1 The Ghost in the Basement

by SUE FINEMAN

  Trevor Ames, Hannah’s ex-husband, came to visit years ago and stayed. He lived in an apartment in the attic.

  Although the two houses were only a few blocks apart, this old house was nothing like his grandmother’s cold stone mansion. The Kane home was filled with warmth and love and laughter. The Goodman mansion was about as inviting as a castle with the drawbridge up and alligators in the moat.

  As they passed the food around the table, Dad asked, “Billy, did you see that attorney today?”

  “Yeah. He said William Goodman had divorced Eleanor, and part of the divorce agreement was that he got to keep the house his parents left him.”

  Dad stabbed a green bean. “I didn’t know they were divorced, although I’m not surprised he wanted out. Eleanor was a witch.”

  “Yeah, I remember. My grandfather put the house into a trust for me after the divorce, but he gave Eleanor a life tenancy.”

  “What’s that mean?” Ginny asked.

  “It means she got to live there for the rest of her life or until she moved out. Now she’s dead and the house belongs to me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Eleanor’s estate is to be divided among her cousins in the Ainsworth family, if the attorney can find them. She had family in Virginia or Tennessee or somewhere in the South. They’re blood relations and I’m not, so I didn’t expect my grandparents to leave me anything.”

  “You’re not related to Eleanor by blood,” said Pop, “but you are to William Goodman. He was Maggie’s natural father.”

  That explained why his grandfather gave him the house, but Eleanor couldn’t have been happy about it.

  “Who’s Maggie?” Ginny asked.

  “My birth mother,” said Billy. “Dad’s first wife. She died when I was seven.”

  “Since you’re only a half brother, does that mean you can only be half as bossy?” Charlie asked.

  Billy thumped him on the side of the head. “Did you win your basketball game today?”

  “Damn right we did. We wiped the floor with them.”

  Dad pointed his fork at Charlie. “Don’t swear.”

  “Do I only have to mind Billy half the time?” Ginny asked.

  “When did you ever mind me?” Billy muttered.

  The banter continued and the food on the table quickly disappeared. Mom and Dad gazed at each other and smiled. After seventeen years together, they were still crazy about each other. And Billy loved the whole quirky family.

  He’d moved out after college, but he didn’t go far. He lived in the apartment over the garage in back of the house and ate dinner with his family at least twice a week. Hannah said she wanted to make sure he didn’t go hungry. Fat chance of that happening. He liked to eat, and Hannah was a good cook.

  “What’s the house like, Billy?” Hannah asked.

  “It’s big and ugly and dirty. The yard is overgrown and the pool is downright skuzzy.”

  Ginny’s mouth dropped open. “You have a pool?”

  “The pool isn’t fit to use until it’s cleaned and resurfaced, and I don’t plan to keep the house anyway. I intend to clean it up and put it on the market.”

  Dad pushed his empty plate back. “I can’t believe Eleanor let everything go like that.”

  Hannah stood and started clearing the table. “Maybe she was too sick to notice.”

  “Sick in the head,” said Dad. “The only thing she ever cared about was Maggie. She was obsessed with her precious daughter.”

  Billy cocked his head. “Did William have blond hair and blue eyes?”

  Dad nodded. “His hair was so blond it was almost white. He died when you were three or four years old, before Maggie got sick.”

  “Of what? Why did he die?”

  Dad shrugged. “I have no idea. There’s probably a death certificate somewhere in that house.”

  “Are you sure he was Maggie’s father?”

  “I’m sure,” said Hannah. “Her birth mother told me.”

  Confused about how Dad’s second wife would know this about his first wife, Billy asked, “Do you know my natural grandmother?”

  “I knew her at one time, yes.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “I have no idea.” Hannah turned away, and Billy knew the topic was closed. Why did he get the feeling she was hiding something?

