After nursing her husband through cancer, and then getting dumped for a “pre-schooler”, Katy McKenna is ready for a major life reboot…
First on her "super-exciting-new-life" agenda is to resurrect the graphics arts career that she put on hold to run a bookstore with her "was-band". Easier said than done.
One day, while gathering newspapers for recycling, Katy notices a story about an impending parole hearing for the man who raped and murdered her high school friend sixteen years ago. Sickened that this man could soon be preying on other young girls, Katy decides to step out of her comfort zone and do something to make sure this doesn't happen, not realizing the imminent peril she’s about to unleash upon herself.
Meanwhile, Grandma Ruby is hell-bent on finding Katy a hunky transition man, and her happily-married BFF is nagging her to blog about her anger issues.
To my husband who always believes in me, even when I don’t.
A Big Thank You to:
My Beta Readers:
Mike Dennis, Holly Dennis, Jeri Petersen, June Kiger, Irvin Kiger, and Dorothy Dink.
Irvin: You have no idea what a boost you gave me—thank you!
Elaine Boles for editing the front matter.
Tracey Garvis Graves (author of On the Island)
wrote a very helpful and in-depth blog about self-publishing that I have referred to many times.
___
And to all those friends who always asked me how my book was going.
Writing is a lonely business and it meant a lot to me.
PROLOGUE
Saturday, May 4, 1996
12:05 a.m.
Lindsay woke to muffled rock music. She turned her head, gasping at the sharp pain that exploded into an excruciating headache. She scrunched her eyes, willing it away, but the pain throbbed in agonizing waves.
She reached out for her bedside Tinker Bell lamp, squinting to prepare for bright light, but instead her arm flailed into a void where the lamp should have been.
Lindsay sat up slowly, each fraction of elevation slamming her first-ever migraine. She held still waiting for the roaring pain to back off. She noticed her top was bunched down around her waist and her bra was popped up over her small breasts. She adjusted her bra, vaguely wondering why that hurt.
Across the dim room, a lava lamp pulsed an orange glow. Where did that come from? Why is my dresser over there? Where am I?
She started to get up and found her legs tangled in the sheets. Reaching to pull the bedding away, Lindsay’s fingers touched something warm. She slid her hand further and felt something rough and bristly. Someone’s in my bed? She jerked her hand away, yanking the sheets off and scrambling to her feet. The sudden move drained the blood from her head and the room exploded into blinding white light before she crumpled to the floor.
Lindsay opened her eyes. She lay sprawled on her side facing a dark shadow that focused into a body shape. She shimmied back toward the bed frame and pushed herself to a sitting position, the pain threatening to split her head open. Her stomach lurched. She clamped a hand over her mouth, pressing her lips tight.
While Lindsay waited for the nausea to subside, her eyes darted around the room, desperately trying to understand what was happening, but her muddled mind would not cooperate.
Maybe this is a bad dream. She reached out and poked the body. It felt solid. Real.
On hands and knees, she crept around the body to the door and opened it, peering into a dark hallway. No Doubt blasted downstairs, the loud bass notes drilling into her skull. Raucous voices attempting to be heard over the din drifted up from below. She ducked back as a pair of legs walked down the hall. A light flicked on illuminating the battered green walls of the hall before a door shut.
The tiled bathroom echoed the gush of a man urinating, and Lindsay’s bladder responded with sudden need. The toilet flushed, the bathroom door opened, and the legs passed the room again.
Once the hall was clear, Lindsay attempted again to stand, but nausea forced her back down, and she crawled to the bathroom.
Inside, she closed the door and groped in the dark for the light switch. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting until she could tolerate the bright, amber glare, then slit her eyes open. When she could see, she hauled herself up to the pedestal sink, held her long, silky blond hair out of the way, and sipped cool water from the faucet.
Her stomach clenched and roiled, spewing up hot vomit, splattering the sink, the floor, and her pink jelly shoes. She clung to the sink until the wrenching heaves went dry, then rinsed her mouth and face.
