The Mystery at Carl’s Cabins
By Caroline Smith
Every school holiday, whether Wendy’s father was free or not, her mother would load Wendy and her older brother Griffin into her maroon 1963 Ford Falcon Futura convertible and set off from their home in New Jersey on a road trip either north or south along the eastern seaboard in search of adventure. No matter where they ended up, the children knew it would be a memorable experience. The two of them would navigate with a tattered paper road map, while the car radio, with a blue and white cloth litter bag dangling from the tuning nob, would play the familiar public service jingle, “Buckle up for safety, buckle up! Buckle up for safety, everybody buckle up.”
Their mother’s favourite destination was Virginia, the state where she had been born and had spent many happy summers in her youth. One year, they visited the living history museum of colonial Williamsburg, and on a subsequent trip they went in search of an ancestral homestead in Fredericksburg and visited Thomas Jefferson’s restored home, Monticello, in Charlottesville. But in the spring of 1967, when Wendy was nine and Griffin twelve, they drove along the Skyline Drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains in the northern part of the state towards the little town of Luray, nestled in the scenic Shenandoah Valley. Here, they planned to visit the celebrated limestone caverns, the largest and most spectacular of their kind in the eastern United States.
After the obligatory stop in Washington, DC, where they toured the Smithsonian Museum, climbed the Washington Monument, and explored the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and the tidal basin, they spent a night at the old Hotel Lafayette, not far from the White House, before heading south the next morning along Virginia Route 211 in the direction of Luray. They got off the main highway and took many detours -- what their mother called “taking the scenic route” – to better appreciate the local character. “If you lived here you’d be home now!” she would chirp, extending her arm out the car window and gesturing at a Confederate monument or a block of wood frame houses with inviting looking wrap-around porches. She was a limitless source of humorous and corny sayings.
It was just getting dark, close to supper time, when they caught sight of a fun fair in a meadow just off the road a few miles outside Luray. They could hear the sound of canned carnival music, and the scent of fried dough and cotton candy filled the air. Wendy, seated in the back, reached over and tapped her mother on the shoulder. “Can we stop?” she begged. Her mother pulled into the parking area and Wendy jumped out, followed by Griffin. They were soon raiding their mother’s purse for coins to ride the merry-go-round and roller coaster and try their hand at various games of chance. Faint screams echoed from the fun house at the edge of the fairgrounds, though the two children found the attractions fairly tame when compared with more sophisticated ones “up North.” But before they left, just for a laugh, they stopped at the Wheel of Fortune. Wendy put a dime on the number nine, for her age, and the wheel magically stopped between nine and ten. She was the lucky winner of an amazingly lifelike porcelain panther, about eight inches long, coal black, with glittering red eyes. In the end, Wendy had to be dragged away. They grabbed a quick dinner at a greasy spoon diner nearby and continued down the highway in search of accommodation for the night.
In the town of Luray, they headed for a Howard Johnsons motel off the main street, but since it was the Easter holiday, a prime period for family travel, the lighted sign outside read, “No Vacancy.” They doubled back a few miles and followed a local road lined with berry bushes, loblolly pines, and the occasional house, garage, tavern, and convenience store. Within a few minutes they spied a dimly lit sign for an old-fashioned tourist court called “Carl’s Cabins.”
The motel, situated in a gravel clearing at the edge of some woods, consisted of a collection of detached white painted cabins with green trim and roofs, with a tiny swimming pool in a grassy patch out front. A handful of aluminum deck chairs with nylon webbing, similar to the kind the family had on their terrace back in New Jersey, encircled the pool. There was also a chair outside each cabin. The office stood at the near end of the row of units. They parked the car outside and tumbled out, eager to see if they had a free cabin.
A painfully thin, balding man in a flannel shirt stood up as the family entered, clearing his throat and asking with a slight southern drawl, “Can I help you?” Was this Carl? Wendy wondered. They made a quick inspection of the nearest cabin, which looked clean, if somewhat spartan, and within a minute or two he handed their mother the key to number two. The cost? An economical fourteen dollars a night for a “family” cabin, with a double bed, one single bed, and a camp style cot for Wendy. They would be two doors down from the office, close to the sheltered alley where the washing, vending, and ice machines and a public telephone were situated. A handwritten sign advertised unlimited free ice for motel guests. Only two other cars were parked in the gravel lot, so wild parties were unlikely. They decided to stay for a couple of nights so they could relax and check out some of the roadside markets they had passed as well as the extraordinary caverns in Luray.
