1 The Ghost in the Basement

by SUE FINEMAN

  She hesitated as though thinking it over. “Why don’t you bring Pop and Billy over for dinner and we’ll talk about it? I have a big pot of stew on the stove.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll stop at the liquor store for more boxes.”

  By the time her three new roommates arrived, Hannah had washed the bedding from her old room and packed her dolls in the last two boxes. One doll had been her grandmother’s when she was a little girl, and there were others that were even older. The ones with the china heads were older than the house. They were probably worth something to a collector, but Hannah couldn’t part with them. Not now. She’d store her things in one corner of the attic and let Donovan and his family have the rest.

  Kevin Kane, her dad’s former partner, wore a big smile and opened his arms for a hug. Hannah was swallowed in his warm embrace before she pulled back. The vital cop with the light brown hair had turned into an old man, with gray hair and a lined face. He’d grown thicker around the middle, but he was still Pop, her dad’s partner and best friend.

  “Hannah, this is Billy,” said Donovan.

  The boy was a miniature version of his father, with lighter hair, and his face was bruised and swollen. “Hi, Billy. What happened to you?”

  “Some kids beat me up at school today.”

  Now she understood why Donovan was anxious to get moved.

  “It’s not the first time,” said Donovan, “but it’s the last.”

  Billy shrugged. “They hate cops. Theo’s father is in prison and his brother is in a gang.”

  “I was a cop’s kid, too, but I never got beat up because of it.” She leaned down and peered closer at his bruises. “Did you cry?”

  “Nah, it didn’t hurt that much.”

  Oh, yes it did. “I would have cried, but I’m not as brave as you.”

  Billy stood a little taller, and Donovan thanked her with a slight smile. Poor kid.

  Hannah stirred the stew and then walked upstairs with her new housemates. Pop pointed to the room nearest the bathroom, Grandpa’s old room. “I’ll take this one.”

  Billy ran into Grandma’s big room. “Whoa, this is bigger than our whole apartment.”

  Donovan pointed to Hannah’s old room. “This will be your room, Billy. I’ll take this one.” He pointed to Dad’s old room. Hannah thought he’d want Grandma’s big bedroom for himself.

  Hannah saw Billy staring at the pink ballerinas on the walls in his new room. She made a mental note to buy new wallpaper. The rug with the flowers had to go, too. A boy would be embarrassed to bring his friends here.

  Pointing to a stack of boxes, Donovan asked, “Do you want us to carry some of these boxes up to the attic?”

  “Sure. Put my stuff in one corner and you can use the rest of the attic.” She started downstairs to check on dinner and stopped halfway down. “Oh, be careful on those attic steps. One is loose.”

  Donovan carried Hannah’s boxes up the attic steps. Using the attic to store his furniture and the basement for Pop’s tools would save storage fees.

  Except for a little room over on one side, the attic was one big open space. A few pieces of old furniture and two trunks sat on one side, and the rest was empty. Plywood covered the floor, and the walls and ceiling were insulated, but not finished. Sonny must have put that in to save on his heating bill.

  Pop followed with more boxes. “Hey, this is nice. There’s room to build more bedrooms up here, and with the dormers, there’d be plenty of light. What’s that little room?”

  “I don’t know.” There was no door, and the walls didn’t go all the way up to the rafters. Strange. Donovan walked around it, looking for a door handle or some way to get inside, but there was none. “We’ll check it out after we get moved.” Sonny’s letter mentioned this little room and a missing space between the back wall of the pantry and the dining room. Donovan was curious, but he didn’t want to start poking around until they were settled. And he didn’t want to tear into anything without Hannah’s permission. It wasn’t his house yet.

  “I’ll go help Hannah with dinner,” said Pop.

  “I’ll see if I can find the loose step. Send Billy up with those empty boxes we left on the porch. Looks like Hannah has a lot more stuff to pack up.”

  There were two loose steps, but before he could check them out, Billy called, “Dad, Hannah says dinner is ready.”