The nausea eased and she raised her head, jolted by her grotesque image in the cracked mirror. One eye was swollen and blood leaked from a gash in her eyebrow. She touched the cut, wondering what had happened as her fear mounted.
The pressure in her bladder became too much and Lindsay lurched to the toilet, knocked the seat down, pulled her short skirt up, and was bewildered to find her panties gone. Gingerly, she lowered herself onto the toilet seat, clutching the edges. As urine trickled out, the searing burn startled her, rendering her breathless and releasing a flow of tears. She gently dabbed herself dry and was alarmed to see blood on the tissue. Then she saw dried blood on her thighs. Did my period start?
Lindsay finished and tugged her skirt as far down as it would go. Cracking the door open and seeing no one, she ventured into the hallway, using the walls for support as she made her way to the other end. Stopping short of the stairway, she peered around the corner and saw a crowd of people blocking the bottom. Frantic, she glanced around for another way out and saw none.
Gripping the wood banister with both hands, Lindsay overstepped the first tread and lost her balance, thumping down the stairs on her rear-end and slamming into a fat, bearded guy lounging against the wall on the bottom step.
He laughed at her. “Hey, party girl. Havin’ a rough night?”
Holding her skirt down, Lindsay scuttled back up a few steps and used the rail to pull herself to her feet. Across the packed, rowdy room, she saw her escape. The open front door. Ignoring the snickering man, she tried to ease around his hefty bulk in the tight space but swayed against him and clutched his shoulder for support.
“Whoa. You’re totally shit-faced.” He reached to steady her and then offered his water pipe. “Want a hit?”
The pungent odor gagged her and she slapped it away, knocking the glass pipe out of his hand to shatter on the wood floor.
“You bitch.” He grabbed her wrist, twisting it hard. “Get the fuck outta here!”
“Let go of me!” Lindsay wriggled out of his clammy grasp and shoved her way through the crush to the door. Outside she tumbled down the porch steps and landed hard on the flagstone path, skinning her hands, knees, and chin, her teeth sinking deep into her lower lip. She lay there weeping, hurt, confused, and scared.
Long minutes passed as people coming and going stepped over her prone body. The brisk night air revived her and finally she stood and limped to the sidewalk, where she leaned against a parked car.
Lindsay pressed her fingers into her temples, willing the pain to stop and her head to clear but accomplishing neither. With no idea where to go but needing to get away from where she was, she began walking.
ONE
Thursday, April 4
Now
“Daisy! Get back here.” My papergirl was supposed to retrieve the morning newspaper at the end of the front walk but had opted instead to chase a squirrel into the next yard, leaving me no choice but to leave the shelter of my vine-covered porch to chase after her. When I caught up, she had the scoundrel t
reed and was waiting for all the hugs and atta-girls she knew I’d bestow upon her.
“Bad. Bad, naughty girl.” I wagged my finger at her. I’d rarely scolded my near-perfect yellow Labrador since rescuing her from the pound four months before, and her smile drooped along with her head and tail.
“Thanks, Daisy,” said a masculine voice nearby. “I really needed another squirrel in my yard.”
I looked across the yard and saw a tall, hunky guy standing by a silver BMW sports coupe convertible and he was drop-dead gorgeous. Tan, perfectly mussed honey-blond hair, dazzling white teeth, male-model two-day stubble. Nordic looking, like a Viking.
He waved. “Hey, Cookie. We finally meet.”
Cookie? That was kind of creepy.
“I’m Josh.”
I waved back weakly. “Hi.”
“Nice slippers.”
He was referring to my fuzzy bear claws, a Christmas gift from Grandma Ruby back in my college days.
“Thanks.” I ran my fingers through my auburn bedhead mess, fluffing it back behind my shoulders, trying to act like I always ran around the neighborhood in my pajamas. “I’m Katy, and you already know who this is.”
“Hi Daisy.”
My dog was grinning from ear to ear and her tail was wagging so hard I thought her butt would fall off.
“Nice finally meeting you two.” He backed out of his driveway and zoomed away with a screech of rubber.
