A Simple Lie

by Mary Bush

  “We talked about old times, like when we first met. We drank some wine. I thought she’d forgiven me.”

  The room went silent for a moment. Thomas reached for a pitcher of water that sat in the middle of the table and poured a glass, drinking nearly all of it in a few gulps. He felt a little light-headed now and hoped the cool water would help.

  “Did you know Julia had a life insurance policy?’’ Gavin asked.

  Colin wasn’t put off by the question. In fact, it appeared to be the easiest one of the day and he answered without hesitation.

  “Yeah. She had the policy before we were married. She left the money to a friend of hers.”

  “Who was this friend?”

  “Molly Dolan.”

  “What can you tell us about her?”

  “I never met her.”

  Thomas couldn’t help but feel that Gavin was fishing with this question, looking for another reason to prove Colin guilty. Colin wasn’t getting his wife’s life insurance either. And he knew it.

  “Can you think of anything else? About Julia? About that night?” Thomas asked, picking up the water pitcher again.

  Colin shook his head. “But I have a question for you.” He pointed to Thomas. “How the hell did her DNA stay on my clothes when she washed them?”

  “She washed your clothes?” Gavin nearly laughed out loud. “This is ridiculous. Your wife goes from trying to ruin you, to doing your laundry all in a matter of what, an hour or two?”

  Jack’s head immediately turned towards Thomas, and their eyes locked, the disclosure was a revelation. Thomas shook his head, signaling for Jack to not say a word.

  “Yeah, she did my laundry,” Colin sneered. “I couldn’t go back to Lauren covered in blood and Julia offered to do it. That’s why I was there for so long. How do I have her DNA on my clothing if they were washed?”

  “I’ll look into it,” Thomas said.

  They wrapped up the questioning and everyone exited the interrogation room. Gavin caught Thomas and Jack in the hallway. “That was the biggest bunch of laughable crap I ever heard from a suspect. If you ask me, he did his own laundry to get rid of the DNA and is upset because he didn’t do a good job.”

  “Unless an oxygen-producing detergent was used, the DNA wouldn’t have been removed,” Jack said.

  “Obviously. Only he didn’t know that.” Gavin walked away and left Thomas and Jack standing in the hallway.

  “Thomas, are you all right? You’ve looked pale all during the interview. But now you look worse. In fact, you’re sweating quite a lot.”

  “I’m fine. They just need to turn some air conditioning on in this goddamn hot building.” Thomas put his hand to his head and wiped his brow. He moved his hand to his chest and looked for a place to sit down. There was a chair a few feet in front of him. He collapsed before he made it.

  36

  Val couldn’t sit still. Someone had tried to renew her dental license, sending in false documentation to do so. Someone was after her, confirmed, and had been for some time.

  She slowly walked into Detective Gavin’s office. He had asked her to meet with him and she wasn’t sure what to make of the invitation.

  She’d been avoiding him because lately it was impossible to talk with him about anything without him warning her to stay away from Jack and Thomas. Whatever suspicion or thought she tried to share, his response was the same: “They’re putting fantasies into your head.” To Gavin’s mind, Colin was guilty. End of story. The two criminal investigators were in this only for money and fame. Not justice. “They’ll do anything to spin the story in Colin’s favor,” he said. “If Colin goes free, they endorse their celebrity status. It attracts more high-profile, hence higher-paying, customers. This is their game, Val.”

  So this time Gavin caught her off guard when he asked how Thomas was doing.

  Val sighed. “There’s no change. Thomas had a heart attack yesterday afternoon, but then slipped into a coma last night. The situation is critical. Jack’s with him now and has pretty much been at his bedside the whole time.”

  Val had offered to come to the hospital to keep him company but Jack declined. He’d prefer to be alone, he said, adding, “I’d rather you and Gwen were following up on that lead about the washing machine.”

