The Nobody Girls (Kendra Dillon Cold Case Thriller Book 3), Rebecca Rane [best book club books of all time txt] 📗

“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