All Those Who Came Before Read online

She scolded herself for being such a fraidy cat, but the peculiar feelings she’d had in the house wouldn’t leave her. Frank had been right when he’d advised: Don’t go into the house. She should have listened. Yet, she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, understand what had made her go in and explore the interior, even go upstairs, when she’d been so adamant she wouldn’t. It was best if she didn’t dwell on that trivial detail. But she’d make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

  THE RAIN THUNDERED on the windshield as she drove into town, the wipers working hard to keep up. More than ever she wanted to talk to Irma Appleton and learn about 707 Suncrest’s past inhabitants and their histories, so she was driving to Irma’s shop. After her strange sojourn into the house’s depths and what had happened to her while she’d been wandering its rooms, she was even more curious about the family who’d lived and died there, and the son who had been sentenced for the crimes.

  Parking the car in front of Irma’s place, she sprinted through the raindrops, through the opened door with the bell tinkling over it, and into the tiny store. The Fabric Shop, Claudia had informed her, had been there now for going on fifty years. Irma had always owned it but it hadn’t always been a fabric store. It had begun as a thrift shop where people purchased or traded for used items cheaply, then it had been a kind of craft shop during the macramé hippie days where someone could buy the needed supplies for their macramé owls and beaded wall hangings.

  In the end, the shop had morphed into what it was now, a smorgasbord shop that sold practically everything all jumbled up together that the previous incarnations had sold. These days it was called a fabric shop but it also offered second-hand stuff, crafts and trinkets; shelves lined the walls full of old-fashioned penny candy like John Mason’s old general store used to carry. Abigail wondered if the glass containers the penny candy was in were from Mason’s old store, because they looked the same, but she’d never asked Irma if they were. All in all, the shop was a real hodge-podge of whatever Irma felt like selling. Rumor was she frequented the yard sales in the nearby towns and carted home the junk she bought to stock her shop, putting price tags on them. That made sense because there was a lot of junk stuffed in every nook and cranny of the store. It reminded Abigail of an indoor yard sale.

  The shop, as small as it was–more like a narrow box between two bigger stores–was stuffed with merchandise from floor to ceiling. Abigail loved the store because of all the oddities it sold. She was always teasing Irma she should call it a What-Ever-In-The-World-You-Need Shop instead of what it was called. Irma liked that name but thought it was too long a moniker to put across her tiny store front. She was probably right.

  Abigail also patronized the place because Irma sold the paints and art supplies she needed. Abigail got her watercolors, her tubes of oil paint, canvases and brushes, or anything else she required, there. Irma ordered them in special for her from a large art store up in Chicago. Abigail could have ordered everything over the Internet and had it delivered to her front door, but it seemed to give Irma a kick ordering and stocking the supplies for her. She said she enjoyed helping an artist. Plus Irma had an amiable contact at that Chicago art store, an old friend, who gave her a huge discount on everything. So Abigail ordered everything she needed through Irma.

  “Hi there, Abigail,” the elderly woman greeted her. Her body, bent with age, was perched on a stool behind the cluttered counter. Irma was probably as ancient as Myrtle, or a few years younger. It was hard to tell. Irma’s body, too, was fragilely tiny, but the eyes in her wrinkled face were those of a younger woman’s, as was her energy level. She had a gift for life, she loved people and she loved selling one-of-a-kind unique items to them. It made her happy.

  Abigail knew Myrtle and Irma were good friends from way back, having known each other as young girls. Irma was sometimes Myrtle’s side-kick on jaunts to the local casinos or on her cruises. Both women loved to gamble and travel. Loved to eat good food and experience new things. The two women amazed Abigail. She only hoped she had half as much life in her when she was their ages.

  “Hi Irma. How are you doing?” Abigail, walking up to the counter, smiled at the old woman. Irma was dressed in her normal uniform of baggy slacks and T-shirt, her long gray hair pulled up in a loose bun at the top of her head, a leather barrette struck through with a stick to hold the bun in place. Her eyes were a soft caramel brown. Often a lollipop or a flavored piece of candy cane rested between her thin lips. A chain smoker most of her life, until she’d had serious respiratory problems in her seventies, sucking on hard candy, she said, kept her from the cigarettes. Today she rolled around a cherry Tootsie Roll Pop between her lips.

