All Those Who Came Before Read online

  Myrtle was still spry for a woman of her age, but she’d been slowing down increasingly of late. She’d been forgetting things. Even Abigail had begun to see it. A lot of people had seen it. Some days, too, Glinda had confided in Abigail, Myrtle’s arthritis was so painful she didn’t want to leave her bed, or the couch. Glinda’s herbal concoctions had helped Myrtle with the pain; helped her to sleep when she couldn’t. More importantly, Abigail knew the old woman had been isolated before, but living with Glinda had changed that. These days Glinda was a social person. Myrtle had even accepted all the crazy cats in the house. Which was hilarious to Abigail because the old lady had always made fun of her animal hoarder late sister, Evelyn, because of all the cats in the house she’d had when she’d been alive.

  The only thing that mattered, though, from Abigail’s viewpoint, was that Myrtle was no longer lonely and neither was Glinda. So Abigail was happy they were living together. An added plus, was that she and Frank didn’t have to fret so much about the accident-prone and overly inquisitive Myrtle anymore. Most of the time Glinda kept a pretty close eye on her.

  Glinda went around to Myrtle’s side of the car and helped the old lady out. Supported by the younger woman, her cane in the other, Myrtle was escorted inside the house. The day, the terror of the tornado, had worn Myrtle out, and she thankfully accepted the aid.

  When Glinda returned to the car, Abigail got out, and she and Glinda tugged Myrtle’s wagon full of oddities out of the hatchback and put it on the porch beneath the roof.

  Conversing through the screen door, as she leaned against its frame, Myrtle said wearily, “I guess I’ll deliver that stuff tomorrow.” She motioned at the wagon.

  Glinda looked back and rolled her eyes at Abigail, but neither one of them uttered a word. Myrtle collected necessities for people at the nursing home and delivered them by her wagon. Her personal delivery service had slowed some the last couple years, but she still tried to get there at least once a week; claiming the old people depended on her so, she had to help them.

  “Come on in for a sec and tell me about your tornado experience,” Glinda voiced over her shoulder at Abigail as the young woman went through the front door.

  Abigail had followed Glinda to the house but hadn’t gone inside.

  “I would,” Abigail said, “but I need to get home and make sure my house is still there; that Nick and Frank are okay. Myrtle can give you the lowdown on the tornado adventure. She was there.”

  “I was and I sure will,” Myrtle replied, still in the doorway. “After I get some food in my belly and can sit down, rest a bit. I’m pooped. Being scared practically to death wore me out. Bye Abigail. See you soon.”

  “Goodbye, Myrtle. Bye, Glinda.”

  “Goodbye, Abigail.” Then the young woman, halting in the open doorway, spun around, stared straight at her and tacked on an odd request. “Be careful tomorrow, Abigail. Real careful, you hear?”

  Glinda and Myrtle disappeared into the house before Abigail could question the psychic on what she’d meant, so shrugging, she got back in the car and drove off. She couldn’t get home fast enough, praying all the way her house and family were as untouched as Glinda’s property.

  THING WAS, THEIR CABIN wasn’t unscathed. As Abigail arrived home she saw their home hadn’t been spared; but, after examining the house and yard, she was only grateful the destruction wasn’t worse. At least the cabin was still there. Sections of the roof shingles were scattered across the yard, along with a mess of other debris and shattered tree limbs. One of the large oaks at the rear of the property was now root side up, its bottom sticking out of the dirt into the sky. The tornado had pulled it up by the roots and slammed it back down again. A wide swath of fresh dirt scarred the earth across the yard on the west side of the cabin. The shed in the backyard was nowhere to be seen. The wind had stolen it away. So the tornado’s path had clipped the edge of their land, but hadn’t done a fraction of the destruction a direct hit would have done. Like the town, Glinda and Myrtle, they’d been so lucky and Abigail, aware of that, sent a thank you up to heaven.

