Chapter 3
THREE
Josie stabbed at the icon that controlled the air conditioning in her SUV until it was on its highest setting.
Air roared through the vents, but it didn’t feel as cool as it had when she had been driving Wren home earlier.
Or maybe the suffocating July heat was just that bad.
She and Turner had only spent a few minutes outside—long enough to ask a festival worker for directions—and sweat was already rolling down her back, pooling uncomfortably at the base of her spine.
She glanced over at the passenger’s seat.
The only indication that the heat was getting to Turner was the fact that he’d taken his suit jacket off, leaving him in a white, long-sleeved dress shirt and blue tie.
He wore suits every day, like he was headed to court to give testimony.
Didn’t matter what the weather conditions were or if they had to tromp through a mile of horseshit. She’d never seen him in anything else.
“Did that kid just say ‘glamping?’” Turner asked. “What the hell is glamping?”
Josie drove along a service road on the fringe of the festival grounds, following waist-high orange barriers that separated the road from a parking lot jam-packed with vehicles.
“It’s glamorous camping,” she muttered. “Like camping, only… fancy. I think.”
Turner said, “I don’t even know what that means.”
By the time Josie had arrived at the stationhouse, a call had already come in from one of their patrol units requesting detectives at the festival camping area. Two females. Unresponsive.
“Trinity and her fiancé, Drake, spent a weekend glamping in Vermont last year. They loved it.”
“Huh,” was all he said. “I didn’t peg your sister for a camping enthusiast.”
Beyond the parking lot, Josie spied a grassy area filled with RVs. “She’s not. Thus, the glamping. It was a tent but they had electricity and a private bathroom.”
Josie’s twin sister, Trinity Payne, was a journalist who’d spent years anchoring a national network morning program before starting her own show, Unsolved Crimes with Trinity Payne.
In a strange twist of fate that often made Josie’s stomach turn, Turner and Trinity had known each other long before he joined Denton PD.
To this day, neither of them would disclose the exact nature of their connection except to assure her that it hadn’t been romantic.
Normally, she wouldn’t care except that Trinity liked Kyle Turner.
Respected him. Claimed that the douchebag Josie had described working with for months was nothing like the man she knew.
The man she met when she interviewed him on national television about a big case he’d solved involving the murders of several high-end escorts in his old jurisdiction.
“Electricity and private bathrooms?” Turner echoed. “Why not just get a hotel?”
Josie pulled at the collar of her polo shirt, separating the fabric from her sweat-soaked skin while simultaneously leaning toward one of the AC vents. “I don’t know, Turner. I didn’t invent it. I’m just telling you what it is.”
“Testy,” he observed. “What’s going on with you? Problems with your new kid?”
The air was definitely lukewarm. She wasn’t imagining it. Just what she needed. “You sure you want to go there, Turner?”
She looked over just in time to see his smirk disappear.
The lines around his deep-set blue eyes crinkled.
One of his large hands tugged at his goatee.
That was his nervous tic. Satisfaction unfurled in her stomach.
It was rare to knock him off-balance, so Josie made sure to enjoy it when it happened.
“Thought so,” she gloated. It felt good. Even if she was also sweating like it was her job.
When he didn’t speak for a whole minute, she couldn’t resist poking him. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”
He shot her a dirty look. “Goad all you want. I’m not talking about my daughter.”
A few weeks ago, his teenage daughter, Cassidy, had burst into the great room at the stationhouse, looking for him. He hadn’t been there.
I’m here to see my dad… Kyle Turner… he’s six four, crazy curly hair, always wears a suit. Total asshole.
Josie and Gretchen had been so shocked they hadn’t had the wherewithal to ask her questions.
Until that moment, they knew absolutely nothing about Turner’s personal life.
He never talked about it, and they never asked.
He’d never worn a wedding ring. Josie just assumed he was single.
She would have predicted a very disgruntled ex-wife—or two or three—in his past but never children.
She’d been burning up with curiosity ever since.
Or maybe she just liked having something to pester him with.
“Come on, Turner,” she said, aiming another one of the AC vents at her face. “How many kids do you have?”
