All Those Who Came Before

by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  All Those

  Who Came Before

  ~

  (Sixth book of the Spookie Town Murder Mystery series)

  Scraps of Paper

  All Things Slip away

  Ghosts Beneath Us

  Witches Among Us

  What Lies Beneath the Graves

  All Those Who Came Before

  Seventh one coming in 2020...

  By Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  All Those Who Came Before (Spookie Town Mysteries, #6)

  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

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  Other books by Kathryn Meyer Griffith:

  Evil Stalks the Night

  The Heart of the Rose

  Blood Forged

  Vampire Blood (prequel to Human No Longer)

  Human No Longer (sequel to Vampire Blood)

  The Last Vampire (2012 Epic EBook Awards Finalist)

  Witches

  Witches II: Apocalypse

  Witches plus bonus Witches II: Apocalypse

  The Calling

  Scraps of Paper-First Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  All Things Slip Away-Second Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  Ghosts Beneath Us-Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  Witches Among Us-Fourth Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  What Lies Beneath the Graves-Fifth Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  All Those Who Came Before-Sixth Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  Seventh Spookie Town Murder Mystery coming in 2020...

  Egyptian Heart

  Winter’s Journey

  The Ice Bridge

  Don’t Look Back, Agnes

  A Time of Demons and Angels

  The Woman in Crimson

  Spooky Short Stories

  Night Carnival

  Forever and Always Novella

  The Nameless One erotic horror short story

  Dinosaur Lake (2014 Epic EBook Awards Finalist)

  Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising

  Dinosaur Lake III: Infestation

  Dinosaur Lake IV: Dinosaur Wars

  Dinosaur Lake V: Survivors

  Memories of My Childhood

  Christmas Magic 1959 non-fiction short story

  *All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s books can be found in

  eBooks everywhere, paperbacks and audio books.

  Chapter 1

  Stella’s Diner was barely half full when Abigail strolled in that morning. She’d driven into town instead of hiking in, as she typically did, because rain had been predicted for later in the day, and Abigail had errands to do before she returned home.

  Sliding through the open door, careful not to drop the drawing tablet clutched beneath her arm; a large leather satchel full of art supplies hanging from her shoulder, she headed for a table in the far corner. The table offered more privacy than some of the others. Since she wanted to observe and sketch the humanity around her, and not be bothered, privacy was a good thing. Plopping down on a chair, she covertly scrutinized the customers close by.

  Seeing something she wanted to paint, she rose, walked over, and spoke briefly to a table of customers before she reclaimed her chair.

  It wasn’t merely the people she wanted to sketch; it was the location. Stella’s Diner had this humble ambience, an old-fashioned charm from a by-gone era, which Abigail loved to replicate on paper or canvas, and had many times.

  The year before she’d revived the idea of capitalizing on the affection the townspeople had for their quaint village by creating more drawings and paintings of the local people; businesses, parks, and official buildings along Main Street, inside and out. Some were detailed and realistic, a section of a Spookie street with the street name sign, or a partial of one of its storefronts; while others were whimsical, a familiar field or section of town woods in the twilight misty with fog. The townspeople seemed to love the paintings.

  She’d begun the original series years before when she’d first arrived in Spookie. In those days she would display and sell the artwork in John Mason’s General Store along the top of the glass counters that contained the old-fashioned penny candy. The man had been her first fan. Well, until he turned out to be a serial murderer, attempted to kill her, and was carted off to prison. The general store closed. Now it was an IGA. They didn’t sell the penny candy anymore, but the product and produce selection was so much better. The IGA was a much nicer store. Not to mention, the owner wasn’t a murderer.

  So she was producing new town pics, as she liked to call the renderings, and peddled them to the local business owners or managers to exhibit in their stores for her. She’d sketch the people or places first and then, using photos to aid her, she’d finish the paintings at home. The businesses took fifteen percent of the sales, and she got the rest. It had turned out to be an excellent partnership because selling the town pics had developed into a lucrative sideline. The drawings and paintings were now spread all over town. There were even a number of them in the City Hall and Courthouse. All in all, the town pics were a smart move. Their sales, along with her normal commissions, provided her a nice steady income. It was an income she had now come to depend on.

  Besides, capturing the townsfolk in their natural habitats was something she enjoyed doing. She always asked the person first if she could draw or paint them, and sometimes, if they asked, kept their figures or faces a little misty so they couldn’t be easily recognized. Once in a while her subjects let her make their faces clear and then bought the paintings for themselves. For her, most times it was the locale where they were featured that interested her most. She captured her models sitting at Stella’s having a meal, munching donuts at The Delicious Circle, walking in the park or reading a book at Tattered Corners. One time she painted all the reporters at their laptops at the Weekly Journal. Samantha, the paper’s publisher and now the town’s mayor, ended up buying the painting for her office. Some of the ones she was most proud of were Myrtle in her eccentric glory hanging around outside Stella’s on a sultry day with her rickety old wagon; Samantha behind her mayor’s desk; Sheriff Mearl in his squad car and Kate selling donuts behind the counter at the donut shop. The possibilities were endless so Abigail never ran out of things and people to paint. All in all, the town pics were a gold mine.

