I Called a Plumber for a Basement Leak – He Then Warned, “Don’t Come Back Home”

The Brooch and the Warning

That night after the police had gone and Scott and Vanessa had reluctantly left, Clare and I sat in my kitchen drinking tea. The basement door had been officially sealed with police tape and an officer sat in a cruiser outside my front door.

“Mom,” Clare said gently.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

I looked at my daughter, so much like I’d been at her age: direct, intuitive, and unwilling to accept surface explanations.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You got very quiet when they showed you that photograph. And earlier when Scott asked about Dad never mentioning the tunnel, you hesitated.”

Had I? I thought I’d controlled my reaction better than that.

“It’s nothing. Just a strange day.”

Clare set down her tea.

“Mom, someone has been living in tunnels under your house. A man has disappeared. The police found evidence of recent activity. This isn’t nothing.”

She was right of course and there was something I hadn’t told anyone. It was something I’d been turning over in my mind all evening.

“The photograph,” I said slowly.

“The one they found in the tunnel. I don’t recognize the people, but I recognize something else.”

“What?”

“The woman in the photograph is wearing a brooch. A very distinctive brooch. Silver with three interlocked circles.”

I stood up and walked to the old secretary desk in the corner of the kitchen, the one that had belonged to Thomas’s mother. From the bottom drawer I pulled out a small velvet box and opened it.

Inside lay a brooch: silver, three interlocked circles, identical to the one in the photograph.

“Thomas’s mother gave this to me on our wedding day,” I explained.

“She said it had been in the family for generations. That it represented continuity, loyalty, and secrets kept.”

Clare stared at the brooch.

“Secrets kept?”

“That’s what she said. At the time I thought it was just poetic.”

I trailed off, looking toward the sealed basement door.

“Now you think Dad’s family knew about the tunnels?”

“I think they might have done more than know about them Clare. I think they might have built them.”

My daughter’s face went pale.

“Mom, what are you saying?”

Before I could answer, the house phone rang. It was the landline I’d kept out of habit despite Clare’s insistence that cell phones were enough.

I picked it up. Heavy breathing, then a voice distorted and mechanical.

“Stop asking questions Margaret. Some secrets should stay buried.”

The line went dead.

Ray is Found

Clare was already dialing 911 on her cell phone when we heard it. It was a sound from deep in the basement, beyond the sealed door and the police tape.

It was the sound of something heavy being dragged. And then clear as a bell, echoing up through the floorboards, Ray Castillo’s voice was screaming for help.

The officer from the cruiser burst through the front door within seconds of Clare’s call, weapon drawn. Two more patrol cars arrived minutes later, their sirens tearing through the quiet night.

Detective Vasquez appeared 20 minutes after that, looking exhausted but alert.

“You’re certain it was his voice?” She asked me for the third time.

“Completely certain. He was screaming for help.”

They’d searched the basement again, this time with dogs and thermal imaging equipment. They’d found nothing.

No Ray, no evidence he’d been there beyond his abandoned tools. The tunnel entrances Frank Morrison had documented earlier were all sealed from the outside, undisturbed.

“It’s impossible,” Officer Brooks muttered.

“We cleared that basement. There’s nowhere for a person to hide down there.”

But I knew what I’d heard. Clare had heard it too.

Detective Vasquez pulled me aside while the other officers continued their search.

“Mrs. Allen, I need to ask you something and I need you to be completely honest with me.”

“Of course.”

“Is there any chance, any possibility, that your late husband was involved in something illegal? Something that might explain these tunnels and the recent activity?”

The question should have offended me. Instead it crystallized a fear I’d been harboring since seeing that photograph.

Thomas had been a good man, a kind man, but there had been parts of his life he’d kept separate from me. His childhood, his parents, the years before we met—he’d spoken of them rarely and vaguely.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“He never spoke much about his family history.”

“What about his mother? The one who gave you the brooch?”

“She died before Scott was born. I only met her a handful of times. She was distant, formal.”

Vasquez made a note.

“And his father died when Thomas was young. A car accident he said. Did you ever verify that?”