  A washer readily transfers DNA. In this case, all that would have been required was to throw something into the load containing Francine’s DNA—for example, her missing bloody sheet—and it would deposit on everything in the machine. Regular detergent does not destroy DNA—only an oxygen-producing one does. Her DNA ended up on Colin’s pants—the same pants that supposedly came out of Julia’s washer.

  “I’m very sorry to hear about Thomas,” Gavin said with genuine sympathy. “Did Julia ever mention a Molly Dolan to you?”

  The name meant nothing to Val. She shook her head, no. “Why do you ask?”

  “Julia had a pretty big life insurance policy. Ms. Dolan was her friend and former co-worker. She’s the beneficiary. She knows that you were also a good friend of Julia’s and wanted me to let you know that she’ll do good things with the money, in Julia’s name of course.”

  “Why did she leave it to a friend? Had she recently changed it from her husband?” Val sat up straight, interested, and moved to the edge of her chair. An insurance policy linked Jeanne Coleman and Lorelei Sebastian and here it was again. Her heart began to beat faster.

  “She took this out before she married Colin. He was never an intended beneficiary. Ms. Dolan told us what she believed Julia’s motivations to be. It seems Julia discussed this matter in some detail with her.”

  “Which was?” Val’s thoughts fired in rapid succession.

  “Molly Dolan works for an organization that provides medical and dental care to people in developing countries. Julia worked with her on these missions quite a bit. She left the money to help Molly with this cause. Julia was quite the humanitarian.”

  Val remembered that Bradley Underwood had said the same thing about Julia’s previous employment. “How much was the policy for?” Val asked.

  “Three million dollars.”

  Val just stared, boggled by the amount. “Isn’t that a reason to have some concern about Ms. Dolan? Three million dollars is quite a lot.”

  “That kind of money certainly could make her a suspect, and we did investigate that likelihood. But there’s nothing in her background to tie her to this case. She’s a well-respected missionary who devotes her time and expertise to helping the poor.” Gavin stressed, “She is not a person of interest.”

  Val could see it in his eyes as he spoke. Molly Dolan definitely had some influence somewhere with someone. Gavin had no intention of pursuing her. He had probably been warned by his superiors to do no such thing. Gavin kept talking, telling Val about Molly’s accomplishments, but Val really wasn’t listening. Her mind was elsewhere.

  “She couldn’t argue when I mentioned that Buffalo was experiencing spring weather as warm as Florida’s,” he said.

  The words caught Val’s attention and she snapped, “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to mention this. She used to live in the Clearwater area of Florida too. She thought it was odd that the both of you would have that in common. She joked about Floridians having to endure weather like Buffalo’s. She told me to share the joke with you. That you’d understand.”

  “That I’d understand?” Val could barely say the words. Her thoughts spun to the day in Julia’s office, the day of her interview. She had told Julia that she lived in Clearwater and now this Molly Dolan knew too.

  “Yes. She lived in Florida for almost ten years. She’s only in town because of the will. She’s leaving for South Africa early next week.”

  Ten years? The same amount of time I lived in Florida? Val swallowed hard. “She’s here? In Buffalo?”

  “I think she’s staying in Ellicottville actually.” Gavin took a look at a pad on his desk. “Yep, Ellicottville.”

  Val couldn�
��t help but notice an address and phone number written on Gavin’s pad. She took note of them, and then made an excuse about needing to return to work. As she turned to leave, he had one more announcement.

  “Oh. They finally found out what species of bacteria is causing Lauren’s infection. It’s Vibrio vulnificus . The doctors are pretty shocked because it’s so unusual. Given her circumstances, they have no idea how she would get something like this,” he said. “Anyway, they’re giving her a new antibiotic and it seems to be working. They think she’s going to pull through.”

  “What antibiotic are they giving her?” Val asked, waiting anxiously for the answer, sensing what it would be.

  “High doses of doxycycline.”

  37

  “Val, we should wait for Jack to return. This isn’t a good idea,” Gwen said. She couldn’t hide the uncertainty in her voice.

