Jack felt around the edges of the second patch. “There was water damage in the bedroom closet, but there’s nothing wrong here. Why repair it more than once? For that matter, why repair it at all?”

“Good question.” Thomas reached in and pushed on the piece. “It’s solidly in place.” He quickly walked away from the linen closet and headed back towards the bedroom. Jack and Stanley followed him. But Val stayed behind. Something caught her eye. Gwen remained with her.

“What are you looking at?” Gwen asked.

“Those,” Val said, pointing to the top shelf that held a few medication bottles. She was interested in two prescription containers partially hidden behind a bottle of cough syrup.

Gwen reached up and pulled the prescription containers down. One was empty and the other only had a few pills left. She read the label. “They’re for doxycycline.”

“Doxycycline is an antibiotic,” Val said, disappointed. Francine’s sister Samantha had many bottles of the prescription pain medication Percocet found at her place and Val thought maybe she could find a connection with the same type of drug. No such luck. Gwen put the bottles back on the shelf and they left to join the men in the bedroom.

When they returned, Jack was in the closet standing on a chair, feeling around the added section of drywall. “The repair in the hall closet was better than this. This one isn’t adapted well at all. It looks like it was done rather quickly.”

He applied a little more force to the area and the added piece slipped up as it separated from the rest of the ceiling. He pressed harder to complete the detachment. With one hand in the hole he felt around. “There’s something up here.”

When he jumped down off the chair he had a large envelope in his hands.

Inside the envelope were personal documents. A few concerned someone named Lorelei Sebastian. An address for her was listed on one of the papers. But most of the papers belonged to Jeanne Coleman.

“Jesus Christ. Francine Donohue and Jeanne Coleman did know each other,” Val said.

24

“It can’t be a dead end,” Gwen said to Val. The two sat in their tiny room at the medical examiner’s office whispering, but Gwen started to raise her voice. “Where the hell could that woman be?”

“Shh,” Val scolded. “It’s not that dead of an end, and please, close the door before someone hears you. This is private information. Gavin told me this morning that they’re not releasing this.”

Gwen got up and did what she was told, then quickly sat back down. “What do you mean?”