Chapter 7 #2
She ran her nose up the column of his spine, inhaling the scent of fabric softener and him.
It was on the tip of her tongue to argue that Wren’s childhood hadn’t been normal either except that he was right.
Wren had had two stable, loving parents.
Not at the same time but they had been there.
By all accounts, her upbringing with her mother and then Dex had been happy and filled with healthy attachments.
Noah’s hands busied again. He didn’t wait for her to argue or agree. “‘Can’t’ can mean because something embarrassing happened, or talking about it is too painful because her old school is one of the last places she felt normal before Dex died. It doesn’t have to be anything terrible.”
Josie let that sink in. “Okay. I won’t worry about it. Much.”
“Look at us, talking about our feelings,” he said, a playful note in his voice.
“Who even are we?” she replied.
In the months after Noah’s abduction, he’d used sex as a way to avoid processing his trauma.
While Josie wasn’t complaining about the physical aspect, she knew he was never going to get better if he didn’t deal with what had happened to him emotionally.
Things were still passionate between them but they were, in fact, talking a lot more lately.
An easy silence fell between them. Josie stayed pressed to her husband, feeling his body move in her arms as he cooked, taking in the sounds and scents.
It was such a lovely, quiet domestic moment.
The kind she’d come to crave, especially when their jobs were often a front row seat to human depravity so profound, it felt like a living nightmare.
Images of Haven Barnes’s battered body flashed across her mind, interspersed with memories of the happy photos the girl had shared on social media only hours before her death.
She’d fought so hard and been brutalized for it.
As a rule, Josie spent as little time as possible thinking about Turner, but she couldn’t get the look on his face out of her mind.
The way his jaw clenched at the same time that his eyes went soft with fear right before he’d walked out of the tent.
“It was so bad, Noah,” she whispered, turning her head to rest her cheek between his shoulder blades again. “What happened to that girl.”
Clearing his throat, he turned the conversation to more practical matters. “Did you get anything from the other campers?”
“Glampers.” Reluctantly, Josie released him and returned to her seat at the table.
“And no, nothing of any use. Someone in the tent next to them thought she heard some weird noises, like a loud rustling and some thumps, grunting and possibly a man’s voice around two in the morning.
She said he sounded angry but couldn’t make out his words.
She just figured someone in another tent was arguing.
No one saw anyone who raised any alarms during the night.
We went through the list of all the other glampers.
No criminal records. There are twenty-four tents and all occupants were interviewed. Nothing.”
“Cameras?”
“Not in any of the camping areas. Only at the entrances and exits of the festival grounds. We found video of Haven and Maxine leaving around ten thirty, just as the witness, Alvarado, said. No one followed them. An initial perusal of their phones didn’t turn anything up besides weeks of angry, combative text messages from Maxine’s husband, Charles.
They were separated. It wasn’t amicable. ”
It also explained the strained look on Maxine Barnes’s face in some of the photos her daughter had taken.
Perhaps glamping at the festival instead of driving back and forth each day had served as an opportunity for them to leave their tense home situation behind. A fun little mother–daughter escape.
“Does Charles Barnes have an alibi?” asked Noah.
“Don’t know. We didn’t get that far. Anya said she’ll have the autopsies done tomorrow. When Charles moved out, he rented a place in Fauset County. Anya will reach out to the ME’s office there so they can give the death notification. Once that’s done, we’ll talk with him.”
Noah turned the heat down under the chicken and then the vegetables. “Did you get anywhere with the flowers?”
“We had a couple of guys canvass vendors at the festival but no one there is selling camellias. Nobody recognized the flower.” Josie’s gaze dropped to her laptop screen.
“That’s what I’ve been researching. I think Hummel was right, they’re camellias, but this is easily one of the deepest internet rabbit holes I’ve ever been in.
There is an actual International Camellia Society. It has a registry. A registry!”
Maybe this was common with flowers. Josie had no idea, but the amount of information was overwhelming to say the least.
“A registry for what?” asked Noah.
“All the different kinds of camellias. There are over two thousand of them. People apparently come up with new kinds all the time. They have different names and some of them are trademarked.”
“Who knew?” He turned the heat under the pot all the way off and fished the bag of rice from it. “Did you find the kind left at the scene?”
She shook her head, clicking through more photos of camellias.
“No. I tried several reverse image searches, but none came up that look exactly like them. There are a few that are as dark as the ones found at the scene, but they’re not shaped the same and they definitely don’t have the white edges.
Also, camellias don’t bloom in the summer.
Never have until recently. There are a few hybrids where they were crossbred with azaleas and peonies to be able to bloom in summer. ”
“So they’re rare. If you narrow those summer-blooming camellia hybrids down, who grows them, where they’re sold, maybe you can find this guy that way.”
