Hey, Gray. Doing research for the obit on Robinette. Can’t find any online articles from The Beacon. Help.
Her phone rang as soon as she’d finished sending the text.
“Hey. Where are you?” Grayson asked. Conley could hear the clatter of glassware and voices in the background. Maybe a television too.
“I’m in town at G’mama’s house. There’s no Wi-Fi at the beach. Where are you?”
“No place special. You’re not gonna find any online articles from the Beacon.”
“We’re not digitized?”
“No, we’re not digitized. In case you haven’t noticed, this is a small-town weekly. If you want to search the back issues for stories on Robinette, you’ll have to go over to the office and look through the bound volumes.”
“Ugh. That’ll take forever. I don’t even know what I’m really looking for. So I’m guessing there’s no index either, right?”
“Nope.” Grayson sounded amused that she would even ask. “Anything specific you’re looking for?”
“Everything. Local color. Family. Hey, did you know Symmes Robinette was married before?”
“Before what?”
“Before Vanessa, who, by the way, is probably twenty years younger than the late congressman.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask G’mama. She’s always up on all the latest dirt. Or better yet, get with Rowena.”
“Ugh. Rowena. Say, Gray, what do you know about the sheriff over in Bronson County?”
“Merle? He’s only been in office a couple years. But he seems okay. He’s black, you know.”
“So?”
“So it might not be newsworthy in Atlanta, but it is around here.”
“Do you know him?”
“Sort of. We’re in Rotary together.”
“Good. Call him up first thing in the morning and ask him to give your new star reporter a phone call. His deputy isn’t what I’d call helpful.”
“What do you want to talk to him about?”
Conley rolled her eyes in frustration. “Symmes Robinette. Duh. The accident was in your sheriff buddy’s jurisdiction. I need to know why Symmes was thirty miles from his ritzy oceanfront home at three in the morning, and I need to know the official cause of death.”
“Call me stupid, but isn’t his death gonna be from being burned alive in a car wreck?”
You are stupid, Conley thought. “We don’t know that. There were no other cars around. I want to know what caused the wreck and whether he was alive when the fire started.”
“Okay, yeah. That makes sense,” Grayson said.
“I also need to talk to the district medical examiner. I don’t suppose you’re in Rotary with him too?”
“Nope. But maybe George McFall would know something.”
“From the funeral home?”
“Yeah, if the body’s been released. George McFall has probably seen more corpses in his lifetime than any M.D. you can name.”
“But what if there’s, like, criminal evidence?”
“Then I think the medical examiner calls in the state crime lab. But you’re not thinking there’s something criminal going on with Symmes’s death, right?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s just … odd. Do you think George would talk to me?”
“He’d talk to you all day long about Florida State football or the evils of cremation versus burial in a $5,000 coffin, but I have no idea if he’d talk to you about what killed Symmes Robinette,” Grayson said.
“Is he in Rotary with you?”
“Yeah. He’s president this year.”
“Great. How about you work your way down the Rotary membership roll, call up all your good-old-boy buddies in town, and ask them really nicely to talk to your sister about how Symmes Robinette died.”
“There are lots of women in Rotary now, you know. It’s not just men like it used to be.”
If she stayed on the phone with her sister much longer, Conley thought, she might pull her eye muscles from rolling them so hard and so often. If that was possible. This was something she’d make sure to ask George McFall about.
“Good to know,” she said. “Do you have Rowena’s phone number?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you please text it to me?”
“I will, but you can’t call her this late at night.”
“Duly noted,” Conley said. “One more question. When’s payday?”
“Friday. But we usually hold a first paycheck back for new hires.”
“Not this time, Gray,” Conley said. “Not if you want my byline in next week’s paper.”
14
HELLO, SUMMER BY ROWENA MEIGS
MAY 1986
Reliable sources are saying that our own U.S. Representative Symmes Robinette has filed for divorce from his high school sweetheart and bride of twenty-four years, the lovely and charming Emma “Toddie” Sanderson Robinette.