  She came across Frank, who was in the yard collecting limbs and other flyaway trash, and gave him a hug as the German Shepherds romped around them, barking and yapping; probably out of relief the storm was over because they were terrified of them. The rare physical exertion had her husband breathing heavily, sweating profusely. He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

  “You better take it easy,” she cautioned him half-teasingly. “You’re not as young as you once were...and, as hot as it is, it wouldn’t take much to give you–or anyone for that matter–a heat stroke.” With the storm gone, the heat had ratcheted up into the triple digits again. Abigail couldn’t wait to get inside into the air-conditioning.

  Frank, for the second time, wiped the sweat from his forehead, picked up the rake that had been on the ground at his feet, and stood straighter. His face was flushed, his movements slow.

  The dogs, woofing and bounding, ran past them and around the side of the house. Frank had left the gate open.

  “Husband,” she announced, taking in the rubble all around them, “it looks like a tornado went through here.”

  Frank wasn’t too busy, or exhausted, not to laugh. “It did, Wife. But we were darn fortunate. What you see is about all we got. It could have been worse. The most important thing is you, Myrtle and Glinda are okay.”

  “As I said in my message, Glinda’s place wasn’t touched, either. Luckily. The town? Have you heard if it’s still there?”

  “I called and talked to Sheriff Mearl. He reported that Spookie was mainly spared, except for downed trees, electrical lines and a flood of miscellaneous items the twister had snatched up and plunked down somewhere else. We were all incredibly lucky. The tornado skimmed along the town’s boundaries like it did here. As far as I know, there were no direct hits.”

  “Thank God.”

  Leaning on the rake, covered in grimy perspiration, Frank appeared exhausted. Abigail was as conscious as he that his doctor had been worried about his heart’s health for years, so she knew he should take a break.

  “Come inside, Frank,” she coaxed, wrapping her hand around his arm, “you look like you’re about to topple over. Enough cleanup for now. It’ll be better this evening, or first thing tomorrow morning, when it’s cooler out here. I’ll even help you. But for now, I think you need a cold drink and something to eat. A rest.”

  Frank swiped one last time at his forehead with the handkerchief, staring up at the sky. “That sounds like an excellent idea. I am tired, hot, and hungry. It has been quite a day.” He grinned. “I think I’ll finish cleaning this mess up tomorrow morning. Relax now. You’re right. It is too darn hot.”

  “Like the sun.”

  “Or close enough to it.”

  Arm in arm, they moved toward the house. Abigail was relieved to be home. The day had been challenging and she ached to feel safe. Home was safe and, with the air-conditioning rushing through the rooms, home was blessedly cool.

  “Where’s Nick?” Going up the steps to the back porch and then through the rear door into the kitchen, Abigail’s eyes scanned the room. If Nick was home, he’d typically be there. That’s where the food was.

  “He’s up in his room devouring a plate of leftovers from last night,” Frank supplied. “He helped me clear away the largest limbs that came down in the yard first, but said he was working on a new song for the band. So I let him off the hook and freed him from the chain gang for today anyway. He said he’d help me more tomorrow if I need him.” Frank was filling a glass with water from the kitchen tap. In between gulps, “I bet, though, he’ll be down later for more food.”

  Nick was going to be a senior when high school resumed in September. An honor’s student, he was hoping to graduate early in December so he and his band, The Young Ones, could start touring. As he put it, then he could begin his real grown-up life. The band, his music, his songwriting, were all
he cared about. It was what he wanted to do for a living, and wanted to do forever. Abigail and Frank were proud that he was growing into an accomplished young man and, as Abigail thought, exceptionally talented. Not only could he play guitar like a pro, he’d self-taught himself the harmonica, keyboards and the fiddle, and he wrote beautiful songs. He was a born musician who, when he heard a song once or twice, was instantly able to recreate it. His music was a true gift.

  They were proud of both of their adopted children. Their daughter, Laura, would be a junior at the Chicago Art Institute in the fall and, for the summer, was on a coveted internship at a high-end Chicago Art Gallery learning the basics of the world she would one day be part of. She came home when she could but her life, more and more, with school and now the summer position, was in Chicago. For the three summer months she was renting a tiny apartment close to where she was doing her internship. She and Frank missed her, yet were happy for her, as well. She was moving forward in her artistic life; doing what she wanted to do.

