Lucy reached over and patted her hand. “How about you just tell me the reason you wanted to talk today?”
The aromas of freshly baked bread and cookies mingled with rotisserie chicken, wafting around them as shopping carts jangled by and voices – talking, laughing, arguing – floated in the air. But between Lucy and Cynthia, silence hung for a long moment. Cynthia’s expression became pensive, almost fearful, and for a few seconds Lucy was afraid she was going to change her mind about confiding in her.
Finally, Cynthia looked her straight in the eyes. “Okay. Conspiracy theories.”
Lucy raised her brow. “Which one?”
Cynthia shifted her gaze down, bit her lip, looked back up. “I found an article online this morning. I wanted to not believe it, but I Googled the author and couldn’t find anything but that he was legit.” She quirked one side of her mouth. “Of course, not everybody thinks he’s got all his screws tight, if you know what I mean, but I guess that’s true of anybody who puts out any kind of conspiracy theory.”
Lucy nodded. “Of course.” She took another bite. Her gregarious personality tempted her to launch into her own beliefs on a wide variety of such theories, but the wisdom that had slowly been gaining on her during the past decade held her back. She simply chewed, watching Cynthia curiously.
The other woman covered the apple with her hand, but merely fingered it lightly. “Okay, so, here it is. The guy claims that the government, drug companies, and food manufacturers are in cahoots to purposely cause the early death of Americans so that the wealthy elite can be assured of being able to continue being the wealthy elite.”
Lucy tried not to be surprised that this was apparently news to Cynthia. She reminded herself that not everyone – most people, as a matter of fact – had not delved into the world of food and nutrition and natural health and therefore had no reason to have ever heard of such a theory.
She finished the bite, nodding again. “What do you think about it?”
Cynthia’s brow furrowed. “I was wondering what you thought about it.”
“You first.” Lucy winked, dipped, and popped the morsel in her mouth to give her an excuse for not talking. Cynthia’s appetite seemed to be non-existent, so she might as well dominate the conversation for a few minutes. Dealing with irate parents and teachers always left Lucy feeling famished.
Cynthia frowned and rolled her eyes. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
Lucy lifted a shoulder.
Cynthia shook her head. “Fine. I think he makes sense. In a way. At least I could see how all the organizations could be feeding into each other and causing a huge problem, even if they’re not doing it intentionally.”
Lucy had come to the same conclusion after coming across similar information several years ago. Swallowing, she took a sip from the stainless steel water bottle she had brought along, then leaned forward. “I don’t think you’re crazy.”
Cynthia’s whole face relaxed.
“But I’ve never been convinced the government – or wealthy elite – is trying to kill people. Or make them sick. More like what you said – the Powers That Be care more about money than anything else, and that’s causing dire consequences.”
Cynthia slowly nodded. “But Melissa didn’t practically die because of some entity slowly infringing on our right to good health.” She removed her hand from the apple, stared at the two pieces of fruit for a minute, then picked up the banana and began to peel it. “But what I read this morning – not just that article, but everything about processed foods and drugs and all that. It’s…scary.”
She held up the banana. “See what I brought for lunch? Fruit and a few vegetables were the only things I could find in my house that were ‘legal’ to eat. I can’t believe I’ve been told all these years that packaged foods were good for me. For us. Why didn’t I find out about it before?” She took a bite of the banana, chewing slowly and contemplating Lucy with narrowed eyes.
“No money to be made.”
Cynthia’s eyes widened. “Beg your pardon?”
Lucy tore another piece off her quickly-shrinking tortilla. Why she hadn’t packed two, she wished she knew. “There ain’t a lot of money to be made from people eating fruits and vegetables.” She was always careful to use correct grammar at school. But now that she was feeling more comfortable, her Tex-Mex speech was going to slip out.
“And using herbs and homeopathics and essential oils for illness and diseases,” she added. “Not the kind of money that Big Pharm and Big Food are used to making.”
