Cozy Mystery Ghost Story Collection: The Complete Shannon Porter Mystery Series Read online

  The women turned toward the deep sound of a man's voice, and Shannon thought her heart actually skipped a beat when she caught sight of the most handsome man she'd been in the vicinity of in a long time. She glanced over at her best friend, who had a slight blush on her cheeks.

  "I'm sorry," Karen said, "but do I know you?"

  The man laughed a deep, throaty sound that seemed to reverberate off the walls of the restaurant. "Sorry, it's Calvin Moore. We used to sit together in Professor McClellan's bio class."

  "Oh, of course." She stood up to shake his hand, and ended up in an awkward looking hug. Shannon felt a pang of jealousy shoot through her stomach. She felt like she was back in high school, and that made her ashamed enough to look away from the exchange. "Um, Calvin, this is my friend Shannon. She's a writer. And her mother, Myra."

  Shannon shot Karen a questioning look. She couldn't figure out why that was the first thing Karen wanted everyone to know about her. It wasn’t as if she was famous or anything. She tried to keep her composure and act like the adult that she was, but her stomach knotted nonetheless as she took the man's hand. It shouldn't feel like a competition for his attention, but it did.

  Shannon hadn't had anyone special in her life for nearly a year. At first she'd blamed her lack of dating life on her busyness with her latest release, but after the hoopla had settled down it had become painfully clear that she alone was the cause of her current relationship status. She knew she was picky, but she didn't want to get hurt. The reasoning felt like a cliché, which she tried hard to avoid under any and all circumstances. She didn't want to settle, though. Relationships had always been hard for her. Not so for her friend. Like always, here was a man practically begging Karen for her attention. How did it come so easy for her? Karen had always had boyfriends throughout high school and college, but after a failed marriage in her twenties, she seemed to have given up. Shannon didn't envy her that heartache, but she wasn't quite ready to settle into spinsterhood the way her best friend was.

  She tuned back in to the conversation just as Calvin was saying, "And this is my grandfather, Amos Moore. He grew up here. We decided it would be fun to celebrate in Keystone the way he did as a boy."

  Karen seemed to perk up as the grizzled old man stepped near the table. She shook his gnarled hand, and peered up at him with a sunny smile. "If you grew up here, maybe you knew my grandfather? Charles Day? He grew up in the big Victorian--"

  "I knew him," Amos interrupted.

  The smile faded from Karen's face, and Shannon frowned at the old man. He certainly fit the image of a curmudgeonly grouch. His jowls sagged, his eyes were hooded by the wrinkles that lined his face, and his white hair was long and stringy. Though she squinted, she failed to see the resemblance between Calvin and his grandfather.

  Shannon watched Karen force a smile that looked more like a grimace. She said, "Well, maybe we can get together while you're here. I'm doing a huge renovation of my Grandfather’s home, and I have all kinds of questions about how things should look. Maybe you could tell me what I'm getting right."

  Amos grunted, but Calvin smiled. "We'd love to. I'm sure my grandfather can help. He's an expert at all things about historical Keystone."

  Karen grinned again, seemingly relieved by the reassurance that someone else could take a look at her work. Shannon knew that Amos Moore could be a good resource for her own research as well, if she found a nugget of a story to follow. Still, there was something about the old man that set her teeth on edge. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she just had that flash of intuition that she followed whenever she worked on a story. A moment later she laughed inwardly at herself. Her imagination was running away with her again. Such was the life of a writer.

  Just as Shannon was shaking herself out of her uneasy thoughts, her mother stood. “If you girls will excuse me for a moment, I’d like to go catch up with that Amos.” Myra flashed them a smile.

  “Mom,” Shannon said, drawing out the word. “What do you want with him?”

  “He seems like a fascinating man, don’t you think?” Myra ran her hand along the back of her chair, but wouldn’t look Shannon in the eye.

  “I know what that means. You act like I’m ten still. Ew, Mom, he’s old enough to be your dad.” Shannon made a face.