The question struck me as odd.

“Why would I verify it?”

“Because sometimes Mrs. Allen, people hide their pasts for reasons that aren’t immediately apparent. And sometimes those hidden pasts have consequences that outlive them.”

After the police finally left again, posting an officer outside but finding no trace of Ray, Clare and I sat in the living room. Neither of us could sleep.

The house felt different now, its familiar contours hiding unknown depths.

“We need to find out about Dad’s family Clare,” I said.

“Really find out. Not just the stories he told us.”

“How do we do that?”

“Tomorrow we go to the county records office. Look up property deeds, death certificates—anything that might tell us who really owned this house before you and Dad.”

I nodded, though the thought of investigating my dead husband’s past felt like a betrayal. But Ray Castillo was missing.

Someone had threatened me and a tunnel system stretched beneath my feet like a secret circulatory system. The next morning I woke to find Scott’s car in my driveway.

He and Vanessa were sitting on the porch waiting. From their expressions they’d been there a while.

“We need to talk,” Scott said without preamble.

Clare appeared behind me in the doorway.

“Scott, it’s barely 7:00 in the morning. This can’t wait?”

He pushed past me into the house, Vanessa following.

“Mom, Vanessa’s uncle is a real estate attorney. We had him look into the property records last night.”

“You did what?” I felt my face flush.

“You had no right!”

“I had every right. You’re my mother and you’re in danger.”

Scott pulled out a folder from his briefcase.

“This house has a complicated history Mom. A history Dad apparently never told you about.”

He spread documents across my kitchen table: photocopies of old deeds, property transfers, legal filings. Clare and I leaned in to look.

“The house was built in 1912 by a man named Josiah Allen,” Scott explained.

“Dad’s grandfather. But it wasn’t originally a farmhouse. Look at this original filing.”

I read the faded text: Commercial property registered for manufacturing purposes.

“Manufacturing what?” Clare asked.

Vanessa spoke up, her voice carrying a note of triumph.

“Josiah Allen was a bootlegger during Prohibition. A major one. He ran an entire operation out of this house and several others in the county.”

“The tunnels weren’t just for transport. They were part of a network that connected multiple properties.”

I stared at the documents, seeing my home in an entirely new light.

“Thomas never said anything about this.”

“There’s more,” Scott continued, pulling out another document.

“In 1943 Josiah Allen died under suspicious circumstances. The official cause of death was a heart attack, but there was an investigation.”

“Several people testified about his involvement in something called the Milbrook Collective.”

“The name from the photograph. What was the Milbrook Collective?” I asked.

“That’s where the records get fuzzy,” Scott admitted.

“It seems to have been some kind of organization or group, but there’s no clear documentation of what they did.”

“What we do know is that several members died within a year of Josiah’s death and the property passed to his son—Dad’s father. Who died just 10 years later.”

“The car accident,” I whispered.

“Except it wasn’t an accident.”

Vanessa pulled out a newspaper clipping, yellow with age.

“Theodore Allen drove his car off Milbrook Bridge in 1953. The police ruled it suicide.”

The room spun. Thomas’s father had killed himself and Thomas had never mentioned it.

Clare gripped my hand.

“Why would Dad lie about this?”

“Because shame follows families,” Vanessa said, not unkindly for once.

“Bootlegging, suspicious deaths, suicide—these aren’t things people advertise. Your father probably wanted to protect you from all of it.”

But was that true? Or had Thomas been protecting something else, something still hidden in those tunnels?

“There’s one more thing,” Scott said quietly.

“The property records show several underground structures registered with the county. Not just tunnels, but rooms, storage facilities. At least one large chamber that was described as a gathering space.”

“Mom, there’s something down there. Something bigger than what the police have found so far.”

Before I could respond, my phone rang. Detective Vasquez.

“Mrs. Allen, we found Ray Castillo.”

Relief flooded through me.

“Thank goodness! Is he all right?”

A pause.

“He’s alive. But Mrs. Alan, we need you to come to the hospital. There’s something you need to hear.”