  “Ah, you know,” Irma waved her hand casually in the air, “I’m still here, still alive. So it’s a good day. When you get my age that’s the best you can hope for. Staying above ground. Have you seen Myrtle lately?”

  “I saw her the other day. She’s doing just fine.”

  “Good.

  “So, Abigail, what can I do for you today? You need something?”

  “Yeah, I do need something. I’m doing this series of paintings of this empty house on the edge of town Myrtle showed me when we were scurrying home the other day during that awful storm, that tornado, we had.”

  “Yep, that storm was a dilly. For a while I was afraid that dang tornado would take half the town and my little shop with it.” Irma tsked-tsked as she shook her head. “We were sure lucky. God was watching over us.”

  “We sure were and He sure was.”

  “Well, when you see that old wanderer Myrtle again tell her to come visit me. It’s been too long. Tell her I’m ready for another cruise. Someplace cool this time.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell her.”

  “Maybe even a freezing destination like an Alaskan cruise. Heck, or even a river cruise. It don’t matter to me. I’m sick to death of this hot weather. And the air-conditioner in here hasn’t been working all that well lately. I could use a vacation somewhere else.” Irma took her free hand and picked up a fan, one of those brightly-colored paper kind a person unfolded to use, and she waved it in front of her face.

  Someone, she thought it might have been either her godmother or a grandmother, had brought three of those paper fans home one year from their vacation in California, and given one to each of her sisters, Carol and Mary, as well as herself. Abigail’s fan had had flowers intertwined with peacocks, vibrant colors and delicate silvery lines all over it. It had been so pretty. What had ever happened to it? She couldn’t recall. Like a lot of things in her early life, it had disappeared somewhere, forgotten and left behind in the baggage of the years.

  Irma’s gaze had gone to the windows, where the rain flooded down in torrents on the outside of the glass. “What’s important enough to brave venturing out in this atrocious weather? You a duck or something? Quack, quack.” Putting the fan down on the counter and taking the lollipop out of her mouth, the old woman grinned at her.

  Abigail chuckled. “Not last time I looked.

  “Anyway...I’ve come in for another reason. I need to pick your brain. Information, not something to buy.” She caught the expression of disappointment on the old lady’s face. “Unless,” she amended, “I see something that I need.” To reinforce her words Abigail’s eyes examined the objects on the counter as if she were looking for something she might purchase.

  Irma recaptured her smile. “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere. For a while anyway.”

  As Abigail continued to peruse the items on the counter, she said, “I actually stopped by to ask you something Claudia, at the bookstore, said you might know more about.”

  Instead of asking right off what Claudia had divulged, Irma probed, “How is Claudia today? Last week she was complaining her legs were killing her. She’s got rheumatoid arthritis something awful, you know. Takes medicine for it and everything.”

  “I know. She didn’t mention it when I last spoke to her at the bookstore and she didn’t seem in too much pain at the time. Her
emotional mood was more what she was concerned with when I saw her last.”

  “Yeah, what’s wrong?”

  “Her husband has left on that mythical African photo safari he’s been talking about for years. I think she’s afraid he won’t come back. He might get hurt, have a heart attack, get eaten by a tiger, or something.”

  “Men!” Irma made a little huffing noise. “Always finding some stupid way to knock themselves off. Ryan has no darn business traipsing around in the jungle chasing tigers and hippopotamuses with a camera. At his age? That’s dangerous. People die out in the wild places. He should have stayed home where he belongs. No wonder Claudia is upset. I would be, too. That is if my sweet Rosco was still alive. I wouldn’t have let him go off to Africa. Ever. No way. No how.”

