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.”