  “Talking about food. Supper in this case,” Frank’s body was propped against the sink, “I was thinking we should have something quick. Easy. It’s been a day, we’re tired, and I don’t think either one of us wants to cook anything. Should I call in a pizza from Marietta’s and have them deliver it?”

  “Sounds like a winner to me. Italian sausage and mushrooms. Cheesy Bread. Please.”

  “Doing it now.” Frank had his cell phone out and was speaking into it.

  “What’s this?” She paused at the kitchen table and picked up a thick manila envelope addressed to her. It looked as if it had been through a lot; sent first to her old address she and Joel had lived at once long ago, then the first house she’d lived at in Spookie, and finally it had found its way to her and Frank’s cabin. She took note of the return address on the back of the envelope and her stomach lurched ever so slightly.

  It had been mailed from the office of Andy Bracco, the private detective she’d hired almost ten years ago now, to find her missing husband. But Bracco hadn’t found him, the police two years later had found her husband...dead in his wood-hidden car. Seeing that name and address on the envelope brought the private investigator’s image back to her along with a flood of unwanted memories.

  Bracco had been a middle-aged, over-weight man, with odd light gray eyes and thick glasses, usually wearing blue jeans and often with a days old scruffy beard. She’d known him as a humorless, but very diligent, intelligent man who drank an awful lot of coffee. He’d worked out of a messy cubicle of an office in a strip mall not far from her old apartment. Not the best office, not the best investigator. He’d been only what she could afford at the time. Even after all the money he’d drained from her, over the months of his so-called investigation, he had not been the one to find Joel. There had been times, in her darkest days, when she’d feared Bracco had just been playing her. That he’d been steadily taking her money but would never find what he’d been hired to find. She was his meal ticket in those days. At the time all she knew was she had had to do something, Joel was missing, and Bracco was her something. As hard as doling out the money continuously had been, she hadn’t regretted it. She’d do it all again. But that was then and this was now.

  Sure, the police had never found who had contributed to or perhaps caused Joel’s death, but as far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter. Not now. She didn’t want to reopen the wound that resuming the investigation would cause. Even if they discovered what had truly happened to Joel that night he had gone missing, nothing would change. He’d still be dead. And she didn’t want to revisit that dark time. Didn’t want to relive it or even think about it.

  “What is it, honey?” Frank, off of the cell phone, was beside her, his eyes on the package she held. He could read her so well he must have grasped immediately something was wrong.

  She told him. “It’s so strange,” she murmured afterwards. “Why would Andy Bracco send me a package? Now, almost eight years after the case was closed?”

  “Well, open it and see.”

  Abigail crumpled down in a chair at the table, her hands shaking; tore open the envelope and pulled out a stack of papers with a note clipped to the top of them. She didn’t want to see what was inside, but somehow she couldn’t stop herself.

  The note read:

  Dear Abigail Sutton,

  I am sending you this file per request by my father, Andy Bracco, upon his death. Yes, sadly he passed away last month–he had a massive heart attack–and I was cleaning out his office, packing things up in boxes for storage or disposal, and discovered this file with a note from my father attached.

  There was a separate scrap of paper included with the note she was reading. That note said:

  Please, Evie, if anything happens to me send this to Abigail Sutton...her address is inside. I feel bad I never found her missing husband and after all was said and done, the police finding his body years later, I felt as if I owed her, at least, attempting to uncover what actually happened to him. I never found that out, either, I’m sorry to say, though I kept looking for years after his death. Perhaps these files on what else I did learn, most collected after his body was discovered and, if you’re reading this now, before I could gather them to send to her, might help the next person or next detective to discover the truth. Tell her I’m sorry I never did what I promised her I would. But I did try my hardest.

  The main letter in Abigail’s hands, resuming the explanation from Bracco’s daughter to Abigail, continued on to finish: Abigail, he wanted you to have the file on the event that he died before he could find your husband’s killer. Yes, he believed your husband had been murdered and he never stopped looking for the killer. So, with my father’s death, I’m sending the file to you. Yours sincerely, Evie Bracco.