What a show-off. So not impressed, I thought, curling my lip with disdain.
Daisy nudged me. She was ready to go home with Josh’s paper in her mouth. To her dismay, I left his paper on his porch. She made amends by pouncing on the newspaper at the end of our front walk and proudly trotting it into the house.
I curled up with Daisy on the comfy, overstuffed chair by the living room French doors to read the paper, but my mind wouldn’t focus on the top stories of the day. Instead, I found myself obsessing over my humiliating meet-up with Josh-the-creepy-Viking. I tossed the paper on the floor, revealing my flannel clad, Oreo print legs.
“Cookie.” Oh. Now I felt really stupid.
My cell phone rang on the table next to me. It was Grandma Ruby. If I didn’t answer, she’d worry, so I put on my happy voice. “Hi, Grandma!”
“What’s wrong?” No fooling her. “You never call me Grandma.” Everyone calls her Ruby, even her kids.
“Nothin’,” I said in a woebegone tone, and then thought, Snap out of it, Katy. So you got caught in your pj’s in front of your neighbor who has the nerve to be a delectable hunk of man-candy. Get over it already.
“I take it you’ve seen the paper. Sooner or later it was bound to happen, you know.”
Ruby is seventy-four, and for the past couple of years her friends have been dropping like flies. Every morning she checks the obits before reading the front page. If anyone she was even remotely acquainted with had passed, she calls and shares with me. I guess that makes me her grief counselor, but I draw the line at attending funerals.
“Who died?” Silence on her end. This had to be bad.
“Ruby. Who died?”
“It’s Chad.”
My official ex-husband as of one month ago. This time last year, I had been nursing him through a horrific cancer battle. The chemo-diet had shed the extra pounds he’d accumulated during the course of our seven-year marriage, so once he was back on his feet, he got a trainer, started working on his long lost abs, and the next thing I knew, Chad was moving out and in with his twenty-two-year-old trainer. And now he was dead.
For seven months, I’d been paralyzed with bitter resentment, and in that instant my anger flew out the window like it was nothing. Who knew death could feel so liberating? “So what happened?”
“The two-timin’ weasel married that bimbo, that’s what happened. It’s in the wedding announcements and I assumed you’d already seen it.”
My five-second euphoria was officially over and I felt a tantrum rearing its ugly head, but I kept my cool for Ruby’s sake. She’d loved the weasel almost as much as I had. “Wow, that was fast.”
“They’re expecting. In August.”
I furiously counted forward on my fingers. May, June, July, August. Jeez, that didn’t take long. He’d told me he wasn’t ready for babies. “I gotta go, Ruby,” I said, choking on a lump of rage.
“I’m so sorry, kiddo. I know it hurts. You know I love you.”
We hung up, and I immediately opened the paper to the local section. There it was—a photo of a beaming Chad and her, the bitch who had stolen my husband and my life.
At one in the afternoon, I was still slumped in my chair in my pajamas when someone knocked on the front door.
“Sweetie. It’s Mommy.” She peered at me through the window near the door.
I should have closed the damned shutters before going into seclusion.
“We’re worried about you. Have you eaten anything?”
Then Ruby hollered, “That jackass ain’t worth it, honey. You got your whole life ahead of you.”
“Everything okay here, ladies?” called Josh-the-creepy-Viking as he climbed the wooden porch steps.
Oh, crap. It just keeps getting better and better.
“My daughter’s had some bad news,” said Mom, “and she’s not answering her phone.”
That was because I’d been too busy diabolically plotting elaborate revenge scenarios involving buses and Chad’s rear-end to take calls. Now the three of them were looking at me through the shutter slats and Daisy was barking furiously at them, which is her job as head security guard, but they took it to mean she was telling them I was in dire jeopardy.
“Honey, I can see you in there. Please open the door,” said Mom. “I just need to make sure you’re all right. And stop biting your nails. I thought you were trying to grow them out.”