“If I can find the damn flower and its name then yeah, I’ll do that.
In the meantime, Conlen and Brennan are visiting every nursery in the city limits and within ten miles out, showing photographs of the flowers to see if anyone sells them or at least recognizes them.
Anyway, pretty much every red flower symbolizes love, devotion, passion, romance, those sorts of things. ”
Noah dumped the rice into a bowl, yanking a hand back as the steam shot into the air. “Kind of a weird message to leave with mother and daughter.”
“Exactly.” Josie entered camellia symbolism into her browser.
After skimming five different websites, she blew out a lengthy sigh.
“It looks like pink camellias mean longing or yearning. The white ones can mean purity or just that the person you’re giving it to is adorable.
The red ones are for passion and can also mean—oh wow—‘you’re a flame in my heart. ’”
Noah quirked a brow. “Is it an internet decree that we must all abide by that symbolism?”
Josie laughed. “No. There’s this whole Victorian language of flowers thing where people used flowers to send secret messages to one another. Floriography.”
“That’s an -ography I’ve never heard before,” Noah remarked. “Are floriographists a thing, or do we need to talk to a professor of Victorian literature? A historian? Botanist? Maybe a horticulturist?”
Josie groaned. She was sick of reading about flowers and their symbology.
What she needed was actual evidence. “I don’t know.
All of them? Definitely a camellia expert who might be able to identify the type.
I just have to find one. I’m also going to enter this into NCIC to see if any matches come up. ”
The National Crime Information Center was a database maintained by the FBI that indexed criminal information nationwide.
If someone else had left flowers at a crime scene similar to theirs, her search would turn it up.
Assuming that all agencies who’d processed such a scene entered the case evidence into the NCIC.
Entering information into it was voluntary.
As Noah found three plates in one of the cabinets, both their cell phones rang with notifications from the security camera at their front door.
Before either of them had time to check the footage, they heard the front door open.
Trout’s nails clicked along the hardwood floors that led from the foyer to the kitchen.
His tail was little more than a stub, so when he got excited his whole ass wagged, like it did the moment he crossed the threshold and found Josie and Noah in the kitchen.
It was like he couldn’t decide what to focus on first—Mom, Dad, or the all-important smell of food.
Wren breezed in while Trout ran back and forth between Josie and Noah for pets and kisses. “You’re up,” she said to Noah, giving him a smile and a mock salute.
“I told you I’d cook.”
Wren walked over to the stove and peered down into the pan of chicken with a frown. “You said you were making chicken cutlets.”
“I am,” he replied.
Josie watched the exchange with far more interest than she’d like to admit. She enjoyed the way Wren was becoming increasingly comfortable with them. Enough to let more of her personality come out.
Slowly, Wren scanned the countertops, stopping on a can of breadcrumbs, an empty bowl, and a carton of eggs Noah had left out what felt like hours ago.
Noah groaned when he realized what Wren was fixated on. “I forgot to do the breading.”
Wren grinned. “This means I won.”
Waggling a finger at her, Noah said, “Oh no. No way. That’s not how this works.”
Everything in their house had become a competition.
Josie blamed it on Harris. Turning things into a game was an easy way to get him to do whatever they needed him to do.
Then when Misty started giving Josie and Noah cooking lessons, they turned that into a competition as well.
They both hated cooking but competing incentivized them.
Since Wren’s arrival, making ordinary things into contests had helped them draw her out and learn more about her.
Or maybe the three of them were just ridiculously competitive by nature.
“Josie,” Wren said, ignoring Noah altogether. “Remember the chicken cutlets I made last weekend with the parmesan breading?”
“Yeah,” Josie said, her mouth watering at the memory. “They were excellent.”
Noah’s head whipped in her direction. “Traitor,” he hissed with mock indignation.
Trout barked, likely volunteering to judge Noah’s cutlets and anything else that would fit into his stomach.
Wren pointed at Noah’s cutlets. “No way are these plain, naked cutlets going to top mine. I’ll expect a bag of wild berry Skittles by the end of the week.”
Trout barked again.
“This system is rigged,” Noah groused, but the moment Wren turned her back, he gave Josie the biggest, goofiest smile she’d seen on him in a long, long time. Then he mouthed, Progress!
Her answering grin was instant. Josie snapped her laptop closed and pushed it aside. There was something stirring in her stomach. A fizzy, bubbly feeling. It was warm and sweet and made her limbs feel loose and relaxed.
The three of them sat down to eat. Josie shoveled food into her mouth while Noah and Wren argued about which was superior: Gummy Bears or Skittles. After a few moments, she realized the thing in her stomach was contentment, and whatever passed for it before had nothing on her present.