Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
While Gretchen drove them back to Denton, Josie stared at the text message Edward Greathouse had forwarded her before they left the bed and breakfast. Before they’d even pulled out of the parking lot, Josie punched the information into the vehicle’s mobile data terminal.
The man who had rented a room every Thursday for months for himself and Maxine Barnes was supposedly called James Smith.
The number he’d given the B&B didn’t exist. It didn’t even belong to a burner phone.
All the excitement that had fizzed through her veins only moments earlier was gone.
Every beat of her heart felt slow and labored at the realization that another lead had turned out to be nothing. A dead end.
It was never that easy.
“There are over eleven hundred James Smiths in Pennsylvania,” Josie groused. “What if this guy is married or in a relationship and also cheating on his partner? This has to be a fake name. Why give a real name but a fake number?”
“We can’t assume the name is fake just because it’s so common,” Gretchen said. “How many of them live in this area? Did any of them previously live in or near Alden?”
“Hang on. I’ll look.”
Josie began to search. They were surging into the thick of festival traffic after crossing back into Denton when she announced, “Six, although one of them is in his eighties so I think we can eliminate him.”
Gretchen rolled to a stop behind a long line of cars. “We’re going to have to talk to all of them.”
She was right, of course. It didn’t matter that Josie was convinced they’d come up empty.
They’d developed the bed and breakfast lead, and this was the result.
They’d be negligent not to look into the James Smiths in the area.
Josie went through the addresses again until she found the one closest to where they were stuck in traffic. She punched it into Gretchen’s GPS.
While they waited for an opportunity to pull off onto a side street so they could question the first James Smith on their list, Josie went to the Camellia Society websites and searched their registries for the Crimson Bride.
Nothing. Perhaps the creator of the flower hadn’t ever registered it.
Registration wasn’t mandatory. It wasn’t like anyone kept track of the camellias or camellia hybrids that weren’t registered.
“Are we going to talk about the whole Crimson Bride thing?” Gretchen said.
“That it’s kind of a creepy name in the context of a double homicide? Or in the context of this guy trying to create the perfect family, which would start with the perfect wife?”
“Exactly that.”
Josie used her phone to scroll through her emails. “But before that, he was giving them to Maxine during their trysts. It’s less creepy in the context of a man giving them to the woman he’s dating over dinner.”
“Because he wanted her to be his bride.”
Josie shuddered. While Gretchen weaved her way out of the heaviest of the traffic, Josie located her contact at the International Camellia Society.
Knowing she likely wouldn’t reach the woman this late in the evening, Josie called and left a detailed voicemail anyway.
Then she sent a follow-up email as well with the name of the camellia they were trying to track down, asking if there was a way to get copies of pending or rejected registrations, promising to send over a warrant before morning.
It was a long shot, but if the James Smith marathon didn’t pan out, she wasn’t sure where else to go with the investigation and she couldn’t get Turner’s broken eyes out of her mind.
“Let’s go wake up some James Smiths,” Gretchen said.
Three hours later, they’d visited all five James Smiths and ruled each one of them out. The killer had clearly given the Greathouse Bed and Breakfast a fake name.
They returned to the stationhouse to complete some paperwork. Noah came in so both of them could go home to get a few hours of sleep. Josie managed to get four solid hours in before Noah called her.
“I’ve got something,” he said when she answered, not bothering with pleasantries or small talk. That was how she knew whatever they had was big.
“Tell me,” she said, stumbling out of bed and yanking a work shirt from her closet.
“Your contact from the Camellia Society called to let us know she’d be sending over the information you requested.
I had her email it to me. The Crimson Bride was hybridized by a woman named Reina Torres.
The application was submitted two years ago but hasn’t yet been approved.
According to the information she provided, she’s associated with the Liora Blossom Nursery and Garden Center. It’s ten miles east of Alden.”