As soon as she’d set up the laptop, she anxiously skimmed her email entries, hoping to find responses to her job queries. Nothing.
Too soon, she told herself. Don’t be so pathetic. Don’t be so needy. Don’t be so desperate.
She opened her browser and began to immerse herself in the life and times of Charles Symmes Robinette, which, up until two nights ago, had seemingly been made up of a remarkable combination of good fortune, good timing, and shrewd friendships. Some details she already knew; others were a revelation.
As Grayson had pointed out, Symmes’s story had the makings of a small-town fairy tale. According to his official congressional biography, he’d been born in 1943 and grew up in Griffin County. His father was a World War II vet who’d worked as a long-haul trucker.
Conley did some quick math. Symmes Robinette had been seventy-seven. She scrolled back and scrutinized his most recent campaign photo with a now-jaundiced eye. He’d obviously started dyeing his hair sometime in the last couple of decades and, in the portrait anyway, augmented it with an artfully arranged toupee. Maybe, she thought, he’d also had some work done? Plastic surgery, she knew, wasn’t just for fading movie stars.
Young Symmes was only ten when his father died of heart disease. His mother, Marva Robinette, went to work as a secretary in a local textile plant, and when Symmes was sixteen, she got remarried to the much-older manager of the plant.
Symmes played high school football and baseball and graduated at age eighteen. He worked in a textile mill and at other menial jobs and took some classes at a junior college before enlisting in the Marines in 1964. He’d served two tours in Vietnam, then returned to Florida in 1968. He went to college and eventually law school, both at Florida State University in Tallahassee, on the GI Bill.
He’d won a Florida senate seat in 1978. According to what she’d read in the Tallahassee Democrat, he was already being touted as a potential gubernatorial candidate when, conveniently, the U.S. representative for the Thirty-fifth District dropped dead shortly into his fourth term in office—which was how Symmes earned the unfortunate statehouse nickname “the Symmes Reaper.”
She found an old feature story from The Washington Post’s Lifestyles section, showing photos of the Robinette family at a White House Easter Egg Roll during the Reagan administration.
Symmes had to have been nearly forty-five in the photo, and Conley noted, not for the first time, how much younger Vanessa Robinette appeared to be—maybe half her husband’s age?
Conley scowled down at the image of the adorable, towheaded Charlie Robinette in his mama’s arms.
“Behold, the Little Prince,” she muttered.
She read on for another hour, making notes of Robinette’s career in the U.S. House—he’d served on the Appropriations, Agriculture, and Veteran’s Affairs committees and, she discovered, his name had been briefly mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for George H. W. Bush.
Symmes had excelled at bringing home the bacon for his district, managing to snag tens of millions of dollars of federal funding for military bases, interstate improvements, and even an agriculture research station at his alma mater, which had been named in his honor.
A sterling citizen, she thought, yawning. It was nearly midnight, and the lack of sleep was starting to wreak havoc with her concentration.
She was powering down her laptop when she heard a light knock at the front door. Peeping out from behind the dining room curtains, she recognized the man standing on the doorstep, holding a bottle of beer in each hand.
“Is this the Silver Bay version of Uber Eats?” she asked, opening the door.
“I was taking out the trash at my mom’s house when I saw the light on over here,” Skelly said, looking slightly embarrassed. “You said y’all were moving out to the beach today, so I thought I’d just check up, make sure Miss Lorraine’s house wasn’t being burgled.”
“Do you always serve beer to the burglars on this block?”
“Just the cute ones.” He handed her one of the bottles. It was icy to the touch.
“Wanna come in?”
Skelly stepped back toward the edge of the porch and looked out at the deserted street. “Maybe we could sit out here?” he asked, gesturing at the rocking chairs. “If Mom wakes up and I’m not there, she’s liable to get confused and wander outside looking for me.”
They sat on the rockers and uncapped the beers, clinking the bottles together in a silent toast.
“She’s that bad, huh?” Conley asked.
