“Yes. The responding officer noted concerns in his report because the children’s clothes weren’t soaked, but damp, which was inconsistent for only a less than eight-minute time span from receiving the call to arriving on scene, even with the warm weather which was eighty-two degrees that day. Certainly not hot enough to start drying the clothes in that length of time, suggesting the children were out of the water for a much longer time span than Gabrielle claimed. Gabrielle denied any discrepancies in time, though. The officer did say that she was traumatized, and it was hard to get a timeline of events from her, as questioning was difficult.”

“Two orders of wings,” the waitress sang and dropped baskets in front of both Val and Gavin. Gavin picked up a wing, dipped an end in blue cheese and took a bite. Val did the same.

“Dammit, Mitch. This case doesn’t make sense. Everything that goes in one direction ends up traveling down a different path.”

“That it does.”

Val licked hot sauce from her fingers. “I met two of her childhood friends at the funeral, one was Bethany Arias, Gabrielle’s emergency contact for Adam.”

Gavin’s eyebrows shot up. It was at this moment that Val realized she had never filled Gavin in on what she learned and proceeded to give him a summary of Bethany and Melinda, and also the fact that Bridget was not there. And why.

“Bethany at least, has a pretty good feeling of what Gabrielle was like, before and after the twins died. I’m planning on talking with these women soon.”

“Good. I want you to do that ASAP.”

“You know, Mitch, I’m convinced they were still seeing each recently, though they aren’t admitting to it.” Val took another wing. “This is what concerns me… Gabrielle was using Bethany as an emergency contact but the number was old and not in service. Since the number wasn’t updated, this tells us they did lose touch. But I think something brought them back together. It was obvious at the funeral that Melinda and Bethany were familiar with each other, that Melinda was trying to get Bethany away from me. I think Gabrielle fits in here somewhere with them, and this is why Melinda and Bethany are trying so hard to make it look like they’ve been estranged this whole time. Because unless something was going on between all three of them, there’s no reason to make it look like they had nothing to do with each other. There’s something that the two living ones don’t want us to know about.”

“I’m glad you’re talking to them because they might open up to you more than they would with me.”