  “Okay.” The loose steps could wait until tomorrow.

  Pop praised Hannah’s cooking, and Donovan had to admit it was good. Since Mom died, they’d all been starved for home cooking. They’d been starved for a lot of things. He should have filed for bankruptcy and started over, but it was too late now. Most of his income went to pay Maggie’s bills, and Pop’s medicine took most of his retirement pay. Inheriting this house could change everything. He could take out a mortgage and get that hospital bill paid off.

  The timer on the stove went off and Hannah took a pan out of the oven. “The dessert is too hot to eat right now.”

  Billy’s eyes popped open wider. “Dessert? We never get dessert.”

  “Cherry pudding. I was going to make a pie, but I ran out of time.”

  Billy turned to Donovan. “Dad, can we move in tomorrow? Pleeease? I don’t need to go to school.”

  It wouldn’t hurt him to miss a few days, and Donovan didn’t want to put him in any school until those bruises healed. Life was tough enough for a motherless kid without making him a target for every bully in school. “No school until after we move, but you’ll have to catch up on the work you missed.”

  The bruises were darkening on Billy’s face. Maybe they should have taken him to the hospital to get checked out. Donovan had been trying to downplay the seriousness of the attack, but it was the third one in the past month, each one worse than the last. Billy shrugged off the first attack. Donovan had a discussion with the school principal after the second one, and she promised to take care of the problem. But she hadn’t. The bathrooms were still not monitored, and that was where the kids were getting hurt. There were two or three other boys who’d been beaten, and one girl who had cracked ribs from a violent kick. It had to stop, but he didn’t want to make an example of his son in order to do it.

  Donovan watched Hannah take a long look at Billy’s face and pull a gel pack out of the freezer. She wrapped it in a dishtowel and held it to Billy’s swollen cheek and eye. “Tough kid or not, we need to get the swelling down.”

  Hannah was acting like a concerned mother, and for some reason, it felt all wrong to Donovan. She wasn’t Billy’s mother, and he could take care of his own son. But Billy lapped up the attention like a starving puppy. Watching the interaction between those two made him feel like a neglectful father, and he wasn’t. From the day his son came into the world, pink and squalling, he’d loved him intensely. He spent every spare minute with Billy. Pop was there for him, too. Still, aside from his teachers, the kid didn’t have any women in his life. The only danger was in letting him get attached and then having her move away.

  “How come we get to live with you?” asked Billy.

  “Because I don’t like living alone. I need your father to help me investigate something, and I need Pop’s carpenter skills, and I need a kid to help me do things around the house, like rake the leaves and carry out the garbage and set the table.” She pulled the ice pack away from Billy’s face to peer closer at the bruises. “So I figure you guys will be doing me a favor by staying here with me.”

  Hannah glanced at Donovan and lifted her chin, daring him without words to dispute what she’d said. She made Billy feel important, and the way Pop was looking at her, she’d won him over, too. Of course, Pop loved anyone who made him a decent meal.

  While Pop cleaned up the dinner dishes and dessert cooled, Donovan carried empty boxes upstairs. Hannah and Billy followed with more boxes, and they cleaned out the rest of her old bedroom. She made the bed with fresh sheets and blankets and dusted the furniture, and Donovan ran the vacuum cleaner.

  Hann
ah picked at a loose corner of wallpaper. “Billy, what would you think about trading the ballerinas for something else?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you like to help me pick it out?”

  Billy grinned. “Okay. Can I stay here tonight?”

  Hannah shook her head. “The furnace is broken. I wore sweats last night and slept under six blankets, and I was still cold. I should have lit the fireplace and slept in the living room.”

  Donovan had seen three fireplaces in the house, but none looked like they’d been used in years. “The fireplaces should be inspected before they’re used. We don’t want to burn the house down.”

