Annie's Rainbow - Fern Michaels [118]
“After my experience in North Carolina, I’m ready to believe anything. You did say that Mr. Newman volunteered the information that the man said he knows all our movements twenty-four hours a day. What am I supposed to think? I’m not going to be able to go back to sleep. Would you like some coffee, Elmo?”
“Coffee would be good right now.”
“Regular or decaf?”
“Regular.”
“Elmo, there’s something I want to talk to you about. Remember how I told you there was something about Parker that bothered me? I didn’t exactly say that, but 1 always had the feeling something was going on somewhere that I should be aware of. That’s the best way I can explain it.”
“So.”
“I read this article about real coffee without the caffeine while I was in the hotel. It seems that certain scientists have learned how to create coffee plants that are missing the caffeine gene. They did some tests on the leaves of their decaf coffee plants and they show only one percent of the caffeine in regular plants. The breakthrough came with the discovery of a gene necessary for production of caffeine by the plant. This was all done at the University of Hawaii. It seems that they can now knock out the gene in certain pieces of coffee plant tissue and regenerate the tissue into new plants. What that means, Elmo, is this. Caffeine knockout means you can produce decaf coffee without putting the beans through the extraction process, which reduces flavor.
“Elmo, this is going to be big business. The commodity market for coffee is a twenty-four-billion-dollar-a-year business. Possibly more. In case you don’t know this, it’s second only to oil. According to the article I read, it’s going to take two years to produce the beans. I think Parker has been doing this all along, and that’s why he’s turned the everyday part of the coffee business over to Kiki. I never understood why a coffee company had to have a laboratory. I think he’s marking genes in coffee plants that involve flavor and yield. If he can do that, it will enhance his coffee flavors, reduce bitterness, and increase the number of beans produced per plant.”
“What does all that mean to us, Annie?”
“If Parker is ahead of the pack, he can win big. Right now he needs my contract and my money to finance this new venture, at which point his price to me will double and I’m dead in the water and the Daisy Shops go under. Now I know why they were so insistent on a long-term contract. I am so glad I had that niggling feeling I was being squeezed. I only signed on for six months. Tom thought I was out of my mind. Parker almost stood on his head to try and convince me to extend it. It wasn’t sitting right even then, but I wasn’t able to put it all together until a few days ago. Parker sure as hell knew how to play the game, though. Right now he’s counting on the fact that we pay on delivery, unlike some firms who take as long as ninety and some times one hundred twenty days to pay up. Scientists are expensive. Laboratories cost a fortune to maintain. I almost fell for it, too. Do you think I’m crazy, Elmo?”
“About as crazy as I am,” Elmo snorted. “So now what?”
“I don’t know. We let the contract run its course. It has three months to go. I’m going to talk to Tom in the morning. We need to get ready for Plan B.”
“Do you still love him, Annie?”
“I thought I did. I allowed myself to paint this rosy picture in my mind. You know, life after the Daisy Shops. A family. I always knew there was a shadow in the picture. I’m not faultless here. We both played the game. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the rules. The thing that really got me, Elmo, was this. I couldn’t get that business with his sisters out of my head. Parker has no respect for women. Oh, he says he does, but he doesn’t. When you think you’re in love you only see what you want to see. My little affair was a moment in time. Everyone has moments like that. It’s a memory.”
“And here I thought you called it all off for