Toddie Robinette is a beloved member of Silver Bay society, where she has been active in the Women’s Assistance Guild, the Silver Bay Presbyterian Church, and the League of Women Voters. She is past president of the Silver Bay Elementary School PTA and the Griffin County High School Athletic Association.
Although details of the split are being kept verrrrrry quiet, Toddie’s friends are heartbroken for her. The Robinettes’ darling home on Spruce Street has been put on the market, and over the summer, Toddie and the children, Hank and Rebecca, will move out to the country.
Your correspondent has been hearing whispers that Symmes Robinette, who spends most of his time these days attending to government business in Washington, D.C., has an especially close “friendship” with a vivacious young brunette aide in his congressional office. We will, of course, report any forthcoming details as they emerge.
In the meantime, the good old days of summer have returned with a vengeance. Mr. and Mrs. V. B. Connors entertained members of the smart set with a dinner dance at the Silver Bay Country Club Saturday night. (V. B., or Bubba, as he is known to one and all, is the newly elected president of the state bar association, and his darling wife, Suzan, is a phenom on the tennis courts!) Tables were resplendent with gorgeous arrangements of pink mums, white tea roses, baby’s breath, and cymbidium orchids. Ladies were chic in the latest summer silks and florals, and their spouses looked elegant in white dinner jackets. Is there anything handsomer than a Southern gentleman in a white dinner jacket? Your correspondent was smitten, y’all!
* * *
Conley leafed through the next few pages of the 1986 bound volume of the Beacon for more tidbits about Symmes Robinette’s divorce, but as luck would have it, the issue was the last one in the volume she’d dragged from the sagging bookcase in the corner of the cluttered newspaper office.
Sighing, she went back to the bookshelf to look for the next volume. It was a hopeless chore. The Beacon had been in existence for over a hundred years—so there were dozens and dozens of heavy, leather-bound volumes—none of which were shelved in any kind of order. She spent the next half hour running a finger over the dusty spines of the books, each of which was stamped in gold with the volume number and year, but the search was useless.
She heard voices coming from the reception area.
Lillian King and Michael Torpy were settling themselves in at their desks. Each had a cup of takeout coffee and a paper plate holding a sausage biscuit.
“You guys work on Saturdays?” she asked.
“Not my idea,” Lillian said. “We’re doing a special end-of-the-school-year advertising section.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Michael said, looking up from his computer terminal. “Grayson had the idea to sell ads to the families of all the graduating seniors, so now I gotta come up with fascinating stories about all these kids.”
“Money’s money,” Lillian said sharply. “Those ads are paying our salaries.”
“Hey, Lillian?” Conley said. “I need the next bound volume for 1986, but it seems to be MIA. Got any clues where it
might be?”
“No telling,” Lillian said. “People come in and out all the time wanting to look through the back issues, but nobody around here ever puts ’em back in any kind of order.”
Conley gestured at the shelves, which looked like they were about to collapse under the weight of the books. “Is that all of ’em?”
Michael rolled his chair away from his desk. “I think I’ve seen some more of those books somewhere around here. Did you look in the supply closet?”
“Thanks. I’ll check there,” Conley said. She pushed the door of the closet open and flipped the light switch. The walls of the room were lined with homemade wooden shelves that she knew had been the handiwork of her late grandfather. The shelves held boxes of office supplies that Conley reckoned had also been there since her grandfather’s time and which had sadly outlived him and modern-day journalism—boxes of typewriter ribbons, reams of yellowing newsprint cut into copy paper—from the days when the staff typed their stories on first manual and then electric typewriters, spiral-bound stenographer’s notebooks, and boxes and boxes of waxy red copy pencils that had once been used to mark up reporters’ copy.
She spotted four or five bound volumes shoved haphazardly on the shelves, but they were all from the 1960s. She sighed heavily and went back to her desk.
“Any other ideas about where missing volumes might be?”