  She settled herself at the table and began to sketch. Stella brought her a cup of coffee, set it down in front of her, but otherwise left her alone. Later the waitress would ask if she wanted something to eat. Stella knew the routine well.

  Today Abigail was concentrating on a group of teenage townies laughing and playing with their iPhones at another table, with the vivid ruby colored bar stools behind them. It’d make an appealing painting. Of course, when she’d first come into the diner she had asked the patrons’ permissions to paint them beforehand and, curious at what she’d come up with, they had agreed.

  After she had the preliminary drawing pretty well rendered in her sketch pad–not bad, she mused–Abigail ordered a sandwich, and Stella carried it out to her.

  “How are you doing today?” Abigail smiled up at the elderly waitress.

  “Ah, as good as I can be doing with this darn arthritis of mine.” Stella grimaced as she slipped her order pad into her apron pocket. “My doctor has just put me on these new pills. Can’t recall the name of ’em but they make me sleepy as a
ll get out. After a week or so of falling asleep everywhere on my feet, even here, I got smart and now I only take them at night before I go to bed. That works.” A quick grin. “How are you and the mister doing?”

  “We’re doing good,” Abigail replied. “And Frank is exceptionally good. Since Kyle finished his medical internship in Chicago and this weekend will begin his search for an apartment near Doc Andy’s office, which you and everyone is aware of, or knows, is not far down the road from here. Frank’s son will commence his doctor’s career by sharing the practice with Doc Andy, our long-time town physician, but he’ll be taking over the practice one hundred percent when the doctor retires the beginning of fall.”

  “That’s fantastic. I was praying someone would take Doc Andy’s place when he flies off to Florida, or wherever he’s flying off to for retirement. I like being able to go right down the street here for my medical care. For me, I’m just grateful we’ll still have a local doctor. Every small town needs a general practitioner.

  “Speaking of Kyle. Are he and Glinda still dating?”

  Abigail snickered. “Still dating? They’ve been keeping company now for over two years. Two years. These days we’re taking bets on when the wedding will be. Kyle is head over heels for her, and she for him. Since he finished his schooling in Chicago, and is temporarily staying with us until he gets his own place, he’s at her and Myrtle’s house most nights. Now that Kyle has finished his internship hundreds of miles away, the two can’t be kept apart any longer. We’re so happy for them both. They’re a great couple together.”

  “I would say so. They both help people. She with her psychic gifts and he with his doctor gifts. Frank must be so proud of the boy.”

  “Oh, Frank is proud of him all right. Mostly he’s just thrilled Kyle will be living and practicing medicine here in Spookie. Close to home. He’s missed his son the last eight years.”

  “I know he has. He talked and bragged about the young man often enough.

  “How does Myrtle feel about Glinda and Kyle being a couple? I suppose if or when they get hitched they’ll be living at Glinda’s house?”

  “Oh, Myrtle’s tickled about all of it. She’s known Kyle all his life and likes him. You know her, the more people the merrier.”

  “Yeah. I know the old woman likes people. Being a talker, she would. Though I’ve seen her yakking a wild streak often enough to people who weren’t there, were invisible, as well.” The waitress chuckled. “But I guess we all have our little eccentricities. Myrtle grows on you.”

  “She does,” Abigail answered.

  “Is that son of yours still in that crazy band of his?” Stella’s weary blue eyes had rested on the teenagers at the next table. They were throwing food at each other. She tossed them a stern glance, clenched her fist in their direction, and the food stopped flying. Brushing her white hair away from her forehead in a habitual gesture, she sighed. Just another hard day at the diner.

  “Oh, he’s still in that band. They’re really good, too. Or I think they are.” Abigail’s fingers had resumed drawing in the sketch pad resting on the table before her. “Music and songwriting are Nick’s passions; have been for years. He has announced he’s going to make it his life. The band is getting so popular; they have gigs most weekends. As soon as he’s out of high school, next year, he and the band plan to go on a national tour. He wants to make a real living out of being a traveling musician, singer and song-writer.”

  “I knew a traveling musician, a friend, once. He was one of those long haired hippie types...but, oh, could he play that guitar of his. He had a mesmerizing voice, too. Wonder what ever happened to him?” Stella speculated aloud, tilting her head up as if she were gazing back into the years, remembering. Someone a couple tables over gestured for her, so she began to move away. “Talk to you later, Abigail. Duty calls.”

  Abigail nodded; her head lowered as she gave her full interest once more to her drawing.

  As she sketched, as it always did, time sped by, and she was so distracted she didn’t see her friend Myrtle hobble in until the old woman was standing in front of her.

  “Hey there, Abby, have you looked outside the windows lately?” Myrtle’s voice was more high-pitched than usual and it gained Abigail’s attention right off.

  Abigail glanced up. “Well, and a good day to you, too, Myrtle.” She hid her smile at the odd combination of faded clothes, (a cotton print dress, mauve-colored tennis shoes and bright yellow socks), the old woman was wearing; a floppy purple hat tamed down her white halo of hair. At least, she wasn’t wearing a coat of any kind, which was good because it was the middle of a scorching summer and the temperatures had been playing around the upper nineties for weeks. It was not outer-garment weather by any means.