No response.
“Just the one then?”
One of his eyelids twitched. He ignored her.
“What’s the big deal?” Josie sighed. “Lots of people have kids.”
“Lots of people don’t talk about their kids,” he said tersely.
“Is the reason you don’t want to talk about your daughter because she doesn’t like you?”
“Nobody likes me,” he said flatly. The lack of playfulness in his tone gave her pause. Normally, he owned his lousy personality and smorgasbord of annoying traits. Reveled in them. Celebrated them, even.
She was going to throw out a comment about how it was his fault no one liked him but then he pulled at his beard again.
Hard. He was serious. She hadn’t witnessed him being serious very often.
As much as he drove her to madness, seeing him so un-Turner-like was disconcerting.
She wasn’t sure she liked it, which was ridiculous, but the last year of her life had been so tumultuous that it was comforting to know at least one thing was unchanging.
Dependable. Even if that thing gave her headaches, indigestion, and strangely moist dollar bills.
It was a weird time in her life.
The rows of RVs on the other side of the barrier ended, giving way to grassy areas packed with small tents.
Every hotel in Denton was booked solid, and it was far less expensive to stay on the festival grounds, especially if you used the campsite area.
Josie decided to end Turner’s suffering.
Surely, that made her the better person.
It wasn’t because she felt sorry for him.
Not at all. “How about you?” she asked. “You like camping?”
He cocked his head, studying her. The hint of a smirk curled the corners of his mouth and Josie felt a strange sense of relief. He said, “Do I seem like the kind of guy who likes camping?”
She made a show of taking in his incomplete suit from head to toe—well, as much as she could scan while he was seated in her car. “Since there are no dry cleaners, I’m gonna say no.”
“Do glampers or whatever the hell you call them have dry cleaners?”
Josie couldn’t stop the laugh that burst from her mouth even though she instantly hated the pleased expression it produced on Turner’s face.
“I think that’s a little much,” she told him. “Even for glamping.”
“Well…” He used his forearm to wipe at the sweat on his brow, leaving a damp spot on his sleeve. So the AC was underperforming. “That’s bullshit.”
Ahead, Josie could see where the camping area ended.
If it wasn’t obvious, at the next break in the barriers were two wooden signs adorned with flowers and fairy lights shaped like hot air balloons that proudly announced: “Welcome to the Balloons and Tunes Glamping Retreat.” This area was not public land.
A few years earlier, one of the local farms, whose property sat adjacent to the festival grounds, had opened this glamping retreat.
Reservations were available almost year-round.
Clearly, they’d made some modifications in their signage to match the theme of the festival.
Josie turned at the sign, bouncing a little in her seat as the lane winding through the center of the “retreat” was packed dirt, pocked with ruts and holes.
On either side were rows of huge, cream-colored canvas tents fitted atop wooden platforms. Unlike the RV and camping areas, which were tightly packed, the glamping tents were spaced well apart from one another with at least twelve feet in every direction, plus room for a vehicle to park alongside them.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Turner said. “Those things are bigger than my damn apartment.”
Turner was right. They were quite large.
Josie didn’t know the standard sizes of glamping tents, but she’d guess these were roughly twenty feet by twenty feet.
Although Josie liked neither camping nor glamping, she knew enough from listening to her sister drone on about both that these were bell tents.
They were cone-shaped. Their roofs were held up by a single pole in the center of the structure.
On the exterior, guy lines extended from the edges of the canvas, pulling the material taut.
Each tent had a small awning that extended over two wooden steps.
There were more cutesy wooden signs standing at the entrances to the tents, adorned with artificial flowers and more solar-powered balloon fairy lights.
A different word had been stenciled on each sign: Mirth, Cheer, Delight.
“What’s with these weird-ass signs?” Turner said. He pointed at the next one. “Does that really say ‘whimsy?’”
Josie slowed the car. “It really does.”
“Were the owners of this place high when they came up with this crap?”
Ignoring him, Josie searched for any sign of their colleagues.
All she saw were tent occupants peeking from behind their unzipped doorways.