  In spite of being manipulated into living together, Hannah seemed to have accepted the situation. This was a huge house for one person to live in. Maybe she liked the idea of having men around to help her get the house in shape. If she was anything like her mother, she wouldn’t stay long anyway, and then he and Pop could make this house their own, assuming they could chase Sonny’s wandering spirits out. If there were any such things.

  After they ate dessert, a delicious cake-like concoction filled with juicy cherries, Donovan drove his family home to their dumpy little apartment. Billy was so excited he chattered the whole way. He loved Sonny’s house and his room in spite of the pink ballerinas, but what he talked about the most was Hannah. His kid had a giant crush on her.

  Pop didn’t say much until after Billy went to bed. “Billy sure likes Hannah. I hope she’s all right with us living there.”

  “Sonny didn’t leave any of us much choice, Pop, and if she doesn’t stay, I get the house.”

  “Don’t go doing anything foolish. You know Sonny wanted her to have it.”

  “I won’t, but if she’s anything like Monique—”

  “She’s not. You don’t suppose—”

  “That Sonny had an ulterior motive? I wouldn’t be surprised, but you and I both know I can’t afford another wife.” He was still paying for the first one.

  <>

  The old house grew quiet that evening. There was no storm to bang the front porch swing, no wind to howl through the trees, and no thunder and lightning to make Hannah’s heart race. And no wounded little boy racing through the house with excitement.

  Everywhere she looked, she saw work to be done. Grandma used to keep this place sparkling. Would it ever be that clean again? It wasn’t just the thick layer of dust. Years of neglect had left the house in a sorry state of disrepair. Dampness had rotted the window sills in her bedroom and the door was so warped it wouldn’t close all the way.

  Cleaning and maintaining a house this size was a never-ending task, especially a house that had been neglected as this one obviously had. The only rooms downstairs she’d had time to clean were her bedroom and bathroom. And the kitchen, of course. But the downstairs could wait for another day. Donovan wanted to get his family moved so Billy would feel safe again, so their rooms had to come first.

  She stripped the bed in Donovan’s room and took the bedding to the basement to wash. The basement had always been a creepy place to her. The furnace was a monster, with arms that went every which way. Those arms were the ducts that carried heat to the upper levels of the house, but when she was a little girl, she thought of it as a giant octopus. In the winter the monster roared and the entire house trembled with fear.

  By the time she got the bedding washed and Donovan’s bed made, she had the upstairs bathroom scoured and the towels in the wash. The curtains in all the rooms were shot. She thought she could wash them, but her finger went through the rotten fabric on the ones in Billy’s room. The shade was so old and brittle, it crumbled when she pulled it down. They all had to be replaced.

  Picking at the loose corner of wallpaper by the window, she pulled it back far enough to see the little teddy bears on the last layer of wallpaper. This must have been Dad’s room when he was a baby. Her grandparents had been married for fifteen years and given up on having any children when their only child was born. They felt blessed to have a perfect little boy to love, and when Hannah came along, she was included in the circle of their love.

  Hannah rubbed her finger over the little teddy bear on the wall and felt a deep sense of sadness. There was a sense of history and permanence in this old house and in the family who’d lived here, but she was the last of the Taylor family. She had no intention of having children. Aside from her father and grandfather, she’d never met a man she could trust with a child, and she didn’t want to be a single mother. Some women handled it well, but Hannah wasn’t sure she could.

  Aside from the house Dad had bought Monique in River Valley, she’d never owned a home. After the divorce, Monique took Hannah to another state, but they never stayed anywhere over four or five months. As a kid, Hannah desperately wanted to belong somewhere, to make friends and go through school in one place, with the same kids. Monique made sure that didn’t happen.

  She thought marriage would give her a permanent home and the stability she craved, but her short marriage had been a huge disappointment. The only stability was what she provided, and her husband chipped away at that.

  Donovan wanted the house, her house. He looked at it as if he already owned it. Would he try to force her out before the year was up? If he did, he had a surprise coming, because she wouldn’t give it to him. Grandpa wanted them to live in the same house for a year, and then Donovan and his family would have to find another place to live.