  <>

  Benton Ainsworth III drove home swearing to himself. He’d been so sure that Sonny guy was bluffing, he’d bet everything on that last hand. And lost. Poker wasn’t his game, so why did he bet so damn much? He always did better at the tables in Vegas. Monte Carlo was out of the question. He couldn’t afford to go there again.

  Not this year.

  He flipped through the mail and found an envelope from Thornton Clapp, an attorney in River Valley, Ohio. He ripped it open and read the letter. Apparently a distant relative had died and left him something in her will. “Yes!” he yelled into the room. He didn’t remember Eleanor Ainsworth Goodman, but at that moment, she was his favorite relative. A decent inheritance could wipe out all his gambling debts and replenish his trust fund.

  Benton walked across the library and pulled a book from the shelves. His grandfather, the first Benton Ainsworth, had made his fortune in the coal mining industry. All the mines had since been sold, but Benton’s father, the second Benton Ainsworth, had done well in business himself, well enough to send Benton to the best private schools and set him up with a trust fund that should have lasted him for most of his life. But Benton’s father drank himself to death years ago, his mother lived in Florida with her fourth husband, and Benton was broke. This inheritance couldn’t have come at a better time.

  He opened the book to the page with the family tree and found Eleanor Ainsworth’s name. She was his father’s first cousin, the only child of Walter and Margaret Ainsworth of Richmond, Virginia. Walter Ainsworth was a wealthy man at one time. Benton wondered just how rich cousin Eleanor was when she died and how many other heirs she’d mentioned in her will. “Maybe I’ll get it all.”

  He fixed himself a stiff drink and walked upstairs to his bedroom. His mortgage payments were three months overdue, and now he owed another forty grand in gambling debts. Add that to the thirty he already owed before tonight and the second mortgage with the balloon due next month, and he was in deep trouble. He needed a half-million to break even.

  He wondered if there was any way to speed up the probate process on his inheritance, but he wouldn’t find out at three in the morning on a weekend. He’d have to wait until Monday morning to call that attorney in Ohio.

  Benton had just gone to bed when the phone rang. Only one person could be calling at this hour. He didn’t want to answer it, but if he didn’t, those goons would show up at the house. He picked it up and mumbled, “Yeah.”

  “I heard you lost more at the tables tonight.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m good for it.”

  “You have one week to come up with the money you owe me. If I don’t have the cash by then, you’re a dead man.”

  The line clicked dead, and Benton knew he couldn’t wait for his inheritance. He’d have to sell the Maserati and everything else of value in the house. The bank could have the house. He owed more than it was worth.

  <>

  Saturday morning, Billy helped Trevor load the mower on the back of the pickup. Hannah and Ginny loaded cleaning supplies and garbage cans, and the twins fussed at each other as they tied everything down. The ropes weren’t tight, but they were only going a few blocks.

  Billy drove Trevor to the Goodman mansion, followed by Hannah and the kids. They were all going to help. “Slave labor,” Charlie called it. He didn’t especially want to work, but the kids were all anxious to see the house.

  Andy stood back and stared at the house while Billy unlocked the front door. “You’re right, Billy. It’s ugly as it is, but it could look good with a few changes.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like adding a porte-cochere and black iron wind
ow boxes to match the gate. You might want to replace the front door, too. It’s probably meant to look like a drawbridge, but it’s ugly.”

  “What’s a porte-cochere?”

  “It’s a covered area to drive through, so people won’t have to battle the snow to get to the front door, like a fancy carport for guests.”

  Billy wondered how much that would cost. It couldn’t help but improve the look of the house, and if he wanted to sell this place, something had to be done to enhance its curb appeal.

  Ginny rubbed her arms. “It looks like something out of a scary movie.”

  Charlie grinned. “Scared, Ginny Poo.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snapped.

  “Enough,” said Hannah. “No bickering. We’re here to see the house and help your brother.”

  “Half brother,” said Charlie. “How come he gets to inherit something and we don’t?”

  “Because Maggie wasn’t your mother. You’re stuck with me.”

