can ask him next Thursday. He and Pamela will be here for dinner. Besides, strange things happen on the trains all the time. I could tell you stories.” She smiled, thinking about the director who wanted to make his film noir on the train.

  “I’m sure you could. And I would feel a whole lot better if those strange things and stories didn’t involve homicide. Let’s get back to your question about the autopsy results. I know you’re naturally curious. You have a sense of justice, as well as a good head on your shoulders. Nevertheless, it would be better if you left any investigating to the proper authorities.”

  “What if the authorities think Mr. Randall’s death was due to natural causes?” Jill argued. “In that case, they’re not investigating anything.”

  “Why would you think his death was anything other than natural causes? Or an accident due to an overdose of his own prescription medication? Which happens frequently, by the way.”

  “Margaret thinks he was murdered.”

  “His fiancée, the young woman you met this morning? I wondered why you were talking with her. I assume she has her reasons for thinking Mr. Randall’s death was homicide.”

  “She does,” Jill said, though she wasn’t sure her father would think Margaret’s suspicions credible. As for ghosts, the less said about that, the better.

  Dr. McLeod sighed. “As it happens, I do know someone who works at the Alameda County Coroner’s Office. He’s an old Navy buddy.”

  Jill straightened in the chair and looked at her father, eagerness in her eyes. “Will you ask him about the autopsy results? Or take a look at them yourself?”

  Her father held up his hand. “I’m not making any promises, Jill. But I will think about it.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Jill looked up as her mother appeared in the doorway.

  “I thought I heard you come in,” Lora McLeod said to her husband. “Just as well. We’re eating early tonight.”

  “Why is that?” he said as he got up from the chair.

  “Because Drew has to leave. He’s rehearsing with his band. They’re playing in Oakland on Friday and Saturday.”

  “That’s right,” Jill said. “Mike and I are going to hear him play on Friday.”

  “Where’s that?” her father asked.

  “A place called Ozzie’s, in West Oakland.”

  “I see. Well, I’ll go upstairs and change out of this suit.” Amos McLeod left the study and retrieved his suit jacket, then paused at the foot of the stairs to talk with his wife. “It’s all well and good that Drew is interested in music, but I really would like to see him concentrate more on his studies. He hasn’t declared a major. I can’t pin him down as to what he wants to do with his life.”

  “Give him time,” Lora McLeod said. “He’s only nineteen and he just finished his freshman year. I’m sure he’ll settle into college soon.”

  Jill knew from her earlier talk with her mother that Drew had not yet told their parents about his plans to drop out of school and tour with the band. That will be an interesting conversation, she thought as her father went up the stairs.

  She followed her mother to the kitchen, inhaling the enticing smell wafting from the oven. “Mmm, that smells wonderful.”

  “It does,” her mother said. “Just roast chicken. I stuffed the cavity with garlic cloves and a lemon before I put it in the oven. We’ll have salad made with the lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes we picked earlier in the afternoon. Thanks for making that chocolate cake. It looks delicious.”

  Jill rinsed the lettuce and the other vegetables in the sink, setting them aside to drain while she washed the bowl and mixer she’d used to make the cake frosting. Lucy arrived home then, after a shopping trip to Oakland with friends. “Did you buy out the stores?” Jill asked as she tore lettuce for the salad.

  “Not exactly. But I found a great dress on sale at Kahn’s.” Lucy took her bags upstairs and then returned, setting the table in the dining room for dinner.

  Later that evening, Tidsy called. “The séance is on. I talked with Margaret this morning and she’s agreed to do it. I also found a medium. Madame Latour,” she added, her voice taking on a dramatic trill. “The madame does advertise in the Chronicle. Be at my place at eight on Sunday.”

  A séance, Jill thought as she hung up the phone. I can’t believe I’m actually going to a séance. She went back to the living room.

  “Who was that?” her mother asked from the sofa, where she was sitting with a book in her lap.

  “Tidsy. She invited me to her house Sunday evening.” Better leave it at that.

  She sat down in the bay window armchair and put her feet on the ottoman. Sophie jumped onto her lap, turning in a circle before settling down to sleep. Jill stroked her cat, then reached for the copy of The Uninvited that she had checked out of the library the day before. She turned the pages to chapter one, and was soon drawn into the tale of a haunted house on the Devon coast. After reading a passage about a room that was unnaturally cold, Jill shivered and looked up from the page. She recalled what had happened on the train—the light she’d seen, the cold she felt in roomette four, and the odd knocking sounds she’d heard.

  Could there really be a ghost? Was it possible that Kevin Randall’s untimely death was murder?

  She thought back to May, when she’d met Kevin Randall on the train, before she’d found his body at the end of the journey.

  Chapter Ten

  May 1953

  The westbound California Zephyr arrived in Portola, California just after eight in the morning. The train slowed as it neared the railroad town nestled on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. The middle fork of the Feather River was to the north, swollen with spring snow melt, flowing swiftly as it paralleled the tracks.

