The Pine Hill Inn Read online

  The Pine Hill Inn

  An Ella Daniels Mystery Book 1

  J. A. Whiting

  Copyright 2019 J.A. Whiting

  Cover copyright 2019 Melody Simmons:

  www.bookcoverscre8tive.com

  Formatting by Signifer Book Design

  Proofreading by Donna Rich

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, or incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to locales, actual events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from J. A. Whiting.

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  Created with Vellum

  For my family with love

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Thank you for reading!

  Also by J. A. Whiting

  About the Author

  1

  The sun was setting as Ella Daniels crunched over the fallen leaves on the brick sidewalk and hurried up the porch steps of the Victorian house. Carrying a large metal case, Ella opened the door to the family’s suite of offices to see her brother, Ben, leaning back against the desk talking with a man who was sitting in one of the leather chairs.

  A black cat with green eyes was sitting on the desk watching the men.

  Ben looked up at his sister. “Oh, I thought you’d be in a little later.”

  The young man in the chair turned to face Ella and when he saw her, his eyes widened and a smile spread over his mouth. “Hi. I’m Liam Turner.” He stood to shake hands with her.

  “Ella Daniels.” She leaned down to place her case on the floor, and gave her brother a questioning look.

  Ben seemed slightly nervous. “Liam is an independent journalist.”

  Ella’s bluish-green eyes narrowed.

  “He’s doing a story on …. us.” Ben winced slightly.

  Ella glanced at the journalist, and then smiled sweetly at her brother. “Can I talk to you … privately?”

  Ben’s face dropped. “Liam, please make yourself at home. There’s coffee on the sideboard if you’d like some. We’ll step into the office. We’ll just be a minute.”

  Ella whispered to her brother, “A minute is all it will take to kill you.”

  When the office door was closed, Ella glared at Ben. “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “You know what ‘no’ means.”

  “Listen. It’s good to get the word out that what we do isn’t crazy. Liam seems like a nice guy. He’s sincerely interested in our story. He has strong credentials. Keep an open mind. It will be good for public relations.”

  Ella shook her head.

  “We have to,” Ben said quietly. “Aunt Jin gave her word.”

  Ella’s cheeks flared red. “Without consulting me?”

  “She knew you’d refuse,” Ben admitted.

  “She was right.” Ella sank into one of the easy chairs. “This is a bad idea. Do you know how many kooks will come out of the woodwork? It will be detrimental to our work, not to mention to our other careers.”

  “Look. Just let Liam tag along. Give him enough information for a story. Then he’ll go away.”

  After Ella pulled the elastic out of her ponytail and let her long, black hair go loose, she pressed her index finger against her temple. “I’m getting a headache.”

  “Just take him with you. Please, cooperate. For some reason, this is important to Aunt Jin.”

  Ella drew in a long breath. “Fine. One time only. Then you and Livvy can babysit him.”

  Ben smiled. “Thank you. Good. You have everything you need?”

  With a weary expression, Ella stood. “I just need some more sage.”

  Liam offered to drive, and he and Ella got into his Jeep and they headed to the main road for the twenty-minute drive to their destination. Ella’s black cat sat on the rear seat.

  “Thanks for letting me come along.” At six-feet tall, Liam had dark brown hair, brown eyes, and an athletic build. “Why does the cat come?”

  “Because she’s smart and intuitive. Her name’s Raisin. She doesn’t like to be called the cat.”

  Liam looked in the rearview mirror at the feline. “Glad to have you along, Raisin.” He asked Ella, “What sort of a place are we going to?”

  “It’s an antique Colonial house that’s being used as a bed and breakfast inn and a restaurant. They also hold weddings and different events there.” Ella looked out the window at the fall foliage. Some of the trees’ leaves had turned yellow and orange, and some were blazing, fire-engine red. Driving along the roads, the landscape was a perfect autumn scene of forest, meadows, and ponds.

  “Why did they call you in?” Liam asked.

  Ella shifted a little in the passenger seat to better face the man. “What do you know about the paranormal?”

  Liam took a quick look at her. “Um, really, not a lot. Before I came to your office, I did some research on what you do. Some of it was confusing.”

  “Have you ever had a paranormal experience?”

  “Me? No, I haven’t.”

  “Do you believe in the paranormal?” Ella asked.

  “Well, I guess not.”

  Ella frowned. “Why are you doing this story?”

  “I think most people are like me.” Liam took a left onto a side road. “They don’t understand paranormal things, but I bet they’d like to hear more about it. It’s intriguing. I’ll report on what your family does. Maybe it will educate others so they better understand things.”

  “It’s also because Halloween is coming and it fits into all that kind of stuff,” Ella said.

