Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
The words on Josie’s computer screen blurred before her eyes.
She leaned back in her chair and blinked a few times.
It had been a day since she and Turner spoke with Dr. Jones.
They’d run down so many leads and talked with so many people she could barely keep up with all the paperwork.
Naturally, Turner was no help. He continued to brood, and Josie wasn’t sure if she preferred that or his normal irritating douchebaggery.
Regardless, she’d never been so grateful to have an upcoming shift with Gretchen.
For now, she found herself alone in the great room on the second floor of the Denton PD headquarters.
It was a big, open area filled with desks that could be used by patrol officers to write reports.
Only five of the desks were assigned. One was for their press liaison, Amber Watts, and the other four belonged to Josie, Noah, Turner and Gretchen.
They’d been pushed together to form a rectangle that gave the feeling of sitting around a table with one another.
The Chief’s office was just off the great room and, blessedly, it was empty at the moment.
The stairwell door whooshed open, and Noah walked in carrying two paper coffee cups from their favorite café, Komorrah’s Koffee.
As he approached, she noticed the dirt on his boots and jeans and the sweat stains in the armpits of his Denton PD polo shirt.
His dark hair was flat instead of tousled, like it got when he’d been working out.
He placed a cup on her desk. “Blonde latte.”
“Thank you.” She smiled but then the stench hit her. Waving a hand in front of her face, she asked, “Why do you smell like manure and moldy hay?”
Lifting the collar of his shirt to his nose, Noah made a face of disgust. “Didn’t realize it was that strong.”
The door opened again, and Gretchen strode through it. She, too, had two Komorrah’s cups in her hand. Freezing in the middle of the room, she glanced around, zeroing in on Turner’s empty desk. A slow grin spread across her face.
“Well. This is going to be a very good night.” She passed by Noah and wrinkled her nose. “You stink.”
Josie took the cup that Gretchen offered and thanked her. Her mouth watered at the prospect of two blonde lattes. Then she looked back and forth between them and frowned. “Wait. Were you both at the coffee shop at the same time? Are these competing lattes?”
“He can’t compete with me,” Gretchen said.
“Bullshit,” Noah shot back with a smile.
Making a face of disgust, Gretchen said, “Wait. You were the fart that was lingering at the Komorrah’s counter?”
Josie nearly spit a mouthful of latte across her desk as laughter bubbled up from her chest.
“It’s not that bad.”
“It’s that bad,” Gretchen said.
Josie wiped a drop of latte that had dribbled down her chin. “What happened?”
Noah ran his fingers through his damp locks.
“I was at the festival for a sexual assault call that turned out to be just a couple of college students doing it—consensually—in the field behind the cowpie bingo grid when two of the cows got loose. It was an all-hands-on-deck situation, unfortunately. You’ll be happy to know that Milkshake and Moo-rey Poppins are safe and back in their bingo grid. No injuries.”
Josie laughed again. Then she saw Gretchen, paused halfway to her desk, mouth hanging open, and laughed some more.
“That’s a lot to unpack,” said Gretchen.
Unlike Josie and Noah, Gretchen hadn’t grown up in Denton.
She’d been raised in a more urban area of Pennsylvania before following her husband to Seattle.
When he passed away, she moved back and had spent fifteen years on Philadelphia’s homicide squad before joining Denton PD.
She wasn’t familiar with some of rural Pennsylvania’s customs.
Noah grinned. “Well, I’m gonna leave it to Josie to explain cowpie bingo. I need a shower, and Wren will be home in an hour.”
“I’d kiss you,” Josie said. “But no.”
“Raincheck,” Noah said over his shoulder just before he disappeared into the stairwell.
Gretchen dropped into her desk chair and adjusted the reading glasses nestled in her short, spiky brown and gray hair. “I’m not sure I want to know. Where are things with the Barnes case?”
Josie sipped at one of the lattes, savoring the warmth as it slid down her throat.
Her body hummed in anticipation of the much-needed caffeine hit.
“The short answer? Nowhere. The long answer? Let’s see.
Two of Maxine Barnes’s former coworkers also told us that she thought she was being stalked but they never saw any evidence of it.
One of them thought she might be using drugs. ”
“Just like the doctor thought.”
“Yes. Turner and I went over phone, social media, and email records again. We executed a warrant on her home. Talked to her husband again. There was nothing to indicate a stalker. In the meantime, I put in calls to someone at the American Camellia Society, the International Camellia Society, a local botanist, and a local horticulturist about these flowers. No return calls yet.”
“What about the husband’s phone?”
“Still waiting on those records.” If Dr. Jones’s theory about Charles being Maxine’s stalker was correct, perhaps they’d find some evidence there.
Gretchen sighed. “How about the daughter? Any leads there?”
“She broke up with her boyfriend in June. He said it was amicable.”
“Alibi?”
Josie nodded. “He was on vacation with his family in the Outer Banks. I got in touch with several of her friends using her contact list, text and call history, and social media platforms. None of them knew of anyone Haven was having problems with besides her dad. No evidence of any harassment on social media platforms. She hadn’t expressed any fear of a stalker or unusual feelings of being followed or anything like that.
Didn’t mention ever seeing or hearing about her mother being stalked. ”
The murders could have been random, committed by someone who had seen the mother and daughter at the festival and followed them, but they had to exhaust every avenue of investigation and, in most cases, the best place to start was with the victims’ personal lives.
Gretchen’s desk phone rang and she snatched it up, barking “Palmer” into the receiver. Josie could tell by the way her shoulders pulled taut that she didn’t like what she heard. After hanging up, she snatched her keys from her desk. “We’ve got a potential missing persons case.”
Josie was on her feet already, the grimace on Gretchen’s face setting off alarm bells in her brain. “What kind of missing persons case?”
“A mother and her teenage daughter.”