She nodded and beckoned for him to follow her to a small waiting room near the back of the main floor. It was a windowless room but still decorated with a grandiose coffered ceiling and velvet-flocked wallpaper. Chairs lined the wall, but they didn’t bother to sit. The moment Caroline closed the door, she turned to him.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Who does Luke know in Philadelphia?”
She stilled. “Aside from the obvious? No one.”
“His bank account is overdrawn from checks written to three people in Philadelphia. I’m worried he was being blackmailed. Did he confide anything to you?”
She sank into a chair as though she didn’t have the strength to keep standing. “He’s still sending money to the families. He’s been doing it for years.”
“What?” he burst out. “I paid those people off long ago. Lukeknowsthat!”
“Gray, I don’t think you have any idea how miserable Luke has been over what happened. It consumes him. He’s never stopped obsessing over it, and he’s been writing checks to those people ever since it happened.”
He should have known. Luke had been knocked off-kilter when his first major business deal imploded. It was an attempt to partner with the Magruders, combining the Delacroix reputation for quality with the Magruders’ ability to mass-produce food. Jedidiah Magruder had suggested a plan in which their companies would cooperate to capitalize on the American obsession with coffee. He proposed a line of pricey coffee, using the Magruder packaging facilities but branded with the Delacroix name and reputation for gourmet quality. Both companies stood to gain.
Everything began well, with the Magruders investing heavily in canisters with snug-fitting lids to preserve freshness, and elegant embossed labels with custom artwork. Luke worked with their father to import coffee beans from Kenya, the best in the world. They tested the market in Philadelphia, a city famous for its coffeehouses. Luke selected the coffeehouses and chefs with connections to the best restaurants in the city. The plan was to release the gourmet coffee in the venues Luke selected, then gauge the response before distributing it to a national market.
Nothing on the canisters coming out of the Magruder production facility indicated there was anything besides top-quality ground coffee inside. What they didn’t know was that Clyde Magruder had always intended to adulterate the full-bodied Kenyan coffee beans with cheap ground chicory. To mask the chicory aftertaste, he used chemical flavoring and colored the mix with indigo dye, lead chromate, and coal tar. The coffee was excellent, with a smooth flavor and enticing aroma. In hindsight, the Magruders were paying close attention to see if their cheap mixture would fool the market.
The combination proved fatal to three people within a week of the coffee going on sale. While most people could easily digest the brew, who knew why some people had sensitivities to chicory root that proved deadly? When those three individuals all suffered swelling in the throat, wheezing, and seizures, the adulterated coffee was quickly identified as the source of their illness. There was no law against what the Magruders had done. Such techniques had been used for decades, but Gray was furious. The Delacroixs had never used adulterants or chemical flavorings in any of their products, but by partnering with the Magruders, they had lost control of the production.
Luke was devastated, feeling as though he had personally administered a cup of poison to each of those three people.
Caroline continued with the story. “The daughter of one of the men is getting married next month, and Luke didn’t want her to scrimp. Her father was a factory shop foreman, and times have been hard since he died.”
“I gave each family twenty thousand dollars after it happened,” Gray said. “That’s more than the foreman would have earned in a decade.”
Caroline shrugged. “You know how Luke is.”
He did. Luke was generous, funny, and completely unmoored from reality. It looked like he had been single-handedly trying tokeep those families afloat, even though they’d all been compensated and signed legal documents agreeing to the settlements.
“Will you make good on the checks?” Caroline asked. “I know we are under no legal obligation, but—”
“I’ll pay the checks.” It was the least he could do for Luke.
“And what about Otis?” she asked quietly.
Gray braced himself for another difficult conversation. Even thinking about Annabelle made him ill, but Caroline needed to know that Otis was innocent, and the only way to do that was to reveal everything he knew.
“Otis had nothing to do with what happened to Luke.” His mouth went dry and his stomach turned. “It was Annabelle.”
Caroline was stunned, and he relayed the details as quickly as possible, choking back revulsion as he talked. Caroline listened in horrified sympathy, waiting patiently until he finished.
“Oh, Gray, I’m so sorry. I’m glad about Otis, but...” Her voice hardened as she stood and began pacing the small room like a panther, fists clenched, jaw outthrust. “If I ever see that woman again, there won’t be a rock big enough for her to hide beneath. I’ll pick her up and bodily fling her into the Potomac. I’ll kick her back to Kansas. I’ll—”
“If you see Annabelle again, you will ignore her,” he instructed calmly. It was the only thing they could do. As much as he’d like to call down fire and brimstone on her head, she hadn’t done anything illegal. Some people might even side with Annabelle. Neither he nor Caroline ever would. To them, she was a snake who had slid into their world, gathered information, and used it to destroy their family.
The fight went out of Caroline. Her shoulders sagged, and she closed her eyes, but only for a moment. Then her spine straightened, her chin lifted, and she returned to sit beside him. “Tell me what I can do to help.”
He bit off an ironic laugh. “There’s nothing you can do. I was an idiot, and now I have to live with it.”
“No, you don’t,” Caroline said brightly. “You’re ready to start a family. That’s part of the reason you fell so quickly for that person from Kansas. Don’t let one bad experience dissuade you. I know plenty of eligible young ladies.”
Everything in him recoiled. Even thinking about starting a courtship at this point was anathema.
Caroline noticed, and sympathy tinged her gaze. “Forgive me. Perhaps it’s too early, but when you’re ready, I will find the perfect woman for you. If I must climb to the top of Mount Everest, I will find her and drag her to your front door.”
