“You see, about a year ago, we had this plan set with another person, Jeanne Coleman. She was killed, her teeth removed, her body dismembered, and whatever parts we thought weren’t necessary we destroyed. Those we wanted to use at a later date to stage her murder, we stored. We chose her teeth and skull for that part. Of course, we had to clean the crime scene. We couldn’t have bloody walls and floors in the apartment. Francine was going to assume Jeanne’s identity and had to live as her for a while, long enough to get an insurance policy. In the end, the money would be left to me and we would split the payout.”

Molly walked around the bed. Val listened to the sound of her voice, tracking where she was in the room. How close she was to her. She seemed further away now and Val frantically tried to tell what Molly was doing.

“I decided at the last minute not to go through with it, even though we had the insurance policy for Jeanne Coleman. I wanted to save this plan for Julia. The money was a hell, and I mean a hell, of a lot more. Francine disagreed, and we argued quite viciously about it. Her rationale was that we were all set, why change it now? My rationale was the payout with Julia would be so much higher. There couldn’t be two sets of deaths like this. It was one or the other. Francine was a bitch and so completely unreasonable. Didn’t she know whose idea this was to begin with? I couldn’t have cared less that she was a dentist and came up with the part of the plan to leave the teeth on the pillow. God, she was acting like she was the mastermind because of this. So, I broke off my partnership with her.”

The room went strangely quiet and Val couldn’t tell what was going on anymore. Her heart raced. Was this it? Was Molly going to kill her now? There was a moment before Molly continued. Val purposely made her breathing shallow.

“Francine went behind my back and changed the beneficiary on the policy to someone named Lorelei Sebastian. She staged Jeanne’s death with the teeth and then began a claim on that insurance policy as Lorelei!” Molly’s voice rose dramatically as she spoke. “She jeopardized everything I worked for! For her betrayal, well you know what happened. I thought it was ironic to rip out her teeth and leave them behind. The fact she was a dentist and had her teeth on her pillow threw a wobbler for the investigation now, didn’t it?”