When they opened the door to their cabin, Wendy made a mental inventory of the contents. The walls were knotty pine style, and the two big beds stood side by side, their sagging mattresses covered with faded green chenille bed spreads. Her smaller camp bed was under the window, with a moth-eaten plaid wool blanket folded up at the end. The pillows had a musty smell, and she noticed a faint, brownish stain on the bottom sheet, which was not fitted, like the ones at home, but merely a folded top sheet.
“See this mark?” she said, pointing it out to Griffin and her mother. “What do you think it could be?’
Her mother put their suitcases on the webbed stand at the end of the bigger beds and came over to take a look.
“Looks like a rust stain to me,” she said, “maybe from the metal frame under the mattress. Or, maybe a drop of blood from a mosquito bite? Thank goodness it’s too early for them yet. You can imagine how hot and muggy it gets here in the summer.”
Wendy shivered slightly, but her mother brushed it off. “The bedding looks well laundered,” she said briskly. “Don’t let your imagination run wild. This seems like a homey spot. And there are a couple of restaurants up the road. Let’s settle in and make an early start tomorrow.”
“It’s a little seedy,” Griffin pointed out. “But what can you expect for fourteen dollars? Let’s see if the TV works.”
A large black and white model sat atop a kind of vanity stand, in front of a slightly tarnished mirror opposite the big beds. He turned the nob at the bottom of the screen. A low humming noise emanated from the machine, and flickering horizontal lines appeared. When he moved the rabbit ears on the top of the set, a Tom and Jerry cartoon came into focus. Griffin scowled and turned it off. “We can get this at home,” he scoffed. He turned his attention to the little cabinet next to the big bed, where he opened a drawer and discovered a well-thumbed edition of Gideon’s Bible. He had seen them in other motels, and always wondered why they had been placed there.
The bathroom was basic, but it had a tub and shower attachment and a rack holding a generous supply of thin cotton towels and some miniature bars of Ivory soap. The lighting was dim, but probably sufficient for their mother to sit in there and read after the children turned off the main light and went to sleep, as was her wont.
The item which fascinated the children most of all was a strange metal box affixed to the headboard of the double bed, where their mother would sleep. They had never seen anything like it before. Looking closely, they discovered that it was a special device called “Magic Fingers,” complete with its own coin slot, connected by wires to the mattress. When activated, it claimed to simulate a relaxing body massage. Wendy, who had some change left over from the fun fair, insisted on trying it out. Lying on the bed, she inserted a quarter, and immediately the bed began to pitch and vibrate and produce a mechanical groaning sound. It felt and sounded more like a dental drill than a massage. Both the children and their mother began to giggle. It was amazing that quirky Carl’s Cabins had invested in this modern, “luxury” feature for its guests. “What a joke!” Griffin exclaimed.
By ten o’clock the kids had crawled into bed, “Magic Fingers” and any curious stains on the bedclothes forgotten. Wendy placed her jet black panther from the carnival on the window sill so she could see it easily from her cot. With its piercing red eyes, the unusual figurine seemed to be watching over her, protecting her from whatever evil might lurk in the woodland abutting the cabins.
The night was uneventful, and the family awakened the next morning for a quick breakfast of bread and peanut butter from the picnic basket before driving the short distance into Luray in hopes of beating the tourist lines. As soon as they had parked in a designated spot, a cave guide handed the family some illustrated brochures and pointed the way to the yawning cavern entrance in the side of the mountain.
As they entered the caves and made their way along the paved, well-lighted walkways, Wendy was surprised at how cool and damp it was. She shivered at the contrast between the damp, rarefied atmosphere inside the limestone chambers and the air outside. The cathedral-sized rooms were ten stories high, and huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ground and ceiling, some joining together to form massive columns. Visitors could admire and photograph the formations, but were obliged to stay on the roped-off pathways and refrain from touching them.
The massive structures were formed, Wendy read, by rainwater seeping through decaying vegetation in the soil on the earth’s surface, where it picked up diluted carbonic acid. This acidified water then percolated through limestone layers under forests and meadows, finally descending into lower levels of the earth, where it released carbon dioxide and left enormous underground chambers. Eventually, what began as slow seepage and thin mineral deposits turned into huge formations of crystallized calcite. She was fascinated to learn that the process continued to the present day, with the stalactites (from the ceiling) and the stalagmites (from the ground) growing at the rate of one cubic inch every 120 years. Pondering the time scale made her feel suddenly very small and insignificant.
