All Those Who Came Before Read online

  “Then there is one other. There’s old lady Irma Appleton...who owns and runs The Fabric Shop, at the end of this road. If I recall correctly she was a friend of the family; a friend of all three children. They were at her store, in one of its earlier incarnations that is, so often in those days. You could speak to her about the house, the family and the murders. She might give you more information.”

  “Thanks, Claudia, I’ll do that.”

  Abigail exchanged goodbyes with her friend and left the bookstore as Claudia dealt with her customer.

  TAKING A CHANCE, AS late as it was, Abigail walked down the sidewalk to The Fabric Shop. Over the years she’d lived in Spookie, she’d been in it many times to either buy material for curtains, make a quilt, or have Irma purchase art supplies for her from out-of-town companies the shop owner had associations and discounts with. She’d met Irma Appleton the year she’d first moved to town and had always had an affection for her. Irma, a skilled seamstress and teacher of quilt making, among many other unique talents, was an interesting lady who looked older than she was; though around seventy years of age would have been Abigail’s estimate. According to Irma, she’d had a hard life.

  The tiny shop squeezed in between the hardware store and a candy store was closed. The sign on the door promising it would be open again on Thursday at nine o’clock. Today was Tuesday. Irma’s shop was only open three days a week and abbreviated hours at that. Irma didn’t like to work too much. Abigail made a mental note to return on Thursday and talk to her then. She could have telephoned the old woman, but she wanted to speak to her in person. Body language gave away a lot. Besides, she owed Irma a visit. It’d been a while.

  She should go to the IGA and then home, but instead, she detoured down the street and headed to the newspaper. If she was lucky, Samantha would be there working on the next edition, and she could ask her about the Theiss house.

  Samantha was in.

  “Hi there, Abigail,” the newspaper publisher welcomed her as Abigail strolled into the office.

  “Hello, Mayor Samantha. How are things? How are Kent and Willie doing?” Willie was William, the boy she and Kent had had two years before. The child, with red hair like his mother’s and an easy-going personality like his father’s, was the center of their lives. They were doting parents, in love with their new parenthood, their son, and already thinking of having another child.

  The woman peered up at her, her lips forming a big grin. “Everything is terrific. Kent’s work at the insurance company is going great, he’s up for another promotion, and Willie is growing an inch a month, I swear. As much as I love him, sometimes I miss the baby I had two years ago. He was so cute and so stationary. Willie is walking and running me ragged these days. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.

  “On top of all that, I’m swamped with juggling my mayoral and publishing duties. Newspaper deadlines and people wanting this or that fixed in town. Second Street has an epidemic of potholes that need fixing; the townspeople want a new four-way stop light at the Henry and Main Street crosswalk, and the Summer Festival is coming up. Lots to do. I’m dog-tired. I need a long vacation.” She took off her glasses, laid them on the desk, and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

  “Well, you’ve taken on a heavy load these last couple of years,” Abigail reminded her, “and you are good at all of it. A fantastic wife, mother, newspaper publisher and mayor. A regular superwoman.”

  “Yeah, that’s me, a superwoman.” Samantha tossed her hands up in a helpless gesture. “Mayor! What was I thinking? I must have been batty believing I could be a good wife, raise a child, run a newspaper and a town all at one time.” She was shaking her head.

  “But you love being mayor, admit that.”

  “Yes, I do,” Samantha muttered, her expression brightening. “I do love making Spookie a better place to live. It makes me feel as if I’m accomplishing something.”

  “You have. And you’re the best mayor our town has ever had. Even Myrtle says that and she should know. She’s seen enough of them in her lifetime here. You’ve come a long way since I’ve known you.”

  “Thanks. You’re making me blush, Abigail. But Spookie is worth it. It’s easy to be mayor here. I plan on being its mayor for a long time to come. If the people want me.”

  Samantha leaned against her chair, her fingers lightly rubbing over the space bar of her laptop. She put her glasses on again. “So, enough flattery. To what do I owe this visit? I know you’re here for a reason. You have that look in your eyes. I can read you like a book.”