Cynthia paused, banana halfway to her mouth. “Big…Farm?”
“P-H-A-R-M. Pharmaceutical companies.” She placed the bite into her mouth while Cynthia’s eyes twinkled with understanding.
Then Cynthia ate three bites of her banana, staring off at a point beyond the top of Lucy’s head while she chewed. After she’d swallowed the third bite, she set the banana onto a paper napkin with a sigh. “I can only hope we’re both right about that. The food-government conspiracy being non-existent, I mean.” She fixed her eyes on Lucy with an intent expression. “But that doesn’t get me any closer to figuring out why Melissa’s food was sabotaged.”
Lucy stilled, her hand hovering above the last bit of tortilla. She felt her eyebrows knit together, tightening the skin on her forehead. “What do you mean, sabotaged?” She listened with renewed interest as Cynthia explained what the blood tests had found, and what Melissa had told her about lunch that day.
“I guess it could be,” Lucy replied slowly, “a mistake on the food processor’s end.”
Cynthia shook her head. “That’s what I thought at first. But Melissa told me that two completely different foods had been affected. And what about the two other kids before her? I doubt they’d eaten the exact same thing.”
Lucy’s heartbeat picked up. Terrorists? But if it was an act of terrorism, wouldn’t they do what they did in her son’s case, and use a quick-acting poison?
She sat back in her chair. “If it was done on purpose, it sounds like whoever did it was just trying to make a few kids sick.”
“But why?” Cynthia picked up her apple and hit it against the table, as if it were her fist. “What’s the point?” Her face wore the exasperation seeping from her voice.
“Psychopaths don’t have to have a point.”
“So a mentally ill person is going around, screwing up school lunches?”
Lucy shrugged. “I’m saying, if it is a psychopath, they don’t need any reason to commit a crime other than that they are a psychopath. If it ain’t, well, I don’t got no idea why somebody would be doing this intentionally, just to make a few kids throw up or have an allergic reaction.”
What she wanted to say more than anything was, why would Cynthia want to eat, and feed her kid, food that had stuff in it that was potentially deadly – or at least illness-provoking? But she’d learned the hard way that people don’t like to be told what to eat. They have to experience their own hard knocks and/or do their own research and come to their own conclusions.
So after her last comment, she simply crossed her arms on the table, pushing what little was left of the guacamole aside, and gave Cynthia a small smile.
Cynthia grimaced. “I don’t get it either.” She sighed and leaned back. “I guess the best I can do is what several bloggers advise: transition into a whole foods diet. And somehow make sure Melissa never puts one morsel of cafeteria food in her mouth again.”
Lucy’s smile broadened. Finally, somebody got it! She had to work not to jump off her chair with glee. “I’ll be happy to help you in any way I can.”
“I might have to take you up on it.” Cynthia polished off the banana, giving Lucy the opportunity to spoon out the rest of the guacamole. When she finished Cynthia said, “I have another idea.” She frowned. “But it might not go over very well.”
Lucy raised her brow and straightened slightly. “Let’s hear it.”
Chapter Six
He wa
s still alive. Not sick. Not in the hospital.
Preston polished off the last of the food samples he’d brought home – a single-serving plastic cup of banana pudding – with a victorious flourish. He’d eaten half of the samples that he wasn’t sending to the lab for lunch, brought the other half home for dinner.
A loud belch escaped his mouth as he stood to rinse the plastic things off and toss them into the box in the laundry room relegated to recyclables. Not using sustainable, sometimes biodegradable, packaging was one thing no one could accuse Delico Foods of. Several years ago, he had been ordered to hire an environmental awareness consultant team who were then charged with examining the company’s processes and packaging with a fine-toothed comb, and write up a report of their findings and recommended changes.