  “We can’t bother him, not with the condition Thomas is in,” Val replied, fighting hard to hold everything together both mentally and physically. She hadn’t slept in two days and felt like someone had rubbed sand in her eyes, grating them to the point of rawness. Fear and paranoia grabbed control of her judgment.

  “Gavin told me that Molly Dolan’s going to be leaving the country soon. Once she’s gone, she could go anywhere. We may never have the upper hand like this again. We don’t know when Jack’s coming back. We know where to find her right now. I’m going there, with or without you.”

  “I have no intention of letting you do this alone,” Gwen said, and then let out a deep sigh. “Val, I’m on your side, I really am. I just don’t see why you’re so suspicious of her. Honestly, you could be wrong, very wrong about this. And if you are, things are going to get bad.”

  Val was borderline hysterical, her voice shrill. “I’m not wrong. She knew that I lived in Florida. How did she know that?”

  “Julia obviously told her,” Gwen said in a calm and even tone. “She was her friend, a friend who was also from Clearwater. It must have come up in conversation.”

  “But she wanted Gavin to tell me. She wanted me to know this. She said that ‘I’d understand.’”

  Gwen just stared and Val couldn’t help but think that Gwen regarded her as crazy. Val tried to explain. “Let me ask you this. Why is someone trying to renew my Florida license by pretending to be me? Don’t you think it’s odd that right after I was hired someone tried to do this?”

  “Val, anyone could have done that. The fact that you have a Florida license is listed in your employee file. You yourself told me that. Blythe could have seen it.”

  Val shook her head. “That fact is listed in my file, and Blythe could easily have seen it, but there was only one person who heard a simple lie that I told about it. And that person wasn’t Blythe. It was Julia.”

  Gwen’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “The truth is that I don’t have a license anymore. It’s expired.” Val nearly laughed. She’d been so worried that someone would find out about the whopper she’d told about Oliver Solaris she didn’t even think about this small one that she’d told about her license. It came out of her mouth in a moment of desperation and was so insignificant that it was easily forgotten, until this point. The license number was listed on her résumé and after she was hired no one asked her to produce any documentation to show if it was current or not. A Florida dental license had no bearing on her position at the Erie County Medical Examiner’s Office.

  “During my interview, I told Julia that it was due for renewal in a month. It was actually expired, and had been for a while,” Val said. “Only Julia, or someone she talked to, would think that it needed to be renewed this soon because no one else could have known about it. That’s not written anywhere in my employee file or even on my résumé.” Val could see that Gwen was starting to understand the significance and she kept the momentum going. “Hell, I didn’t even tell you that fact until now.”

  “What do you suggest then?”

  “I’m going to meet with Molly Dolan, unannounced. What better opportunity than to just show up on her doorstep? I’m going to call her out.”

  Gwen grabbed Val’s shoulders. “Val, that’s what makes me worried about all of this. If she’s involved with this, why would she purposely want you to know about living in Clearwater? If she is the one trying to renew your license, impersonating you to do so, wouldn’t she want to keep this a secret? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “If she’s involved with this case, she’s crazy. She kills people. I would have to say that she doesn’t engage in rational behavior.”

  “But Val, you usually do engage in rational behavior. Though today, I will admit, what you’re doing is testing that claim to the limit.” Gwen sighed. “Think about it. If she is part of this, and she’s crazy, then you’re not calling her out. She’s calling you out.”

  38

  Molly Dolan was staying in an expensive Airbnb in the trendy town of Ellicottville, NY. The drive took about an hour. Gwen sat behind the wheel, discussing the best way to handle the situation. Val eventually began to listen to some reason, confirming they would approach this in a cautious manner. This seemed to calm Gwen down.

  Though, thought Val, I really didn’t promise anything. “The next house should be hers,” Val said. “Slow down.”

  Gwen slowed the car and parked. “Now what?”

