The Nobody Girls (Kendra Dillon Cold Case Thriller Book 3) Read online

  “Dad, you accused Pam of stealing, and you crashed through the table. You threatened to fire everyone in the known universe. Also, your eye.”

  “I’m fine. And Pam should be fired for calling you. That’s an escalation that did not need to happen.”

  “Dad, you’re not fine. Your blood sugar is in the four-hundred range, and you’re up fifteen pounds. You’re supposed to be eating a low sodium diet. And we haven’t even talked about blood pressure.”

  Her dad made a noise that wasn’t quite a word but conveyed utter disgust at Kendra’s mention of diets and low sodium.

  “Here’s the deal. They’re going to put you in an assisted living facility. It’s really nice. You’ll have your own room.”

  “NO WAY IN HELL I’M—”

  “Shh, Dad, this is a hospital.” Kendra hoped she had her dad right where she wanted him.

  Big Don gritted his teeth and gave Kendra a steely-eyed gaze that had cowered automotive executives for decades. Kendra wasn’t going to be cowed.

  “I am not going in an assisted living whatever, a home.”

  “It’s not a home, and you can’t stay in your house. Not after this.”

  “I am not.”

  Kendra paced back and forth; she made a large drama of appearing to rack her brains for other options. She scratched her chin and darted her eyes around as though she’d improvised a possible solution.

  “Well, there might be one alternative.”

  “What?”

  “What if you promise the doctor you’re taking your health seriously, like this was your wake-up call. Maybe we can convince him to send you to that rehab place, River Park.”

  “How long?”

  “Well, I think a few weeks. I mean, if you prove you can manage your blood sugar and you don’t have any more incidents. Maybe then we take that assisted living option off the table completely?” Kendra explained, acting like this option wasn’t the suggestion they’d all just discussed out in the hall.

  “Fine, River Park, fine. I’ll do it. But I am not going to some old man home.”

  “Okay, I’ll go beg Dr. Mankiewicz to have them order rehab. He’s pushing the assisted living option.” She wanted Big Don to think his daughter was in league with him against the doctor.

  “Be firm. I’m going to River Park!”

  “Got it, Dad.”

  Kendra came out to the hall to find Dr. Mankiewicz, and her sister leaned toward her Dad’s hospital room. Gillian stood up and crossed her hands over her chest. She cocked her head to the side.

  “You just straight up lied to Dad.”

  “He’s going to River Park, isn’t he? He promised to work on his weight and blood sugar, didn’t he?”

  “You just threw me under the bus, I think, too,” Dr. Mankiewicz said.

  “I didn’t lie or throw anyone under a bus. I negotiated,” Kendra countered.

  “Yeah, I think you take more after Big Don than I realized,” Gillian smirked.

  “We met in the middle. No one’s happy. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “Right, that’s what Dad always said.”

  “Doc, let’s get Big Don rolling.”

  Kendra had presented her dad with an option she knew he would hate, to get him to move over to the one that they hoped would help him get well.

  Sure, she’d lied a little, but she didn’t feel bad about it. Not one bit.

  Chapter 9

  By the time Kendra returned to work the next day, the plan for Big Don was in place.

  He was safe, though likely terrorizing the staff at River Park.

  Kendra and Shoop sat in Art’s office and made their case for spending more time on what they were calling The Nobody Girls season.

  “We’ve got a lot of legwork to do yet, but I want to focus on this,” Kendra said.

  “You have one dead body, no idea who she is, and then what, a list?”

  “I have to interview the FBI, and then I’ll know more about the patterns, maybe, and the status of the case. But Art, The Cold Trail had always been about the victims, to me anyway, and to Shoop. We’ve solved the case in a couple of incidents, but that can’t be the only reason we tell the story. We have to let people know about these women that everyone forgot about. Even if we can’t solve the cold case.”

  “I’ll give you a few days. You’ve earned that,” Art conceded.

  “I need interviews. That’s what I need. Right now, we have one current mystery in High Timbers, and then, well, a few old ones that seem to fit with the circumstances.”