  Jill stood in the Silver Gorge’s vestibule with Frank Nathan, the porter. To the south, she saw the backs of buildings along Commercial Street. Two people stood on the platform outside the small Portola station. When the CZ stopped, the porter unlocked the vestibule door, lowered the stairs and set down his step box. He got off the train, followed by Jill. The last time she’d gotten off the train was in Salt Lake City, late last night. Now she wanted to take advantage of this brief stop to stretch her legs and get some fresh air.

  One of the passengers, a gray-haired woman in a plaid dress, walked toward the third chair car, the Silver Saddle, carrying a handbag and a small suitcase. The other passenger, a man, moved toward the Silver Gorge. He wore a gray suit and had dark hair and brown eyes behind his black horn-rimmed glasses. His suitcase and briefcase were the color of honey, the soft leather scuffed and scarred with years of use. As he reached the car, Jill greeted him. “Good morning, sir. Are you traveling on this car?”

  The man nodded. “Yes, I have a roomette. Number four.”

  Frank Nathan reached for the man’s suitcase. “I’ll take your bag, sir. The roomette is just down the passageway.”

  The passenger climbed into the vestibule. He disappeared from view, the porter right behi
nd him. Jill remained on the platform, watching as two other men rounded the corner. They must have been waiting on the other side of the station. The first man had a bulky frame and a big stomach, his shoulders straining the jacket of his dark suit. The other man was tall and balding, wearing serviceable khaki work clothes and boots. He was smoking a cigarette. Now he pitched the butt to the platform and ground it out with the toe of his boot. Both men walked toward the second chair car, the Silver Pony. As the man in the suit boarded the train, the tall man turned and looked right at Jill. He had a pencil-thin mustache, a thin sliver of brown on his weathered face.

  The conductor and brakeman stood talking near the baggage car. Then the brakeman climbed onto the train. The conductor turned and began walking down the length of the train, calling, “All aboard.”

  Jill boarded the train as the porter appeared in the vestibule. The whistle sounded and the California Zephyr pulled out of the station, leaving Portola behind. For the next three hours, the train would wind down the rugged, scenic Feather River Canyon. Then the train, and the river, would leave the mountains for California’s broad Central Valley, stopping at 11:25 a.m., in Oroville.

  As the train picked up speed, Jill walked down the corridor to roomette four, where the new passenger had set his suitcase and briefcase on the floor below the window. “Good morning. I’m Jill McLeod, the Zephyrette. Where are you bound for today?”

  “I’m Kevin Randall,” he told her. “I’m going to Oakland.”

  “Let me know if you need anything.”

  Mr. Randall nodded. “Thank you, I will. Right now, I could use some coffee and breakfast.”

  “The dining car will be open for a while longer.” Jill consulted her watch. “At least until nine, maybe later.”

  “Good. I hope they’re serving French toast. It’s my favorite.”

  Jill smiled. “Mine, too. I had some earlier today.”

  Mr. Randall took his briefcase with him as he left the roomette. It must contain something important, Jill thought, watching him walk in the direction of the dining car. Another passenger called to her from a nearby roomette and Jill stopped to answer a question.

  A short time later, Jill entered the dining car, on this trip the Silver Restaurant. The CZ was approaching the Clio Trestle. The railroad bridge, one of the many sights along this scenic route, was over a thousand feet long, towering a hundred and seventy-two feet above Willow Creek. It was time for her to make her first announcement of the day, describing what the passengers would see in the Feather River Canyon. She picked up the mike on the public address system near the center of the car. After she had made the announcement, she walked through the car, where Mr. Randall sat at a table for four, drinking coffee as he consumed his plate of French toast. A few tables away, Jill noticed the tall man who’d boarded in Portola. He, too, was drinking coffee, though he seemed to be staring at Mr. Randall. As Jill passed his table, he lowered his gaze to a plate of scrambled eggs.

  The train continued its journey down the canyon, passing the Keddie Wye, an impressive structure that towered high above Spanish Creek, with two legs on bridges and a closing track that ran into a tunnel. Wye was the term used to denote a triangular junction of tracks. The California Zephyr ran on what was called the mainline, while one set of tracks headed north through the steep, forested slopes to connect with the Great Northern Railroad. The wye was named after Arthur W. Keddie, the man who in the 1860s had surveyed the Feather River route, one of the lowest in elevation to cross the Sierra Nevada. Construction of the railroad through the rugged canyon began in 1905 and was completed in 1909, with the “Last Spike” ceremony taking place on November 1, 1909, right here at the wye.

  As she walked through the Silver Gorge, she saw that Mr. Randall was in his roomette, unlike the other passengers on the California Zephyr, many of whom were in the Vista-Domes, admiring the scenery in the rocky canyon. He had removed his suit coat and loosened his tie, and his briefcase was open at his feet. He had turned the lid that covered the toilet seat into a small desk that held a blue-and-purple device covered with number keys. The legend at the bottom read Marchant Figurematic. It was a mechanical calculator, Jill realized. On Mr. Randall’s lap was a book bound in brown leather, open to show ledger pages covered with figures. He had a lined legal pad as well. He was scribbling notes on the yellow pages, in a spiky, slanted hand.