  “It’s true that a story like this is more marketable at this time of year,” Liam admitted.

  “How long have you been a journalist?”

  Liam chuckled. “I’m supposed to be interviewing you.”

  “I need to know some things about you if I’m going to have you with me,” Ella explained. The man seemed pleasant enough, but she was suspicious of his motives in writing a story about her family.

  “I worked for my high school newspaper and I was also on my college news team. I got a job at a small news organization after graduating,” Liam said. “They had to let some of us go due to shrinking profits. A lot of writers are going freelance now. It’s the nature of the industry.”

  Ella said, “It’s too bad there are so many cuts to staff going on. It’s an important job.”

  Liam took another quick look at the young woman sitting near him. He appreciated the respect she had for journalism.

  “So you end up doing a lot of fluff pieces?” Ella asked.

  “I don’t think of anything I do as fluff. Every person has a story, and every story is important,” Liam said. “Can I ask you some questions now?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “How did you get into this line of work?”

  “It runs in the family. We do it on a part-time basis, wh
enever someone needs help. We all have day jobs, too. Ben is a firefighter, our sister Livvy runs a shop in town, our Aunt Jin is a doctor doing medical research at the university. She works four days a week there.”

  “What do you do besides this?” Liam asked.

  “I’m a professor at the university,” Ella told him.

  “Really? What do you teach?”

  “American history.”

  When they were about ten minutes from their destination, Ella said, “If a spirit appears, don’t interact with her. Don’t ask questions, don’t try to touch her, don’t ask her to touch you. Just watch and listen.”

  With alarm in his voice, Liam asked, “Am I going to see a spirit?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Do you see spirits?”

  “Sometimes,” Ella nodded.

  “Can your entire family see spirits?”

  “Yes. So can Raisin.”

  Liam glanced at the cat in the rearview mirror again.

  “How do you know the cat, I mean, Raisin, can see spirits?”

  Ella smiled. “She told me.” The young woman gestured. “The inn is coming up on the left.”

  It was nearly dark when Liam turned onto the long driveway and followed it around to a gravel parking area. The house was painted a dark red and had a wooden front door. Brick sidewalks led to the entrance and old-fashioned lamplights flickered a golden glow over the walkways. Mums, pumpkins, hay bales, and corn stalks decorated the front of the large inn and tiny white lights had been strung on some of the branches of the trees. The place looked cozy and inviting.

  Ella lifted her metal case from the back of the SUV and they headed inside with Raisin padding along behind them.

  “What’s in the case?” Liam questioned.

  “Things we need. I’ll explain when we take them out.”

  When they stepped into the small foyer, an older woman hurried over to them. “Ella, good to see you. Thanks for coming.” The woman looked down at the black cat. “Hello, Raisin.”

  Ella introduced Liam to the innkeeper, and then said to the journalist, “This is Lucy Bigelow. She runs the inn and the restaurant.”

  “And it’s not an easy job either.” Lucy’s face was lined with fatigue. “We have a big wedding here in a week. I hope you can get our friend to behave, or at least quiet down for a while.”

  Liam looked into the rooms on either side of the hall to see a space on the left that looked like a tavern, and on the right, a small dining room. Logs burned in fireplaces in both rooms. At the end of the hall, there was a small reception desk. On one side, there was a large dining room and on the other, a gift shop. A staircase led from the reception area up to the second floor.

  “It’s a beautiful building,” Liam said admiringly.

  Lucy said, “It’s one of the oldest operating inns in the country. It was built in 1762 for a man named Elias Cooper and his family, and it’s been in continuous operation since that time.”

  “Impressive.”

  “The key isn’t on its peg,” Lucy muttered and turned away from the pegboard that had room numbers written over the small hooks where some room keys were hanging. She headed to a backroom. “I’ll get the spare key for you.”

  “You’ve been here before?” Liam asked.

  “Loads of times.” Ella pulled her hair into a loose bun.

  “What … what’s the problem here? What did Lucy mean when she said our friend?”

  Ella made eye contact with the man. “Someone won’t crossover. She becomes active around this time each year. At times, she is aggressive towards some of the guests. There’s a guest room upstairs that can’t be rented out when the ghost becomes agitated. A lot of people want this particular room because of its history so it causes some issues when the innkeepers won’t rent it out.”

  Liam looked warily at the staircase. “What does the ghost do that’s aggressive?”

  Raisin walked over to the stairs and sat down on the bottom step, waiting.

  Lucy came out of the backroom. “Oh, Sam? The key to room 11 is missing again,” she called into the gift shop. “The ghost people are here and they need to get into the room.”

  Liam’s face looked a little pale.

