Read Online Little Lost Angel by Michael Quinlan - Free Book Online Page A

Shanda had transferred to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Melinda was obsessed with the thought that Shandaand Amanda were still sneaking around behind her back. She often told Laurie that she wanted to beat up Shanda, and sometimes she said she wanted her rival dead.
    *  *  *
    On January 8, 1992, Laurie called Melinda and invited her to a hardcore concert in Louisville that Friday night. Hardcore was the rough-edged stepchild of punk and heavy metal music, and there were plenty of young local bands playing this new sound. Melinda called some of her friends to see if they wanted to come along, but they’d heard about Laurie’s reputation and none of them were eager to spend the evening with her. Melinda called Laurie back the following night and said she’d go, but on one condition: She wanted the evening to include a trip to Shanda’s house.
    She told Laurie that she needed her help in a plan she’d concocted to lure Shanda out of her house. Laurie played along, saying she’d do whatever Melinda wanted. Melinda said she wanted to kill Shanda and Laurie coldly agreed that it could be done. Then Laurie told Melinda that she’d already asked two girls from Madison to come with them that night. Melinda asked if they would go along with the plan to get Shanda, and Laurie assured her that it wasn’t a problem.
    Actually it was a problem. Laurie was sure that one of the girls, Toni Lawrence, wouldn’t go if she knew about the plot against Shanda. Too much like the preppy kids at school who had ridiculed her, Toni was too skittish for Laurie’s liking. The other girl, Hope Rippey, was a different story. Laurie held considerable sway over Hope, and she knew that Hope, who’d been in a number of fights herself, was game for anything and wouldn’t shy away from a little terrorism.
    Now that the Leatherburys lived in Louisville, fifteen-year-old Hope was Laurie’s closest friend in Madison. They’d met in grade school and formed an immediate kinship. While other youngsters were ridiculing Laurie’s strange ways, Hope was always there to lend a sympathetic ear, particularly when Laurie was going through her problems with her mother.
    Hope also had her share of family problems. After years of heated arguments, Hope’s parents had divorced when shewas seven. The couple’s oldest son, John, stayed with his father, Carl Rippey, who worked as an engineer at the Clifty Falls Power Plant in Madison. The three other children—Dan, Tina, and Hope, the youngest—moved to Michigan with their mother, Gloria.
    Three years after the divorce Carl and Gloria decided to get back together for the good of the children. They never remarried, but they made a pact that they would no longer argue in front of the children. However there were still times when the home—a two-story frame house near the railroad tracks in west Madison—was rocked by violence. The two Rippey boys, John and Dan, had developed a rivalry that would often result in fistfights in front of Hope and the rest of the family.
    “John was bigger and would beat Dan up,” Carl Rippey recalled. “I allowed them to fight it out because I knew John would not hurt him badly. When Dan said ‘uncle’ the fight would stop.”
    The rough atmosphere of the Rippey home rubbed off on Hope, and she developed her own feistiness. When she was in junior high she organized a student walkout over a school policy she disagreed with. While the stunt irritated her teachers, it made her popular with the more rebellious students.
    Hope, a medium-sized brunette with an earthy attractiveness, played basketball, ran track, and was in the school band in junior high, but she gave up all three pursuits after entering Madison Consolidated High School. As for the sports, it was probably a practical decision. She wasn’t an outstanding athlete, and she realized she would have had difficulty competing at a higher level.
    The decision to give up her formal music training, however, was unfortunate