Page 118 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“It’s a sap-like resin. Highly concentrated scopolamine.”

“Deadly?”

“Yes.”

Liv remembered how the dirt had clung to the blank inside brim of Babette’s hat, and the rash of bumps across the dead woman’s skin. “Who has access to that waste material now?”

“No one. ADD Inc. has a proprietary machine process to sequester the scopolamine into sealed containers that are removed directly from our labs. There’s no way anyone can get hurt by it anymore. And even at the time . . . Fiona knew the risks. She should have been more cautious in the testing environment.”

“But you still gave her a stake in CareFree to keep her quiet.”

Devon was silent for a long while.

“My sister did what she had to do.”

Liv wiped the back of her neck. The tea tree crystals in the hat had stopped working, their effect likely blunted by the sweat on her forehead.

“Just to clarify,” Liv said. “The creation of CareFree generates a dangerous byproduct that killed someone. Fiona recommended an expensive waste management process to deal with it. After Stefan’s firm invested, he suggested a different approach. You paid Fiona off and went with Stefan’s suggestion, ADD Inc. Then a year later—a few weeks ago—Babette canceled the ADD contract. Did she sign on with someone new? Or could she have been in conversation with Fiona about reopening the question of how to process the waste?”

“As far as I know, Babette and Fiona hadn’t talked in months,” Devon said. “Though Fiona did say Babette invited her here.” Devon looked out to the edge of the river, where a flock of mergansers were diving for fish. “Babette made business decisions on instinct. She didn’t feel the need to tell us why she fired someone or didn’t renew a contract, and the reasons she did share rarely made sense. For all I know, she decided ADD had bad vibrational energy, or the owner’s astrological chart was suspect. She just told me and Charlie she’d canceled it. The implication was that we’d have to figure out a new option.”

“Did you?”

“Charlie sourced some bids, but frankly, we had bigger issues to deal with. This was just another instance of our sister acting impulsively and expecting us to clean up her mess.”

Liv looked back down at the contract in front of her. She flipped past lists of chemicals and waste sequestration specifications, hunting for something she could grab on to, something she could understand. She got to the very last page. White space surrounded two signature blocks: one for the head of ADD Inc., and one for the CEO of Babette Botanique. The black line above ADD Inc. was signed in blue ink, a jagged scribble she couldn’t even begin to guess at. The signature line for Babette was vacant.

Then she saw it. Under the ADD Inc. signature, also in blue ink: a hand-scrawled date.

This contract was not a year old. It had been prepared just a week ago, days before they’d all met at the lodge to begin this godforsaken trip.

She narrowed her eyes at the signature page. Stefan had brought this contract with him to the Grand Canyon alongside the papers for Babette’s leadership transition. Were the two contracts linked? What would make this waste subcontractor so important to Stefan?

The papers that had struck Liv as dry before now seemed to be pulsating with energy. The heat that had felt so oppressive just minutes ago now felt like the portal to a breakthrough.

Liv stacked up the papers. “With your sister dead, who signs contracts on behalf of the company?”

“Charlie,” Devon said. “Or if we move forward with the CEO transition as planned, it would be me.”

“Would you reenter a contract with ADD Inc. for CareFree waste management?” Liv asked.

Devon looked puzzled.

“Stefan’s boss—your big investor—if they asked you to reinstate the contract,” Liv said, “would you do it?”

“I’d sign it right now,” Devon said. “Charlie and I deal in outcomes and data, not signals from the universe. And ADD did nothing wrong. Even if we don’t know why Stefan had this with him, it must have mattered to the Regent Group. If working with ADD is important to our biggest investor, especially at a precarious time like this, then it’s important to me too.”

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.”