The Trap is Set

20 minutes later we were all in Ray’s hospital room: me, Claire, Scott, Vanessa, and Detective Vasquez. Ray looked terrible—pale and shaking with cuts and bruises covering his arms.

But he was alive.

“Tell them what you told me,” Vasquez said gently.

Ray’s eyes found mine and I saw a real fear there.

“Mrs. Alan, I’m so sorry. I should have never gone down there.”

“Just tell us what happened Ray.”

“I was checking the pipes near the water heater when I heard it. A voice coming from behind the wall.”

“At first I thought maybe it was a radio or sound carrying from outside. But then I heard it clearly. Someone calling for help from the tunnel.”

“I didn’t know it was a tunnel then. I just knew someone sounded distressed.”

“I found the storage room door was unlocked.”

“Unlocked?” I interrupted.

“Not picked?”

“No ma’am. Just unlocked. Like someone wanted me to find it.”

“I went in, saw the boards had been removed and I could see the opening. That’s when I called you, but the call dropped.”

Ray shook his head.

“No ma’am. Someone hit me from behind. I felt hands on my neck and then everything went black.”

“When I woke up I was deep in the tunnel system in some kind of room. Stone walls, old furniture, filing cabinets. And there were documents everywhere. Papers, photographs, ledgers.”

Detective Vasquez leaned forward.

“What kind of documents?”

“Names, dates, money transfers. It looked like records from the 1940s, maybe earlier. And there were photographs, lots of them. Groups of people in what looked like meetings or ceremonies.”

“I saw your house in some of them Mrs. Alan.”

“Did you see anyone else down there? Whoever hit you?”

“That’s the thing.” Ray’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“I never saw anyone. But I heard them moving around in the tunnels. Always just out of sight. And they kept talking to me.”

“Talking to you? What did they say?”

“They said I’d stumbled onto something that should have stayed hidden. That the Millbrook Collective protected its secrets. That if I valued my life, I’d forget everything I’d seen.”

The room went silent. Finally Scott spoke.

“How did you get out?”

“I don’t know. I must have passed out from fear or dehydration. When I woke up, I was lying in a field about a mile from your property Mrs. Allen. A farmer found me and called 911.”

Detective Vasquez pulled out her phone and showed Ray a photograph. It was the one found in the tunnel showing the four people and the woman with the brooch.

“Do you recognize any of these people from the documents you saw?”

Ray studied the photo and nodded slowly.

“The man on the left. I saw his name on several documents: Josiah Allen. And the woman with the brooch. She was in a lot of the photographs, but I don’t remember her name.”

I did. Suddenly with horrible clarity I remembered.

“Eleanor,” I said.

“Her name was Eleanor Allen. Thomas’s grandmother. The woman who had owned my brooch before me. The woman who had been part of the Milbrook Collective.”

Vanessa pulled out her phone.

“I’m looking up Eleanor Allen now.”

Her fingers flew across the screen.

“Here: Eleanor Allen, née Blackwood. Born 1895, died 1971. But look at this: she didn’t die in Milbrook. She died at Riverside State Hospital.”

“That’s a psychiatric facility,” Clare said.

“It was the county asylum back then,” Vanessa corrected.

“Eleanor Allen spent the last 12 years of her life in a mental institution.”

Scott grabbed the phone from his wife, reading quickly.

“It says she was committed in 1959 by her son, Theodore—Dad’s father. 6 years after his supposed suicide.”

“But if Theodore died in 1953,” Clare said slowly.

“How could he have committed his mother in 1959?”

The implications hung in the air like smoke. Theodore Allen hadn’t died in 1953.

The suicide was a fabrication. But why?

What had Thomas’s father been hiding? Detective Vasquez was already on her phone making calls.

“I need records for Theodore Allen, supposedly deceased 1953. And I need access to files from Riverside State Hospital for Eleanor Allen, patient from 1959 to 1971.”

While she worked I sat down heavily. Everything I thought I knew about my husband’s family was unraveling.

Thomas had lied to me. Or at least someone had lied to him and he’d never bothered to verify the truth.

Ray spoke again, his voice weak.