  “I mean it, Abby. Take a peek out the window.” The old woman was poised with a hand on her hip and a worried frown on her wrinkled face. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, balancing with the help of her cane. The cane was a new accessory she’d acquired since she’d broken her arm falling into the creek on her grandniece’s property two years before. These days she maintained she wasn’t as steady on her feet, at her advanced age, so best to be safe than sorry. The cane, a stick of wood with a marbled grain topped with the silver shape of an owl’s head, was unique. Eye-catching, actually. Glinda had given her the cane as a gift, and since it was so beautiful, Myrtle had decided to use it.

  Abigail’s eyes examined the outside. On the sidewalk Myrtle’s battered red-slatted wagon waited where it had been left. These days Stella would no longer let Myrtle drag the thing into the restaurant where people might trip over it, so it remained exiled outside as it often did when Myrtle was in a business somewhere in town. The wagon was chock-full of sundry objects Myrtle had salvaged from somewhere (most likely someone’s trash pile) and was transporting to somewhere else, and the heat was churning in waves around it. Her eyes moved to the space around the wagon and then upwards into what sky she could see through the glass windows.

  “Yikes, Myrtle, it’s green out there. Green.” And it was...the strangest hue of green Abby had ever seen. When had that happened? Higher in the sky there were swirling, threatening ebony-tipped clouds and the wind had picked up. Wow, it was really blowing out there, she thought, closing her sketch pad, putting her pencil away. A bad storm was coming.

  So far August had been the hottest in a decade, but it looked as if it was going to break records for violent storms, as well. The relentless thunderstorms had developed remarkably early in the spring and hadn’t ceased since, but had been growing more ferocious each month, as if they were building on the one before and rising higher each time. Everyone in town would be the first to admit the summer weather had been bizarre. Sometimes Abigail felt like Dorothy in Kansas right before she was rocketed to Oz.

  For a quick moment Abigail watched a woman hustle down the sidewalk past the diner’s windows, her head and shoulders tucked down against the wind, going somewhere in a hurry; probably to get inside somewhere to safety.

  “Yep,” Myrtle stated, her eyes sliding again to what was brewing outside. “It’s the same shade of pissed-off green that can only mean a tornado is coming. Trust me, I’ve been around a heck of a long time–I’m old–and I know when a twister is a ‘coming. We got to get out of here and get to someplace safe. Into a basement or a deep cellar or something. Straightaway. I saw you in here and thought I would save you.”

  Uneasy, Abigail pressed, “How long do you think we have before whatever is going to hit us hits us?”

  Hand on her cane, Myrtle spun around and stole another sharp gander out the windows. The mouth in her wrinkled face scrunched up. “Not long. We need to get out of here. Now.”

  That’s when the town’s alert sirens began to wail. Well, that answered that.

  “Do you think we can make it to our cabin? The basement will keep us safe if the tornado, if there is one, decides it wants to chase after us. I have the car outside.” Abigail’s thoughts touched on
her husband, Frank, and her son, Nick. Frank, off doing a wrap-up of a case he was conducting for the sheriff’s department, as a consultant, could take care of himself. Nick, with school out for the day, was most likely already at home.

  “Maybe we can make it. Either to my house or yours. If we leave now. Let’s go.” Myrtle was already heading through the diner towards the door.

  Abigail took out her iPhone and called Frank. He said he was almost home and not to worry. Just get herself home. Then she called Nick. He was aware of the coming storm and told her he was ready, in an instant, to flee to the basement. That took care of that. Both her men were safe. Now to get herself and Myrtle out of harm’s way.

  Cramming her drawing tablet and the rest of her colored pencils into her art pouch, slinging it over her shoulder, Abigail jumped to her feet. The diner had practically emptied around them. The people she’d been sketching were the only other ones remaining in the restaurant and, seeing what was threatening outside, they were also running for the door. Good thing she’d finished the preliminary drawing. She had taken photos on her iPhone before her subjects had scattered, so she had more than enough to complete the painting.

  “Goodbye, Stella! A bad storm’s coming and we’re heading to my house. Money’s on the table. Tip, too,” Abigail shouted at the harried waitress who was now busy behind the counter.

  Seeing what was outside, Stella was obviously getting ready to close the diner and get her grandson, who was cooking that day in the kitchen, and herself to the basement below them.

  “Goodbye, Stella!” Myrtle echoed. “Get to the basement if you want to live. It’s going to be a whopper of a squall, I’m telling you.” Myrtle rushed out the door with Abigail trailing behind her.

  Outside, the wind had shifted into high gear. The sky had darkened even more. An empty trash can noisily bounced down the street followed by a fluttering flock of loose newspaper pages. She and Myrtle had to move quickly to dodge the empty trash can. Whatever had been in the can was long gone.

  Abigail grabbed Myrtle’s old wagon by the handle, yanked it to her car, opened the hatch back area and threw it in.