  He looked up at her and smiled. “My trip to Portola was business. I still have a lot to do before we get to Oakland.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to it,” Jill said.

  She continued her walk through the train, all the way back to the dome-observation car. The bulky man who had boarded the train in Portola was there, standing at the table that held various newspapers. She began climbing the steps to the upper-level Vista-Dome, wondering briefly why the man, who was a passenger in the chair cars at the front of the train, was back in a section of the train normally used by sleeping car passengers. As she reached the dome, she was bombarded with questions by a trio of children who were traveling with their parents to Sacramento. She talked with them about the sights they were seeing, the rugged, rocky canyon carved by the river, and the Pulga and Tobin bridges, where the tracks and State Highway 70 crossed each other.

  When she returned to the lower level, the man was no longer in the lounge. Jill walked forward through the transcontinental sleeper and the sixteen-section sleeper to the Silver Gorge. Two men were standing in the vestibule. One was Mr. Randall, who held the ledger and the legal pad. The other was the man she’d seen earlier. They talked in low urgent tones, keeping their voices down. Something about their body language told Jill they were arguing.

  “The figures don’t add up,” Mr. Randall said, brandishing the ledger in his right hand. “And you know it. I have to—” He looked up and saw Jill in the vestibule.

  “Excuse me,” Jill said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  Mr. Randall rearranged his face from a frown to a tight smile. “It’s all right.”

  The other man was ten or fifteen years older than Mr. Randall, and probably thirty pounds heavier. He loomed over the younger man, as though trying to intimidate him. Under his dark hair, slicked back with hair cream, he had a sallow face with large pores and a long nose. There were bags underneath the pale blue eyes that seemed to look through Jill.

  She stepped past the two men, heading into the passageway that separated the roomettes. As she moved away, they began talking again. Mr. Randall’s voice had a note of strain and urgency. “You should have told me you were coming to Portola.”

  “Just hear me out.” The other man’s voice was a low, insistent rumble.

  “I know what you want me to do and I can’t do it,” Mr. Randall said. “Wait—”

  The other man interrupted. Jill couldn’t make out what he was saying. She entered the car and headed down the passageway between the roomettes. “I wonder what that was about,” she said aloud, just as Frank Nathan stepped out of roomette nine.

  “You wonder what?” he asked.

  “I saw Mr. Randall in the vestibule with another man. I think they were having words.”

  “A big man with a long nose?” the porter asked. “Yes, I saw him earlier. He came through the car looking for Mr. Randall. I told him to check roomette four. Then they were having words, like you said, and they went out to the vestibule. I don’t know what it was about. But they’re still at it?”

  “Yes,” Jill said. She kept going and didn’t think any more about what she’d seen, or heard, until her return trip through the train, about an hour later. As she walked down the passageway between the roomettes in the Silver Gorge, she saw another man standing outside roomette four. He was tall, dressed in khaki work clothes, and when he turned, she saw a weathered face with a thin mustache and lines around the man’s brown eyes. It was the man she’d seen earlier, boarding the train.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  His voice had a deep Western twang. He smiled
. “Just looking for a fella. He doesn’t seem to be here.”

  Jill glanced inside the roomette, which was empty. “If I see Mr. Randall, I’ll tell him you were looking for him.”

  “No matter. I’ll catch up with him later.” The man stepped past her and walked forward, in the direction of the dining car.

  Something odd about that, Jill thought, but she couldn’t put her finger on why it seemed so. She walked forward and rounded the corner, looking out the window. The train was coming out of the mountains that had bracketed the Feather River, and North Table Mountain was visible in the distance. The flat-topped mesa was a few miles north of Oroville, the train’s next scheduled stop at 11:25 a.m. As she walked up the corridor toward the next car, she encountered Mr. Randall, coming in the opposite direction. He was carrying the briefcase she’d seen earlier.

  “There was a man looking for you,” Jill said after she greeted him. “A tall man with thinning hair, and a mustache. He got on the train in Portola, same as you.”

  Mr. Randall looked down at the briefcase he carried and when he looked up again, his brown eyes took on a guarded expression. “Was he in my roomette?”

  “No, standing in the doorway. He said he would catch up with you later.” When he didn’t say anything, Jill added, “Is something wrong, Mr. Randall?”

  He shook his head. “No. No, everything is fine. Thanks for letting me know, Miss McLeod.” He stepped past her and continued back toward the roomettes. By now the train was descending into the wide terrain of the great Central Valley. From the window, Jill glimpsed the outskirts of Oroville.

  She had breakfasted early that morning, so now she was ready for lunch. She reached the dining car as the train pulled into the station. The steward pointed her toward a nearby table for four, where two people were already seated. Jill introduced herself.