The report had ended up being over two hundred pages, and they made numerous recommendations – from replacing conventional fluorescent lights with CFLs or LEDs, to switching to recycled toilet paper in the restrooms. For a time, Preston had actually felt guilty for working for a company that had, up to that point, been so lackadaisical as far as eco-friendly practices went. But while implementing all the recommended changes would be too costly for Delico, the company had taken action on about ten percent of them. Probably the most publicly visible change was adopting post-consumer recycled plastic and paper for their packaging – and to use only the kinds of plastic that most cities accepted in their recycling programs.
When a six-month-long ad campaign informed consumers of these facts, sales of Delico Food products skyrocketed over the next year. Maybe that’s what Preston needed now. An ad campaign proving that Delico was not out to poison schoolchildren.
As he clicked on the television, he sighed, remembering his conversation with Guy that afternoon.
“Looks like I’m going to need a copy of your conversation with that St. Peter school guy after all.”
Preston had glanced up from his computer to see Guy standing just inside his office. “Am I in trouble?”
Guy’s expression was unreadable. “Doubt it. But Dawes and Lester have got wind of some kind of rumor about St. Peter wanting to replace our desserts with a competitor out in the Northeast. They want to make sure that you said nothing…inciting.”
Preston huffed out a breath. “E-mail it to you?”
“That’d be fine. Right now, if you don’t mind.” Guy turned sharply and walked away, leaving Preston under the impression that Guy might be in trouble if Dawes and Lester, the CEO of the parent company and his C.O.O., decided that Preston had screwed up.
He pressed the power button on the remote, and the screen flickered to black. He wasn’t in the mood for either dramas or sitcoms right now; besides, for the most part, Hollywood seemed to have developed a desperate void in the area of creativity. Whatever happened to the writers who used to churn out classics like Hill Street Blues, M.A.S.H, and Cheers?
Okay, so maybe Cheers wasn’t the greatest example.
Flicking off the living room light, he strode into the spare bedroom where his computer, printer, and fax machine sat in a row on an expensive hardwood desk. He booted up the computer, rubbing the tense muscles in the back of his neck while he waited.
He wasn’t sure what he was after, but he couldn’t just sit around and wait to get fired. Or not. He couldn’t just sit around and watch more kids get sick.
What if Delico Foods was the culprit? He wondered what his sister would have to say about all this. Carly had been a health nut for the past seven years, and a year ago had announced that she was “going raw”. Whatever that meant.
It at least meant that any and all food processing companies – including the one that stuffed Preston’s bank account – had suddenly become Evil Incarnate. Thanksgiving dinner with her and her husband, and Preston and Carly’s parents, last year had been awkward, to say the least. Carly had all but told him that he needed to find a different line of work, that he was playing into an elaborate scheme of power-mongers who were out to destroy the “little people.”
At the time, Preston had had to shove down anger with a large bite of turkey and dressing. He still thought she’d gotten a little brainwashed by whatever she’d read that had led her to this strange diet that had her limiting her Thanksgiving dinner to salad and fruit, but he’d forgiven her. He could ignore her “holier-than-thou” jabs. He had to. No way was he going to throw away over a decade of career ladder climbing.
Unless Delico Foods was doing something unethical under the proverbial table. His first search was “Delico Foods harming children.” To his amazement, one of the first results was a thread on a natural health board where some of the members had apparently already picked up on the rumor Guy had told him about. His eyes widened as he read through the accusations. It brought him little relief to see another of the St. Peter school district food providers mentioned. Delico Foods was obviously the target of this thread; it was even named in the subject line.
Preston expelled a breath, brow pinched. Who had started the rumor in the first place? The question had hounded him all afternoon, and he’d been able to come up with two possible answers: the mother of the most recent victim of St. Peter school food, or Dr. Munger or one of his cronies.
He could see why an angry parent would spout off half-truths and stir up trouble. He couldn’t be happy about it – it was going to cause him a lot of grief, and possibly a cut in pay if Delico lost too much money over the issue – but he could understand it.