Other glampers stood out front of their temporary lodgings, murmuring among themselves.
Their faces were lined with worry, their bodies stiff with tension.
They must be getting close. Turner still seemed fixated on the signs in front of the tents they passed. Bliss, Joy, Magic, Charm.
Ahead on their right, one of their patrol officers, Conlen, emerged from a dirt crossroad and waved them over. Josie made the turn only to pull to a stop in front of a Denton cruiser parked sideways to block vehicular traffic.
Josie left her SUV there, locking it up once she and Turner joined Conlen. “Follow me,” he said brusquely. “Decedents are in the Jubilation tent.”
As they walked, Turner shortened his strides to keep pace with Josie. “Jubilation? Are you kidding me?”
“Wish I was,” Conlen muttered.
Along this lane, more glampers gathered on the front steps of their tents, looking wary and afraid.
“It’s two hundred degrees out here,” Turner complained. “And this has got to be some kind of record for humidity. Why would anyone want to stay in one of these things?”
“Each one is outfitted with a portable AC unit,” Conlen said.
Turner shook his head. “AC units, electricity. In tents. But no security cameras.”
“We’re in semi-rural Pennsylvania,” Josie said. “At a campsite.”
“A glorified campsite,” Turner corrected. “Again, I ask: why not get a hotel?”
Both Josie and Conlen ignored him.
“These things just zip up?” Turner asked, falling a few steps behind. “That’s it? That’s how you get in and out?”
“That’s how tents work,” Conlen said over his shoulder.
Finally, Officer Dougherty came into view, standing outside a strip of crime scene tape in front of the tent marked Jubilation. He held a clipboard so he could record everyone who entered and exited the perimeter.
“Thanks, smartass,” Turner groused. “I didn’t realize. My point is they’re not very secure.”
“Also how tents work,” Josie said but she knew what he was getting at—all that stood between a tent’s occupants and someone who wanted to harm them were two flaps of canvas and a zipper. It was one of the many reasons she disliked camping.
“Is there a Pain in the Ass tent?” Turner snapped. “If there’s not, maybe they could name one in your honor.”
Josie quirked a brow at him. “That’s going to cost you a dollar.”
“Bullshit.”
From several feet away, Josie caught the unmistakable odor of decomposition. Even with a portable air-conditioning unit, she was willing to bet it was warm enough in the tent to accelerate the process. “The two females were deceased when responders arrived? Or rescue efforts didn’t work?”
“No rescue efforts,” Conlen answered. “They were already deceased, probably for a few hours.”
“Signs of trauma?” Josie asked.
“None that myself or Dougherty could see. It looks like they died in their sleep but, uh, the scene is a little weird.”
With both hands, Josie swiped at the sweat that dripped from her temples. “What makes you say that?”
Conlen’s eyes darted around them to the people watching. He lowered his voice. “There are a bunch of flowers scattered everywhere.”
“How many flowers are we talking about?’” asked Turner.
“On the floor? Not sure,” Conlen shrugged. “At least a dozen. The two females are in their beds, sheets pulled over them. Between the two beds, the flowers are just laying all over the place. But that’s not the weirdest part.”
“What’s the weirdest part?” Turner said.
Conlen gave a small shudder despite the fact that perspiration beaded along his hairline and upper lip. “A single flower was placed on each of their chests.”
Somewhere in the back of Josie’s heat-addled mind, a red flag went up. “Were they holding the flowers?”
In other words, had someone arranged their bodies, or just put the flowers on top of them?
“Nah. They were just there,” Conlen said. “Kind of like the way people put flowers on top of caskets at funerals. They were crazy-looking.”
“In what way?” Josie asked.
“They’re such a dark red they almost look black, but the edges are white. If they weren’t so damn creepy, they’d be pretty cool.”
Before she could interrogate him further about the flowers, Turner said, “Do we know anything about the victims?”
Conlen dragged a hand down his damp face. “According to the reservation and a couple of witnesses who had contact with them here, they are Maxine Barnes, thirty-seven years old, and Haven Barnes, seventeen years old. Mother and daughter.”