Death is Semisweet Read Online Free PDF Page B

second-tier production, that we were going to join elite company.”
    Junior felt weak, wanted to sit back down, but somehow he thought he had to do this standing up, man to man. “There aren’t many folks who process their own cocoa beans and make consumer products. The rest of them are just candy makers.”
    Claude grinned and put the ten-pound block down on his brother’s desk. “This first one is for you. I signed it.”
    Junior looked down and sure enough, his brother had scrawled,
Another big step for Foster’s Chocolates, Love and Thanks, Claude
, and the date, on the top of the package. Junior could feel his breathing become shallow.
    “If you hadn’t put together the financing for the refining machines, we wouldn’t be up there with the big boys,” Claude said gratefully.
    “Claude, I’ve made a bad mistake.”
    “What? What bad mistake? If you think the placement of the—”
    Junior cut him off. “Oliver Bodden is coming from Ghana today. He wants to be here for the unveiling of the refining facility.”
    “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. The second-stageproduction man from West Africa who helped finance this, sure he’d want to come.”
    “Oliver is insisting that we use only West African nibs, that we can’t blend. He says they’ll pull out if we don’t do it their way, says we still need more of their money for the distribution and all the new inventory.”
    Claude shook his head vehemently. “What are you talking about? Every second-tier producer blends nibs from all over the world. That’s what makes a company’s chocolate have an individual taste. No one just uses cocoa from one place. That would be suicide.”
    “I told him that. I asked why they would want to see us fail, that it was in their interests for us to have a product that would compete with all the Swiss and Belgian second-tier producers. He said …,” Junior paused, fighting for air. He thought he might just fall into a faint right then and there. “He said that would be a pity, now wouldn’t it, and they’d have to take over the company if we went under, that they were our largest lender.
    “He said we had signed a contract for him to provide some experienced production managers, to help train our people. They would report back to him and make sure we weren’t trying to sneak in any nibs from other countries.”
    “Oh, I get it,” Claude said angrily. “He brings a bunch of spies in here to watch us, and when we go broke because of this exclusivity thing, he and his partners take over and they can use a sensible blend of nibs and make a killing. That’ll happen over their dead bodies!”
    Junior smiled wanly. “I think the phrase is, over
my
dead body.”
    Claude wasn’t in the mood to be corrected. “They plan to make money off our failure. But you’re right, it will have to be over someone else’s dead body, becauseno one is going to run us out of business so easily. Did you check the contracts? Do we have to do what he says?”
    Junior shrugged. “It states that decisions about second-tier production, when there’s a dispute, will be the authority of the West African Cacao Company, as they are the experts at refining, etc., etc. I’ve got the legal department going over it with a fine-toothed comb now.”
    Claude pushed at his thinning hair and almost shrieked at his brother. “Now! Oh, great. Now’s the time to have legal on overtime, after the horse is out of the barn.”
    “I doubt anyone in legal would have thought before this that a company would invest millions and then sabotage the product they’d invested in,” Junior pointed out. “Besides, it sounded good on paper, to have the folks who’ve already been doing that kind of work be here to guide us. Normally, you would take their advice.”
    “So now, for the five million they threw in for this second-stage facility, they might be able to pick up a third-stage operation worth half a billion, that is, if they put us out of business.