  “Fine, you’ve got a couple day’s leeway, but if you’re stuck then, you have to move on. I’ve got underwriting, which is great, thanks to your success, but it’s not unlimited. We need to nail down a season and figure out how to promote it. This has gone bigger than just WPLE.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re national, and even though this is a WPLE production, there’s interest in all types of ways to expand on it.”

  “From whom?”’

  “How about I worry about that? You worry about the next season?”

  “Okay, good, thanks, Art.”

  The Cold Trail had been successful beyond Kendra’s wildest expectations. They’d gone from unknown cold case podcast to the show some compared to Serial. It had brought new pressure and new expectations. She would let Art think about expansion. She could only focus on the cases. The victims deserved her full attention.

  Kendra and Shoop had convinced Art that they were on the right track for the next season for now. But all they really had was a hunch that this was a story they could dig into or help with in some way.

  They’d bought the time they needed to research further, but now they needed to decide on the next step.

  Kendra sat at her computer.

  She knew who she needed Special Agent Branson, the FBI agent Newkirk mentioned.

  She did a search and produced a disappointing result; Branson had died in the early 2000s after a distinguished career.

  Crap. But this was the way with cold cases.

  They wouldn’t have the original investigator for their stories. That had helped so much with the Ethan Peltz stories, having the lead investigator’s recollections. But Kendra wasn’t daunted. There were records, regardless of who filed the reports.

  “We’re going to have to check in with the FBI for their case files,” Kendra called out to Shoop.

  They had plodding work ahead. They’d be trying to draw back the curtain to a time that on paper didn’t seem too long ago, except it was. And it was all mostly on paper. There weren’t the digital files, easily emailed, like today. But Kendra and Shoop knew that; in fact, it was what they had become experts at wading through.

  They spent an afternoon digging and ticking off a list of mundane checks and cross-checks that made the hands on the clock seem like they were crawling.

  But then two things happened that did the opposite and made Kendra wish for more hours in the day.

  She found another story that matched a possible fourth victim of the same kind of violent end that the High Timbers Jane Doe had met.

  Her name was Susan Hodges.

  Kendra read the account. A highway repair crew outside Cincinnati, nearly to Kentucky, had found a body, wrapped in a garbage bag, off the road. It was far enough to be disguised from drivers but close enough to be discovered by road crews.

  It had all the markers of the High Timbers scene, and the timing was right.

  It was 1981.

  Kendra was ready to add this story to the three they had already, a fourth Nobody Girl, when Shoop leaned her head through Kendra’s office doorway.

  She’d made a discovery as well; she had a name and number of a relative from one of the first three victims.

  “Linda Kay Ellis had a sister, Wilma Kay, a few years younger, who lives out in Perryville. I called her.”

  “Great! And?”

  “She says you can visit today; she’s got nothing else to do
.” Shoop presented the information like it was a Christmas present. And to Kendra, it really was.

  “Great, now?” Shoop answered Kendra’s question with a nod. “You put the FOIA in and an interview request while I’m gone. I have no idea who they’ll have us talk to since the original investigator has passed.”

  Kendra hated to dump the paperwork request on Shoop. She gave her an apologetic look.

  Shoop waived her off. “Go, get Wilma Kay before she dies of old age. That’s what we’re fighting here.”

  “Got it, yes, good work!”

  Wilma Kay Appleman, formerly Ellis, was not that old. That was Kendra’s first thought. She must have been very young when Linda died.

  If she was sixty, Kendra would be shocked.

  Wilma was on her back deck, hosing it off and waiting for Kendra to arrive. She had on pink flip-flops, khaki capris pants, and a floral print blouse.

  “Ha, hi, bird pooed all over my deck!”

  They were in a nice suburban neighborhood outside of Port Lawrence. Perryville was quiet, a little snobby in Kendra’s Dad’s estimation, but an easy drive.

  The home was on a road that wrapped around a golf course.