  “You know me well. Okay. Here goes. I’m doing a series of paintings of the old abandoned Theiss house at 707 Suncrest Road. Do you know the place?” Abigail sat down beside her friend. It felt good to sit in the cool room after the heat she’d endured walking over on the town’s sidewalks and streets.

  “The Theiss house on Suncrest?” Samantha’s face scrunched up as if she were thinking hard, trying to pull up any information she might have in her head on the subject. After a minute, she said, “Not really. I know it’s been empty for many years, way before I was born, no one ever wanted to buy it, but I never asked why. People in town, though, I’ve gathered, think it is haunted. That’s about all I know. Offhand anyway.”

  “Yeah, Myrtle said that, too. About it being haunted. I must admit, it is an eerie place. But I have to paint it. It calls to me.

  “Anyway, since I’ve been out there, and seen it, I’ve become curious as to the house’s history. So I’ve been asking around about it. I’ve learned some things, but I still have more questions.”

  “What have you learned about it?” Now it was Samantha’s interest that seemed engaged, the reporter’s curiosity in her wanting answers if there were any to find.

  As concisely as she could, Abigail repeated what she’d gleaned from Frank, Myrtle and Claudia. Afterwards she stated, “I thought possibly you could contribute more to their stories. Search in the newspaper’s archives and see what else there might be in them about the house, the crime and the people involved. And if you could find out any information on the son who was convicted of the killings. What’s happened to him.”

  “Hmm.” Samantha had fallen thoughtful. “You want me to see what articles there might have been published about the crime and the trial in the Journal at the time? You said it all happened around nineteen seventy-nine or so?”

  “Around then.”

  Samantha turned to her desk laptop computer and began clicking on its keys. “Good thing we put all those old microfiche articles on digital years ago. Thanks to Frank. When he was collecting information about that sailor and his long-lost treasure out on Glinda’s land it made me realize we needed to switch those ancient microfiche into digital files. Pronto. The task took a ton of time and work, but now the storeroom upstairs is empty, clean, and our old archives are simple to access. It should be fairly easy to bring up the files of the years around that year and locate any stories the newspaper might have published about the crime or the trial. You know Spookie. The town loves a crime mystery.”

  Yet after a time on the computer, Samantha sucked in her breath, looked up and shook her head. “I’ll be darned. It seems there are a few years where the microfiche were so bad, heat or mice might have gotten to them, we couldn’t transfer their years to digital. Just so happens some of those years are the years nineteen seventy-nine and nineteen eighty. What bad luck. I did a search on some of the other years around those two years and nothing came up under Theiss, on that family, those murders or the trial. I’m sorry, Abigail. I can’t add anything else to the story. You’re going to have to get the facts somewhere else...if you can.

  “If I were you I’d do a search on the Internet. There might be something.”

  “Tried that,” Abigail said. “There wasn’t much. Basically just what I’ve already learned. Forty years ago was a long time. I guess the murder wasn’t horrific enough, our little town here important enough, to warrant a Wikipedia page.”

&nb
sp; Abigail was disappointed Samantha couldn’t help her, yet there was nothing else to be done about it. Things happened. “I do have another living source I can tap. Claudia gave me some more pieces of the puzzle. She suggested I speak to Irma Appleton at the Fabric Shop saying Irma knew the family. I’m going to talk to Irma tomorrow...or as soon as she’s in. She wasn’t there today.”

  “She’s rarely in the shop these days.” Samantha chuckled. “Nineteen-seventy nine? I hope she can remember that far back. Like Myrtle, her memory is kind of sketchy. And unlike Myrtle, Irma has been known to remember things completely wrong. Things from...yesterday.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t heard that. Every time I’ve talked to her she seemed pretty with it to me. I guess I’ll find out soon enough when I speak to her how dependable her long ago memory is.”

  The two chatted about the town, their families. New town gossip. Friend talk.