  Abigail had heard all about Rosco Appleton from Myrtle. A shy scholarly man, he’d been married to Irma for over half a century and had never left her side their whole married lives, except to go to work each day at the local community college where he was a mathematics professor. He’d died of a sudden brain aneurysm on Irma’s seventieth birthday and had been dead a long time. Myrtle also said that sometimes, when she was with her, Irma even talked to her dead husband as if he was right there with them. Myrtle, being how she was with ghosts, didn’t think that was all that strange.

  “Okay,” Irma was stretching her body on the stool, her skinny arms rising toward the ceiling and then out to their sides, “why did Claudia send you to me? What do you want to know? What’s going on?” There was a second stool on the other side of the counter and Irma gestured Abigail to it. “Sit down. You look tired.”

  Abigail claimed the stool gratefully. “I am a little tired. I’ve been out painting all morning, before the rain came anyway. That’s why I’m here. I was out at the old Theiss place on Suncrest. You know, the abandoned house at 707 Suncrest?”

  “Oh, that house.” Irma’s expression was suddenly grave. “That house is cursed, you know?”

  Oh boy, shades of Myrtle.

  “So I’ve been told. But I don’t believe in cursed or haunted houses. A house is just a house.” But Abigail knew, even as she said those words, it wasn’t necessarily true. The Theiss house affected her in some mysterious ways and she couldn’t deny it didn’t. “Anyway, Claudia mentioned you used to be friends with the two Theiss kids, the ones who were killed. She also said you knew all three of the children well.”

  Irma tilted her head and released a sigh, her expression softening. “Yeah, I was friends with all three kids. They were really sweet kids, too. Let’s see. Imelda was about eleven, Jeanette sixteen, when they were murdered. It was a terrible, terrible thing. I didn’t know the parents as much, but I’d met them a few times and they seemed like nice people. The father was a doctor at the local hospital and the mother was a stay at home wife. With three children she had to be, though I think she sold Tupperware, and had home parties, on the side. She made good money at it, too, as I recall.

  “I had the shop here, of course, it was strictly a craft store at the time, and the children came in regularly to buy things. Jeanette made these cute small macramé owls and beaded macramé purses with colorful beads, feathers and stuff. She was really good at them and sold them to her family, or friends at school, for extra money.

  “Imelda, the younger girl, loved those wildly popular, at the time, plastic monster or dinosaur kits you put together and hand paint. She had a whole collection of them. Dracula, Frankenstein, and a herd of dinosaurs. She bought each one of them from me and then, when she was done assembling and painting them, she’d come in and show them to me. She really did a good job.”

  The model monsters and dinosaurs on the shelf in the girls’ room, the macramé purses hanging on the door hook drifted, uninvited, into Abigail’s mind. Slowly the girls, the family, were becoming more real to her. That might not be a good thing.

  “And Lucas,” Irma prattled on, “the son, was obsessed with and built those balsam airplanes. Remember those?”

  Abigail moved her head in affirmation. Her late brother, Michael, had also loved to build those flimsy balsam planes. Being reminded of Michael made her sad. Her brother had been gone a long time but his memory would be with her for as long as she lived. A fleeting image of Michael as a small boy cradling his latest airplane model in his arms, smiling, took the melancholy away. They’d had many happy times together before the hunting accident stole him from her and the family. The most intense heat of the summer reminded her of how she and Michael would forage deep into the woods near their house for patches of wild strawberries or big plump blackberries. They’d ramble the gravel roads, singing songs of the day out loud, and explore the forest and the creeks together, laughing. Ah, she had a ton of precious memories just like that. Her attention circled back to Irma and what she was saying.

  “So I knew the Theiss children fairly well. They were a nice family. To this day I’ll never believe Lucas murdered them all. It wasn’t in him. He was a gentle boy. A good boy.” Irma was rocking her head back and forth, her lips a tight frown.

  “He went to prison for life for the crimes, I’ve been told. Frank checked on him through his old police connections and Lucas is still in prison forty years later.”

  “I know he’s still in prison,” Irma responded. “I think of him often. Say prayers for him. I’ve even sent him letters, cookies on Christmas, a couple of times over the years. He answers me. He still maintains his innocence.

