“Only a little.” But the look on Otis’s face made Gray suspect it was a lot more.
“How little?”
“I took the applesauce to chemists for analysis,” Otis said. “Luke set up the connection with the magazines up north. We planned to launch the takedown next month.”
Gray braced a hand on the wall, leaning against it for support. Had all this been happening beneath his nose and he hadn’t noticed? Probably because he’d been so distracted by Annabelle that he’d been useless to his business and his family. Otis could have been hosting a circus in their backyard, and he would have been oblivious.
Even with Luke in prison, it looked like Otis and Captain Haig intended to carry out the ridiculous prank. Gray shouldn’t have anything to do with this sort of mischief, but as he glared at the casks of adulterated applesauce, Otis continued talking.
“That ‘applesauce’ is mostly pumpkin flesh boiled in cider. Two sets of chemists tested it, and their results match. Cheap filler, fake dye, fake sweeteners, and a premium price. You’ve got to give the Magruders credit for audacity.”
Gray gave the Magruders credit for a lot more than that. Their tainted food had been at the heart of Luke’s crushing sense of guilt for years. Luke had always been reckless, but it wasn’t until the incident with the coffee that his rowdiness spilled over into truly destructive behavior. Gray would give his right arm if he could turn back the clock and save Luke from any association with the Magruders.
In a few months Clyde Magruder would run for a seat in Congress. If he won, he could surely craft legislation that would pave the way for more adulterated food in the future. Unless he could somehow be shamed into stopping.
“Let’s go to your quarters to discuss this,” Gray said to Captain Haig. Everything about this rubbed him the wrong way, but he had to agree with Haig that Luke’s plan was fiendishly clever.
It was a tense walk up the companionway to the captain’s quarters. Like in most merchant steamers, the crew lodged on the top cargo deck near the stern. The captain’s quarters wereon the starboard side, and the owner’s cabin was directly opposite. Gray had long since cleared his belongings from the cabin, but he couldn’t resist opening the door to peek inside. It was empty.
“I planned to let the chief engineer move in,” Captain Haig said.
Gray let his eyes roam the tiny room. A bed with enough space for a trunk at its foot, a desk nailed to the wall, and a porthole for a window. It wasn’t much, but he’d spent the majority of the past two decades in this cabin.
“I’ll be moving my things back in soon,” he said, a sense of resignation weighing heavily. It wouldn’t be so bad. There had been periods of genuine satisfaction when he’d lived aboard thePelican.
But for now, he needed to figure out what to do with the twelve crates of imitation applesauce in his hold. He was fully prepared to look the other way while Haig and Otis tried to carry out Luke’s plan, but he needed to minimize the risk to his ship and his company.
The captain’s cabin had enough room for a small table, and soon they were all seated. Gray listened while they filled him in on the plan. Captain Haig showed him a jar with the original label, which simply saidApplesaucein bold letters printed over a drawing of shiny red apples. There was no list of ingredients, which meant the label was perfectly legal. Had they lied on the label and claimed the jar contained real apples, it would be a problem, but the omission of an ingredient list was permissible.
“The labels Luke designed have already been printed, so the next step is to paste them on the jars,” Otis said. He continued to outline their plan for distributing the jars to a select number of food critics, laboratories, and journalists.
It didn’t sound like the contents were dangerous, just unpalatable. The Magruders probably saved only a few cents per jar by using the cheaper pumpkin. That meant they were planningon producing this counterfeit food on a massive scale to realize a profit. Likely millions of jars would be sold in the coming years to unsuspecting consumers. What if one of those customers was allergic to pumpkin?
“Under no circumstances do I want those jars in grocer’s stores,” Gray said.
“Amen,” Otis replied. “Luke’s plan was to send them to people who help shape opinion, along with the real ingredient list. He knows journalists all over the country, but Haig and I don’t have those connections. We need help.”
Silence hung in the air. It was obvious they expected him to step up to the plate and open those doors, but everything about this plan went against the grain for him. He wasn’t a rule breaker. He wasn’t reckless or foolhardy.
But he knew the food business. He knew how publicity channels and distribution to grocers worked, and could help get this slop off the market.
“I can open a few doors with the press,” he conceded. “I can contact the mail order catalogs like Sears and Montgomery Ward to alert them to what’s in those jars and get them to pull the product.”
Otis and Captain Haig both beamed, sensing his capitulation was only moments away. And it probably was. They needed him for credibility with the journalists, but it didn’t have to stop there. The government could probably help, and Caroline had access to a megaphone louder than all the others combined.
He immediately rejected the idea. “I don’t want Caroline involved in this,” he said, for she had too much to lose.
“You sure about that?” Otis asked. “If she knew about this, she would seize the chance.”
It didn’t matter. Loyalty to Luke might prompt her to participate, but Caroline had a promising future, and this plan involved risk. She didn’t deserve to get sucked into Luke’s schemes.
“Caroline is to know nothing about this. I don’t want her within a mile of it.”
“And what about you?” Captain Haig asked.
At that very moment Luke was sweltering in a Cuban jail cell, unlikely to ever get out, and it had all started because of a cup of tainted coffee. Peeling the curtain back on Clyde Magruder’s schemes was the best gift Gray could give to Luke.
A smile curved his mouth. Heaven help them all, he was going to do it.