“There’s something else Mrs. Allen. In that room in the tunnels, I found a journal. I couldn’t take it with me, but I read some of it while I was trapped.”

“It was written by someone named Eleanor. She wrote about the collective, about their purpose. She said they were guardians.”

“Guardians of what?”

“She didn’t say exactly. But she wrote that Milbrook sat on top of something important. Something that had to be protected at all costs.”

“She said the tunnels were just the beginning. That there were deeper levels, places where the real secrets were kept.”

My mouth went dry.

“Deeper levels?”

“Mrs. Allen, what I saw down there—that wasn’t just bootlegging tunnels. Someone built something much larger, much more complex. And based on that journal, they’re still using it.”

Detective Vasquez ended her call and turned to face us.

“I’ve got teams going through county records now. But Mrs. Allen, I need to ask you: did your husband ever mention anything called Project Milbrook?”

I shook my head.

“Because I just got off the phone with a federal agent who’s very interested in your property. Apparently during World War II, several classified government projects were hidden in rural areas across the country. Milbrook was one of the designated sites.”

“Government projects?” I felt like I was falling down a rabbit hole with no bottom.

“What kind of projects?”

“That’s classified. But the agent said that if your property was part of Project Milbrook, then the tunnels and underground structures would be considered federal property, not private. And anyone accessing them without authorization would be committing a federal crime.”

Scott stood abruptly.

“This is insane Mom! You need to sell this house immediately. Whatever’s down there, it’s not worth the danger.”

But I wasn’t listening to Scott. I was thinking about Thomas, about the man I’d shared my life with for 36 years.

Had he known? Had he been part of this Milbrook collective, whatever it was?

Had he been protecting me? Or hiding something from me?

And then another thought struck me, cold and terrifying. The threatening phone call had used my first name.

The voice had been distorted but the familiarity was there. Someone who knew me was involved in this.

I looked around the hospital room at the faces of my family. Scott, anxious and controlling.

Vanessa, too interested in the property records, too quick with information. Even Clare, my ally—how much did I really know about her life, her finances, her reasons for dropping everything to drive here?

“Detective Vasquez,” I said carefully.

“When you searched the basement, did you find any evidence of how someone could enter the house from the tunnels? A way to get from underground into my living space?”

She frowned.

“No. All the tunnel access points were sealed from inside the house. Why?”

“Because someone opened that storage room door. Ray said it was unlocked, not picked. Which means someone with access to my house deliberately opened it.”

“You think someone in your household?”

“I think someone wants me out of this house. And I think they’ve been working toward that goal for a while now.”

The room erupted in protest from Scott and Vanessa, but I kept my eyes on Clare. My daughter met my gaze steadily and I saw something there I hadn’t noticed before: guilt.

“Clare,” I said softly.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

My daughter’s face crumpled.

“Mom, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it would come to this.”

“Clare,” Scott’s voice was sharp.

“What did you do?”

“3 months ago I got a call,” Clare said, tears streaming down her face.

“Someone said they were from a historical preservation society. They wanted to know about the house, about Dad’s family history.”

“They offered me money. Good money if I could convince you to let them study the property.”

“How much money?” I asked, my voice steady despite the betrayal cutting through me.

“$50,000 Mom. Jason lost his job and we’re behind on our mortgage. I thought it was legitimate. I thought it was just historians wanting to study an old house.”

“Did you give them information about the house? The layout? My schedule?”

Clare nodded miserably.

“They asked questions and I answered them. I didn’t think… I never imagined they wanted to hurt you.”

Vanessa’s voice cut through the room like a knife.

“You led criminals to your mother’s house for money? What’s wrong with you?”

But I barely heard her. I was thinking about the unlocked storage room door.

I thought about how someone had known exactly when I’d be at the market. I thought about how they’d used Ray’s presence as cover to access the tunnels.

“Clare,” I said carefully.

“Do you still have contact information for these people?”

She nodded, pulling out her phone with shaking hands.

“Good,” I said, standing up with a resolve I hadn’t felt in years.

“Because we’re going to set a trap. And we’re going to find out exactly what the Milbrook Collective is really protecting.”