1 The Ghost in the Basement Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Blurb

  Acknowledgements

  chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Excerpt ~ The Ghost Upstairs

  Excerpt ~ Con’t

  Author’s Note

  Backlist

  Author’s Bio

  THE GHOST IN THE BASEMENT

  The Kane Family Ghosts: Book 1

  by

  Sue Fineman

  The Ghost in the Basement

  Copyright © 2012 Sue Fineman

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from Sue Fineman.

  Published by Amazon KDP

  Seattle, WA

  Electronic KDP Edition: January, 2012

  This book is a work of fiction and all characters exist solely in the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any references to places, events or locales are used in a fictitious manner.

  When Hannah Taylor inherits her grandfather’s home in Ohio, there are strings attached. She must share the house with Police Detective Donovan Kane and his family for a year, and if she doesn’t stay, Donovan gets the house. He’s sure Hannah won’t stay the full year and he’ll end up with the house, but she’s not about to give him her home.

  In a letter to Donovan, Grandpa said to “find the diaries, open the house, and send the wandering spirits on their way,” but nobody expects the old diaries to lead them to a secret staircase, a body buried in the basement, friendly ghosts, and love to last a lifetime.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Grandpa said in a letter to Hannah.

  Afraid of what, Grandpa?

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank all the people who helped me with my writing in the past fifteen or so years. My wonderful writing group in Gig Harbor, Washington – Colleen, Joanne, Marci, and Maureen, and others who drifted in and out of the group over the years. Jo Nelson, a writing teacher, mentor, and friend. Jo is gone now, but the lessons she taught have stayed with me. Jeanne, Dee, and Vonnie – you’re wonderful!

  In the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to have the help of a great group of friends and fellow authors. Carolyn, Aileen, Tessy, Robin, Judythe, Tessy, Becky, and the folks at Elements of RWA, I love you all. Without you I would have given up a long time ago. And Sandy, who has helped me with all the technical aspects of getting my books published. I couldn’t have done it without you. I wouldn’t have known what to do or how to do it, and I wouldn’t have had the courage to try.

  To all of you who have been there for me when I needed you, a big THANK YOU!

  Chapter One

  Thunder rumbled in the distance and the rain came down in sheets when the taxi driver pulled up in front of the house on Livingston Avenue. He turned on his spotlight and played it slowly over the big house on the corner. “This is it.”

  Hannah Taylor stared through the water-streaked window. She didn’t remember it being quite so imposing, like a dignified lady wearing a golden dress with dark green velvet trim. Her apron, the deep front porch, was of white lace, and her hat was trimmed with two large dormer windows. And then there was the pregnant bulge on the left corner, the round alcove off the living room.

  Lightning pierced the sky followed a second later by an ear-splitting crack. Hannah jumped and her heart raced. She hated thunderstorms almost as much as she hated the dark, and there wasn’t a single light on in that house.

  “Miserable night,” the driver muttered.

  “Yes, it sure is.” It wasn’t that far from the street to the wide front porch, but she was bound to get drenched before she reached it. There’d be no one to open the door and help her off with her wet coat, no one to welcome her with smiles and hugs. Only ghosts, a little voice inside her whispered. And memories.

  Seeing the house brought a lump to her throat. It didn’t matter that the paint was faded, the gutter over the front porch sagged, and the sidewalk had buckled over the roots of the two big maple trees. She was home.

  A big golden leaf blew against the window and stuck, obscuring her view and reminding her she couldn’t sit in the taxi until the storm was over and the sun came out.

  The driver pulled his collar up and his cap down over his head. He ducked out into the downpour and carried two bags to the porch, where the swing was banging into the house. The lady in the golden dress must be angry, thought Hannah, angry that the only living descendant of the Taylor family had been gone for so many years.

  She splashed through the rain to the front porch with her two smaller bags and paid the driver, adding a generous tip. Fingering the key in her pocket, she stared at the door, knowing that to unlock it would mean unlocking the memories of the last summer she’d spent here.

  The taxi driver pulled away from the curb, leaving her alone on the dark front porch. Forcing herself to unlock the door, she felt around the wall inside until she found the light switches. But the lights didn’t come on.

  A horn beeped at the curb and a second later, a man ran toward her. Her hand tightened on the tiny can of pepper spray on her key chain.

  “Hannah? I’m Donovan Kane. Do you remember me?”

  A ragged sigh of relief came out. “Yes, of course. I’m glad you came by. The lights won’t come on, and—”

  “It’s the storm. Hold on a minute. Sonny kept a lantern on the fireplace.” The dark house swallowed him and he reappeared a minute later with a lantern. The soft yellow light cast flickering shadows on Donovan’s face. The boy she’d had a crush on when she was a little girl had turned into a handsome man, as she always knew he would, but she had other things on her mind than his wide shoulders or his intense blue eyes and dark blond hair.

