“You hybridized it yourself?” asked Josie.
She nodded. “Yeah, I went to school for horticulture. Finished before Mom passed away. I’ve come up with a few different hybrids, but that’s my favorite one. She wasn’t around to see it, unfortunately.”
“Any significance to the name?” Noah said.
There was a wince, so small and quick that Josie almost missed it. Reina recovered quickly, pasting on a bright smile, but the knuckles of her fingers, intertwined with her husband’s, were white. “No,” she said. “No significance. I just thought it was a cool name. Especially with the white edging.”
“Do they have a particular meaning? I’ve had a bit of a crash course in floriography lately.” Josie laughed, hoping to get Reina to relax a little.
“Floriography,” Reina smiled. “We know all about that. Most nursery owners and florists I know are familiar with it. My dad used to study the meanings behind everything in this place from Victorian to modern times. He used to leave my mom little bouquets of flowers with sappy meanings.”
“Tussie-mussies,” Josie said, remembering the term Dustin Emmer had used.
“Oh God, I haven’t heard that in ages!” Reina chuckled.
“Did your Crimson Bride have a particular meaning?” Josie asked again, circling back to her original question.
Reina’s features immediately tensed again. “No, no particular meaning. Whatever camellias mean, I suppose.”
Noah looked around as if he might see some. “Do you sell them here?”
“We have some, yes,” Reina said. “Shrubs. Camellias are actually evergreen shrubs that flower.”
Josie nodded. She’d learned that during her deep dive into camellias. “Do you keep a record of sales of those shrubs?”
Milo gave his wife’s hand a squeeze as he addressed them. “What do you want to know? I can probably look up how many we’ve sold this summer and when. The issue is that we’ve been selling them for a couple of years now. Since they’re shrubs, anyone who bought one, took it home, planted it, and cared for it right would have Crimson Brides in their yard.”
It was exactly what Josie was afraid of—that the killer simply had his own shrub at home which he could have gotten at any time in the last two years. It didn’t matter that they’d found the person who had created the Crimson Bride if they couldn’t use that information to help rescue Dani and Cassidy.
“We understand that,” Noah said. “What about information on sales going as far back as your records go?”
Milo’s brows were still drawn together. “I guess we can see what we’ve got. If you’re looking for the names of people who’ve bought the Crimson Bride, we might be able to look it up if they used credit cards. Those things will take time and don’t you…shouldn’t you have a warrant?”
“We can get warrants, yes,” Noah said. “But a teenage girl and her mother are missing and every minute counts. The longerthey’re gone, the less chance there is that we’ll be able to bring them back alive. We were hoping you could at least answer a few of our questions now.”
Milo pulled his wife closer until she was pressed against his side. His body was rigid, the muscles under his shirt pulled taut. It was the posture of someone who was ready to shield his wife at a moment’s notice. “What questions?”
First, Josie showed them the photos of Maxine and Haven. No recognition. Their names didn’t register either. Next, were photos of Dani and Cassidy. The couple hadn’t seen them or heard of them either. The still photos of the killer from Dani’s home security footage were the only ones to provoke a reaction, and it was so minute that Josie would have missed it if she hadn’t been paying such close attention. Milo’s eyes widened just slightly before he seemed to catch himself, smoothing over his expression. Still, like his wife, he denied that he knew the man in the pictures.
He said, “You think that whoever committed those crimes got the flowers from here?”
“Is there somewhere else he could have bought them?” Josie asked.
Husband and wife looked at one another. Then Reina slumped against her husband’s side. “This is the only place they’re available for purchase. The Crimson Bride is a hybrid which makes it unique and rare, especially since it blooms in summer, but there’s not a huge demand for summer-blooming hybrid camellias, believe it or not.”
Milo’s fingers squeezed his wife’s bare shoulder. “Not yet.”
“Would you know if any of your employees had taken some or purchased some?”
Reina sounded skeptical. “One of our employees?”
“We’d like a list of them as well, if you wouldn’t mind,” Josie said. “Especially employees who have keys to the center. We can also include that in the warrant.”
“Fine.” A muscle in Milo’s jaw jumped. “Whatever you need.”
“Are there security cameras here?” Noah asked.
“Only in the building,” Reina said. “Not the greenhouses or outdoor spaces, but with all the crazy stuff going on lately, we’re getting some installed.”
