The agent left, Caroline watching him the whole time. “Isn’t he delightful?”
“But he’s right,” Gray said reluctantly. “Any association you have with me or Luke can only harm you.”
“I suppose you’re both my cross to bear,” she teased.
She said it affectionately, but he feared she was correct, and that hurt more than anything.
Ever since Dickie Shuster’s visit, Annabelle scanned the newspaper each morning, curious about what he had up his sleeve, but the article was so much worse than she could have imagined. Dickie Shuster had no interest in food purity. He was only interested in writing a salacious exposé of the entire Delacroix family.
It was no surprise when she arrived at the laboratory to see Horace poring over the disgraceful article and not a single test tube or seed sample brought out of storage for testing.
“Have you seen this?” he asked with excitement.
“I’ve seen it,” she replied, heading straight toward her collection of lab notebooks.
“Absolutely appalling,” he said in a voice dripping with delight. “And there is more to come. Did you see that this is only the first article in a series?”
Annabelle dropped the lab books and darted to the newspaper. “No. Where?”
Sure enough, in small print near the bottom, it indicated that Mr. Shuster would release the second article about the Delacroix family and their crusade against the Magruders the following week.
Horace rubbed his hands so firmly his knuckles cracked. “Dickie Shuster recently came into possession of a matched pair of chestnut bays and has been driving them all over town. I happen to know those horses once belonged to Clyde Magruder, but now they are Dickie’s, and that’s no coincidence.”
“Are you suggesting that Dickie Shustertook a bribe?” She was so aghast she could barely get the words out.
Horace giggled. “My dear, you are so naïve. I don’t think Dickie would use the wordbribe, since it has so many unsavorylegal implications. But the Magruders know how to get things done, and the ‘gift’ of some fine horses certainly paid off for them. And trust me, there is more to come.Muchmore, and I think I know what it is.”
She shouldn’t be gossiping. Mr. Bryant had warned her time and again about squandering time with gossip, but this was important. It was still three minutes before nine o’clock, so technically she wasn’t on duty yet.
She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “What else do you know?”
“I know that Dickie didn’t milk the treason angle about that Delacroix brother in Cuba nearly enough. A tidbit that scandalous belongs on the front page, not buried on page eight. He’s holding something back, and it’s big.”
How much worse could it get than branding a man a traitor and a spy? But Horace always had his nose to the ground and knew Washington politics inside and out. “What are you expecting?”
“I expect that next week’s installment will be a front-page story documenting the traitorous activities of a Naval Academy graduate and corruption within the War Department.”
She shook her head. “Luke Delacroix never graduated from the Naval Academy.”
“Au contraire,” Horace practically purred. “He graduated last year.”
“No, he didn’t,” she insisted. “He got kicked out eight years ago, a semester shy of graduation.” She still remembered the despair in Gray’s voice as he talked about Luke—so much talent but so little discipline. And Luke’s subsequent years of reckless living certainly didn’t comport with the expected behavior of a Naval Academy graduate.
The smirk on Horace’s face made it clear he didn’t believe her, but it was almost time for their supervisor to arrive and shut down all superfluous chitchat. Horace darted to the hallway andlooked both ways. Apparently Mr. Bryant wasn’t yet in sight, as Horace closed the laboratory door and hurried back to the lab tables, gesturing for her to lean in close.
“You know my wife is a secretary at the War Department,” he whispered. “And secretaries know everything.”
A sense of dread loomed, for Horace wouldn’t be gloating so much unless he had something truly scandalous to share.
“What does your wife know?” she asked.
“She knows that about a year ago, a special request was made at the Office of the Navy to award Luke Delacroix a diploma from the Naval Academy. It was all hush-hush, but officers from the academy arrived and met with the proper authorities, obtained the necessary signatures, and brought that paperwork back to Annapolis to be officially filed. My wife put the signed diploma in the mail. She saw it with her own eyes and personally addressed the envelope to Mr. Luke Delacroix. As of last year, he had the trust of high-ranking officers in the War Department. Now he is a traitor. Tell me, Annabelle from Kansas, don’t you think that level of corruption is worthy of a front-page story?”
It was. And it was also something Gray needed to know right away.
Thirty-Five
Annabelle dreaded going to see Gray. The last time they saw each other had been almost two months ago. That awful morning in the Springfield train station when Gray definitively stated there could be no future for them.