  Billy pushed the front door open. “Go ahead and explore while I unload the truck.”

  Ginny stepped inside the front door and wrinkled her nose. “Ew. It stinks in here.”

  “It needs to be aired out,” said Hannah. “Open the windows.”

  By lunchtime, the lawn had been mowed, the pool was draining, the broken glass from the sunroom and all the pictures were in the trash, two rooms and a bathroom had been cleaned, and the main floor had been aired out. He couldn’t have done it all without their help.

  Hannah went home to fix Pop’s lunch and start the laundry, and Billy ordered pizza for everyone else. They’d all worked hard that morning, and they needed a break.

  When the pizza came, Billy put it on the table in the breakfast room.

  Ginny sat down and asked, “Why are we throwing out all the pictures?”

  “Because nobody is going to buy this place with all those pictures on the walls. There are more in the albums.” He didn’t tell her he intended to throw them away, too. He didn’t want any reminders of his hateful mother.

  “She was pretty.”

  “Yeah, she was pretty.” And vain. And selfish. She didn’t do anything but sit around and look pretty or yell at him. Or shop.

  He suspected Eleanor had let the house get rundown on purpose. She didn’t want the baby who killed her daughter to have anything of value.

  Charlie nudged his elbow. “Are you going to eat that?”

  Billy picked up the last piece of pizza. Charlie could eat a whole pizza by himself, and he’d already had four pieces. “Yeah, I’m going to eat this.”

  When he finished eating, they loaded the mattress and bedding from Eleanor’s room in the pickup, then loaded the trash cans filled with pictures and broken glass.

  Charlie rode with Billy to the dump. He hung out the window and asked the man at the gate, “Where do we dump the body?”

  “He’s kidding,” said Billy. But the guy wasn’t laughing.

  When they returned from the dump, Police Chief Donovan Kane, his face dark with fury, stood by the door, and Billy knew the man at the dump had called the police. “You’re on your own, little brother.”

  Charlie groaned. “Why couldn’t I have a father with a normal job?” He jumped out of the pickup, saying, “Dad, it was just a joke.”

  It was all Billy could do to keep from laughing. Of all the kids in the city, Charlie was the one who gave the police chief the most grief. Billy had always been a good kid, and so was Andy. Ginny wasn’t too bad, but Charlie had an ornery streak. Pop said he’d make a good cop someday, if his father let him live that long.

  Billy left Charlie with Dad and walked upstairs, where Ginny was going through Maggie’s closets, looking for clothes that might fit her. Not that she needed more clothes.

  She held up a skirt and blouse. “Billy, can I have this?”

  “Take what you want. Just clear it with Mom before you wear any of it.” He’d donate what she didn’t want to charity.

  Andy called from downstairs, “Hey Billy, come look at this.”

  Billy trotted down the stairs and into the library, where Dad and Andy stood fiddling with something on the bookshelf. Dad looked over his shoulder. “Billy, did Clapp give you the combination to the safe?”

  “What safe?”

  “This one,” said Andy. “I was looking for the secret room when I found it.”

  Safe? Secret room? “Just tell me there’s no body buried in the basement.”

  “There’s nothing down there but the dungeon,” Andy said with a straight face. “But there might be a body or two behind this wall.”

  “Not funny.” Billy remembered all the police tromping in and out of the house when he was a kid, people digging the bones out of a shallow grave in the basement. Then there were the ghosts. If this house was haunted, he hoped Eleanor wasn’t still here. Or Maggie.

  He didn’t need that kind of trouble.

  Chapter Two

  The sun peeked over the horizon and reflected off the still water in the river as Kayla Blanton drove over the bridge into River Valley, Ohio. She adjusted the visor and squinted. “Looks like it’s gonna be a pretty day today, Buford.”

  The dog poked his head out the back window and woofed.

  She pulled into a gas station on the other side of the bridge. After she walked the dog and filled the gas tank, she went inside and handed over her last fifty dollar bill.