  Her mother raised an eyebrow—a move she had perfected years before—and she said, “Yes dear, and he’s old enough to be your grandfather. Do you have a point?”

  Karen smothered a giggle by taking a drink of her water as Myra walked away. Shannon looked over at her friend helplessly. Her mother seemed to get crazier each day that passed, and there was nothing to be done about it.

  “He’d make a really interesting step-father,” Karen teased.

  Shannon shivered. “Don’t say that, please.” She paused. “Although he might be a prospector. That could be a fun diversion for my mom now that she’s retired. Maybe she’ll find a new career while we’re out here.”

  “That’s the attitude.” The other woman lifted her water glass in a toast. They laughed at the absurdity of the situation, and returned their attention to the menu.

  Chapter Two:

  "You ready to do this?" Karen asked, handing Shannon a sledgehammer.

  Shannon lifted the heavy handle, and grunted as it thudded back to the floor. "You're kidding, right?"

  "Not at all. You really should work out more. Just because you're a writer doesn't mean you have to be a weakling."

  "What does that even mean?" Shannon shook her head, and adjusted the mask over her nose and mouth. "What're you hoping to do up here, anyway?"

  Karen ran her hand along the wall that they were planning to demo in a few seconds. She took a deep breath. "The original blueprints to the house show that this floor should be at least five hundred more square feet. I’m thinking there has to be something behind this wall.”

  "Really? That's kind of cool and creepy all at the same time."

  "Kind of like one of your books."

  "Huh?"

  "Cool and creepy. That's what I'd say you write. Your mysteries. They're just so...cool and creepy." Karen smiled at her, and Shannon felt the heat of a blush rise on her cheeks. She still couldn't get used to people making a big deal over her stories. She'd made a career of scratching the thoughts that filled her head down on paper, and somehow she'd sold them. “And all those ghost stories that you weave in, it reminds me of when we were kids.”

  Shannon smiled. “Do you remember when we thought this place was haunted?”

  Karen glanced around the space. “I still think this house is haunted.”

  “I always liked that story that your mom used to tell us about the school teacher. Remember that one?”

  “How could I forget? That was practically my bedtime story. Why haven’t you ever used that in one of your books?”

  Shannon tried to shift the sledgehammer, but failing, leaned against it instead. “I don’t know. Maybe that will be in my next book.”

  “How would you tell it?” Karen asked, tipping her head thoughtfully.

  Closing her eyes for a moment, Shannon said, “I’d use her story as the historical part of the story perhaps. Or at least part of it. I would set her as the sister to my heroine.”

  “But in the story my mom told, she was a single woman who braved the mining camps on her own.” Karen swung the sledgehammer back and forth like a pendulum.

  “I know, but there’s no reason to stick strictly to the original story. Besides how many twists and turns do you think the legend had before your mom told it to us? Like I said, the sister angle would be the twist I’d make to the story.” Shannon paused as her writer mode took over. She could feel the creativity begin to flow, and she almost thought of abandoning the demolition project to begin writing. The only thing that stopped her was the fact that her mother was in the living room on the phone with Amos. She shuddered to think what was going to come of that situation.

  “Maybe they came out together. My heroine was
betrothed to a respectable man out here, but by the time the girls arrived he’d mysteriously vanished. She sets out to discover what happened to him, but in the meantime the girls need a means to make some money. The school teacher finds a position to support her sister’s search.” Shannon stopped again, and laughed. “Then all the details of the ghost story: how she fell in love with a prospector, how he got jealous of one of the men on the school board, how he murdered both of them and dumped their bodies in a mine shaft. I think I’d have the ghost of the school teacher haunt the sister and every successive generation. What do you think of that?”

  “I love it! You have to let me read every draft.”

  Shannon reached out to give her friend a one armed hug, and said, “Sorry to derail the demo. And you can read every word. I’d love to have your input.”

  "Shall we?" Karen asked, raising the sledgehammer over her shoulder with ease.

