A wistful look overcame her. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to survive in the restaurant business these days?” she asked. “The economy was tanking and it was taking my customers down with it. Food prices were going up high and fast, but the bigger chains could keep their prices low because of volume. I didn’t have that luxury. The only way I could have stayed profitable was to raise my prices and lose my customers. Then Mr. Chester came along.”

“Mr. Chester is the one those commandos were after. He’s dead.”

Millie stiffened momentarily, then quickly regained her composure. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“What kind of deal did he offer you?”

“He needed a place to test his products for allergenicity and other health effects, and he needed it fast. All I had to do was buy my food from his processors. I tasted everything first, of course. It was good, high-quality stuff. No problem there. Plus, he funded my retirement by just a little bit.”

“What’s a little, Millie? What was selling out like this worth to you?”

“Enough to let an old lady leave it all someday.”

“And Stone?”

“He was paid to keep an eye on things. He did whatever William asked him to. If there was trouble with any of the deliverers, he would take care of that. Little things that I guess added up to a lot. You sure William’s dead?”

“Sure as sugar,” Lou said. He shook his head in dismay. “Did you know what Chester was doing? Why he needed to get that corn of his into the marketplace so rapidly?”

“A retirement fund buys a lot of silence. I didn’t really ask.”

“So you had no way of knowing that his experimental corn could dangerously diminish the decision-making capacity of your consumers?”

Millie shrugged. “I just knew that they were loyal and regular customers. But Chief Stone did ask me to keep a close lookout for anything unusual in any of them—allergic reactions, skin problems, and such. And as I said, there were none.”

“What you were looking for was only the tip of the iceberg—the things you can see.”

“If you say so. Why hasn’t everyone who ate here over the last eighteen months suffered these lapses?”

“Maybe they have, to a greater or lesser degree. We may never know if the problems were related to how much people ate here or just an allergic, idiosyncratic reaction, but I am positive that your food is the cause. And regardless, Millie, what you did was illegal, wrong. You knowingly fed your customers food products that were not FDA approved or even tested.”

“You have no proof of that. I’m just a businesswoman running a business. I bought my food from the supplier that gave me the best deal. Proof, Doctor. You have no proof that I did anything wrong.”