“Oh yeah,” Skelly said. “It’s weird. Some days, she’s fine. Insists on going to the store with me, putting on her lab coat. She greets old customers, even talks about their prescriptions. She still thinks she’s running the store. Other days, she doesn’t recognize me, can’t figure out how to put on her own shoes. Some days, she thinks I’m my dad. Other times, she thinks I’m her own father.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Conley said.
“Nothing to say.” He tipped his bottle to his lips and drank.
“Hey, did you hear about Symmes Robinette?” he asked. “He was the guy. In the wreck.”
“I did. In fact, Grayson and G’mama ganged up and browbeat me into doing a story for the Beacon. That’s why I’m here tonight. We don’t have Wi-Fi at the Dunes, and I needed to start doing research for the obit.”
Skelly rocked backward, crossing one leg over the other. “Too bad you can’t talk to my mom. She went to high school with Toddie, you know.”
“Who’s Toddie?”
“Toddie Robinette. Symmes’s first wife.”
“For real?” Conley sat up straight. “I’ve been in there doing research on Symmes for a couple of hours. I never saw anything about a first wife.”
He shrugged. “I think they kept the split real quiet when it happened. I don’t know much about her, just that Mom used to cuss every time anybody mentioned Symmes’s name. She was never interested in politics, but after the divorce, she by God made sure she went to the polls and voted against him every time he ran for reelection.”
“Verrrry interesting,” Conley said. “Fascinating.”
“See?” Skelly said. “Silver Bay’s got all kinds of shit going on, if you just know where to look.”
13
Skelly sat with his back against the white-painted columns on Lorraine’s front porch, gazing up at the sky. An owl hooted from the top of an ancient pecan tree that shaded the far end of the house. “It’s sure a pretty night. Clear as a bell. I bet you don’t see this kind of night in Atlanta, with all the lights of the city around.”
Conley stole a glance at her old friend’s profile. There were fine lines etched around his eyes, and she could see flecks of silver in Skelly’s beard.
“No,” she agreed, inhaling the scent of the night-blooming jasmine that wound around the wrought iron porch railing. “To tell you the truth, I can’t remember the last time I even looked up to see the night sky in Atlanta.”
“Everything all right out at the beach when you finally got there?” he asked.
“Yeah. Well, actually, it was kind of sad. The Dunes seems so run-down, and G’mama has me kind of worried. I didn’t want to believe Gray, but G’mama really has started to slow down. This year, she said she and Winnie want to stay downstairs in the bunk rooms. She made out like it was because of Winnie’s bad hip, but I think she really doesn’t want to have to go up and down those stairs all the time. She insisted that I take her old room on the top floor.”
“How old is Miss Lorraine?”
“It’s a state secret. Eighty something?”
“Count yourself lucky that she’s in as good a shape as she is,” Skelly said. “My mom is only sixty-eight, and some days, she can’t figure out how to button her own shirt or fasten a bra.”
“Oh, Skelly.” Conley touched his knee. “Don’t tell me you have to—”
“Not yet, thank God,” he said, smiling ruefully. “I hired an aide who comes in every day to
help her bathe and get dressed. I bought her a bunch of ladies’ undershirts, the kind we always used to call wifebeaters? She’s awful skinny now, so it’s not like she really needs a bra. And then I finally just gave away all her blouses and tops with buttons, and now she wears T-shirts that she can just pull on. And pants with elastic.”
“Pretty resourceful,” Conley said.
“She cried when she saw I’d cleaned out her closet,” Skelly said. “She keeps asking me what happened to all her pretty church dresses and high-heel shoes.”
“Your mama was always the most stylish woman in town,” Conley said. “I always used to love her clothes.”
“I’ve got three big trash bags at home if you need some church dresses,” he said. “I still don’t have the heart to just throw ’em out.”
“Your mama was like a size 4,” Conley said. “I couldn’t get in one of her dresses if my life depended on it.”
“I doubt that.”
