“I’m afraid I don’t,” Luke answered flatly. “The women those orchids were delivered to were the victims of a serial killer.”
“Wait, what?” the manager cried, obviously shocked and dismayed by what he had just heard.
“Victims of a serial killer,” Luke repeated deliberately. “So far we’ve connected three victims to your flower shop. There’s a possibility that we might find more if we keep digging,” he warned.
The manager, a man in his forties, looked as if he was about to have an anxiety attack right in front of them.
He grabbed hold of Luke’s arm. “Wait, you can’t mean that you think one of my delivery people actually—” Unable to bring himself to finish his sentence, he cried, “It’s not possible. I’ve had each and every one of my people vetted. None of them have so much as a parking ticket between them—”
“We’re not saying it’s one of your delivery people,” Frankie told him, cutting in. “What we think is that the killer might have sent the flowers from your shop. Yellow orchids.” Frankie held up a picture she had taken in the last victim’s home.
The florist examined the image on her smartphone, then shrugged, attempting to put distance between himself and the crime. “They might have come from here,” he said vaguely.
“The tag that was attached to the arrangement said that they did come from your shop,” she told him in no uncertain terms.
The man’s shoulders sagged considerably when confronted with the information.
“All right, then, they did come from here.” He bit his lower lip, debating what he was about to ask because it just connected him to this even more. “Do you have the address where they were delivered?”
“You don’t quite have the hang of how a murder investigation works, do you?” Luke asked him. “We get a call and come to where the body is and everything goes from there. In this investigation, the victims were all found in their homes, so yes, we have addresses to give to you.”
“Sorry,” the florist said. He flushed as he collapsed into a chair behind the counter. “This just has me rattled so that I can’t seem to think straight. Everything feels all jumbled in my head,” he confessed. His eyes darted from one detective to the other.
Was it just nerves, or was there something more going on, Frankie wondered.
“I think we kind of got that,” Luke told him. “Now, Detective DeMarco and I are going to give you the names and addresses of the last three murder victims. All three of the women had orchids delivered from your shop. I want you to check the addresses against your files and tell me the name of the person who paid to have the flowers delivered.”
Luke enunciated every word to the man, as if he was talking to someone who had difficulty processing any sort of information—because it appeared that, at least for now, the man apparently did.
His hands shaking, the shop owner typed in each of the addresses where the orchids and vases had been delivered. Pulling up what he was looking for, he said, “The orders were all placed over the phone,” he told the detectives in his shop.
“Naturally,” Luke murmured. “How did they pay?” he asked out loud.
“By credit card, of course.” The manager checked the screen to verify that. “The names on the credit cards were all different.”
“And the cards all checked out?” Luke asked.
“Yes. The flowers don’t go out until I run a check on the credit card,” the manager explained, his voice sounding slightly miffed. It was obvious that he seemed to be coming around.
Luke processed this new piece of information. “Okay, so our guy is either a hacker, as well, or he just steals credit cards outright.” He sighed. “Give me the names on the credit cards,” he ordered.
“Okay. It’ll take me a minute to print them out,” the manager told him. “You’re sure I won’t get into any trouble for this?” he asked nervously.
“Not unless you were the one who killed those women,” Luke answered, only to have the florist turn pale.
“No! No, of course not,” the manager cried. He quickly printed out the transactions and handed the page to Luke. “Anything else you want me to do?”
“Not at the moment,” Luke told him, folding the paper and putting it into his jacket pocket. “But we might be back if it turns out that the killer had orchids sent to his other victims.”
“Oh, dear Lord, I hope not. Not that you won’t be back, but that the killer sent more orchids from my shop.” The very idea of being involved in any form with the heinous crime seemed to make the man shiver. “It’s awful enough that he sent an arrangement of orchids to three of the women.” The manager looked at Luke nervously. “You’re sure that they all came from the same person?”
“The MO was the same and I don’t believe in coincidences,” Luke said, opening the front door. “Thanks for the list,” he added as he followed Frankie out of the shop.
If the manager said anything in response, neither one of them heard it.
Chapter 13
The moment they were back in the squad room, Luke put in a call to Valri.
It took his cousin five rings to pick up.
“I almost hung up, Valri,” he told her when he heard her voice.
“Little busy here, Luke,” Valri answered, obviously preoccupied and in the middle of something as she answered her phone. “No time to talk.”
“I won’t keep you,” Luke promised. “But—”
“Too late,” she told him.
He talked faster. Though he was confident that she wouldn’t hang up on him, he wanted to make good on his initial statement. “When you get a chance to go over those two laptops more thoroughly, see if you can find anything having to do with a site called The Perfect Date in either victim’s search history.”
He heard Valri laugh. “Have you finally gone through all the available women in the area to ask out?”
“You know, this job has turned you into a completely different person,” he commented. “You really used to be so sweet.”