  “What a tragedy all around. His family murdered and he’s been locked behind bars all these years. Poor boy. Not many in town believed Lucas was innocent, but I did, because I knew him. During Lucas’s trial I was asked to give a character reference, but it didn’t help. Everyone’s mind was made up that Lucas had done it. So they locked him up. The way I saw it, he didn’t have a chance.”

  “Do you know,” Abigail probed, “what really happened to the family that night? The night they died?”

  “Well, I wasn’t there, yet as the newspapers printed, and the town scuttlebutt of the time confirmed, each one of the family was shot in the head, even Lucas. Which is why I don’t believe he did the crimes. Why shoot himself, almost die, when he could have just skedaddled? It made no sense. Any other reason for killing his parents and siblings also made no sense. Lucas loved his sisters, his mom and dad. Thing was, Lucas had another theory. One as bizarre as him murdering off his whole family.

  “The boy swore up and down, testified about it on the stand, that Jeanette had had a demented stalker and he had killed the family. Someone who used to send her sickening and graphic love letters–which she would not reply to–and gifts, which she threw away, but he never showed himself. Well, other than Lucas said the stalker would creep around outside Jeanette’s window in the night, spying on her. During the court trial Lucas swore he almost caught him one night. And that after a while when Jeanette wouldn’t answer his letters the stalker started leaving dead animals. First big tip off. Lots of serial killers start out butchering little critters.”

  “But Jeanette was only sixteen.”

  “Makes no difference. She was a gorgeous girl, and she looked a lot older than sixteen. And, besides that, evil psychos don’t care how old the object of their obsessive desire is. They’re depraved. Could be this one liked them young.”

  “So,” Abigail shifted on her stool, “no one believed Lucas’s stalker story, huh?”

  “They did not. No one listened to him. They thought he was lying to cover up what he’d done.”

  “Then the police never found out who that alleged stalker was?”

  “They didn’t believe there was one,” Irma said. “No concrete proof other than Lucas’s word. So I don’t think they even searched for him.”

  Abigail peered out through the windows. The rain was still falling. She wanted to get home and do more on the painting she’d begun at the Theiss house. Her fingers were itching to work on it. The memory of what she’d seen and heard that morning at the house came back to nag
her. The shadow in the window. The slamming door. The feeling something or someone had been watching her.

  She and Irma talked more, mostly about town stuff, and, after picking out something to buy, an umbrella, Abigail took her leave. “I’ll need more art supplies pretty soon, Irma. I’ll email you my list tomorrow.”

  “Painting up a storm, huh?” Irma winked at her before glancing outside at the rain. She picked up another lollipop, unwrapped it, and struck it in her mouth. It was a grape one.

  Abigail laughed. “Trying to. I’m going now but I’ll give Myrtle your message about the cruise and you’ll see me again by the weekend. Bye for now.” The painting in her car was calling to her. She wanted to go home and work on it.

  “Bye Abigail. You be careful out there, ya hear? Be careful at that cursed house, too. There are more things in heaven and earth, Abigail, than are dreamt of in your philosophy....”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Frank said the same exact thing to me just the other day,” Abigail tossed out the words as she popped open the umbrella, waved goodbye to Irma, and went out the door.

  SHE WAS AT THE END of Main Street when she spied Glinda hunkered beneath the awning at Stella’s Diner, trying to avoid the rain. The psychic waved at her and Abigail swung the car around. There were something she wanted to discuss with Glinda anyway. It wouldn’t take long.

  She parked the car in front of Stella’s and waited as Glinda made her way to the passenger’s side, opened the door and slid in.

  “I knew I’d see you in town today,” was the first thing Glinda said to her. Looking cool in a sheer sleeveless sundress covered in a delicate pink rose pattern, her silver hair was piled on top of her head in a circled braid; her green eyes were twinkling with a secret she could no longer keep. There were pink sandals on her feet. She laid her purse and umbrella on the seat beside her and turned to Abigail.

  “The tarot cards tipped you off?” Abigail cocked her head, her eyes focusing on Glinda. The young woman looked more beautiful than ever. That’s what being in love did to a woman.