Luke was still dispirited when he sat down to dinner. The plate before him contained baked chicken, au gratin potatoes, and green beans. It smelled good, but he wished he could throw the potatoes out the window, because that was surely the only logical place to infuse a tablespoon of chemicals.
“Bon appétit,” Nurse Hollister said with good cheer as she delivered their meals, but Dr. Wiley looked darkly ominous as he followed her into the dining room.
“I’ve heard there have been a number of visitors prowling around the house, asking for information and even autographs,” he said. “I want it understood that this sort of publicity is not welcome, and I want it stopped immediately.”
“We can’t help it,” Nicolo said. “They love us.”
“It is going to stop immediately,” Dr. Wiley said. “None of you joined this assignment for the glory. It is a controlled experiment for the good of science. The editor of the newspaper in question has agreed he won’t publish any additional reports until the study is concluded. I want this to be the last time I have to issue this warning.”
There was plenty of grumbling, but even though no one actually agreed to anything, Dr. Wiley must have assumed he’d made his point, as he retreated behind the swinging door leading to the kitchen.
“It seems wrong to deny my adoring public access to my autograph,” St. Louis said.
“Your adoring public is nothing compared to mine,” Nicolo said in his florid Italian accent. “Half of the female clerks at the Census Bureau wanted my autograph. They all marveled at my bravery. I got cramps in my hand signing all those newspapers.”
Luke felt too ill to participate in the conversation as he cut into his chicken. Besides, the less attention he drew to himself, the better, because he wasn’t going to let press attention fade away.
Clyde Magruder might have frightened off the editor of The Washington Post, but from now on Modern Century would be getting exclusive stories with all the details. His editor had never been afraid of a lawsuit, and Luke would keep publishing those articles for as long as he was a part of this study. He’d never told Dr. Wiley the name of the journal he worked for, which meant he could get away with publishing his articles anonymously.
Before the ransacking of his office, Luke had been motivated by science. Now he was motivated by the need to take Clyde Magruder down.
Twelve
It was time for Andrew and Sam to return to Baltimore, and Marianne accompanied them to the train station. She’d been trying all week to have a private conversation with her brother, but it seemed her mother or Sam was always hovering nearby. There was no privacy in the bustling Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, but it would have to do. They still had twenty minutes before their train boarded, and she steered Andrew toward a bench on the far side of the waiting area.
“Why don’t you take Bandit for a walk?” she suggested to Sam. The last thing she wanted was a nine-year-old to overhear this conversation. “You’ll be cooped up on the train for a while, so let him walk off some energy now.”
“Don’t go too far,” Andrew warned as Sam headed toward the row of newsstands and vendors selling treats to the passengers.
Marianne pinched the tips of her fingers to wiggle off the tight gloves as she searched for the most delicate way to phrase her question, but there was no dignified way to ask if their father was still being unfaithful with Lottie O’Grady.
“Do you think Papa’s visits to see Tommy are entirely innocent?”
Andrew’s expression grew stormy. “They’d better be.”
“Do you have any reason to suspect otherwise?”
Andrew shifted on the bench and folded his arms. “I don’t go with him on the visits. I have no desire to see that woman or the child.”
His bitterness was blatant. Lottie O’Grady had been Sam’s nanny. It was impossible to know when her affair with Clyde began, but Sam was six when it became obvious the nanny was carrying a child. Clyde did some fancy footwork to move Lottie into her own town house before the baby was born. Vera found out anyway and left Clyde for six months. She lived with Andrew and Delia before Clyde succeeded in winning her back with lavish apologies and vows of eternal fidelity.
But Clyde’s visits to Lottie still rankled both Andrew and her mother. Marianne could understand Andrew’s disdain for Lottie, but the child was innocent.
“Aren’t you at least curious about Tommy?” she asked.
“No. I witnessed six months of Mother’s agony when she lived with us after it happened. I wish Dad would wash his hands of both Lottie and the child. It’s the least he could do for Mother. There’s no reason a lawyer can’t simply write the woman a monthly check and be done with it.”
It was impossible to share his sentiments. Marianne was grateful down to the marrow of her bones that Clyde hadn’t abandoned her. She had been given the gift of two loving parents and a stable household. That wouldn’t have happened had she been raised by the opera singer who was paid to turn her over to Clyde, then made no attempt to contact her again.
“I wouldn’t mind meeting him,” she said quietly.
It was the wrong thing to say. Andrew whirled on the bench and shook his finger in her face. “Don’t you dare,” he said vehemently. “It would kill Mother. She’s been through enough, and you can’t repay her generosity by extending an olive branch to the O’Gradys. Mother did more than enough when she took you in twenty-six years ago.”
“Shh!” she warned. “Sam might overhear.”
The boy was loping toward them with Bandit at his heels. “Can I have a nickel for a pretzel?” he asked Andrew. “Bandit wants one too, so that means two nickels.”
Andrew scrounged in his vest pocket and produced the coins, then waved Sam away. His voice was calmer when he turned back to her. “I’m sorry for speaking bluntly of things better left in the past, but my loyalty will always be to Mother. I’ve told Dad that if I catch him being unfaithful again, I’ll quit working for the company.”
“You would really do that?” she asked in surprise.
“I would.” His face was somber as he watched Sam buy two enormous pretzels. “Managing the company is harder than I expected. It seems like every day new problems crop up.”
“But you enjoy the work, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “It’s not like I get to spend my days taking pretty pictures. It’s one headache after another.”
She ignored the swipe. Andrew had never approved of her job, and surely his work was more stressful than hers.
“Do you remember that article in the newspaper a few days ago?” she asked. “The one that Papa got so angry about?”
“I remember.”
“Is there any truth to the notion that the chemicals we use are unsafe?”
“It would be worse if we didn’t use them,” he replied. “We put a tiny bit of preservatives into canned foods that could sit on store shelves for months. Just this year I spent a fortune commissioning tests that prove our preservatives are safe.”
“You did?” she asked hopefully. “I thought you said tests like that were too expensive.”