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

“No, I hid. Ashamed to say it, but I hid, mostly. I was so afraid that Coco Tone was the one who did it. And then I started to worry that it was the—what you call it? Yeah, the client. How was I going to know? Eventually Pastor got me in for a job working on the nutrition staff at the elementary school. I didn’t have a record, so that was good. A blessing. I never went back to that life. She saved me, Sincere did.”

“And Sincere didn’t have a family?”

“She did, long gone now, though. Did you see the photos? Of the way they found her, I mean?”

“I am waiting on the official FBI files.”

“Let me know when you get them. I think I’d be ready to see them.”

“This could be a big step. You knew her. Maybe something would stand out differently than what the investigators saw. But once you see it, it may be very difficult to forget. Maybe it’s for the best you haven’t seen any of the crime scenes.”

“It can’t be worse than what my mind has conjured or the devil has created in my head.”

“I’ll call you as soon as they release them to me. You can decide then.”

Ophelia considered Kendra’s offer and changed her mind. “On second thought, I’ll remember her whole. Pretending to be Cher. I just I wish I would have helped more, then.”

“I’m not sure you could have done a thing differently. And what you’ve done with your life is impressive. You’re an amazing woman. I have it on good authority from your pastor.”

Ophelia smiled.

Kendra finished the interview. Kendra felt like she had gotten way more than she’d ever expected. Thanks to Ophelia’s sharp mind. And her refusal to forget a friend.

Chapter 12

Kendra and Shoop combed through everything they could find that was publicly available about bodies found along I-75.

Kendra and Shoop logged the sound on the interviews with Wilma and Ophelia. This list of each soundbite helped them quickly find specific passages in the long recordings as they edited the program.

“They were great interviews, good people. That makes me feel like Linda and Sincere were too,” Shoop said. They’d listened to both interviews several times. They verified what they could and cross-checked against what was already know about Linda Kay and Sincere.

“I think, if nothing else, this might be the podcast.”

“The victim’s stories,” Shoop said.

“Yes, we have four now, all in the same time frame, all murdered—or found, anyway—the same way. What if we just go back in time and do our best work for them, to make them real, living, breathing people, not thruway stats?”

“Okay, but we got lucky with the sister, and I gotta hand it to you. Finding Ophelia was brilliant, but that’s two. We don’t even know where to begin with the body at High Timbers or Susan Hodge.”

“Let’s write two episodes,” Kendra said. “Let’s write about Linda and then Sincere, and we can just do it and trust that we’ll find more. I know we will find more.”

Shoop cracked her knuckles over her computer keyboard like she was about to start playing a piano concerto. They got to work.

They used the facts of High Timbers and the facts of Linda Kay Ellis to create their episode.

By the end of the week, Kendra felt they had two solid episodes of The Cold Trail. They had unearthed two compelling stories of women who’d been forgotten by the rest of the world. It was a testament to the victims, how much of an impact they’d really had. Decades later, they were still being mourned, quietly to be sure, but powerfully, by two good women. That had to mean something.

Miles set aside time for them to lay down Kendra’s voice tracks.

Kendra cleared her throat, pulled the mic down to her lips, and stretched the padded earphones over her hair.

She had a music stand in front of her, where the script they’d written fit nicely.

“Give me a level,” said Miles.

“Cold Trail, Linda Kay.”

Miles gave her a thumbs up.

Linda Kay Ellis grew up in Port Lawrence. She rode her bike on Harvey Street decades before they built a Costco on the corner. In Linda Kay’s day, there were fields, a little general store, and mom and pop gas station on that corner.

Linda Kay’s friends called her Elke, like the ‘60s movie star Elke Sommer. It was a play on her initials, L. K.

Linda Kay was pretty, not blonde like Elke Sommer. She was a brunette with a sweet smile and a turned-up nose who won her elementary school potato sack relay race.

And Linda Kay was protective of her little sister, Wilma Kay. She was independent and rebellious, but she looked out for her friends and her sister.

The moment she graduated from Port Lawrence High School, she was out of her parent’s home.

She wasn’t exactly a runaway, but she wanted distance from her parents. She wanted out of there. That was the phrase, out of there. Though no one knew where you went from out of there. Out of there was more of a concept than a clear destination.

“My dad hit my mom, us, anyone in his way. My mom blamed all of us for whatever set my dad off. The words they use today, abusive, toxic, that would give you an idea of how we kids grew up.”

Wilma Kay was Linda’s little sister. Wilma Kay adored Linda, Elke.

“She was the cool one. She smoked cigarettes, wore bell-bottom jeans, listened to cool music, had neat earrings.”

The bellbottoms Wilma Kay mentioned, they were wrapped tightly around Linda Kay Ellis’s neck when her body was found. She was neatly wrapped in a garbage bag and left by the side of I-75.

Linda Kay hadn’t been Elke in quite some time.

She was on her own, out there. And she’d gotten into trouble. Out there was just as tough. By 1978, Wilma Kay said her sister was gone from her life and living a much rougher