“I’m fine! And my nails are fine too!” I hollered from my chair, wishing I could hide behind it, so I could bite my damned nails in peace. “Just under the weather, that’s all. Don’t want you to catch it.” I coughed a few times for effect.
“We have to get in there,” said Ruby. “I’m psychic, and there’s no telling what she might do.”
Ruby has possessed incredible psychic powers ever since she electrocuted herself years ago while hanging outdoor Christmas lights in a drippy fog, so you’d think she’d know I hadn’t done anything desperate. The strongest medication I keep in the house is ibuprofen. She is the one with the medical marijuana card. But I had been swilling chamomile tea for hours and desperately needed to pee.
I heard the sash window in my bedroom scrape open, which set off the security alarm and put Daisy into howling mode. I bolted to the keypad by the front door to punch in the code, but totally blanked on the numbers—my birth year. Duh.
I was too busy shouting, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and pounding the keypad into submission to notice the Viking had joined me.
“Hey, Cookie,” he said, scaring the beejeebers out of me.
I screamed, jumping about a foot off the floor as he opened the door to my mother and Ruby, plus several nosy neighbors rubbernecking at the foot of the porch steps.
And then I lost my tea.
After a couple of days of hiding out to avoid embarrassing run-ins with the Viking or those other neighbors I don’t know and probably never will now that I am the neighborhood incontinent crazy lady, I decided to clean my house and get on with my pathetic life.
I gathered the newspapers for recycling, and was once again subjected to Chad’s happy and very much alive face. I resolved to be magnanimous and wish him well. Wasn’t I the grown-up one? Well, anyway I tried, but it wasn’t working for me. So I wished the baby well. That worked. Then another familiar face on a page, attached to a short piece, caught my attention.
Child-killer up for parole in July.
Phillip Hobart raped and murdered local girl Lindsay Moore in 1996.
In the late hours of May 3, 1996, Lindsay Moore, a promising fifteen-year-old sophomore at
Santa Lucia High School was brutally gang-raped by three college students at a fraternity house party. A police investigation was underway when several days later Lindsay was reported missing by her mother, Belinda Moore. Weeks later, Phil Hobart led police to Lindsay’s body. She had been kidnapped and murdered by Hobart and two other boys, Jake Werner and Erik Mason, all involved in the frat house gang-rape. Hobart was nineteen at the time and was sentenced to fifteen years to life, and will soon be eligible for parole. The parole hearing date has tentatively been set for July 13. Hobart is incarcerated at Folsom State Prison in Sacramento County.
I sat on the leather ottoman by the sofa, gazing at Lindsay’s photo while the sad, distant memory refreshed. How could someone who had committed such heinous crimes ever be up for parole, let alone this soon? Surely they wouldn’t let this happen.
Lindsay had been a cute, popular cheerleader—friendly to everyone, including geeky me. If you’re a kid and a friend your age dies, it’s hard to wrap your head around it—your first realization that you are a mere mortal. It was something I had not forgotten.
I cut out the article and put it in the desk drawer. It didn’t feel right throwing Lindsay’s story into the recycling.
TWO
Saturday, April 6
I was online paying bills when my BFF Samantha texted, Lunch? I replied, Pizza? Ten minutes later her horn honked outside.
Sam was arguing with her stepdaughter, Chelsea, through the Bluetooth speakers as I folded my 5’9” frame into her Ford Escape.
“The answer is no. Not maybe. No.”
Chelsea’s pleading voice whined, “But—”
Shaking her head, Samantha rolled her sky-blue eyes at me. “No buts. Just watch your little brother, do your homework, and I’ll be home in a couple of hours.”
“But—”
She pressed the End icon on the navigation screen before Chelsea could whine some more. “God, Katy. I’m way too young to have a teenager.” She peered into the rearview mirror and fluffed her blonde pixie cut. “Why did I marry a man eight years older than me with a kid?” She pointed to an infinitesimal frown line. “Look! I need Botox. Already. At thirty-one. She’s aging me before my time.”
Pamela Frost Dennis - Murder Blog 01 - Dead Girls Don't Blog Page 1