  Abigail riffled through the crinkled, stained or dog-eared pieces of paper, her eyes widening as she took them in. There had to be over a hundred pages of neatly typed data decorated with hand-written notations in the margins, in what Abigail recognized as Bracco’s own distinctive, curvy letters and tightly packed, handwriting.

  “Oh my god.” Abigail ran her fingers gently over the stack of pages on the table before her. She didn’t know what she felt. Shock. Sadness. Memories were flooding back she’d been trying to forget for years. It had been a decade since Joel had disappeared and eight since the police had found his body in his car in that ravine. Her life with and loss of Joel had been so long ago and, in her new life, she was happy. So why had this happened now?

  Bracco’s daughter’s words: Yes, he believed your husband had been murdered...hit her again.

  Murdered?

  Damn you, Bracco, she fumed.

  Abigail skimmed portions of some of the pages, then stopped and angrily shoved them back into the envelope. It was too hard to read what Bracco had written. Details of Joel’s vanishing, her report of him missing, the police search and interviews with witnesses and friends. All the horrible minutia of the worst thing that had ever happened to her in her life. The words on the pages jumped out at her and imprisoned her heart. All over again. She felt the old anguish and tears came to her eyes before she wiped them away. No! She wouldn’t cry. No, she wouldn’t let the tortures of Joel’s disappearance and death pull her down again. This envelope from another dead man resurrecting an old tragedy wasn’t going to upset her life. No way.

  She rose from the chair, her legs unsteady. “After the day I’ve had, I can’t read any of this now. If I ever read it. I need time to digest this. I can’t believe after all these years that I have to deal with it again. No matter what this report says, Joel will still be dead. Even if Joel’s killer is found–if there even is a killer–Joel will still be dead.” Then, as hard as she tried to hold them in, the tears came and Frank took her into his arms. The day had been so exhausting and all she wanted to do was eat pizza, cheesy bread, and go to bed.

  “It’s okay, Abby. It’s okay. You don’t have to,” he whispered, holding her closer. “You
don’t have to open that envelope again if you don’t want to. You don’t ever have to read what’s inside if you don’t want to.”

  She grabbed onto his words as a lifeline. “No, I don’t, do I? Or at least not tonight.” She drew away from him and swiped the tears off her face with the back of her hand. “I think I’m going to go upstairs and get freshened up before the pizza arrives.”

  But, as she paused at the bottom of the stairs and caught a brief glimpse of the kitchen, she saw Frank pick up the envelope, open it, slide out the pages and begin reading. There was a look on his face she knew well. Intense cop curiosity. Anticipation. Without having to ask, she suspected what he was going to do now. He was going to scrutinize the information the late Andy Bracco had sent her, and he was going to attempt to unravel the mystery it held. What else could an ex-homicide detective, who loved her, do?

  And Abigail knew what she was going to do. The first chance she got she was going to collect the envelope and stick it somewhere dark and hard to find; never read what was inside it. She was going to forget she got it until she had the courage to burn it, and its contents, to ash.

  Then she had a better idea. Before she went up the stairs, she paused on the mid-way landing and spoke out loud, “Frank, do me a favor, would you? Throw that envelope in the trash for me? There’s nothing in it I want to see.”

  After a moment, Frank’s voice answered, “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” And then she went upstairs to clean up. That took care of that.

  Chapter 2

  The following morning after breakfast Abigail packed up her sketch pad, easel, her art supplies and loaded them into the car. She returned to the house to collect a few last items from her upstairs room.

  Nick had already taken off to practice with his band mates, Leroy and Paul, and would most likely be gone until supper time. The band had an important gig on Saturday and were learning the new songs Nick had written. At seventeen, he was pretty much grown and they trusted him to stay out of trouble. His music helped with that, too. It kept him busy and out of trouble. Rarely did she or Frank worry about Nick getting into something he shouldn’t.