Page 50 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“When we were kids,” Mandy told the guides, “our dad thought it was funny to drop other stuff in the jar with the brine and see what happened. How it affected the flavor. We made penny pickles, chili pickles, grass pickles, even one time he was repping a dog food brand and he dumped some biscuits into the jar just to try it out.”

“How’d they taste?” Big Pete asked.

Liv grimaced. Everything Pickles were never about the taste.

She knew Mandy wouldn’t tell that part of the story, how he’d send his girls back to the grocery store with the mostly eaten jar of whatever crap he’d thrown in so they could complain there was something wrong with the pickles and get a free replacement. It was a never-ending joke for him and Mandy, a game. For Liv, it was something else. A fermented, stinking lie. Even when she was stationed in Romania, where pickles were works of art—each jar an explosion of flowering dill and fresh-cut horseradish root—she couldn’t stand the sight of them.

“I’m with Thor and Pete,” Liv said. No more charming Guy Chisholm stories today. “Calories are calories, however you consume them. C’mon,” she said, grabbing for Mandy’s hand, “let’s take a dip before your hike.”

Liv guided them down to a quiet stretch of the bank and waded up to her knees in the river. Now that the sun was at its apex, the water sparkled with green flashes of movement, the light tracing every swirling eddy and flickering fish. Next to her, Mandy unwrapped the sarong from around her bikini and dunked it in the icy river.

“Let’s talk assignments before we split up,” Liv said.

“Charlie seems pretty wound up. Want me to grill him when we’re out on a ledge somewhere?”

“I want you to do two things.”

“Grill him AND make sure no one pushes him over the ledge?”

“You can watch how Charlie interacts with Stefan, but more importantly, try to get Stefan on his own. He’s involved with whatever Charlie and Devon are up to, even if he didn’t receive a threat. And buddy up to Fiona.”

Mandy draped her soaked sarong over her hair and torso like a nun’s habit. “Why Fiona?”

“She ran the CareFree testing for three rounds, until fourteen months ago, when someone died. Then they got rid of Fiona. I want to know why. Maybe she screwed something up. Or maybe there’s something dangerous about their use of datura that they don’t want her to reveal.”

“You believe that witchcraft stuff?”

“It’s not just a hippie theory,” Liv said. “The State Department has done its own studies on that plant. I didn’t make the connection until Devon started talking about scopolamine. In South America, they call it Devil’s Breath. Ingesting datura can turn people into zombies, make them willing to do anything. I’ve seen videos of people voluntarily handing over their car keys and bank cards to criminals under its influence. It’s scary.”

“But they’re using a different strain and part of the plant for CareFree.”

“That’s what they say,” Liv acknowledged. “But the fact that datura is associated with serious crimes . . . I don’t like it. Devon says the formula they’re taking to market is benign. But Fiona said Babette begged her to come here because of a problem with CareFree. Maybe Fiona saw something different in the focus groups.”

“Do you think the person who died in the focus groups might be named Justine?” Mandy asked.

Liv looked at her sister in surprise. Every once in a while, Mandy made a connection Liv hadn’t even considered. It was as if the synapses that marched down straight paths in Liv’s head did trampoline backflips in Mandy’s.

“That’s interesting,” Liv said.

“Cross me and you’re dead too.” Mandy sounded excited now. “Maybe Fiona killed someone named Justine. Maybe I can crack the case right now.”

“Or maybe it was Babette.”

“You don’t like the Sauvages, do you?”

Liv hesitated. She could see the frustration on Mandy’s face, the implication that she was judging not just the Babette team, but her.

“I don’t trust them. There’s a difference.”

Mandy swallowed. “And you don’t trust me to find out Charlie’s plan.”

“That’s not it. I’ll push Devon on that. But that’s a known issue. Whatever Stefan’s up to, what Fiona knows—that’s uncharted territory.”

“So you get the death threats, and I get the question marks,” Mandy said. “You’re the deep end. I’m the kiddie pool.”

“It’s all useful data,” Liv said. “Not a competition. And as you said, Fiona could be dangerous. The more we know about everyone, the better we can assess whether the threats are credible.”

“What do you mean?”