  One step inside and she was sucked into a vortex of memories, of warm smiles and big hugs, the smell of Grandma’s fresh baked cookies and Grandpa’s silly jokes. And then the black wreath on the door and the overwhelming grief. The smiles ended the day her father died, and the happiness in this house was buried with him.

  The only people who’d ever truly loved her had lived here, and now they were all buried in the cemetery on the hill outside town.

  Donovan lit a candle, and Hannah followed him into the only bedroom on the main floor. “Pop and I came over the other day and put clean sheets and blankets on this bed. We figured you’d be tired after your long trip. Everything else in the house is a mess, but you’ll have a bed to sleep in tonight.”

  “The attorney said the furnace didn’t work.”

  He set the candle on the dresser. “No, Sonny used to tinker with it every winter, but nobody else knows how to make it work. It’s so old, it needs to be replaced anyway.”

  “I don’t know anything about furnaces.”

  “I’ll send a couple people over to give you estimates.”

  The furniture that had once gleamed and smelled of lemon oil was now buried under a thick layer of dust, and the windows Grandma had kept sparkling were filthy. The house smelled stale and musty, as if it had been empty for years instead of weeks, and as
ide from the patches of light from the candle and lantern, it was dark. At her age, she shouldn’t be afraid of the dark. But she was.

  Donovan handed a flashlight to Hannah. Her hands were shaking so hard, he didn’t trust her with a candle or lantern. Had the storm scared her this much, or was it memories of the last summer she’d spent here, when her father was killed? That was eighteen long years ago.

  From the way she reacted on the porch, she didn’t recognize him, even though it was his hand she’d clung to at the funeral, his handkerchief she’d cried into. Hannah wasn’t quite a teenager the summer her father died. She was a somber little girl with the weight of the world on her small shoulders. Her mother was off with some guy and couldn’t be found, her grandparents were distraught with grief and could barely console each other, and a quiet, grief-stricken kid was left to fend for herself. At seventeen, Donovan was old enough to know the girl needed someone to hold onto, someone to help her get through the toughest day in her young life.

  The pretty little girl with the black pigtails had grown into a real beauty. Her hair barely brushed her shoulders in a sleek, simple cut that cupped her pink cheeks, and her gray eyes reminded him of the river on an overcast day, liquid and constantly moving, drawing everything into their depths.

  They walked into the kitchen and he set the lantern on the counter. She put the kettle on the stove and the gas flicked on. “I hope there’s some coffee or tea or something here.” She pulled out a can of instant hot cocoa and turned to him, eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.

  “That’s good.” He pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table. “It’s too late in the day for coffee.”

  “Tell me about my grandparents. How did they die?”

  “She was sick for two years, chained to an oxygen tank, and he took care of her. A few weeks before she died, the doctor found the cancer in his liver, but he didn’t tell her. He didn’t want her to spend the last days of her life worrying about him. After she died, he just gave up. We buried him two weeks later. You didn’t know?”

  “Of course not. I thought they died years ago. If I’d known, I would have been here.”

  “I tracked your mother down last year and called her again three months ago, after Sonny was diagnosed. She said she’d let you know.”

  Hannah froze for an instant and then opened the can and spooned some of the mix into the cups. “My mother and I haven’t spoken since I threatened to castrate that creep she married. He’s rich, which makes her happy, but he can’t keep his hands to himself.”

  The kettle rattled in a pillow of steam. She poured hot water in the cups and glanced over her shoulder. “And I’ll bet that’s waaay more than you wanted to know.” Her wry humor didn’t hide the weariness in her voice or the droop of her shoulders, but she no longer looked scared.

  Yes, you should have been here, he thought. Sonny and Virginia Taylor had outlived their friends and their only son. They had no one except Pop, their son’s former partner in the River Valley Police Department. And each other. They had each other.

  Hannah brought the cups to the table and sat across from Donovan. “After Dad died, every time they called we all ended up crying.” She stared into her cup. “And then they stopped calling.”

  “Of course they did, Hannah. Your mother blistered their ears and told them not to call you again, that all it did was upset you. They tried again a few months later, but by then the number had been disconnected.”

  “That’s no surprise. Monique traded men like some people trade cars. We moved so often I carried my address and phone number with me so I could remember where I lived.”

  Donovan had heard stories about Hannah’s mother, Monique Maxwell, how she’d tricked Charlie into marrying her by pretending to be pregnant. By the time Charlie figured out she’d been lying, she really was pregnant. He couldn’t fault Charlie for sticking with her, though. He’d done the same thing in his own marriage – stuck with it for the sake of his son.

  “You always wanted to be a cop, like your father.”

  “I’m a detective. Pop retired years ago. After Charlie died, he lost his enthusiasm for the job. He worked as a carpenter for a few years, and now he stays home and takes care of my son, Billy.”

  “You’re married?”

  “My wife died two, almost three years ago, and then my mother passed away last year.”

  “So much death. I remember your mother. She took me shopping and bought me a new dress to wear to Dad’s funeral. I really liked her. How old is Billy?”

