Page 115 of Sunburned

I swallowed my surprise, focusing on the barrel of the gun to keep my poker face straight. A thrashing fish had to be reeled in carefully. “How did you know—”

“I’m not as dumb as I look,” she cut me off. “But when Ian’s shoe washed up, I saw my opportunity to take care of my son in the way that Tyson prevented Ian from ever being able to take care of him.”

“You blackmailed him for five hundred thousand,” I said. “Was that all you wanted?”

She shook her head. “I just wanted the cash as a guarantee he’d play ball. Once I told him what was in the lockbox and threatened to tell the police, he would have agreed to transfer the millions I planned to demand.”

“But how did you know the key to the safety deposit box was still in the lining of the shoe?” I asked. “That wasn’t reported publicly.”

“I knew that even if it was no longer there, Tyson was paranoid enough to respond to blackmail,” she said, confirming my suspicions.

“So you sent him that newspaper clipping,” I said.

She nodded. “And it did the trick, just like I knew it would. I didn’t realize he’d invite you down here, but it ended up working in my favor.”

I wanted to ask why she’d tried to kill me on the boat, but it seemed like a bad idea to remind her of her failed attempt while she was holding a gun that could finish the job, so instead I asked the question that had been bothering me since Tyson had shown me the blackmail note. “What was in the lockbox, that you were so sure he’d pay you?”

“Proof that Tyson had stolen the De-Sal technology from Ian.”

I stared at her, my mind suddenly blank. “What?” I choked out.

She cocked her head, surprised. “You didn’t know?”

Shock washed over me as I shook my head. But it explained so much…

“He was working on it in the plastic pools behind the trailer,” she said. “You saw it, I’m sure you did.”

A blurry image formed in my mind. A dead snake on a humid summer night. “The hydroponics?” I managed. “I thought that was for growing weed.”

“I mean, he did intend to grow weed with the water it produced, but the experiment was using the brine left over from the desalination process to power the system.”

I blinked, processing. “Which is what’s made De-Sal so successful.”

Had Tyson simply taken advantage of Ian’s death to use his technology? Or had Tyson murdered Ian with the intention of stealing it? Regardless, the fact remained that if Jennifer was right, Tyson’s entire empire was built on a lie. And the worst thing Tyson could’ve imagined was anyone finding out he was a fraud.

“If you couldn’t get into the safety deposit box, how did you know what was inside?” I asked.

“After I saved Ian’s notebooks from the fire, I made him promise to lock them up there to keep them safe.”

But her logic wasn’t totally sound. “If the notebooks were in the lockbox, then how did Tyson get them?”

“Ian kept an extra key on his keychain. Tyson stole it when he killed him.”

The lockbox must have been where Tyson found the video that Ian had shot of us on the Fourth of July, too. But…“Then there would be nothing left inside, no reason for him to fear exposure from the keys,” I pointed out.

“I don’t know,” she snapped, growing annoyed. “I never got that far. But I do know Tyson killed Ian and stole his technology, and he was scared enough about what might be in the safety deposit box that he took out the money to pay me.”

The triumph of being right about Tyson’s blackmailer not having anything on him rang hollow in the light of all that had followed.

“I don’t understand,” I said, trying to fit together the pieces of the puzzle. “If you had your ace in the hole, why did you decide to kill him?”

She snorted. “I didn’t kill him. You did.”

I paused, confused about why she was turning things around on me now, when she’d confessed everything else. “No, I didn’t.” At her disbelieving look, I raised my hands. “Don’t you think if I wanted his money, I would have come after him with a paternity suit years ago?”

“Maybe you changed your mind.”

I shook my head. “My life with my kids is great. We may not be rich, but we want for nothing. Staying out of our lives was the one kindness Tyson afforded me. I was as surprised as anyone that they were in his will.”

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