Chapter 63
SIXTY-THREE
Ellie combed through Nina Gillis’s bedroom. Typical teenager furnishings. Poster of a rock star on the wall. Also ones of ballet dancers.
Then ones of her dance team. All smiling, happy photos.
“She loved dance,” Nina’s mother said softly. “But when she didn’t land a part in The Nutcracker, she got disillusioned with it and quit. And then the depression hit…” Pain and grief laced the woman’s voice.
Ellie opened the closet door and glanced inside. Sneakers, T-shirts, jeans, lots of colors. Again, everything told the story of a cheerful happy girl.
Although she’d suffered from depression.
She thought of Minnie and her pregnancy and the way her family and friend had described her as being shy. Yet she’d turned up pregnant as a young teen. From an alleged sexual assault.
Had something else traumatic happened to Nina to trigger her serious depression? Perhaps forced, non-consensual sex?
“Yolette, think back. Do you recall if something happened to Nina before or after she quit dance? Had she changed?”
“What do you mean changed?”
Ellie shrugged. “Something that drove her to join that other crowd?”
“Like what?”
“Problems at school? A falling out with a friend? Relationship with a boy or a man?”
Yolette ran her fingers over a framed picture of a younger Nina dressed in a costume as Annie when she was small. “I don’t know. She became moody and slept a lot. We worried about her, so my husband and I took her to a counselor.”
Ellie contemplated that. “How did that go?”
“At first it was okay. I thought she was improving, but then one day she came home crying, and she locked herself in her room and wouldn’t come out.”
“Did she mention if anything happened during the session?”
Yolette shook her head, but a pained look crossed her face. “No, but she was never the same.”
“After that, how long was it until you discovered she was pregnant?”
Yolette dropped her fingers from the photograph, her eyes tormented. “About four months,” she said. “She spiraled even more. I urged her to continue counseling, but she refused. But she did try to kick the alcohol and weed because she was afraid she’d already damaged the baby, so she joined AA.”
Minnie had attended AA.
“I’d like the name of the counselor,” Ellie asked. Prying information from a professional mental health counselor would be near impossible, so she’d see if she could obtain a warrant first.
If Nina was getting clean because she was worried about the baby, it didn’t make sense that she’d kill herself and the child.
In Ellie’s mind, that alone would have raised a question about suicide, something the local law, Deputy Rouse, hadn’t pursued.
Because he’d wanted to tie up the case so quickly.
But if Nina had been murdered as Ellie suspected, her killer might have killed her to keep her quiet.
Ellie glanced through the girl’s closet but didn’t see anything helpful, just typical teenage clothing. She checked a shoebox on top of the shelf. Inside, she found birthday and Christmas cards her parents had given her.
Ellie’s heart squeezed at the box of memories, ones Nina had treasured enough to keep.
“I’ve looked through her things a dozen times, although I couldn’t bear to read things at the time,” Yolette murmured, her voice trembling with tears.
Ellie wanted to hug the woman. “You don’t have to,” Ellie said gently. “Did the police search in here?”
Yolette shook her head. “Not really. The former sheriff simply ruled it a suicide and said Nina’s suicide note confirmed it. Then he closed the case.”
Ellie bit her tongue at the man’s incompetence. He should have asked more questions.
“I need a minute.” Yolette hurried from the room, wiping at her damp cheeks.
Sympathy for Yolette filled Ellie. Gathering her own emotions, she decided to check the girl’s desk. The top drawer held pens, sticky notes and a spiral notebook filled with doodle drawings of animals.
Next, she searched the lower drawers. A few school project papers, mostly graded with As and Bs, although the later dated ones revealed her grades had definitely slipped. That might have been around the time she started drinking.
Ellie accidentally knocked a pen off the top of the desk, and it rolled under the bed. She bent to retrieve it and noticed a small shoebox on the floor. Curious, she pulled it out then thumbed through it.
Inside she found another notepad with pages of thoughts Nina had recorded, each dated.
Her breath caught as she skimmed them.
That Friday night my life changed forever.
I hate him so much for what he did to me.
I feel like my chest is going to explode sometimes.
I can’t sleep for seeing his face. For remembering the way he touched me.
The way he held me down… His breath on my cheek.
His voice telling me he liked it when I fought.
Except I couldn’t fight because he drugged me.
I want to tell somebody but I’m too ashamed. My mother works hard and my daddy’s been sick for a while, and it would hurt them to know what he did.
So I have to stay quiet. If I tell, he’ll kill me and my family.