Copper Beach

some serious research. She arranged to meet you at that gem-and-mineral show. The next thing you know, you’re giving her a tour of the lab and she’s filling out a job application.”

    “You started working for us before Cassidy did. How did you learn about the Phoenix Mine and the crystals?”

    “Ray Willis filled up more than one lab notebook with the records of his experiments,” Frye said. Cold triumph rang in his words.

    “I’ll be damned. Willis kept more than one notebook?”

    “There were two, the one he showed to your father and Knox, and a second one in which he kept his own private records. Shortly before the explosion in the mine, he sent the second one to my mother for safekeeping.”

    “Why would he send it to your mother?”

    “The two of them were lovers at the time that your father and the others discovered that vein of crystals,” Frye said. “He realized the true value of the stones immediately, and wanted to conceal some of the results of his experiments from his partners.”

    “Did your mother have any idea of how dangerous the stones are?”

    “No, of course not. The first lab book wasn’t encrypted, but it might as well have been, as far as she was concerned. The notes are all written in the form of para-physics equations and technical jargon. I found it when I went through her things after she died a few years ago. But there was nothing in the notebook concerning the exact location of the Phoenix Mine.”

    “But after you found the lab book you knew who did have that information, though, didn’t you? Your father’s partners, Elias Coppersmith and Quinn Knox.”

    “I managed to track down Knox,” Frye said. “He was deep into the booze and the pills by then. I tried to question him, but I couldn’t get much out of him. His brain was mush. He told some very tall tales about the Phoenix Mine, but he had long since forgotten the coordinates, or pretended that he had forgotten. All I got from him was that it was somewhere in Nevada.”

    “Lot of desert in Nevada.”

    “Knox did let slip one other interesting bit of information. He told me the story of how he and your father had escaped from the mine after Willis tried to murder them. He said that they both nearly died because your father insisted on carrying out a sack of rocks.”

    “You realized that my family probably still had the crystals.”

    “I decided my best bet was to get a job with Coppersmith Inc.,” Frye said. “With my talent, it wasn’t hard to work my way into the Black Box facility.”

    “You became a trusted employee, but you couldn’t find what you wanted most, the location of the Phoenix. And there was no record of the geodes that my father had carried out of the mine the day of the explosion.”

    “Since the stones were not housed in the lab vault, I knew they were most likely either here on the island or down in Sedona,” Frye said. “Couldn’t see the Coppersmith family letting the crystals get too far out of sight. After a couple of visits here, I realized that your private lab was the most likely place.”

    “But my security is good, and you didn’t even know where the vault was located. You needed to get someone inside. And then Cassidy came on the scene, and you saw your opportunity. How did she find the vault in the wall?”

    “There aren’t that many firms that specialize in high-end vaults and safes here in the Northwest. I eventually tracked down one that had a record of an installation here on Legacy a few years ago. There weren’t many details, but a contractor had left some handwritten notes that made it clear the safe had been installed in a basement wall.”

    “Cassidy had the freedom of the whole house when she stayed here with me. But I still don’t know how she found the vault. I never showed it to her.”

    “Finding it wasn’t that hard,” Frye said. “I knew there had to be a phony wall somewhere, and that the vault would be behind it. I gave Cassidy one of the high-end metal detectors we use in the lab. It didn’t take her long to find the lever that opens the wall.”

    “After that, the two of you figured you were home free. You weren’t concerned about your ability to crack the vault. Given your lab equipment and your talent, you assumed that would be a piece of cake. You chose a night when you knew that I was going to be away from the island on a consulting trip.”

    “When you go off on one of those trips, you’re generally gone