  2

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Lucy groaned. “Where has that man gotten off to?” She headed for the caretaker’s office to get the master key rings and came back to the reception desk in less than a minute. “Come on. I’ll unlock the door for you.”

  When they reached the second floor, they followed a long hallway to the end. Lucy used the key to unlock the door, but she left it shut and didn’t go inside. “The rooms on either side are vacant until later this evening, but see if you can keep the noise down anyway. Good luck.” The woman returned to the first floor.

  “What should I expect?” Liam asked nervously as Ella lifted her case and put her hand on the door latch.

  “I’m never sure what I’m going to find. Sometimes, she’s calm, other times, she’s very agitated. We’ll see what today brings.”

  “Why doesn’t she cross over?”

  “I’ll explain later when we’re outside.” Ella pushed the door open and Raisin darted into the room.

  The guest room was large with wide pine boards on the floor, lower than average ceilings, and wood walls. There were two sitting chairs by the window, a desk and a chair, a king-sized bed, and two dressers. A vase of fresh flowers sat on the side table, several oil paintings of the inn’s grounds hung on the walls, and colorful braided rugs were scattered over the floor. At first glance, the room appeared warm and inviting.

  Looking worriedly over his shoulders, Liam kept close to Ella while she placed the case on the bed and opened the lid. Raisin sat on the bed quilt sniffing the air.

  “What’s all that?” Liam kept his voice quiet as he looked at the contents of the case.

  “Tools of the trade.” Ella lifted three flashlights out of the case along with two other devices which she turned on and set in different locations in the room. “I use the flashlights for yes-no questions. This device records EVPs and the other one records changes in temperature and vibrations.”

  “What’s EVP mean?” Liam asked.

  “Electronic voice phenomenon. They’re sounds or words picked up by audio recorders that we won’t usually hear while we’re in here. Sometimes what is heard on the recorder is clearly a voice, other times, there are unidentifiable sounds.” Ella strapped on what looked like a large watch. “This is an EVP wrist recorder that does the same thing, but I don’t have to fiddle with on-off buttons or fumble around carrying the bigger recording device which can cause false sounds.”

  Ella lifted two other devices from the case. “This is an EMF meter. It picks up on tiny changes in electromagnetic energy, and this one is a camera that can detect ghosts that can’t be seen with the naked eye.” The young woman set the two objects in different places.

  “I don’t need these things,” Ella explained. “I don’t think they provide that much information, but what gets recorded can be helpful to other spirit finders who help us so I use the devices when I’m on a finding mission. I also listen to the recordings sometimes to refresh my memory about what was said during a visit.”

  The temperature in the room suddenly dropped and Raisin let out a long, deep meow.

  Liam rubbed the skin on his arms. “Why is it suddenly so cold in here?”

  “Because we’re about to have a visitor.”

  The desk chair flipped over backward and landed on the floor.

  “Rebekah? It’s Ella. Raisin is here, too, as well as a friend.” Ella placed the three flashlights next to each other in a line and set them on the bed. “As always, if you want to indicate, yes, turn on the flashlight on the left. No, will be indicated by turning on the flashlight to the far right.”

  “The ghost’s name is Rebekah?”

  “Rebekah Cooper, daughter of Elias Cooper, the original owner of the house,” Ella said.

&nbs
p; The desk chair slid across the wood floor and bashed into one of the dressers.

  “Sit down on the bed. Watch out for any flying objects,” Ella warned in a low voice, and then addressed Rebekah at normal volume, “This was once your room.”

  When the left flashlight lit up, Liam jumped off the bed and received a scornful look from Raisin.

  “Lucy tells me you’ve been upset lately.”

  All the flashlights remained dark.

  Both Liam and Ella saw the bed’s mattress depress a little as if someone had sat down on it. Raisin turned her head, leaned a little to the side, and lifted her chin like there was an invisible hand scratching under her chin, each cheek, and behind her ears.

  A smile lifted the corners of Ella’s mouth, and she turned her face to the right so that the bed could be seen out of the corner of her eye.

  Some ghosts would not appear to a living person through direct eye contact, but only from a sideways glance. Ella could only spot a few shimmering atoms from the spirit.

  “October can be a hard month for you.”

  The left flashlight lit up. Yes.

  “Have you thought anymore about crossing over?” Ella asked gently. “I can help you with it.”

  The far right flashlight glowed. No.

  “I think it might make you happier. You’ll see a circular bright, light. It will call to you. You saw this light right after you passed away.”

  Ella waited for a response, but none was forthcoming.

  “It must be lonely for you here. If you cross, you won’t be alone anymore.”

  The flashlight on the right turned off and on. No, no, no.

  The chair on the floor began to shake and rattle, banging against the floor, boom, boom, boom, boom.