  Shannon hefted the tool up, and nodded. She was afraid that if she spoke she might say something sentimental, and that wasn't her role in this friendship.

  "Three, two, one. Smash!"

  Karen threw herself into the hit, and a large chunk of drywall splintered, pieces falling to the floor. Shannon watched amazed as her friend repeated the motion again and again. By the time she managed to hit the wall, Karen already had a large hole opened. Shannon's hit barely made a dent.

  "Come on," Karen called. "I think we can climb through. There's definitely a room on the other side."

  Goosebumps prickled along her skin as she followed her friend through the wall. This was something that she'd dream up for one of her mysteries. Only in her version there would be a body or some other gruesome discovery awaiting them.

  What she stepped into, however, was much more mundane. It looked like a little boy's room, complete with bed and dresser. The floor was covered with an ancient looking braided rug, now covered with the dust from the wall smashing. Karen was walking around the room, and looked almost as if she were in a trance. Her fingers made trails on the top of the dresser where years of dust had accumulated. Shannon hung back by the hole, feeling equally as if she was intruding and as if she'd indeed stumbled upon a scene from one of her books. She had a bad feeling that there was a literal skeleton lurking in the closet on the opposite side of the room.

  "So whose room was this?" she managed to ask after clearing her dry throat.

  Karen glanced over her shoulder, seeming startled that there was another person in the room. "Oh. I suppose it was my grandfather's. Doesn't it look like a little boy's room?"

  Shannon nodded. "It does." There was a model airplane suspended from the ceiling, hung like a baby's mobile over the bed. In one of her mysteries, she'd use it as a symbol for some deeper truth in her main character's life, but here it just seemed sad and forlorn. A remnant of a childhood long forgotten. "Why would you wall up an entire room?"

  Karen shrugged. "I have no idea." She sighed, and placed her hand on the doorknob of the closet. Shannon tensed. "I have so many questions about this house, and my family. Did I ever tell you how my grandfather died?"

  Swallowing hard against the roughness in her throat, Shannon shook her head. Why did this place make her feel so nervous?

  "That's because we don't know. We lost touch with them after Dad left and then one day my Grandma just called and told my Mom that Grandpa was gone. He just disappeared. My Grandmother insisted that he was murdered. He He had no reason to just run off and leave his family, you know? But, they never found a body, and there wasn't a motive or a ransom or anything like that." Karen let go of the closet doorknob and leaned heavily on the door. "I suppose we'll never know for sure. I guess that's why I'm throwing everything I have into this renovation. Even if I can't have the real answers, maybe this house can give me some kind of insight."

  Shannon forgot her desire to remain calm and collected. She forgot her unease at standing in this room, her fear of what might lurk behind that closed door. Instead, she crossed the room to where her best friend stood, baring her soul and on the brink of tears. Wrapping her arms around Karen, Shannon said, "Why did you never mention any of this before?"

  A tear leaked from Karen's eye, and trailed down her cheek. With a half shrug, she leaned against Shannon. "I don't know. When Grandma died, she left the house to Mom but we never came out here. Mom said there were too many bad memories. She never sold it, and for the most part it was left in the keep of a local caretaker. I guess now with Mom gone, I’m starting to feel like it’s the last connection that I have to my past."

  The two women sank to the floor, arms still wrapped around each other. Shannon held her friend while the tears fell, but she didn't quite know what to say. She'd known Karen most of her life, but didn’t know this part of her story. Shannon's heart ached for her, knowing how much it must hurt to feel so alone.

  Finally Shannon said, "Have you found anything else in all the research you've done to make you think differently about your Grandfather’s disappearance?"

  Karen hiccupped. "You mean, have I found any clues?"

  "Yeah, either way. I suppose it'd be better to know definitively what happened to your grandfather, than to spend more years speculating."

  "The only thing I found in all the digging I've done is the blueprint for this house, which is great for my renovating project but doesn’t help to answer any questions. All of the other stuff seems to be based on gossip and speculation.”

  "More rumors, huh?" Shannon gave an uneasy laugh that came out sounding tinny and weird.