  Val’s pulse raced. She started to have second thoughts about knocking on the door, possibly going inside the house. And possibly being trapped. It would be two against one, but they might not be a match for a woman expert at ripping people apart. “We wait for her to come outside.”

  Three hours passed before the door opened and a woman walked out.

  Molly Dolan worked in developing countries but she looked as if she’d stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine. She had dark red hair cut short, pixie style, and her clothing was straight off the Burberry line. But there was something else about her, and the chic appearance didn’t hide it, really it couldn’t.

  Val’s heart began to bang hard. “Holy crap, it can’t be. It simply can’t be!”

  “Can’t be what?”

  Val jumped out of the car. She was shaking so strongly that she almost fell once her feet touched the ground. Stumbling, she ran forward as best she could.

  “Val!” Gwen jumped too, running after her. “Val, stop! What are you doing!”

  Molly snapped her head in their direction. Then quickly retreated, backing away in obvious fear of the two women coming at her. She looked towards the door of the house. There was no way she’d make it in time. She put her hands up defensively as Val approached her.

  Val stopped within a couple of feet of Molly. “I know what you’ve done! Why don’t you just admit it?” Val yelled.

  Gwen’s eyes went wide. She grabbed Val’s wrist and tried to pull her away. “What in the hell are you doing?” she said through clenched teeth.

  Molly put her hand to her chest, her mouth hung open in shock. She looked in Gwen’s direction for some explanation for Val’s outburst. “What are you talking about?” she asked, frightened. “Who are you?”

  “It’s Val. Like you don’t know.”

  “Val? Valentina Knight?” Molly narrowed her eyes. She looked thoroughly stunned. “Julia’s friend?”

  Val glared at Molly. “I know everything about you! I’ve got you!”

  Molly jumped back. “Oh my God, you’re insane! Stay away from me!” she yelled, quickly reaching for her phone. “Get away from me! I’m calling the police!”

  Val broke out of Gwen’s grasp and lunged at Molly, trying to pull the phone from her hand. She continued to spew accusations as she yanked at her. Val didn’t stop struggling until she felt an intense pain on her arm, forcing her to release the grip on the phone, and Molly. Molly had bitten her.

  Val screamed loudly and continued to scream as Gwen grabbed her, dragging her away as Molly ran towards the house, and inside the front door.

  “
Get a hold of yourself, Val!” Gwen yelled. Her hands were firmly on Val’s shoulders, shaking her, trying to drive common sense home. “What happened back there? You’re losing it. Jesus Christ, Val, you know I thought this was a bad idea all along. It’s just gone from bad to worse. In fact, it doesn’t get any worse than this.”

  “You’re right it doesn’t get any worse than this. That person isn’t Molly Dolan. I knew it from the moment I saw her.”

  Val couldn’t help but notice that Gwen was looking at her as if she was out of her mind.

  “Who is it then?” Gwen asked, exhausted.

  “Julia DeHaviland!”

  39

  Over the next hour, several angry messages were left on Val’s voicemail. All from Gavin. Molly Dolan had called him. He knew what had happened, and in detail. And he was pissed. Without some proof to support her suspicions though, Val was screwed. She had nothing.

  Maybe I am going crazy, Val thought. Molly really appeared stunned by the accusations.

  Gwen sat on Val’s couch. “Val, procrastinating like this isn’t going to change the situation. I wish I could say more, but I never met Julia DeHaviland. I don’t know what she looked like.”

  Val knew Gwen didn’t believe her. Hell, at this point, who would? Val finally picked up the phone, calling Gavin to get this part, the reaming-out part, over with.

  She winced as he spoke. “Val, did you visit Molly Dolan?” His voice was on edge.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Were you incendiary and accusatory? Did you come off looking like a raving lunatic?” Gavin’s anger came clearly down the line.

  “Maybe.” She faltered. She knew the problems she had just caused for herself and the medical examiner’s office.

  “She called and complained and is threatening a lawsuit. I can’t even repeat what she said about you. She wants a restraining order. She’s afraid of you.”