“Hey,” she said, deciding it was time to switch up the topic of discussion. “I detoured by the Bronson County Sheriff’s Office on the way into town earlier to pick up the police report on Symmes Robinette’s accident.”
“Oh yeah? Anything interesting?”
“Not really. I’m hoping to talk to the sheriff in the morning. Merle Goggins. You know him?”
Skelly shook his head.
“I need to find out if the cops have any idea of what caused that wreck. We sure didn’t see any cars coming or going, right?”
“Right.”
“And then, the obvious question is, what was a seventy-seven-year-old man doing cruising around way out in the boonies at that hour? The police report said Robinette’s house is someplace called Sugar Key. Where’s that? I’ve never heard of it before.”
“It’s a new gated community some developer built out at the end of Pelican Point,” Skelly said. “Very ritzy. Very exclusive. There’s an eighteen-hole golf course and a swim and tennis facility under construction, but only about nine or ten houses have been sold so far. From what I’ve heard, the cheapest house starts at around two mil.”
“Huh. From what I remember, Pelican Point has to be at least thirty miles from where we found that wreck,” Conley said. “And that’s mighty rich real estate for a Podunk place like Silver Bay. I wouldn’t have guessed there were that many folks with that kind of money living in this part of the state.”
“Believe it,” Skelly said. “They keep it low-key, but they’re around. I hear the CEO of GulfBanc has a second home out there, and a venture capital guy from Birmingham lives there full-time now. And of course Miles Schoendienst.”
“The railroad guy? From Atlanta?”
“Yeah. You know him?”
“I know of him. He’s a big political donor—supports both Democrats and Republicans, depending on the issue.”
“Huh,” Skelly said. “So that’s just Schoendienst’s vacation house? Damn! It’s huge. Must be at least ten thousand square feet. Right at the point where the bay meets the Gulf. But it’s so far off the road, you can only see it from a boat. It looks like a Spanish castle.”
“You party with the likes of Miles Schoendienst?” Conley asked, only half joking. “The drugstore business must be in way better shape than weekly newspapers.”
“Not,” Skelly said. “Family-owned pharmacies like mine are a dying breed. We can’t compete with CVS and Walgreens. Not to mention the online pharmacies. I’ve been out to Sugar Key exactly twice—both times, come to think of it, were to drop off prescriptions for Symmes Robinette.”
“You still make deliveries?”
“For old customers, yeah. Mom always said service was what separated us from the chain stores. We don’t advertise it, but I make deliveries if somebody requests it.”
Conley was intrigued. “What kind of stuff were you delivering to Symmes Robinette?”
“Nice try. You know about HIPAA regulations, right? There’s such a thing as patient privacy.”
“But this patient is dead,” Conley pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about something else, okay? I shouldn’t even have mentioned that he was a customer.”
“Was Robinette sick?” Conley knew she was pushing, but she couldn’t help herself. “Maybe that’s why he crashed the Escalade.”
“No comment,” Skelly said firmly.
“You’re no fun.”
“That’s what my ex always said too.”
“Ouch. From the research I did earlier, I saw that Robinette’s house in D.C. was in Georgetown. I didn’t look up the tax records yet, but there’s nothing cheap in Georgetown.”
“What’s your point?” Skelly asked. “Symmes was a lawyer. All lawyers are rich, right?”
“He’s been in elected office for decades. Hasn’t practiced law in forty years. So where’s a small-town lawyer come up with the kind of money to own millions of dollars’ worth of real estate?”
“It’s not against the law to be a rich politician. Maybe he’s done really well in the stock market. Are you suggesting Robinette was some kind of crook?” Skelly asked.
“Not suggesting anything. Yet. I’m just doing what my old editor called turning over rocks. To see what crawls out from under, you know?”
Skelly fixed her with a stern expression. “This isn’t Atlanta, Conley. Symmes Robinette was a hero to a lot of people around here. With the exception of my mama. You need to be real careful about what kind of rocks you turn over in Silver Bay. It’s a small town, and people take this stuff real personal.”
