Chapter Fifty
“So, Fiona?” Guy said. “A secret investor turned killer?”
Charlie nodded somberly. “As much as it pains me to say it, it makes sense.”
“All right, then.” Guy clapped his hands together. “Let’s fire up the radio and call the police. Then we can get on the same
page about our own story and get rescued.”
“Now you’re willing to call them?” Mandy asked.
“If we know who did it, we aren’t suspects,” Guy said. “We’re heroes.”
Mandy looked over at Thor, who hadn’t weighed in. He was whittling a coyote willow branch, trying to approximate a needle
they could use to patch the raft.
“I don’t like it.” Thor flicked his blade, shooting slivers of wood into the late afternoon air. The guide pointed his knife
at Charlie. “I think you don’t like Fiona. I think it would be convenient for you if she was the killer. Disgruntled ex-employee,
no connection to what you’re doing now. It would take her objections to your product off the table.”
“The product is safe,” Charlie said.
“I can’t fathom it being Katy, neither,” Thor continued. “Though I suppose she’s the only one I could imagine taking the gun.”
“The gun?” Mandy asked.
Thor nodded. “She handed it off to me when I went on watch last night.”
“And you don’t have it anymore?” It was a silly question. She wasn’t sure how it would change things if Thor had a gun. But
just talking about it scared her enough to ask.
The guide shook his head. “I had it when I went on watch, but I had that bottle of tequila too. And, between us chickens,
I’m a lightweight. By the time y’all woke me up with your goings-on down at the supply boat, the pistol was gone.”
Mandy thought back to when she’d crept by Thor that morning. It felt like a million years ago. She could see his passed-out
sprawl, the empty liquor bottle in his hand. But no matter how hard she squinted, she couldn’t recall a gun.
“Whoever killed Stefan probably took it,” Charlie said.
“Then why didn’t they shoot him?” Mandy asked.
“Too loud,” Guy said. “They never would have got away with it. The knife was quieter.”
“The knife,” Thor said. He turned to Mandy. “You still got it?”
She pulled the slim blade out of her pocket.
Thor nodded. “Let’s go back to basics. If Marc never crossed the river, how did that knife end up killing the Dutchman?” He
turned to Guy. “You said you didn’t see it when he was hiking down with you.”
“We’ve already gone over this.”
“He wasn’t wearing it on his belt?”
Guy held up his protein bar. “I swear on this peanut butter monstrosity. I never saw that knife before.”
Then Mandy remembered something.
“You saw it,” she said to Charlie. “You said so in the boat.”
“I must have been mistaken.” Charlie shrugged. “It’s Fiona. It’s done.”
Thor’s hand darted out, fast as a snake, grabbing hold of Charlie’s long-sleeved hiking shirt. There was a swishing movement. His whittling knife. The long, sharp blade. One of the buttons from Charlie’s shirt fell into Thor’s sun-cracked hand.
“It’s not done until I say it’s done,” Thor said. “Not until we know everything about what happened.”
Mandy gulped. She didn’t want to see Charlie in danger. But they needed the truth now.
“When the raft was upside down,” she said in a quiet voice. “Before I beached us. You said you’d seen that knife before.”
“Yes, but—”
Another swishing breath. Another button dropped.
“You did say that,” Thor said. “She’s right.”
Charlie clutched the gaping fabric of his shirt where the buttons had been. He was trembling now.
Finally, he spoke. “Can I see it?”
Mandy held it in her outstretched palm toward the jittery CFO.
“I could be wrong,” Charlie said, “and I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
Mandy resisted the urge to roll her eyes. This was how accountants killed people, with an abundance of caution.
“But I think I saw Marc showing it to someone that first day, down at the beach, before we got in the rafts.”
“Who?” Thor asked.
“Imogen and Lucinda. I first noticed them chatting at the luggage drop, now that I think about it. Imogen had her phone in
the air, streaming everything. She was arguing hard to bring a lighting bank along with her tripod. Marc told her there wouldn’t
be electricity down in the canyon, and she flipped out.”
“I was with Marc that morning,” Thor said. “I don’t remember any of this.”
“You were flirting with this one,” Charlie said. “I believe you and Mandy were swapping tips about backcountry hair care.”
Touché. The accountant had some nerve after all.
“Anyway,” Charlie said, “once Imogen got over her disappointment, she stalked off, and the other two repacked the bags together. It seemed like they knew each other.”
“Marc and Lucinda?” Thor asked.
Charlie nodded. “When she told us she’d rafted the Grand Canyon before, I assumed maybe Marc had been a guide on another trip
she’d taken. But then you told us he’d just been hired a few days ago.”
“Marc was green as a Muppet,” Thor said. “Told me the only desert he’d ever seen was on active duty in Afghanistan.”
Mandy tried to picture Thor at a dusty bar in Flagstaff surrounded by hikers, thrill seekers, and wannabe desert cowboys.
Thor said he’d recruited Marc, but maybe it was the other way around. She imagined the hulking bald man approaching Thor,
talking him up, buying him a beer or five. Marc must have profiled Thor. Tracked him. It took a level of professionalism and
focus that made Mandy very uncomfortable.
Then she realized something.
“The military group Marc was part of, JT whatever it was . . . that’s Canadian Special Forces, right?”
