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 were on 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 the Pelican.