Valri chuckled softly. “What you mean is that I used to be such a pushover.”
“I never saw you in that light,” Luke protested with just the right amount of sincerity.
“Uh-huh.” After a moment, she asked, “What was the name of that site again?”
He repeated it for her slowly. “And I’d really appreciate it if you’d put that search on the top of your list.”
“Of course you would.” He heard his cousin sigh deeply before she told him, “All right, Luke, I’ll see what I can do.”
“That’s all I ask, Valri.”
“No, it’s not,” was his cousin’s weary response, just before she terminated the call.
Frankie couldn’t help but hear the exchange. “Problem?” she asked.
He replaced the receiver and looked across his desk at Frankie. “Valri’s feeling overworked.”
“There’s a good reason for that,” Frankie told him knowingly.
Luke decided that it was prudent not to respond.
* * *
Valri got back to him just as he and Frankie were about to leave the squad room. They were on their way to interview the friends and families of some of the other victims. Their main question entailed finding out if any of the victims had made use of that dating site, too.
Busier than ever, Valri didn’t bother with any unnecessary preliminary conversation. Instead, she told her cousin, “Looks like you were right. According to search engines on the laptops, both victims accessed that dating site recently.”
Luke could feel his adrenaline rising. “Did you get any profile names, or whatever it is they call people on this virtual mating game?” he asked.
Valri laughed. “Cousin, you are woefully undereducated when it comes to all things cyber.”
&nb
sp; “Sue me,” he quipped. “I believe that meeting people should be done the old-fashioned, traditional way—like bumping into them at a club.”
“Right.” She didn’t bother to point out that most of the family had met their significant other because of the job. But she knew that not everyone was fortunate that way. “To answer what I took to be your question, no, I couldn’t find any male profiles that either one of the victims had saved. To be honest, something tells me that the victims weren’t the ones to erase them,” she added.
Luke could see where his cousin was going with this. “You think the serial killer erased himself?” he asked Valri.
“Not in the way you mean,” she answered. “I think the killer hacked into their accounts from the comfort of his own home and erased the evidence.”
Frankie noticed Luke frowning as he spoke to his cousin. “He could do that?”
Valri’s laugh was audible enough for Frankie to hear where she was sitting.
“Oh, someday, when we both have a little time, I do need to take you under my wing and really educate you, cousin.”
“Until then, Valri, I have you,” Luke responded pointedly.
Valri sighed. “Yes, I know. Okay, if I’ve answered your questions for now, I’ve got to get back to the backlog of work I have waiting for me, thanks to you.”
“I really appreciate this, Val.”
He expected her to mumble something in response like “Yeah, yeah,” and hang up. Instead, he was surprised to hear her say, “You can show it by making a donation to the baby fund.”
“What baby fund?” he asked.
After a pause, Luke heard his cousin answer, “My baby fund.”
“Wait, back up,” he ordered, trying to assimilate the information that had just been thrown to him. He lowered his voice. “You’re having a baby?”
Valri laughed. “Nothing gets by you, does it, cousin?”
The family was really growing by leaps and bounds, Luke thought. “Does Uncle Andrew know?”
Again she laughed. “Alex and I tried to keep it a secret,” she confessed. “You know how well-kept secrets are within the Cavanaugh family. I think he’s planning something next weekend.”
“Uncle Andrew is always planning some kind of family gathering,” Luke reminded her.
“But this time I’m sure he’ll be putting the word out that there’s a baby theme for the celebration next weekend,” Valri told him.
“Next weekend?” Luke repeated. This really was the first he’d heard of it and he’d just been in contact with his mother this week. She was usually the first one to know these kinds of things and she hadn’t said a word to him about it.
“Count on it,” Valri assured him.
“So, what do you want, girl or boy?” Luke couldn’t help asking as he lowered his voice again. Even so, he saw that Frankie’s curiosity was really piqued.
“Yes,” Valri answered ambiguously. “Gotta go,” she told him just before hanging up.
“Girl or boy?” Frankie repeated, looking at the man across from her quizzically. “Okay, I was listening in,” she admitted, although she’d only caught the latter part of Luke’s end of the conversation. “Are we back to thinking our suspect might be a female?”
“What?” For a split second, the woman’s question confused him—and then belatedly he realized what she was asking. “Oh, well, we’re still ruling that out,” he lied, then told Frankie, “Valri was just telling me that there’s probably going to be another one of Andrew’s bashes this weekend.” For the moment, he didn’t specify anything about his cousin’s pending motherhood. Instead, he suddenly thought of extending the invitation to Frankie. “Hey, you want to come?”
Frankie felt she was being backed into a corner. “You don’t even know that there’s going to be a gathering,” she pointed out. “You used the word probably.”