“Look in Grayson’s office,” Lillian advised. “Anything goes missing around here, I can usually find it in that rat’s nest of hers if I look long enough.”
Conley tried the door and looked up. “It’s locked.”
“Here,” Lillian said, producing a key from her desk drawer. “But don’t let on that I gave you that. She likes to think that office is her inner sanctum.”
* * *
Grayson’s desk was stacked high with back issues of the Beacon, file folders, page proofs of color ads, coffee cups, and soft drink cans. There was a bookcase in the corner, bulging with old books that Conley knew had been her grandfather’s, but no bound copies of the Beacon.
It struck her how much Grayson had changed since their childhood. Conley had always been the messy, creative one whose bedroom was one empty cereal box short of a dumpster, while her older sister had insisted on keeping her own bedroom spotlessly clean and tidy. Back when they were kids, the surest way to make Grayson nuts was to trespass in her room, borrow an item of clothing, and bring it back stained, torn, or wrinkled—which was usually the state of every item of clothing Conley owned.
The only thing of interest in her sister’s messy, disorganized office, as far as Conley was concerned, was the sofa. The brown leather upholstery was old and cracked and peeling. A pillow and a lightweight cotton blanket had been tossed on one end of the sofa, and draped over the arm was a pair of yoga pants and a sports bra.
“Huh,” she said aloud. She opened the door to the tiny bathroom. A makeup bag was perched on the top of the toilet tank, and a glass held a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. The back of the door held more of what she recognized as Grayson’s clothes; in fact, it looked like several days’ worth of clothes. Obviously, her sister had been sleeping in the office. The question was, why?
“Interesting,” she muttered before backing out of the office and relocking the door.
She went back to her desk and began typing up the police blotter, rolling her eyes at the mostly innocent nature of the “crime wave” the town had experienced the week before.
THURSDAY, Apr. 30–4:40 p.m.—ANIMAL CRUELTY—Officer responded to call of animal cruelty at Smitty’s Bait & Tackle, at Silver Bay Marina. On arrival, officer waved down by complainant Annalisa Sorenson, 19, who stated that bait shop operators were torturing live animals (bait fish) by penning them up in bait tanks. Officer advised bait fish not covered by current animal cruelty statutes. Bait shop owners requested complainant leave premises and stop harassing fishermen.
FRIDAY, MAY 1.—THEFT FROM VEHICLE—Silver Bay Country Club. Victim, reports his vehicle, 2019 Mercedes Sedan, was entered in parking lot of Silver Bay Country Club, sometime between 8 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Victim stated car, which was unlocked, was ransacked and valuables removed. Items taken include pair of three-carat diamond and sapphire stud earrings worth estimated $36,500, also insulated Yeti coffee mug, and security transponder for victim’s gated community.
SUNDAY, MAY 3.—SUSPECTED DRUG OVERDOSE. Officer and Fire and Rescue Unit dispatched to Griffin County High School football field at 1:40 a.m. Anonymous caller reported apparently unconscious person in parking lot. Officer observed group of teenagers surrounding victim but witnesses scattered upon seeing approach of emergency vehicles. Victim, white female, approximately 15 years old, pale and unresponsive, had vomited. No ID found on victim who was transported to Northwest Florida Memorial emergency room.
“Okay, I’m gonna do it,” Conley announced, after she’d shipped the column to Grayson for editing.
“Do what?” Michael looked intrigued. The rookie reporter looked about fifteen. He was lanky, with freckles, wavy reddish hair, and an impossible amount of energy.
“I’ve got to call Rowena and ask what she knows about Symmes Robinette,” Conley said gloomily.
“Cool. I mean, Rowena acts kind of batty, but she always seems to know everything that’s going on in town. How old do you think she is?” the kid asked.
“Older than dirt,” Lillian volunteered. “And twice as mean.”
* * *
“Hellooooo,” the voice on the other end of the line sang out. “This is Rowena. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
“Oh, hi, Rowena. This is Conley Hawkins.”
“Conley?” There was a long pause at the other end of the line.