But why would the school officials leak out a blatant lie? After all, no one knew what had caused any of the children’s illnesses. And until a couple of days ago, SPISD and Delico had enjoyed a friendly relationship for years. Even though it made no sense that Dr. Munger would have instigated the rumor, Preston couldn’t shake the idea. In fact, it shouted more loudly in his head than the other possibility.
He remembered something his mom told him a few times when he was a teenager: “If you have a choice to make, and one choice looms above the other in a huge way and you can’t get it out of your mind, take it as a sign from God.” While Preston wasn’t a particularly spiritual person, he did believe in God, and wondered if her advice had any merit in this case. If it did, he would have to turn the tables on Munger and investigate him.
Preston sighed, then clicked on another search result, an online newspaper article that talked about the three kids who had gotten sick in the city of St. Peter after eating cafeteria food. Delico and the other companies were mentioned at the end. Not quite as condemning as the forum thread, but any reasonably intelligent person would put two and two together and infer that the food manufacturers were at fault.
So much for objective journalism.
He searched “toxins in Delico Foods.” Nothing specific there; all the results seemed to be articles that talked about toxins present in food, both processed and natural. Preston had skimmed over information like this before, but had never taken too much stock in it. He had been eating processed foods and non-organic fruits and vegetables for years, and his health was okay.
But this evening, one article summary in particular caught his eye and his curiosity got the better of him. He clicked the link, but at the same moment the web page opened before his eyes, somebody knocked on the door.
Karen. Who else would it be?
He considered ignoring the knock. There was no reason for her to believe he was in there. Sure, she could see the light on under his door, but a lot of the residents of this luxury apartment complex left a light on in their absence to deter burglars. And he hadn’t been making any noise that she would have been able to hear.
A second knock, more persistent. Preston sighed and stood, regretting for the umpteenth time the day several months ago he had entered into conversation with the twenty-year-old.
Opening the door confirmed his guess. “Yes?” He didn’t smile. Karen Lewis didn’t need any more encouragement. And he’d learned early on not to ask, “What do you want?”, or “Can I h
elp you with anything?”
Her inevitable coy response, accompanied by a flutter of eyelashes and given in a seductive voice, was, “My, that’s a loaded question, isn’t it?”
“I brought you some brownies” was how she greeted him tonight. She held out a glass plate wrapped up in plastic wrap as proof.
Well, at least the girl did something to occupy her time. According to her, an uber-wealthy aunt had left her multiple millions of dollars when she died three years ago, enabling Karen to live a life of leisure.
“I hate chocolate.”
“No you don’t.” She pushed by Preston and into his apartment. He tried not to look at her tight skirt, much too short for the mid-January weather, and equally tight blouse that hiked up her belly and revealed her bellybutton, and failed.
Her face was as attractive as her curvy body, framed by earlobe-length blonde hair cut and sprayed in a movie-star style. But Preston had learned the hard way by age twenty-three not to fall for a girl based on her good looks. And Karen’s attractiveness was merely physical to Preston. She was overbearing, self-centered, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
She set the tray of brownies down on his kitchen counter as if she lived there. “I saw you eating chocolate pudding once.”
“I was trying a new product.” And that was the truth. Wanting to branch out into healthier dessert options, the plant had produced a small sampling of a concoction using stevia, a super-sweet, no-calorie, no-carb herb, as a sweetener. Preston had taken two bites and couldn’t finish it, and the company tasters ended up agreeing that the recipe should be trashed.
Karen whirled around on her red high heels, crossed her arms, and pouted. Another thing about her he despised. And he didn’t think it was a habit she was going to grow out of. “Most people say ‘thank you’ when someone gives them a gift.”
A gift. The last thing he wanted to do was accept a gift from her. Talk about encouragement. Preston walked over to the counter and picked up the plate, trying to smile, trying to be gentle. Karen was, after all, only twenty, obnoxious hussy though she may be. It was within reason to believe that she might actually be clueless. Meaning well, but without any social finesse.