As they wound their way through the caverns, a guide called their attention to the “Great Stalacpipe Organ,” known as the world’s largest musical instrument. If they listened carefully they could hear a subtle singing sound caused by stalactites gently tapping together throughout the three-acre site, as well as an ever-present sound of dripping water. They also marvelled at the spectacular “Double Column,” a highlight of what was known as “Giant’s Hall,” soaring to a height of forty-seven feet.
“Listen to this!” Griffin said, touching his sister’s arm and shaking the guidebook with excitement. “A thirteen year-old boy called Quint Campbell played a big part in the discovery of the caves. He was with a group of local men walking in the area in August of 1878. All of a sudden they felt a rush of cold air coming from a limestone sinkhole. Thinking they might find a cave, they moved away loose stones and sticks and uncovered a rocky chamber below.”
“Wow!” Wendy exclaimed. “Talk about an adventure! How did they manage to get down there?”
“Well,” Griffin said, “It was the old days, so all they had was a rope to hold onto and candles to light their way. Somehow Quint and his dad made it down safely. They couldn’t believe what they had found.”
By the time they got to the end of their tour, Wendy was feeling weary and a little feverish. Her mother put her lips to her daughter’s forehead and declared, “You feel kind of hot. You need to go back to the motel and get some rest.” Luckily, she had brought some aspirin with her. So instead of visiting the local antique car museum or setting off to explore Civil War cemeteries, as they had originally intended, they decided to return to Carl’s Cabins. Wendy could take a nap while Griffin and his mother investigated area shops, farm stands, and flea markets, of which there were many lining the highway just outside of town.
Despite her southern ancestors, some of whom had been prominent planters and slave owners, their mother was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who denounced anything concerning the Confederacy. This was one of the main reasons they had moved north following the untimely death of her naval aviator father in the early nineteen twenties. But here in the Shenandoah Valley, reminders of the Civil War bubbled up all around them. “We’ll find things to do,” she assured Wendy. “You just take it easy.” Ordinarily Coca Cola, with its teeth-rotting sugar and caustic chemicals, was off the menu, but she had picked up several bottles at a service station in Luray in case her ailing daughter was thirsty. Bad as it was, Coke still seemed to have some medicinal value.
Wendy wasn’t interested in lunch, so after swallowing two aspirin tablets with a swig of soda, she lay down on her cot near the window and closed her eyes. Her nose was stuffy and her throat felt scratchy. Maybe she’d caught a chill in the caverns? Her mother put the cabin key on the TV table and warned her not to open the door to strangers. Then she and Griffin went back to the car and drove north on Route 211 to explore what other curiosities the area had to offer.
Wendy was just drifting off to sleep when she heard a screech of car tires. She sat up abruptly and peered through the ragged, gauzy curtains in the window above her. An old silver and blue Mustang pulled up outside the cabin two doors down, which must have been number four. Out jumped a short, stocky man, followed by a tall woman with blonde, bouffant hair, knee high boots, and a mini skirt. Looking closer, her nose pressed against the ancient, carelessly patched window screen, Wendy saw that the woman had a revealing blouse and large bangle earrings. She loitered outside the cabin while the man went to the office to get a key. Then they both disappeared through the door of the cabin and closed it behind them.
The girl sat on her cot pondering the situation. She remembered being snowed in with her brother and parents in a motel in Binghamton, New York one winter weekend. Everyone had cabin fever, so for a joke her father suggested they put a water glass to the wall in order to eavesdrop on the people in the next room. The couple now occupying cabin four must have an interesting story. If only the cabins were connected!
She couldn’t hear if they were talking, but over the next hour or so the man made repeated trips to the ice machine with a plastic bucket. She could hear the repeated clunk as ice cubes dropped into a receptacle and he took them away. They must be having cocktails, she mused.
As the sun dipped lower in the sky, a lone crow cawed from the edge of the woods. Wendy seated herself in a lumpy beige armchair near the door and turned on an ugly but serviceable lamp. Maybe reading a few pages of “A Little Princess,” a book she loved and had read repeatedly, would help to distract her. On the window sill the china panther looked on impassively. It had quickly become a treasured talisman.
It was nearly seven o’clock when Griffin and their mother returned to the motel. “Do you feel like eating something?” she asked Wendy, bustling through the door. “There’s a family restaurant just up the road. Oh, and you won’t believe what your brother and I found! One of those flea markets along the highway had some interesting antiques.” She propped open the door and Griffin walked in carrying a small concrete rabbit – the perfect ornament for their New Jersey garden. Some people might consider it tacky, but their mother had an eye for captivating kitsch. She had given over a corner of the garden to wildlife, and a rabbit statuette would fit in beautifully with the rambling undergrowth, especially come summer.