“Sarah Conley Hawkins.”
“Oh. Sarah. How niiiiice,” Rowena trilled. “How are you today? And how is that darlin’ grandmother of yours?”
“I’m fine, thanks. G’mama is fine too. I’m calling because I agreed to write the obituary for Symmes Robinette for the Beacon—”
“Such a shock!” Rowena said. “My phone has been ringing off the wall since yesterday. In fact, I’m going to dedicate this week’s column just to Symmes.”
“Great idea,” Conley said. “Since you’re such an institution in Silver Bay and knew him and his family so well, Grayson thinks it would be a good idea if I picked your brain before I start writing.”
“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Rowena said. “Would you like to drop by my house for some coffee and doughnuts?”
“That would be really helpful,” Conley said.
“Wonderful! I like those maple-bacon-frosted doughnuts they have at the Corner Café. And Tuffy just likes the bacon, so be a dear and bring three of those, plus whatever it is that you young girls eat these days. We’ll have a lovely little talk. You know where my house is, don’t you?”
“I do,” Conley said.
* * *
Everybody in town knew Rowena Meigs’s house. The Crispin-Meigs House, as it was known, had once been what Rowena herself would have called a showplace, a formerly stately Greek revival mansion with six massive Doric columns marching across a sweeping veranda that looked out on Silver Bay’s moss-draped Lee Street, named, of course, for Robert E. Lee, who, according to unreliable local sources, had once spent the night there during the waning days of “the Late Unpleasantness.”
Nowadays, the mansion resembled a crumbling wedding cake. Each of the front porch columns seemed to list in a different direction, and the porch itself sagged. The long-neglected front garden featured azaleas that had grown head-high and a towering magnolia tree whose roots had knuckled up the front walkway. The white-brick façade of the house was covered with a fine sheen of green mold.
When she reached the front porch, Conley was startled to see a large raccoon casually dining from a tin pan full of what looked like cat food.
“Shoo!”
The raccoon slinked away into the tall weeds at the edge of the porch.
The front door opened before she could ring the bell.
Rowena was dressed in a pale pink floor-length caftan with pink ostrich feathers outlining the hem, the kind her grandmother would have called a hostess gown. Her face was heavily powdered, her lips caked with fuchsia lipstick. She clutched Tuffy tightly under one arm, and in her right hand she held her cane, which today was decorated with a jaunty pink satin bow. “Why, Sarah Hawkins,” Rowena trilled. “What a nice surprise.”
“Um, you invited me here, Rowena. Remember? I wanted to ask you about Symmes Robinette.”
“Of course, you silly girl,” Rowena said. “You come right on in here.”
The interior of the house was gloomy and dimly lit, but Conley glimpsed faded wallpaper and rows and rows of portraits of even gloomier-faced Meigs ancestors.
“I’ve set us up in Judge Meigs’s office,” Rowena said, leading her into a high-ceilinged room with dark paneling. A fireplace took up one wall of the room, and mahogany bookcases lined the other three walls. The room was hot and airless, with a single propped-open window offering the only ventilation.
“Let’s sit right here and have a nice chat,” Rowena said, using her cane to indicate a spindly, gilt-trimmed settee with faded crimson upholstery. She seated herself in a high-backed leather chair. A mahogany tea table rested between the chairs, and on it was a highly polished silver tea set. Beside the tea service were a pair of delicate bone china cups and saucers and a small jar of Sanka.
Conley sat and handed over the white cardboard box from the Corner Café.
“Oooh, goody!” Rowena said, lifting out a doughnut. “Bacon-maple. My favorite. Now,” she said, spooning the Sanka into a cup and adding water from the teapot. “Tell me why your sister thinks I might know something of importance about poor old Symmes Robinette.” She handed the teacup to her guest.
Conley took a sip of coffee and immediately wished she hadn’t. The “coffee” was boiling hot and thick as maple syrup.
She set the cup on the table. “Grayson says you know everything and everybody in town.”
Hello, Summer Page 11