  After a while, Abigail stood up. “I hate leaving good company, but I should be going. Being outside all day in the heat has sapped my energy and I’m tired. I still have to stop at the IGA and get home. Figure out what to have for supper. Frank and Nick will be wondering where I am.”

  The women said their goodbyes. Abigail left.

  She made her way to the car. It’d been a long day and, after the stop at the store, she drove home. After supper she had more work to do. She wanted to take the preliminary drawing she’d accomplished that day at the Theiss house and begin its painting while all the place’s details, and emotions she’d gleaned from it, were still fresh in her mind.

  Chapter 3

  Frank had numerous times read and reread Bracco’s report on Joel’s missing person and eventual found-dead case. The private detective had been thorough. There were pages of notations of who, when, and why Bracco interviewed various witnesses and people-of-interest and what they had revealed. In the beginning when Joel had only been missing, the detective had faithfully tried to find him. Then later, after Joel’s body had been discovered, long after Abby had ended their contract, apparently, the detective had not stopped trying to locate the person who’d mugged and, either intentionally or not, been part of Joel’s death. Bracco had never given up.

  The late detective’s loyal tenacity to uncovering the truth impressed Frank. In the end, Bracco hadn’t only been in it for the money. He’d wanted to help Abby find out what had happened to her husband. Imagine that, an honorable private eye. It was just a shame the man hadn’t gone after the hidden leads, the other path Frank had detected, that might have taken him where he’d wanted to go. Solving the entire case.

  After reading through the paperwork for the fifth time, taking notes and aligning the timelines and witnesses’ statements up, Frank had had an epiphany. Bracco has missed some very important clues. Glaring, really. Frank had seen something that Bracco, obviously, had not.

  For one: The night Joel had disappeared he’d stopped at a local gas station for gas, there was a credit card receipt found in the car’s glove compartment to prove that, and a copy of it was in the file. The detective had interviewed the night manager at the station twice, yet he had not tried to run down anyone else who might have been at the gas station when Joel had been there. None of the cashiers, other workers, or customers in the store at the same time. That had been a mistake. One of those people could have been the one who abducted and robbed him. Or one of those witnesses could have seen something that would have helped bring the truth to light.

  The second thing Frank realized reading the report was, shockingly, there’d been no DNA evidence taken from the car or the body. None. There had been no visible injuries or trauma on Joel’s corpse so the local police, a small town force evidently far behind the times, and the medical examiner, pronounced the death could have possibly been from natural causes. The stress and fear of the robbery could have possibly done him in; given him a heart attack or a fatal stroke and that was what had sent his car into the wooded ravine. Sure, Joel had been robbed and could have been taken somewhere else in his car afterwards, but the robber hadn’t, in the end, actually killed him. That’s what the ME had decided. There was no real proof otherwise the investigators concluded. Simple. Case closed. It hadn’t been murder at all.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Frank had mumbled beneath his breath as he’d read the copy of the autopsy report Bracco had included. “What kind of medical examiner would push that stupid hypothesis–that Joel had died of natural causes?” An incompetent one, Frank brooded, or someone who hadn’t cared enough to keep the case open for one reason or another.

  There had been no extensive autopsy, merely the most rudimentary of one. Even after two years of body deterioration DNA still could have been collected and examined; the results put into the autopsy files. Oh, my lord. As if Joel Sutton wasn’t important enough, worth a full investigation or a fair process. No, he hadn’t been an important, wealthy or famous man, but he’d been a man who’d deserved more than he’d gotten. It made Frank angry.

  The last thing Frank did was comb the Internet for any other minuscule particulars about the old case, Joel’s disappearance, and the inevitable discovery of his corpse two years later. There wasn’t much. There existed the reporting of his initial going missing and then, years later, that the body had been found, and not much else. Joel Sutton’s murder hadn’t been more than a blimp on the evening news. So there wasn’t much on the Web, either. That made Frank sad. The fate of one everyday man hadn’t meant much in the scheme of things, it rarely ever did. But, to Frank, a human life was a human life. Joel, and who might have killed him, if someone had, mattered.

