Chapter Forty-Seven
Liv was sweating, and not just from stress. In the frenzy to get back on the river, she had somehow neglected to grab her
cap.
It was ridiculous to worry about her hat when there was a murderer with her on the supply boat. She knew that. But it was
skin care police. She kept squinting down at the river, wishing she could dunk her head, a hand even, but the water was at
least two feet below the baffles of the boat. Without a life jacket, she didn’t dare even get close to the edge.
All the guests had bundled themselves in the middle of the barge, ringing Big Pete, who worked the giant oars from a perch
above their shoulders. The only exception was Lucinda. The older woman was at the very back of the boat, her paddling gloves
on, dangling one of the deconstructed camping chairs in the water like a crude rudder.
There weren’t many of them left. Devon. PK. Fiona. Imogen and Lucinda. And Big Pete.
His powerful oars drove them down the Colorado much faster than they’d gone in the rafts. There was no bumbling chitchat,
no amateur paddle strokes to nowhere. Even the rapids passed quickly, the bucking waves tempered by the massive size of the
supply boat. They were going deeper into the canyon whether she liked it or not.
Just like the canyon, Liv’s investigation, while riddled with side trips, was fundamentally about narrowing.
If Stefan’s killer was indeed a lady, as Mandy’s note had suggested, the pool of possible suspects was small.
PK and Big Pete were out. Imogen didn’t seem clever enough to plan a scavenger hunt, let alone a double murder.
And Lucinda had no connection to Babette’s business.
So Liv homed in on the two women now sitting on opposite sides of Big Pete’s perch: Fiona and Devon.
Fiona sat ramrod straight against a stack of crates, eyes closed, LED mask switched on, the glow from it an eerie blue that
matched her wide-rimmed visor. Devon was a few feet closer, poring over Stefan’s papers under a shade covering she’d rigged
up from a sleeping mat and a Babette kimono.
Shade. That was a good idea. Liv looked around for her own source of relief and, finding none, settled for pulling her thin
T-shirt up over her head.
Fiona and Devon. Could either of them have pulled off both deaths?
She’d put money on her theory that Babette had been poisoned with whatever had killed Justine Long. That required specialized
knowledge from CareFree testing that both Fiona and Devon had. But it wasn’t at all clear how either of them could have delivered
a deadly substance to Babette on the day she’d hiked in. Perhaps it had been stashed in Babette’s luggage, in a personal item
they knew she would reach for during a long hike in the sun? That suggested a level of closeness and proximity that pointed
to Devon . . . unless Fiona had offered Babette a new skin protection doohickey and had buried the poison within it.
Stefan’s slashed throat seemed bolder, but easier to execute. As a dermatologist, Fiona had likely performed minor cosmetic
surgeries, and Devon, a botanist, was skilled with a knife. Liv remembered how deftly she’d split the datura flower to show
Liv its insides, the confident way Devon ran the blade down the delicate surface of the plant.
Each woman had the means to kill Babette and Stefan.
But did they have motive? Devon wanted to take over the business with her brother, and it was possible a coup might not be as bloodless as she had led Liv to believe.
Meanwhile, Fiona, while invested financially in the success of CareFree, seemed to have little trust in Babette’s leadership to put out a safe version of the product.
Maybe she wanted to take the company down.
Or take it over. Perhaps the two women were even working together.
A two-person team. Liv felt the ache where her own partner should have been. Where was Mandy? Had she been compelled to leave,
or had she left Liv behind?
If Liv was honest with herself, this was the riddle that plagued her most. Not who killed Babette and Stefan, but where her
sister and dad were. Visions of Mandy flooded Liv’s brain. Mandy as a little kid, scarfing down orange dust from the mac and
cheese box and begging Liv to tell their mom a stray dog had stolen the noodles. Mandy as a teenager, sneaking out to concerts
with a fake ID she’d conjured from a library card and laminate. Mandy after their mom died, stunned, in pain, and drowning
in her first confrontation with the fact that sometimes life’s magician had terrible tricks up its sleeve. Mandy in her twenties,
skittering from job to job, apartment to apartment, accumulating hand-thrown ceramic bowls and bedazzled sunglasses. Mandy
tugging Liv up a tree; into a bar; down a trail; or, just the day before, paddling beside her through walls of water, a riotous
grin on her face as they smacked the river and rose again.