  Karen sat back against the closet door, and wrapped her arms around her legs. "Yeah, but this one is the stuff your stories are made of."

  "Okay," Shannon said slowly. Her mind geared up as time seemed to slow down. That's how it always felt when a new story idea was about to be born.

  "There was a diary entry, over at the historical society. It was by my great-great-grandmother, Eleanor Martin. She wrote about going for a walk with her best friend, Julia, and finding a piece of quartz with a shiny rock inside. The two girls took the rock home to their parents, and it turned out to be a piece of gold. The two families went back to dig, and they hit the mother lode. The gold mine that was established was one of the most successful mines the Black Hills had ever seen, second only to the Homestake up in Lead. They named it "Fancy Free” Karen’s eyes had a glazed over look as she wove the tale of her family’s history.

  Shannon's heart sped up. She could feel her blood pounding at all her pulse points. This had such a great historical feel to it. How could she turn it into a mystery novel. "What happened to it? The mine?"

  Karen sighed. "It shut down operations when an ownership dispute began between the two families. No one could prove who made the actual claim for the Fancy Free, so in the end no one got it. I think that's what ultimately did my Grandpa in. His lust for the gold. From what my Grandma told me, he spent his whole life trying to find the deed, just to prove that my family was the true owner of the mine."

  "What about the descendants of the other family? Have you tried to contact them at all?" The questions flowed easily as the other part of Shannon's brain tried to piece together the fiction behind the truth. She layered the cast of characters that had been presented to her with the few facts she had. She wondered if she might be able to turn the mystery into a multi-generational novel. Or one that jumped back and forth between time periods. She'd always wanted to try her hand at one of those, and this might be her chance.

  "I couldn't find the lineage. Whoever Julia married must not have been from the area because there are just no records of her after eighteen-ninety-eight. She must have left the area too, or moved to a different town in the region. I've thought about checking the records over in Hill City and Custer because they're pretty close, but I haven't had the time." Karen climbed to her feet, and offered Shannon her hand. "Shall we open this closet and see what we've got inside?"

  The buzz of fear hummed in Shannon's ears as she grabbed Karen's hand and hoisted
herself up, but her curiosity had been piqued. Now she had to know more. Each tidbit and fact that she gathered would help her write the story that was percolating in her brain now.

  Karen turned the knob, and the door swung open. No literal skeleton popped out, but as the two women peered in to the dimly lit space, they could see stacks of boxes. It looked like a jackpot to Shannon if she'd ever seen one. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to stash something in this room, wall it up, and try to forget that it ever existed. Now the two of them were going to uncover whatever secrets this room and this house held. And maybe, just maybe, Shannon would get a new story, and Karen would get answers about her grandfather.

  Chapter Three:

  They finished demoing the wall so they could haul the boxes out of the room, and down the stairs. By the time they were done, it was well past dinner and both women were drenched in sweat. They'd laughingly agreed to throw on their coats and walk to the convenience store down the road. "Nothing like frozen pizza after a hard day's work," Karen had quipped.

  As they trudged through the violet twilight across yesterday's fresh snow, Shannon shivered despite her warm down jacket. The sweat that had clung to her skin had dried and cooled in the freezing air, leaving her skin feeling oddly slick and sticky. She'd caught a glimpse of herself in the little mirror next to the front door on their way out, and she knew she was a mess. Normally she'd have run a brush through her hair, or freshened up her make-up, but she was on vacation, she didn't know anyone in this town, and she was too exhausted to care. She was, however, excited to open those boxes. Her fingers had been itching to tear into them all day.

  The bell over the door jingled to announce their arrival. Karen pushed her hood down, and Shannon pulled off her knit cap, giving her hair a good shake. The woman behind the counter greeted Karen warmly, and lifted her eyebrows in pleasant surprise when Karen once again introduced Shannon as a writer. After that the two women roamed up and down the tiny aisles, grabbing all sorts of junk: pop, chips, candy, and of course, frozen pizza.