“Right,” he said. “I think we’ve done all we can here.”
We headed for Stanley’s trailer. I stood by while he unlocked his door. It was an old Shasta trailer—I guessed 1960s vintage—and small, but well maintained and neatly organized. Just inside the door was a built-in table with banquette seating on either side. The sink and stove were on the wall across from the door, the refrigerator and a closet opposite, and built-in drawers and cabinets ran from floor to ceiling on either side. A curtain at the far end probably concealed the built-in bed. Not an inch was wasted, and hardly a single unnecessary item was visible.
“Used to belong to my parents,” he said, noting my appraising look. “We took family vacations in it when I was a kid, and the first ten years after Dad retired they dragged this thing all over the country. Useful sometimes, when I’m on a case someplace remote.”
I sat at the banquette on one side of the dinette table while Stanley opened the small refrigerator.
“I’d offer you coffee,” he said over his shoulder. “But I don’t think either of us needs the caffeine at this time of night. Decaf iced tea or lemonade?”
“Whatever’s easiest,” I said.
We heard another distant rumble of thunder.
“That’s getting closer,” I said.
“Big front coming through,” Stanley said. “Thunderstorms sometime between now and dawn, according to the local weather.”
He brought a large pitcher of iced tea and two glasses to the table, poured us each a glass, and sat down on the banquette opposite me. In fact, he almost collapsed.
“Long day?” I asked.
He nodded and sipped.
“So why were you capping off a long day by skulking behind Theo Weaver’s house?” I asked. “Do you actually think there might be something to Miss Annabel’s theory about Weaver?”
He was silent for a few moments.
“Could be,” he said finally. “When she told us, I thought no. At least ten to one against. I figured it was the grief talking. Grief does peculiar things to people sometimes.”
“Not just grief,” I said. “Add in the fact that she believes her cousin died in a stupid accident that might have been her own fault. Cordelia’s own fault, I mean, although maybe Annabel also blames herself for letting Cordelia do all the generator-tending. Even if Cordelia didn’t have a kerosene lantern with her, maybe she unwisely tinkered with the generator. And maybe Annabel finds it a lot more satisfactory to think Weaver could be responsible.”
“Precisely,” Stanley said. “But dismissing her notion out of hand wasn’t going to get us anywhere—to say nothing of the possibility, however small, that she was right. So I decided to start my investigation by checking out Mr. Weaver.”
“Any interesting findings?”
“Not really.” He reached onto the seat beside him, picked up a manila folder with perhaps half an inch of paper in it, and handed it to me.
“I can summarize it if you like. He’s retired from some kind of investment banking firm. He was an assistant vice president, which sounds impressive, unless you do a little poking around their annual report and figure out that AVP was actually pretty low on the totem pole there. The place currently has about a hundred employees, and at least half of them are assistant vice presidents, associate vice presidents, senior vice presidents, executive vice presidents, or just plain vice presidents.”
“Impresses the client, no doubt,” I suggested.
“I suppose. He retired from that five years ago. Still serves on the boards of a couple of small companies.”
I nodded. I was looking at the list of Mr. Weaver’s directorships. A Richmond real estate firm. First Undermountain Bank, a tiny Riverton-based institution that had somehow managed to escape being gobbled up by one of the big fish. A mutual fund I’d never heard of. A mining company.
“Smedlock Mining,” I said. “What is smedlock, and where do you mine it?”
“Smedlock’s the founder,” Stanley said, with a chuckle. “A hundred years ago he was quite the robber baron, but while his children inherited his fondness for high living they didn’t get his business acumen. They lost their West Virginia coal fields and these days the company only has a couple of small mines producing quartz and amazonite and a few other decorative minerals. Rumor has it that the current generation of Smedlocks would be delirious if some big company mounted a takeover bid, but no one has, because they don’t really have anything worth taking over. Rather the same with the bank whose board Weaver serves on. So small that it would have been gobbled up by now if it weren’t one step above worthless. I’m told they dabbled too deeply in real estate derivatives, whatever that is.”