“Ha, I’m still looking for mine!” Val got up to leave, she had her hand on the door when she turned to Zoe. “If the seeds weren’t meant to kill her, why do you think they were placed in Gabrielle’s mouth?”

“If the seeds are a distraction, decoy, or part of a ritual, I don’t know. Either way, someone knew what they were doing with them. That was intentional.”

11

It was late in the afternoon now and Val sat in her office looking over Dr. Maddox’s autopsy notes, getting more and more frustrated with each flip of the page.

He reported the fact that Gabrielle didn’t have seeds in her throat any further than the back of her soft palette, that none were in her stomach, and that he felt Gabrielle never swallowed once the seeds were placed in her mouth. But Val read no hard proof Gabrielle was dead before this.

“Not swallowing” doesn’t indicate death. Circumstantial evidence yet again on this case.

Crap, Val threw down her pen. Circumstantial evidence usually makes a case take incidental turns. That’s why they call it circumstantial. It relies on an extrapolation of the facts. What Val needed was another motive. From someone other than Gabrielle. But who would want to kill Gabrielle and Adam if Gabrielle was already potentially dying from cancer? If her cancer hadn’t progressed, and this wasn’t a metastasis, maybe this was a way to ensure the woman died. Why though? Val glanced at her watch. She and Jack were due to speak with the Ballards, Gabrielle Morgan’s next-door neighbors, in about an hour.

“Did you prepare your thoughts on the candidates for Dr. Maddox’s interviews tomorrow morning?” Gwen asked as she entered their shared office and pulled up a stool next to Val. “He’s wondering where it is.”

Val grabbed a folder that held several résumés of those applying for the positions that had become available after the staffing upheaval eight months ago. Luckily Dr. Maddox came on board shortly after as chief. Now all they needed was a deputy medical examiner and another death scene investigator to fill the void. Dr. Maddox asked Val to give an opinion on the applicants for both jobs, though tomorrow he was only interviewing for the deputy position.

Inside her folder she had a torn piece of notebook paper listing her opinion of the candidates, which was not as detailed as she would have liked. Or even presentable. Val glanced at her watch. Damn! She didn’t have much time before she had to meet Jack. No way her analysis of applicants was going to get any better before that.

“Next will be the search for our new fellow death investigator. With Howie gone too, we’ve been operating with a skeleton crew,” Gwen said. “Did you get a chance to look through those applications yet?”