Griffin had discovered a treasure trove of his own at a roadside stand. An enterprising salesman named Nick had purchased a range of souvenirs of the caverns and was selling them to passing tourists for half the price of those featured in the attraction’s gift shop. Griffin had bought a bag full of intriguing porcelain stalactites, badges, and other memorabilia for his souvenir collection. Wendy was wide eyed to see his loot, happily accepting the gift of a miniature miner’s pick with the words, “Luray Caverns” engraved on the handle. But she had news of her own to share. She touched her brother’s arm and said with a tone of mock horror, “You should have seen the woman in cabin number four! She’s visiting the man – some kind of a salesman, maybe – with the Mustang, and they keep running to the ice machine.” She went on to describe the woman in amazing detail. Wendy was a fan of mysteries, and knew how important it was for witnesses to use their eyes and ears.
“She sounds like a hooker,” Griffin said. Their mother was freshening up in the bathroom, so was not privy to the children’s conversation.
“You mean…a prostitute?” Wendy said. “At Carl’s Cabins?”
“Yes,” Griffin said. “Remember David Butler’s father, who had a heart attack in a room at the Sleepy Hollow Motel on Route 1? You know he wasn’t alone there. You’ve heard of cheap ‘day rates’ right?”
“Oh yeah,” Wendy said, not really sure what he was alluding to. ‘I guess this place doesn’t attract the best kind of people. But it’s kind of homey, which is nice.”
Still feeling tired and congested, she decided to forgo dinner. But an hour or so later her mother returned with a package of chicken legs and some corn on the cob in case Wendy was hungry. She nibbled a little chicken, then brushed her teeth and crawled into bed before nine-thirty.
The weather was still chilly, but the girl felt hot and sweaty, so she propped the window open above her bed. After Griffin had retired and her mother had switched off the overhead light and crept into the bathroom to read, Wendy slept fitfully, tossing and turning, the bed frame creaking beneath her.
Sometime after midnight – Wendy kept her glow-in-the-dark Timex wrist watch on the small table beside her, and checked it periodically in her wakefulness – she heard a man cursing, followed by a single scream, both of which seemed to be coming from the direction of cabin number four. She sat bolt upright in bed and pressed her nose to the screen, twisting her neck in an effort to get a better look down the row of cabins. The porcelain panther stood sentry, its red eyes glittering ominously in the gloomy darkness.
Several doors down, a screen door squeaked open and then slammed shut. Wendy, in her delirium, thought she heard some kind of scuffle or commotion outside. But neither Griffin nor their mother woke up, and the motel forecourt remained dark. The birds from the adjacent woodland were silent. Wendy shivered, drank another swig of Coke, and eventually managed to fall back to sleep. Her dreams were strange and chaotic. Hadn’t she and Griffin and her mother heard a news piece on the car radio that day about an outlaw couple rumoured to be on the run, or holed up in a local motel near Luray? Maybe the pair from cabin four were a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.
When she woke up again it was about eight o’clock. Both Griffin and her mother were still in bed. Feeling slightly more human, she got up, unlatched the door, and padded out onto the forecourt to check the number of cars parked outside the line of cabins. The silver and blue Mustang was gone, and she noticed unusual drag marks in the gravel outside cabin four. What could have caused those? she wondered. Suddenly Carl’s Cabins seemed more like the site of a sinister crime than a comfortable, if somewhat shabby, oasis.
A few minutes later Griffin, still clad in his pajamas, appeared at Wendy’s elbow. “What are you doing?” he asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Spying on the neighbours?” Their mother was in the bathroom by this time, taking a morning shower.
Griffin’s arrival served to embolden her. “Come here,” she said, gesturing towards cabin number four. The two of them tip-toed up to the window and peered through the ragged curtains. There they saw a collection of Dixie cups and a half empty bottle of whiskey. The empty room was in a state of disorder, bed clothes and towels flung every which way.
“You know,” Wendy whispered, “last night I heard a man swearing, then a woman’s scream. Then it was quiet, and I went back to sleep. Now there’s nobody here, and there’s this strange dragging pattern in the gravel.”
“What do you think happened?” Griffin asked, putting his hand on his hip and giving a sardonic smile. “Maybe they just checked out early. Nothing unusual about that.”