  Frank shut his laptop, closed the file, his mind clicking away with the mystery he was faced with. What had really happened to Joel? Had he been murdered, and if so, who had killed him? To Frank, that mystery had not been resolved. He got up from his chair. Hungry, he headed to the kitchen and fixed himself a cold meatloaf sandwich. Abby had made an extra meatloaf just so they could have quick sandwiches when they wanted them.

  After his sandwich was on a plate, Frank moved out onto the rear porch. Whew, it was hot. Good thing the porch was shaded. The dogs had been let loose in the morning and he sat, eating, as he watched them romp around the fenced in the yard. They were showing off for him; jumping up and prancing around like show dogs. His German Shepherds didn’t care how hot it was, they liked being outside. But older now, their play didn’t last long before they were lolling in the grass, tongues hanging out, beneath the shade of a tree.

  Even Abby’s cat, Snowball, was tucked away dozing in the shadows under a bush.

  He should be writing, Frank knew that, but he was restless after reading Bracco’s file. His thoughts were preoccupied with the case. He knew he wouldn’t stop now. If he could, he had to follow the missed clues and find out exactly what had happened to him. Abby’s first husband’s disappearance and death had hung over and haunted her for nearly a decade; as long as he’d known her. Whether she was aware of it or not, finding out the truth, no matter how bad it was, might finally set her free. He was beginning to believe Joel had been murdered, and if so, he was going to try to uncover who had done it.

  Sitting there, after he finished the sandwich, he tried to ignore the dull ache in his chest. His hand went up and laid across the spot, lightly rubbing it. He wouldn’t admit how fatigued he felt all the time, which wasn’t like him. He was due for his yearly medical check-up but kept putting it off. Could be he needed to stop doing that. Next week he’d be sure to make an appointment with his doctor.

  Someone was banging on the front door, even on the rear porch he could hear the racket, so he went to answer it.

  “Good afternoon, Myrtle.”

  “Frank. Let me in, it’s as hot as blazes out here.” Myrtle slipped inside past him into the cool house, hobbling in leaning on her owl’s head cane.

  “And to what do I owe this surprise visit on such a scorching day?” Frank followed her to the kitchen. After hanging her cane on the back of a chair, she was alr
eady checking the table and counter tops for anything she could eat.

  “I’ll tell you as soon as I put something in my stomach. I’m starved.”

  Nothing new there. “There is a package of those little powdered sugar donuts you like so much in the cabinet above the stove. Help yourself.” Frank took a cup from the cupboard and fixed himself a fresh coffee. It was late in the day for coffee but seeing Myrtle place the donuts on the table, and pour coffee for herself, made him want another cup. He grabbed a few of the donuts, too.

  “Okay, what do you need to tell me so badly you walked over here in this heat, Myrtle? You know, at your age, you should be avoiding exerting yourself like that.”

  “I know, I know.” Myrtle, now sitting at the table, was cramming another donut into her mouth. Her eyes, when they rested on him, shone with concern. “But I wanted to tell you something. Something important. I already warned Abigail, but you know, she don’t always listen.”

  “Listen to what?”

  “Ha, I’ll tell you. If I was you I wouldn’t let Abigail go near that Theiss massacre house again. I know she’s hot to trot to immortalize it in paint or something, a bunch of spooky pictures, but the place is dangerous. I’m not just talking about the physical condition of the building–it’s a wreck–but there has to be malevolent ghosts, even the murdered victims, wandering around the grounds or in that house looking to make trouble. They could be a problem. People all think that ghosts can’t hurt you, but, believe me, they can.

  “I was attacked by this one evil ghost once in the forest behind my house. I guess he got lost in the woods years ago and froze to death. He was all white, icy and stuff. He chased me, howling and screaming words I couldn’t understand, for a long time, with a rock in his hand, and I just knew if he would have caught me he would have hit me over the head with that rock. Most likely killed me.” Myrtle visibly shuddered. “I was so lucky to get away from him.”