  The house on Livingston Avenue was her home.

  He couldn’t have it.

  Chapter Three

  Donovan sat in the captain’s office talking about the situation at Billy’s school. “I hate to file a formal complaint, but I don’t know what else to do. Kids are getting hurt, and the principal isn’t taking care of the problem. She’s taken no measures to correct the problem or to punish the bullies responsible.”

  “File a complaint with the school board and another one here, with the police department. The bullies need to spend a few days in Juvie and get the piss scared out of them.” The captain shook his head. “They’re starting younger and younger these days.”

  “Yes, they are.” The kids responsible were in the fourth and fifth grades. If they were this bad now, he hated to see the trouble they’d cause as teenagers.

  “Filing a report might not do anything except get the bullies away from the other kids for a few days.”

  Donovan took a deep breath and blew it out. “That’s a start.” If he had to sue the school district to force them to take action, he would, but only as a last resort. He’d like to shake some sense into the parents who allowed their little monsters to behave like that, but he knew many kids in that school came from single-parent homes and their mothers worked two and three jobs. There wasn’t anyone home to supervise or guide the kids in the right direction. Thank God he had Pop to help with Billy.

  “What about setting up a crime prevention program for the schools?” Donovan knew it wasn’t the answer to all the problems in the schools, but it couldn’t hurt.

  “Good idea.” The captain wrote himself a note. “I’ll take it to the chief, see if he’ll put it in the budget.”

  After he filled out the complaint and wrote a letter to the school board, Donovan took Billy to the doctor so they’d have a medical record of his injuries in case this ever got to court.

  Maybe it was time to quit his job and find another one, something that paid better. Something that wouldn’t get his little boy beat up in the bathroom at school.

  After their trip to the doctor’s office, Donovan brought Billy to Hannah’s house.

  She smiled. “How’s my favorite kid today?”

  “Dad took me to the doctor and they took pictures of my bruises and stuff.”

  She looked up at Donovan, her smile gone. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine, but I filed a complaint with the school board, and we needed evidence. I want the kids who did this punished before they hurt any more kids. The captain agreed to
talk to the chief about setting up a crime prevention program in the schools. It might help prevent future attacks.”

  “I hope so.”

  While Billy carried in more boxes, Donovan said, “Hannah, two of my men are coming over this afternoon to check out Sonny’s car.”

  “That’s nice of them, but I doubt it’s worth fixing. I’ve been checking the newspaper ads, but I don’t know enough about cars to know what’s a good buy and what isn’t. If my ex-husband hadn’t taken my computer when I threw him out, I’d check on the Internet.”

  Donovan cocked his head. “You were married?”

  “Once, a mistake I never intend to make again.”

  He watched her walk upstairs, wondering why any man in his right mind would walk away from a woman like that. Billy said she was pretty, but pretty didn’t touch it. She had a natural beauty and a freshness that didn’t come from makeup and expensive clothes, but she’d built an invisible wall around herself and posted no trespassing signs all over it.

  Getting involved with her would be as foolish as dating someone he worked with. Those things never worked out. When she left and he ended up with ownership of the house, he didn’t want to be pegged as the bad guy.

  He carried more boxes inside. Sonny’s old house had been a real showplace years ago, but the place was showing its age. The weeds had taken over the lawn, and the rose bushes Virginia had lovingly tended were woody and overgrown. If the sagging gutters weren’t replaced soon, they’d have water damage.

  The house was cold and damp in the daytime, and the temperature dropped at night. With Pop’s arthritis kicking up, they had to get the heat on before they moved. Donovan sat down with Hannah and they reviewed the two furnace estimates. The second estimate was so close to the first one, Donovan said, “Let’s go with the first one. It’s a few dollars more, but they can get the new furnace in sooner.”

  Later that afternoon, Tom Peterson and Bob Carson, two detectives on Donovan’s team, brought a pickup load of furniture and boxes from the apartment and helped Donovan carry it all up to the attic.