Black Orchid Girls (Detective Amanda Steele)

FORTY

Amanda rolled closer to her desk and brought up the video from the state park, studying the shadowed figure, angling her head every which way, as if it would better her focus. “Could that be Stephanie?”

Trent bent forward and scrutinized the image. “It could be. But… I don’t know.”

Amanda played the video and watched the movements of the person on the screen. She wasn’t an expert on gait to know whether this was a man or woman just by the way they walked. “Shoot.”

“Okay, well, we know Stephanie has no alibi for the mornings of the murders either. Just that she was home sleeping. She had reason to hate Chloe and Jayne. Chloe always outshone her. Jayne rubbed that fact in.”

She mulled both facts over. Had it been enough to move the girl to murder? But it was hard to ignore the complete change in her demeanor from when they spoke to her previously and today at the funeral. At the church, she had appeared quite shaken and affected by Chloe’s death. Then again, funerals had a way of reaching in, grabbing one’s heart, and squeezing so hard there was no redemption. The finality couldn’t be ignored any longer.

Amanda keyed in Stephanie’s name to pull her background again. Something she’d seen earlier in the investigation, but at that time nothing had popped. She wanted to do some more digging before they headed over to question Stephanie once again. “Her father is listed as Max Piper, fifty-one, and the mother as Leah McMillan, forty-two.”

“So the professor is her stepfather. And no one mentioned that at all before now?”

She gave it some thought. “Really, there was no need for it come up, but look”—she pointed to Leah’s maiden name—“Turnbull. Holy shit.”

“And that name is a big deal because…?”

“Black orchids.”

Trent smiled. “I’ll need more than that.”

“When we were at Lee’s Flowers in Woodbridge, Lee took out the order book…”

“I remember.”

“The name of the person who ordered black orchids was Leah Turnbull. Why she’d used her maiden name, I don’t know. Maybe she hadn’t married McMillan yet?”

“Well, that was three years ago when the flowers were ordered,” he pointed out.

She looked in the system. “Looks like they’ve been married a couple of years. Ah, so that’s why she used Turnbull. But as you said before, the killer could have access to a private stock of the flower.”

“Okay, well, if she ordered the orchids to grow and breed herself, then she might need to have some sort of greenhouse.” He raced around to his cubicle, and his chair squeaked as he sat down. He started typing.

Curious, she went to his desk to see what he was doing.

“Look.” He pointed to the screen, which showed a satellite’s view of an impressive house. “This is the McMillan property. That there, I’d say, is a greenhouse.”

There was a part of the house that jutted out, and it was clearly a greenhouse given its ceiling of windows.

“We just connected Stephanie Piper to black orchids, but let’s take a step back and talk this out a minute. From the looks of the report I pulled, Stephanie lives in Woodbridge with her parents,” she said.

“I can see that. Stephanie was focused on her studies. By living at home, she’d have less distractions.”

“All that hard work, and Chloe could have made her feel like her efforts were insignificant. Maybe Stephanie couldn’t take it anymore and snapped. Though, if she’s our killer, she still took her time to think about the execution of the murders.”

He shrugged. “She’s a smart girl.”

The more they spoke, the more plausible it was that Stephanie Piper was the killer—right under their noses. She didn’t have an alibi for either murder. But how did she connect with Ashton Chambers, if she did at all? Was it just a coincidence that he was the one who drove the killer to the park and had a past with Chloe?

Then Amanda remembered something. “Stephanie told us she was a nervous driver and that she took public transportation…”

“Right. So she could have ordered the car from the Pick Me Up app.”

“I wonder if there isn’t more to it. Maybe she went to high school with Chloe and the rest of them. If so, she would have known what Chloe had put Ashton through. She could have found out what Ashton did for money and exploited that, knowing there would be a possibility that the investigation would lead back to him.”

“Very smart, if so. We’re busy looking at Ashton and who he could have teamed up with, all the while not looking at her.”

“Where did Stephanie go to high school?” She jogged back to her cubicle where the report was still on the screen.

Trent leaned in, beating her to the answer. “Looks like Leah has always lived in Woodbridge so it could be assumed Stephanie has too.”

“Just like the Somners. It would be plausible Stephanie went to the same high school as Chloe, Jayne… Ashton. It’s time to brief Malone and move on this.”

“Just go in there from a calm perspective, have a talk with her, feel her out,” Malone said from the other end of the line. He wasn’t in the best of moods, but she had interrupted an early dinner.

Back in her cubicle, Amanda had him on speaker so Trent could be part of the conversation too. “You heard what we have on her, right? The connection to—”

“The black orchids. Yes. I heard everything you said. But we just can’t go running in there on another assumption.”

Sure, she could admit that the track record with this case hadn’t been that great. There had been a lot of leads that didn’t pan out, but they all served as stepping stones to get them to the true killer. That, Amanda knew in her bones. And in her and Trent’s defense, they’d had valid reasons for bringing in each suspect when they had. “We’re moving forward based on evidence,” she seethed, taking a tone she didn’t very often pull on Malone.

“Don’t get smart with me, Amanda. Do you have information back yet from the credit card company on who ordered the car? What about DNA evidence or… or… that spoofing angle?”

She glanced at Trent, who nodded—her silent message that she needed some privacy received. She took Malone off speaker and walked with her phone to a small conference room and closed the door.