Wendy frowned. “I think it’s much scarier than that,” she said. Her brother could almost see the wheels turning in her head. He had seen her like this before – just like a terrier worrying a bone.
“Seems like maybe the man and the woman robbed a bank and were hiding here at Carl’s Cabins. Maybe they got into a fight, and he ended up strangling her, maybe by accident,” she said, drawing in a breath and raising his eyebrows. “She screamed and he smothered her with a pillow. Then he wrapped her up in an oriental rug and dragged her out to the car, drove to the Shenandoah River, and dumped her in while it was still dark. As you said, she was probably a hooker. Maybe no one would notice she was gone….”
Griffin stared at his sister, amazed at the detailed scenario she had concocted. “It’s true, it looks like something was dragged across the parking lot, but where would he have gotten a rug?” he pointed out. “There aren’t any fancy carpets at Carl’s Cabins. Maybe he just dragged her to the car, shoved her into the back seat, and drove away.”
“I think we need to talk to the manager…find out what’s going on,” Wendy insisted.
Now their mother was dressed and was standing outside the screened door to cabin number two. “Want to get some breakfast, guys?” she asked. “I have some doughnuts, and there’s coffee, cereal, bacon and eggs down at the diner. We need to sit down and figure out our next move. How are you feeling this morning, Wendy?”
“My throat’s a little sore, but I think the fever’s down,” Wendy said.
At that moment a little girl with red hair and freckles came out of cabin number eight, at the far end of the row of cabins, and shrieked, “We have bed bugs in our room!” She stood in the morning sun and raised her pyjama top to show her belly. “Look at my rash!” Her skin was covered with angry, red welts, as though she had poison ivy or had been slapped.
“Oh my,” Wendy and Griffin’s mother said, “That’s awful. Have you reported it to the manager?”
The red-haired girl’s mother came barrelling out into the forecourt and strode angrily to the motel office at the end of the row. This time a pudgy young fellow -- the nephew of the skinny, balding man they had met when they first arrived, it turned out – was seated behind the desk. Wendy, Griffin, and their mother followed the other guests into the office. The screen door creaked behind them.
“Is there a problem?” the man asked, glancing up from a crossword puzzle. Wendy noticed a dusty stag’s head staring down from the wall above the key rack, casting a cold, stern eye on the proceedings.
“Bed bugs!” the woman exclaimed. “I demand a refund. We didn’t sleep a wink!”
The pudgy man looked vacantly at his disgruntled guests. “No one has ever complained about this before,” he claimed. “My grandfather, Carl – he was the original owner of this motel – let these units out as hunting camps until the late 1950s, when he refurbished them and turned them into tourist accommodations. We may be economical, but we have a reputation to uphold.”
Hearing the ruckus, the thin man emerged through a door behind the desk, his face red with embarrassment, and shook his head. “I’m sorry to say this is the second complaint we’ve had today,” he admitted. “A man from cabin four came storming in here late last night, just as I was about to close up. I told him we would refund his money, but his woman friend was frantic. The man got so angry that he ripped the mattress off the bed and dragged it out of the cabin. It’s propped up over there by the dumpster, just behind the pool. Then they left here in a big hurry. Housekeeping have been informed, and the exterminator is on his way. I’m really sorry about all of this.”
Wendy, wide eyed, stared at the two men, who were fumbling with keys and paper receipts. “So that’s what the screaming and swearing was about!” she exclaimed. “And the strange marks in the gravel….”
“Sometimes cheap is cheap,” Griffin said, giving a flippant shrug. “Fourteen dollars a night isn’t really a bargain if there are insects in your bed.” Then he cocked his head. “Were the ‘Magic Fingers’ there to distract us?”
“Well,” their mother said, “We haven’t had bed bugs in our cabin, as far as we know, but maybe it’s time to head home. We’ve seen the caverns, we have our souvenirs, and I’m sure Wendy will sleep better in her own bed.”
Within a few minutes, they had packed their bags and loaded the Falcon for the long, homeward journey. The gravel crunched and flew out to the side as their mother accelerated quickly and pulled out of the forecourt onto the highway. The motel hadn’t charged them for the second night, so they used the money they had saved to splurge on a hearty, southern breakfast at the diner up the road. Wendy was weary as she lifted successive forkfuls of waffles to her mouth and downed two more aspirin with a glass of orange juice. But they all smiled as the platinum blonde cashier tallied up their bill and uttered the by now familiar refrain, “Y’all come back and see us sometime!”
