PEACE: Smart money

He doesn't mention any siblings, but if he did have any that just increases the likelihood of his having closer, by blood, relatives to whom he might bequeath his business. Stockholders, majority or otherwise, don't need to know anything about day-to-day operations of a corporation they own stock in.

I'm not sure where Smart got all his money, or when, but he had money before he met Olivia. He claims to have earned enough in Florida to have bought Tilly's store, had he wanted to, "for collateral, you know, on a loan from the bank, just like I'm doing here" (148). He had already bought Bledsoe's drugstore, with the help of a bank (Blaine's?) loan. He may have had off-the-books money from illicit drug sales to carney freaks (as Stone Ox notes). (He wasn't looking for a cure for cancer in his lab at Olivia's!) He may have had money from the sale of the family farm. At some point he sold Olivia's house. There may well have been insurance money from Olivia's death. I don't know that he even needed any of the Weer fortunes to start up the plant, even if John had money to spare by that time. It depends on which came first--the Depression or the plant. Thinking about this, just now, I had an insight! In fact (and I don't know how I overlooked this when working on the timeline!), I think that I can now prove that the plant existed before Olivia's death--in which case Smart probably didn't need any Weer money. "At my aunt Olivia's funeral he had been much younger; small, stocky (he was already beginning to make money, and my aunt had hired an excellent cook, a Latvian who . . ." (149) Two points here: Smart was making money before Olivia died; she hired a cook. "She [Olivia] had grown plump within a year of her marriage, eating Milewczyk's cooking . . ." (180) And: "In the evenings, when Milewczyk and the maid (neither of whom lived in) had gone home, and Julius was at work in his laboratory in the basement, my aunt soaked in a hot tub [. . .] her breasts [. . .] waxed, in the two years that passed between her marriage and my parent's return . . ." (180). Den was still living with the Smarts at that time, was living there when the cook was hired (and a maid!), his parents were still in Europe, Olivia was alive, and Smart was "already beginning to make money". That must be referring to money made from the plant. Milewczyk was hired within the first year of their marriage. Remember also that, according to Blaine, it was Olivia who "set her cap for Julius Smart when he went into business here the next spring" (174). It was Olivia who pursued Smart, not he her. Bledsoe's had already been taken over by Smart before he even met Olivia, so the business he later "went into" had to have been the juice plant. If this is all true, then Julius started up the plant before he married Olivia. In which case he did it without any Weer money, and he owed the Weers nothing, not even token gratitude. It was Olivia who married Smart for his money. They probably married in 1925, the second spring following Macafee's birthday party. That would put the plant's founding in 1924.

You may be right about the citrus season in Florida; I know it's been discussed here before, but I don't remember the particulars. You may also be right about Smart having lived with Tilly for longer than he claimed. As for whether or not he killed Tilly, that's hard to say. On the one hand Den says that he showed genuine grief, on the other that he (Den) possessed a child's credulity to full measure (148). Postmortems were not often performed in those days, and not very sophisticated when they were. How can you establish rigor mortis in a man who was turning to stone? <g> I would like to have seen a coroner's report! -Roy