The memories hit Liv like heat waves, making her woozy. She pulled her shirt down off her head. The truth was that Mandy had
never run away from her. It was Liv who had done that, with her judgments and foreign service assignments, her unwillingness
to leap into the unknown. Mandy always wanted to be closer, to go deep with her. Liv was the one who had pushed her sister
away.
Her face burned with the realization. The guilt. The loss. And the heat.
“What’s going on in that big brain of yours?”
Liv squinted up at Lucinda Duvray. Could she be a useful thought partner? Liv didn’t want to scare her, but Lucinda had handled
herself calmly and capably so far. And she’d been a businesswoman before she retired. Maybe she could be some help now.
“Have you ever been involved in a corporate takeover?” Liv asked.
Lucinda looked puzzled. “A million years ago, yes.”
“Do you know of any that have gotten . . . violent?”
“You think someone killed Babette and Stefan to gain control of their skin care company?”
“Maybe,” Liv said. “But I don’t see why they would have to go to criminal extremes to do it. I thought those things were usually
bloodless.”
Lucinda smiled. “You’ve never been in a boardroom, have you?”
Liv shook her head.
“They have dark hardwood tables,” Lucinda said. “Mahogany. Teak. You might think it’s for aesthetics. But really, it’s to
hide all the blood spilled in the name of ‘business as usual.’”
“Things can get ugly,” Liv said.
Lucinda nodded. “In my experience, family companies are the worst. I never did business with my family. There’s something
precious about the opportunity to love someone without expecting them to produce. Business is business. Family is family.
Bad things can happen when you mix the two.”
Lucinda looked to the front of the boat, where Imogen was shooting a video about “survival skin care” using a spatula as a
mirror. Liv could see the barefaced pleasure the older woman took in her frivolous grandchild.
“You own laundromats, right?” Liv asked.
Lucinda waved her off. “Owned. Some retail as well. Direct sales. Vending machines. Cash businesses. Simple stuff.”
“You must have gotten good at assessing what might be a worthwhile investment.”
“Those businesses didn’t require much analysis, dear.”
“But you did well.”
“I did.”
Liv liked that she owned having achieved something with her work.
“Sometimes, the simple companies are the most lucrative,” Lucinda said.
“Imogen says I should get interested in these new platforms, the power of social media. But companies like Hitch or Babette always seem like paper tigers to me. I can’t tell where their roar is coming from, or if it’s real.
Give me a cash business with a one-sentence value proposition.
That I can understand. That I can make money from. ”
“Do you think it’s possible there’s something wrong with CareFree?” Liv asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What you just said about paper tigers . . . I’ve been narrowing in on the person behind these murders, assuming whoever killed
Babette and Stefan did so to capture the value of the new product line. But what if there is no value in CareFree? What if
the value is somewhere else?”
Lucinda stared at her. “I’m not following.”
Liv shook her head. “You’re right. I just keep talking myself in circles and not getting anywhere. I’m sorry. It’s too hot.”
Her hands were turning pink in the heat. She looked longingly at Lucinda’s long sleeves and paddling gloves. Covering up was
the smart thing to do.
“Do you want a hat?” Lucinda asked. She reached between two coolers and dug out a pristine Babette ball cap. “Imogen ended
up not needing mine after all.”
“Are you sure?”
Lucinda nodded. “Let me help you.”
Liv wanted to peek at the inside brim, but Lucinda was already smoothing the hair back from Liv’s forehead, pressing down
the hat, and cinching the back closure to a snug fit. The tea tree crystals felt good where they pricked Liv’s skin. Whether
it was a placebo effect or not, she was already cooling down.
“Thank you,” she said. “I just wish I could figure this all out.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Lucinda said. “We’re alive. We’re moving.”
“For now.”
“For now.”