  They were decades away from 1978 but worlds away from whatever had happened to Linda Kay.

  “You’re Kendra, come on back. I wiped off the chairs. We’re safe. Unless the bastard comes back.”

  Wilma Kay was friendly and pretty, thought Kendra. It was hard to reconcile the bright woman in front of her with the tragedy that Kendra had associated her with. Linda Kay Ellis found in a bag, dead, discarded.

  “Hello, thank you for seeing me on short notice.”

  “Or maybe I’ve been waiting since 1978. Ha, before you were born, I can see.”

  “Your deck is lovely.”

  Wilma had flower boxes overflowing with pink petunias on each of the deck rails.

  “Thank you.” Wilma sat at a chair pulled up to the patio table, shaded by a blue umbrella. “I’ve got lemonade, but with Splenda. I’m going to have some, join me?”

  Kendra nodded. It was hot, even though they were past noon now. The water from the hosed-off deck evaporated before their eyes.

  “I’m going to tape, if it’s okay, for the podcast.”

  “Sure, okay. Though I hate my voice, it always sounds too high and fast when I hear it on video.”

  “Do you listen to podcasts?”

  “My son showed me how to find them on my phone, and there’s this one, You Must Remember This, old Hollywood stories, I like that. Oh, except she did a whole season on Charles Manson, not interested in that at all. Too close to home. I want to be entertained, not horrified, no offense.”

  “None taken. I know this might be hard, but I want to talk about Linda Kay.”

  Kendra put her digital recorder out as she talked. She unspooled the microphone cable. Kendra was skilled now and slick when it came to putting a mic on an interview subject. The act of it could interrupt the flow of conversation or make a person feel uncomfortable. Kendra found it was best to get it clipped on and move on as fast as possible. Before the nerves set in for her subjects.

  “Oh, your producer told me. I’m so glad someone wants to talk about her.” Wilma smiled.

  It was hard, talking to victim’s families, so often hearing the name of the person they loved, now gone, only brought pain.

  “You smiled just now, thinking about your sister.”

  “That’s the long trail you have to walk, after grief, to find a place that doesn’t hurt.”

  Before going to the hurt, Kendra wanted the life of Linda Kay Ellis. She wanted to hear what it was about Linda that had made Wilma smile just now.

  “She was your big sister?”

  “Yes, ten years older than me, so of course I idolized her. We didn’t have the greatest parents, so Linda was my salvation, I have to say. She had the coolest earrings; she pierced my ears.” Wilma put her index finger up to her lobe and tweaked it. Tiny diamond stud earrings caught the sunlight.

  “She did a good job,” Kendra said.

  “Well, this hole is lower, I swear!” Wilma laughed.

  “I’d have never noticed.”

  Wilma paused and took a breath. She brushed a hair from her temple and tucked it behind her ear.

  “Linda was left to her own devices too much. We all were. She didn’t have a curfew, and the only time my parents paid attention to her or any of us was to yell at us. Not the best start. But she did try to protect me. She was fierce like that. She’d step in and back our mother off or flip off our dad.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Her friends were cool when she had them around. They all had fringe and bellbottoms. I tried to mimic it, you know, my little kid self.”

  Kendra let the memories roll. Talking with Wilma was easy and sweet.

  “She listened to Beach Boys music; we had never seen a beach, but she loved that sound. I missed hearing it after she left.”

  “When was that?”

  “She moved out with some guy, I can’t remember his name, in ’73, right after she finished high school. And then, well, she stayed away. I couldn’t blame her for that. She had me over to one of her apartments. It was such a dump when I look back. But I was a kid. I didn’t care.”

  “Did police question the boyfriend? After?”

  “Oh gosh, no idea, but she had a lot of boyfriends. I realize now what that was about. In, oh, ’76 or so, she just got skinnier and skinnier. My dad called her a junkie. The fun times we’d had, the sister bonding stuff, that went down to a trickle.”

  “What was going on?”