“So?” Thor asked.
“Lucinda and Imogen are Canadian,” Mandy said.
“Canada’s a big place,” Guy said.
“I know,” Mandy said. “But Imogen said they’re related to royalty. Lucinda Duvray might really be a lady. With a capital L.”
“The lady in the poem!” Thor said. “I knew it wasn’t Tennyson.”
“What?” Guy said.
“When Stefan was reciting that poem on the beach,” Thor said, “he repeated this line, like ‘the lady has gone mad, the lady
has gone too far,’ and I remember thinking, there’s no lady in that poem. I mean, it’s about the lotus eaters, and probably
some of them were women, but it’s not like when Odysseus gets trapped by Circe or Calypso or when Nausica? helps him. The
lotus eaters are just generic opium fiends. There is no lady in that part of Odysseus’s journey across the water.”
The water. Mandy turned to Charlie. “You said you saw Marc and the Duvrays talking down by the river too?”
“That’s right.” Charlie’s words were coming faster now. “When we were eating lunch and waiting for Babette. It was just the
two of them, Marc and Lucinda, feeding watermelon rinds to the mules. That’s when I saw the knife. Maybe he gave it to her.”
Mandy nodded. It fit. If Lucinda and Marc had a plan to kill Babette, they would have had to scramble when the helicopter
didn’t show up. They would have had to improvise.
It was time to put her cards on the table. “It’s Lucinda. She’s the whale. She’s the killer.”
“The grandma?” Guy asked.
“How could she have killed Babette?” Charlie asked.
“I think she directed Marc to do it on the hike down.”
“A guide.” Charlie shook his head. “I knew it.”
“I don’t think Marc was truly a guide,” Mandy said. “He was a plant. A mercenary. I think Lucinda planned it all. Think of
the hats. Imogen said they got accidentally delivered to their room at the lodge, and they came to the rim a day early. Lucinda
probably embroidered the threats in them herself.”
“Not mine,” her father said. He adjusted the cheap Grand Canyon ball cap on his head.
Mandy nodded. “Marc brought Babette’s custom hat back up to the rim for her. But he had to buy a souvenir one for you, because
no one knew you were coming.”
“Do you think Babette’s hat had a threat in it?” Charlie said.
“If there’s something in that hat, Liv will find it.” For the millionth time, Mandy wished her sister was here with them,
but this time, she didn’t need Liv to save her. If anything, she wanted Liv to see what she’d accomplished on her own.
“Imogen was streaming everything that morning up at the luggage drop,” Mandy continued.
“She even gave her grandmother a quick shout-out on her last post before we started hiking down. If Babette watched Imogen’s post when she woke up, she would have seen Lucinda on the video.
The person who wasn’t invited was Imogen’s chaperone, and CareFree’s secret investor.
Babette would have known Lucinda showing up without telling her meant trouble. ”
“So Babette went for help,” Charlie said.
“Me,” Guy said.
“You,” Mandy said. “But she signed that intense NDA, so she couldn’t tell you who you were after. And she never got a chance
to confront Lucinda. Marc killed Babette on the hike down, and Stefan figured it out. When he was raving on the beach about
how the lady had gone too far, how the violence wasn’t necessary, maybe Lucinda felt threatened. Or just disrespected. And
she killed him with the knife Marc had given her.”
“It’s a lot of ifs,” Charlie said.
“But it fits,” Mandy insisted. “Stefan mentioned that he invested in Hitch, the social media platform Imogen is on. If Lucinda
is the money behind the Regent Group, it makes sense that she could pull the strings to get her granddaughter selected as
the fresh face of CareFree. Lucinda could plant who and what she wanted for your new product, and for her own purposes.
“And her company is called the Regent Group,” Mandy continued. “A regent is an agent of the king, like a lord or a lady. Like
Lucinda.”
No one said anything for a long moment.
“What purposes?” Charlie finally asked.
“What?”
“You said she could plant who and what she wanted for her own purposes.”
“To make money, I guess,” Mandy said. “Can we focus on what’s important here? Our sisters are trapped with a murderous grandma.”
Guy snorted.
“What?” Mandy said.
“You have to admit . . . it is kind of a wild accusation.”
“But the knife, and Marc, and Hitch, and—”
“You’ve got a lot of interesting points,” Guy said. “But what I don’t hear is the reason why Lucinda Duvray would want to kill Babette. Let’s imagine you’re right. Let’s say this little Canadian lady is the brilliant
investor behind CareFree, and Hitch, and a slew of other companies. Let’s say Marc works for her and he killed Babette, and
she got pissed when Stefan said she was nuts and she killed him for that. Which means she’s also a secret knife aficionado
or a former ninja. But let’s put that aside. If Lucinda is the big money behind CareFree, why would she murder Babette? What
purpose would that serve? Why would she kill the woman who was going to sell CareFree to the world?”
He was right. It didn’t make sense. Regardless of her management skills, Babette Sauvage was a born saleswoman. Even in a
world where everyone was replaceable, a spokeswoman like Babette was not. She was the brand. She was the megaphone. She was
CareFree.
“I don’t know,” Mandy admitted. “But if Lucinda is a killer whale—as strategic and ruthless an investor as you say—she must
have a reason.”