  “Morning,” said the man behind the counter.

  “Morning.”

  The attorney wouldn’t be in on a Sunday morning, so she’d go by Eleanor Goodman’s home, if she could find it, and see if any of the other heirs were there. She wondered how many there were. She didn’t know much about the Ainsworth side of the family.

  She asked the man behind the counter, “Do you have a phone book with a city map?”

  “I got a book, but somebody tore the map out. Where you going?”

  She gave him the address on Mansion Drive.

  He glanced at her and at her old blue van as if he couldn’t believe she’d have business in that part of town.

  “My cousin lived there,” she explained. “I’m one of her heirs. Maybe you knew my cousin, Eleanor Goodman?”

  “Lady, I don’t know anyone in that part of town.” He pointed the way.

  After a stop at a fast food restaurant for two breakfast sandwiches, one for her and one for Buford, Kayla found the address and parked on the street in front of the house. She would have parked in the driveway, but there was a black iron gate across it.

  She ran a comb through her wild auburn curls, freshened her lipstick, and stepped out of the van. “C’mon Buford. Let’s go check this out.”

  The house looked enormous, but then Mama said Daddy’s family was rich until his daddy lost it all in the stock market. The only stock market Kayla had ever dealt with had been a grocery store by that name.

  There wouldn’t likely be anyone up at this hour, but she was curious about the house. The smaller gate beside the driveway wasn’t locked, so she let herself in and walked down the driveway. The house loomed in front of her as big as a hotel or office building, blocking the morning sun. Creepy looking place, all dark gray stone and that ugly door.

  A shadow crossed a window upstairs. Someone could be living here. On the other hand, it could be Eleanor Ainsworth Goodman, the most recently departed. She rang the bell, but no one answered.

  Fighting to stay awake after driving all night, she wondered if she had enough money left to get a motel room. No, not if she wanted to eat. As soon as she spoke with the attorney and found out about her inheritance, she’d know how soon she had to find herself a job. She could sleep in the van, but she couldn’t shower in the van, and after driving all night, she could hardly stand herself.

  Walking around the house, she spotted the pool and the pool house. The pool had a few inches of murky water in the bottom and the surface was flaking off. The grass had been mowed recently. She could still smell it. But the lawn was
more weeds than grass, the flower beds were a mess, and the fountain by the steps down to the lower garden looked scummy. Too bad. The garden could be a real showplace with a little work.

  Did Eleanor spend the last years of her life in a nursing home? If so, that would explain the neglect. She wondered if the inside of the house was as bad as the outside.

  In that moment, hopes for her inheritance drained away. If Eleanor couldn’t afford to take care of the property, she couldn’t have left much to her heirs.

  While Buford sniffed out the garden, Kayla wandered into the pool house and found a dressing room with a bathroom. The plumbing worked, and the water was hot enough to take a shower. Did she dare? Oh, why not? There was nobody home, so who’d know? She really did need a shower.

  Leaving Buford in the lower garden, she hurried back to the van, grabbed her overnight bag, and walked back out to the pool house. The birds were singing and the sun shone brightly. It promised to be a good day, and the house didn’t look quite so creepy from this angle.

  Minutes later, she had the bathroom in the pool house scrubbed clean enough to use, and Buford was stretched out by the pool in the morning sunshine. Kayla stood under the shower, letting the hot water soak away her exhaustion.

  The pool and yard were in such sad shape, she wondered if Eleanor had run out of money to maintain it. Nobody would give her a house like this, which meant her inheritance was probably a piece of jewelry or a painting or something that had sentimental value.

  It was a disappointment for sure, but it was her own fault for coming here without speaking with that attorney first. Of course, after Leonard cleaned out her bank accounts and took all her jewelry, including her wedding rings, she didn’t have much reason to stay. The cops had put the club where she’d been working out of business, her divorce was pending, and Leonard was fixing to marry that blonde bimbo he’d been sneaking around with.