“Oh, there’ll be one,” he assured her. “Uncle Andrew hasn’t thrown a large party in a few weeks and he never misses an opportunity. It’s definitely time for one—and according to Valri, he now has an excuse. Not that he needs one,” he added. “The man just loves having the entire family around, loves cooking for them.”
Frankie nodded her head. This wasn’t exactly news to her. “So I’ve heard.”
“And yet,” Luke observed, “I don’t recall ever seeing you at one of them.”
Frankie didn’t think that he would drop this topic until it was resolved to his satisfaction.
“There’s a reason for that,” she told him evenly.
“Which is?” Luke prodded.
“I’ve never been to one of them,” Frankie answered simply. Anyone else would have accepted that and just let the subject drop. But O’Bannon wasn’t anyone else.
“Why not?” he asked.
“You said they were family parties, right? Well, I’m not family.”
And now I’m not part of anyone’s family, she added silently, thinking again of Kris.
“Uncle Andrew used to be the chief of police,” he told her, in case Frankie was the one person on the force who was unaware of that fact, “and he considers anyone in the Aurora Police Department to be part of his family.”
“That’s all very nice,” she said, dismissing the whole subject of parties and attending them. “But right now we have a serial killer to catch.”
“There will always be killers to catch,” Luke told her. “The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.” He’d made up his mind. He wasn’t going to give up until he had convinced her to attend. “I guarantee that you’ll have a great time at the party. So, how about it?”
She had no idea why this was suddenly so important to him. Maybe it was part of the bonding process with the team. Frankie pressed her lips together and sighed. “If I say I’ll go, can we get back to work?”
“Absolutely,” he told her, then added, “But I will hold you to that, DeMarco. I think it’ll do you a world of good.”
“Fine, yes,” she told him in exasperation. “Now, about this dating site,” she said again, determined to get back to the topic at hand.
“What about it?”
Frankie knew she was going to have to choose her words very carefully in order to get O’Bannon to sign on to this. But she thought it would be their best shot at finding their serial killer.
“Well,” she began slowly, “we’ve established that the serial killer definitely has a type.”
The women whose photos were tacked onto the bulletin board looked so much alike, they could have been sisters, or at the very least, cousins. Anyone could see that.
“Yes. So?” Luke asked, studying her carefully.
“So.” Frankie spread her arms wide in an effort to get him to look at her more closely—and actually see her, not as a detective, but as a woman.
His eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?” Luke asked sharply, although he thought he had a pretty good idea what she was intimating.
“That maybe if I sign up and post my picture with a made-up profile—”
“No,” Luke said flatly.
She wasn’t used to being cut off like that and she didn’t like it. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say,” she said angrily.
Did she think he was dumb? “Oh, yes, I do, and we’re not about to use you as bait.”
Undaunted, Frankie tried again. “But we could save a lot of time and effort that way,” she stressed. “We can get him to come to us.”
For the sake of getting along, Luke decided to try to reason with her. “That’s a long shot—”
“So? I’ll take it,” Frankie insisted.
Luke had no intention of being reckless in order to close another case. There were consequences to consider. Grave consequences.
“Look, we haven’t gotten down to the bottom of
the barrel yet. We’ve got other options open to us, other avenues that we can explore—”
He was just stonewalling her, Frankie thought, frustrated. “And meanwhile, another woman might be getting murdered because you’re dragging your feet.”
It took him a moment to keep his temper from surging. “Let’s see if we can try narrowing down the suspect pool by using good old-fashioned detective work first, how about that?”
“And if that doesn’t work?” she pressed. Why was he being so stubborn? Why couldn’t she get him to agree to her plan? Was it just because she was the one who had come up with it and not him?
“Then we’ll revisit your harebrained idea,” Luke conceded between clenched teeth. “But not until then,” he underscored. And then he told both White Hawk and Frankie exactly what he wanted them to tackle first, even before finding out if the other victims had signed up for that dating site. “Let’s question the families and find out just how many of those women had a substance abuse problem that they managed to kick.”
Frankie regrouped. What Luke had just suggested went along with what they had talked about earlier.
“And if they were in rehab,” Frankie added. “We need to know the names of those facilities and what support groups the victims had frequented. Maybe the serial killer is lurking there, trying to bring these former addicts to permanent salvation.”
Luke rolled the latter part of her statement over in his mind. “That’s one possible motive. Another one is that he’s using all those women he killed as surrogates, making them pay for something someone close to him had once done.”
“You mean, like a girlfriend who overdosed?” White Hawk asked.
Frankie took the idea further. “Or a mother or sister. By killing them, maybe in his mind he’s hurting them for hurting him.”
Luke nodded, considering both angles. “That’s why all the victims are so similar in appearance. The killer is getting even with the same woman over and over again.” He looked at Frankie. “Which is why you’re not putting your face out there on that dating site—even though that just might be his hunting ground.”
Frankie sighed. “Okay, we’ll do it your way—first,” she agreed grudgingly.
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