“So … don’t go poking any bears? Is that what you’re saying?”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“I’ll be discreet, but if there’s a story here, I’m gonna find it, Skelly. That’s what I do. It’s the only thing I know how to do.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “But what happened to kicking back at the beach? Hanging out with your grandmother?”
“Who says I can’t do both? Speaking of family,” she asked, trying to sound casual, “what’s up with the Little Prince these days?”
“Charlie? He’s a lawyer in the old man’s law firm. He’s a customer at the drugstore. I see him at the country club occasionally, although I haven’t been over there since, well, since Danielle left. I know he hangs with the courthouse crowd. Very preppy. I think he’s what they call an up-and-comer.”
“So a chip off the old block. I wonder—”
“Oh shit!” Skelly jumped to his feet. “Mama?”
A tiny, wraithlike figure walked briskly down the sidewalk in their direction. She was barefoot, wearing an oversize white undershirt, and was, from what Conley could see, naked from the waist down.
“Patrick?” June called. Her voice was startlingly loud and shrill, coming from such a diminutive body. She stood outside the wrought iron fence surrounding Lorraine’s yard, searching for her long-dead husband.
Skelly rushed to his mother’s side, taking her by the arm. “Mama, what are you doing out here? What happened to your clothes?”
“I’ll go get her something to wrap up in,” Conley said. She went inside and came out with the first thing at hand, a crocheted throw G’mama kept in a basket by the hall closet.
She flew down the steps and handed the blanket to Skelly, who struggled to wrap the throw around his mother’s waist.
“Patrick?” June Kelly gave her son a stern look. “I’ve been calling and calling you. Your supper is ready. Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Sean said. “I just came down here for a moment. Let’s go on home now and get you back to bed. It’s pretty late.”
June brushed her son aside, letting the throw fall to the grass. Conley couldn’t help but stare. What had happened to her beautiful, stylish, accomplished neighbor? Sean’s mother’s face was smooth and unlined, but she wore grotesquely smeared red lipstick, and her thinning white hair stood out from her head like a barbed wire halo.
“Who’s that?” June Kelly
demanded, pointing at Conley. “Your new girlfriend?”
Skelly shot her an apologetic look as he tried again to cover his mother’s exposed lower body.
“This is Sarah Conley Hawkins, Mama. You know Sarah. She’s Chet and Melinda’s daughter. Lorraine’s granddaughter. Come back to town to visit.”
“Don’t lie to me, Patrick.” June batted his hands away. “Is this your girlfriend? One of the nurses at the hospital? Or one of your so-called patients? How dare you!”
June Kelly’s brilliant blue eyes searched Conley’s face, trying to make a connection. Conley thought about all the times Miss June had treated her to a free ice cream cone at the soda fountain. She thought about the pharmacist’s immaculately starched white lab coats with her name stitched in cursive letters over the breast pocket that she’d worn over her pretty dresses. June Kelly, RPh.
“It’s me, Miss June,” Conley said, taking the older woman’s fragile arm. “Sarah Conley. Sean’s friend from down the street. Remember me?”
“Sarah? From down the street?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Conley said. She picked up the throw and fastened it, sari-style, looping one end over the older woman’s shoulder and knotting it securely in front before taking a step backward.
Skelly mouthed a mute “Thanks.” He took his mother’s arm and gently turned her back toward the sidewalk. “Let’s go home. Okay? I can’t wait to see what you fixed for dinner.”
“Pot roast! Your favorite,” June said cheerfully. “And cherry pie.”
They were halfway down the sidewalk. “Thanks, Conley. I’ll bring the blanket back tomorrow.” Skelly’s voice floated in the warm evening air.
* * *
She went back inside and tried to resume her research on Symmes Robinette. Many of the references to Robinette focused on his political life, his campaigns, and his accomplishments. There was precious little about his life back in his home district in Silver Bay.
She picked up her phone and hesitated. It was late; maybe her sister was in bed. She texted instead.
Hello, Summer Page 10