  “He’s nine.”

  The phone rang, interrupting their conversation. A minute later, Hannah hung up and turned to Donovan. “That was Thornton Clapp, Grandpa’s attorney. He wants us both in his office tomorrow morning at nine. Apparently we’re both mentioned in the will.”

  “Well, that’s a surprise.” All Donovan knew was that Raymond ‘Sonny’ Taylor had changed his will after his wife got sick. The old man was bitter toward Monique and the way she’d kept Hannah from them after Charlie died. And Sonny was afraid his granddaughter would end up like her mother. The Hannah Donovan remembered was nothing like Monique, but life changed people in unexpected ways. Hannah was no longer a little girl clutching his hand and sobbing at her father’s funeral. She was a stranger to him now.

  Hannah sipped her cocoa. “I know there are some stipulations in the will, but the only one the attorney mentioned was that I’d have to live here for a year to claim the house.”

  Interesting. Didn’t Sonny expect her to stay? “Do you want to live here, Hannah?”

  “I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else. This is the only place I’ve ever felt like I belonged.”

  The power came on, and Hannah spotted the keys to Grandpa’s old car on the kitchen counter, along with the two house keys that had no doubt belonged to her grandparents. When Hannah was in high school, Monique told her they’d died, but it was a lie. All these years her grandparents were living right here, in the house on Livingston Avenue.

  As soon as Donovan left, Hannah changed into her sweats and pulled on a warm, dry jacket. The house felt chilly and damp. She walked upstairs, flipping on lights along the way. There were five bedrooms upstairs, including the big room with the round alcove, her grandmother’s bedroom. The room on the left of Grandma’s had been hers when she was a child. Although eighteen years had passed, not much had changed. Her doll collection was still on the shelves and the frilly pink and white bedspread was still on the bed, as if the little girl who’d once slept there was simply out playing with a friend.

  Her father’s room had been turned into a shrine, and Hannah’s chest hurt to look at it. She’d closed off this part of her life years ago, taken her grief and locked it away in a little box. But the letter from the attorney broke the lock and the contents spilled out when she walked into this house. After so long it shouldn’t still hurt, but it did, and the hurt was too big to stuff back in the box.

  Grandpa’s room was the only bedroom on this floor that looked like it had been lived in recently, and the toilet in the only bathroom upstairs had a thick layer of moldy scum floating on top. She flushed and walked downstairs. The rattle of the old plumbing echoed through the house. What else needed to be fixed or replaced in the old house? She didn’t have much money, and she didn’t want to go into debt except as a last resort.

  The storm raged outside, and the wind rattled the windows. Hannah hugged her arms, chilled to the bone. Replacing the furnace had to be one of the top items on her things-to-do list. It was already October, and winter was closing in.

  <>

  Hannah rode to the attorney’s office with Donovan the next morning. The rain had stopped, but low clouds shrouded the city, blocking any warmth from the sun.

  Thornton J. Clapp was a big bear of a man with white hair and a ruddy complexion. He looked like he belonged on the seat of a tractor or swinging an axe in the forest. Donovan shook his hand and introduced Hannah.

  Mr. Clapp sat behind h
is desk and opened the file. “Now then, Miss Taylor. As I told you on the phone, your grandfather has essentially left his entire estate to you, with certain stipulations. The first, as I mentioned before, is that you must agree to live in the house for at least one year. Detective Donovan Kane and his father and son are to share the house with you during that year.”

  Hannah gaped at the attorney and then stared at Donovan. “Share the house?” He had to be kidding.

  Donovan sputtered, “Oh, wait a minute now. I never agreed to—”

  “What if I refuse?” asked Hannah.

  “Then the house goes to Detective Kane. Your grandfather wanted to leave his home to someone who would live there and love it as he had, someone who intended to make it their permanent home.”

  “So no matter what I decide, Donovan gets a free place to live for the next year, and if I don’t stay, it belongs to him? Is that it?”

  “That is essentially it, yes.”

  “How much pain medication was my grandfather on when he wrote that will?”

  “Mr. Taylor was of sound mind and body when he made the will two years ago. The house is a family legacy he wanted to pass down to you and your children, if you agree to stay.”

  Stay? What else could she do? There was nothing to go back to in Tacoma. Before she left, she quit her job, sold her car, and donated most of her household furnishings to the Salvation Army. After the divorce, she didn’t own anything worth moving, and she hated her job. It was time for a change, but she didn’t anticipate this.

  Donovan held up his hand. “Back up a minute. Why did Sonny want me and my family to live there?”

  “He had knowledge of a crime committed in the house many years ago. He and I spoke at length about it, and I urged him to report the crime, but he didn’t want to upset his wife or disrupt the household with an investigation when she was so ill. Sonny had a great deal of confidence in you and your detective skills, and he didn’t want his granddaughter living in the house alone. He said you’d find clues in his mother’s diaries.”