  “Heroin. She was a trend setter on that. The hard stuff, my Dad called it. Then we sort of lost touch with her. I think I was around twelve the last time I saw her. And this was years before she disappeared.”

  “Can you remember what you did?”

  “She’d come over, but only when my parents were both gone or out. Thank goodness, so no fighting or bullshit, as she liked to say. We played records and then watched TV. She loved Laugh-In, and you know, she had a Goldie Hawn vibe, 1960s Goldie Hawn, not 1980s Goldie Hawn.”

  “Gotcha.” Kendra would have to look that up.

  “She’d spend a random afternoon with me, or evening. And that was it. She sank further into a life where she turned tricks for drugs. They called from the hospital once that she had overdosed or had to have her stomach pumped. My mom told them there was no money for hospital bills and to leave us alone.” Wilma raised her eyebrows and narrowed her lips. The memories that came were darker now, and a furrow appeared in the brow of the smiling Wilma Kay. “I don’t really have a memory of her after that. She was lost to me. I was too young to go help her with whatever she needed or maybe drive her home from the hospital.”

  “The records say she was found dead in 1978,” Kendra prompted.

  “Yeah, I’m ashamed to say, we had no idea that she had gone missing. She probably was out there for a day or two. It’s just…she’d not been here for years. No one reported her missing, at least not from our family. We wouldn’t have known if she’d been gone for years because she kind of was, from us.”

  “How did you find out what had happened?”

  “There was a knock at the door, and it was the cops. Never a good thing, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  “So, there they are, at the door. I’m inching toward my mother, straining to hear what they were saying. My mother answered with her typical bad attitude. Like our staff was off or something, and she was slumming, doing normal things, like answering the door. I watched her, still can see her standing there. They said a woman was found, dead, murdered, in a bag, along I-75. Some farm field, I guess. She had a wallet on her, and Linda’s driver’s license was in there. Her back was to me, and the policeman was trying to be calming and talking to her. My mom screamed. She screamed like she gave a damn about Linda. I remember thinking she was such a hypocrite. They were telling her that Linda Kay was dead. And th
at it was an awful death. It was the moment I went from being a kid to an adult. I hadn’t seen my sister in a year. I knew she was living a dangerous life. But the idea that I’d never see her again, I still can’t get my head around it. I expect to see her, long hair, great earrings, swaying to ‘In My Room.’ Almost every day, I expect to see her.”

  “Did they know what happened? Tell you about suspects?”

  “My mother’s reaction didn’t leave the door open for more details or rational discussion. She screamed like I said. And the cops eventually left her there, in our foyer, falling to pieces.”

  “Did you ever learn more?”

  “No, we weren’t called to do anything else that I know of. I only knew that my sister was murdered. It was weird. She hadn’t been in my daily life for a long time. I’d been raising myself since she’d left, but I felt it. I wished so badly that I was with her, that I could have held her hand. Warned her to run or, well, your mind comes up with all sorts of things after the worst happens. Whoever did that to her was a sick monster.”

  “Yes. I just want people to know that she was a person, that someone loved her.”

  “That’s sweet. Someone did. I did. I loved her very much. It still haunts me that we didn’t know she was dead until the policeman came to the door. I just wonder now, how she would be, as an old lady like me, if she could have gotten clean, or whatever, if we could take trips together or go shopping. That kind of stuff, you know?”

  “I do. I have a sister, a little sister. I do know.”

  “When will this be on?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m just starting to figure this out. A woman’s body was found a few days ago, similar to the circumstances as your sister. Decades-old, and well, I’m just starting on trying to find out more. You really helped.”

  “Good, I’m glad. I wish I could tell you more about what might have happened. But I’m not naïve. My sister had a rough existence at the end, I think. I mostly just work to make sure I don’t forget the girl who loved The Beach Boys and this fringe jacket she had. When she made my cockeyed ear holes, she squealed as loud as I did. Can you imagine two girls screaming during an ear-piercing? It was hilarious. There aren’t many memories, and they are getting yellow with time, but I bring them out and roll them around. It helps.”