“I guess I could try doing an ad buy in the Beacon,” he said. “Tell Grayson to come see me, okay?”
“Do you have the graphics for the ads you run in that mailer?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, email them to Grayson. She can send you the rates, and if you decide to do it, your ad can run in tonight’s digital—which should get a lot of hits.”
“Why’s that?”
She waggled her eyebrows. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. No, really. This story is starting to take off in ways I’d never imagined.”
“You’re not even gonna give me a hint, are you?”
“Nope. Now about my lunch?”
33
When Conley got back to the Beacon office, Lillian was at her usual post in the reception area. The radio was on, and she was listening to Buddy Bright, who was talking excitedly about the county commission zoning meeting. Conley reached over and turned the volume down.
“I’ve had about enough of that guy,” she groused. “When does he sleep?”
“I go to church with a lady who works at the Waffle House out on the county road,” Lillian said. “Melissa told me that Buddy Bright’s in there all the time, at all hours of the night. Guess he really is a night owl.”
Conley sat back down at her desk and was trying to craft a lede for the story that would be combined with Rowena’s exclusive when Michael Torpy burst into the tiny newsroom, holding his cell phone in one hand and a grease-stained paper sack in the other. He wore faded blue jeans, a rumpled short-sleeved shirt that had seen better days, and unlaced Converse high-top sneakers. As always, the earbuds for his iPhone dangled from around his neck.
“I got Charlie Robinette to give me a statement,” he announced, grinning. “He confirmed that he’s running for his father’s unexpired term. And,” he added, “I videoed the interview, just in case.”
He rolled his desk chair up alongside hers. “Take a look.” He tapped the photo icon on his iPhone and held it out for Conley to watch.
Charlie Robinette was already assuming the mantle of a mature politician. His neatly barbered hair showed a few strategically placed gray hairs at the temples. Conley cynically wondered if he’d had his barber tint his hair just for the occasion. He was wearing a white button-down shirt with a loosely knotted red, white, and blue tie, the shirtsleeves rolled up, as though notifying the voting public that he was ready to get down to work in Washington.
He looked steadily into the camera. “All my life, I’ve looked up to my dad as a role model. And I modeled my life plan after his, graduating from the same university and law school, practicing law in the family firm, and working summers during college as a congressional aide in his office. Dad and I had many late-night discussions on the topic of public service and the best way to serve his constituents and address the changing needs of the district.”
“Uh, so, does that mean your dad was grooming you as his successor?” Michael asked off-camera.
“Yes,” Charlie said. “That’s why I’d begun having conversations with some of Dad’s closest political advisers over the past year. My father made it clear to me, even before his recent illness, that he believed I would be the best candidate to represent the Thirty-fifth District. Of course, we’d hoped I wouldn’t have to announce before his retirement, but cancer has a way of cheating the best-laid plans.”
Michael’s voice could be heard off-camera. “Can we back up? You’re saying he knew the cancer diagnosis was terminal? But kept that diagnosis secret?”
Robinette’s smooth, tanned face flushed. “We felt it was a private, family matter. Dad felt well enough to be in Washington, attending to the people’s business in Congress, right up until the end of his life.”
“Did you know your mother intended to run for your father’s seat?”
Robinette’s expression was blank. “No. She didn’t discuss her decision with me or with anyone else in his close circle of associates as far as I know.”
“Won’t this strain relations in your family?” Torpy asked.
Robinette shrugged. “My mother is her own woman. Clearly, I think my father’s decision that I should run for his seat, should he not be able to complete his term, is one that should be respected.”
“So no family feud?” Torpy asked.
Robinette cracked a smile, displaying beautiful, white teeth. “Thanksgiving could get a little awkward, but we’re a political family. My dad always cooked two turkeys on the holiday—one on the smoker, the other in the oven—so that my mom could make her famous giblet gravy from the pan drippings. We’re used to finding ways of compromising.”
The video ended, and Conley jumped up and flung her arms around the young reporter, whose face blushed as bright as his auburn hair. “Mike! That was brilliant! Exactly what we needed,” she said.
“What’s exactly what we needed?” Grayson walked through the front door just in time to hear Conley praising the paper’s junior staff member.
“Mike not only got Charlie Robinette on the record as saying he’s running—against his own mother—he got it on video,” Conley said, still beaming with pride.
“Good work, Mike,” Grayson said. “You’ll write the piece about Charlie’s announcement. Give me about twenty inches. Get some reaction comments from a couple of Symmes’s party cronies, and see if there are any Democrats sniffing around and testing the waters to oppose the GOP candidate. Conley, you’ll do the story you suggested, wrapping Rowena’s story into yours. Write it as a second-day piece, since the accident happened last week. Thirty-five inches, max.”
Conley nodded, then turned to Lillian. “Grayson tells me you usually send out the digital news updates. We’re aiming to send out a big updated story about Robinette’s death—and the fact that both Charlie and Vanessa have announced they’re running—by five o’clock today. You can handle that, right?”
Lillian did a double take. “I send out the emails with the election results and football scores, but we haven’t won a game in a while. And I’ve never messed with video.”
Michael opened his paper sack and began inhaling a chili dog. He paused mid-bite. “I can help you with that, Lillian.”
“I’ve got some news too,” Grayson said. “I just sold Sean Kelly a three-month contract for advertising, both in the print paper and the digital edition. And I managed to talk the IGA, Silver Bay Motors, and Gulf Coast Orthodontics into doing a digital ad buy too.”
For the first time since she’d come home to Silver Bay, Conley thought, her sister seemed animated, excited even. It was the first glimpse she’d had of the old Grayson.
Lillian’s jaw dropped. “Now we’re running ads with the announcements? Who’s gonna make that work?”
Grayson draped an arm around Michael. “You know how to do digital layout, right?”
“Sure,” Michael said. “I was production manager on the college paper. We embedded video, music, and advertising graphics all the time. No problem.”
Conley regarded her colleague with frank admiration. “How old are you, Mike?”
Michael was seated at his desk, eating limp french fries and tapping away at the keys on his computer. “Twenty-three.”
“They taught you all that in journalism school?”
“Some I learned in class, some I picked up from my friends working on the staff of the school paper. But a lot of stuff I figured out from watching YouTube videos.”
“Maybe sometime you’ll teach me,” Grayson said. “But not today.”
* * *
Conley spent the next two hours on her story, combining the more lucid details of Rowena’s “exclusive” with her own, while tall, skinny Michael kept jumping around, pacing the room between paragraphs, radiating a kind of crackling energy that lit up the shopworn newspaper office. He had his earbuds in place, and she could hear faint notes of the rap music he favored.
As they tapped away at their computer keyboards in tandem, she found her young colleague
’s enthusiasm contagious and welcomed the adrenaline buzz that came from working on a hot story on deadline.
She was her own worst critic, always, and as she reread her story, she wished again that she’d been able to interview Vanessa Robinette and again regretted that she still didn’t have answers to her nagging questions about the nature of Symmes Robinette’s fatal accident.
But that was the nature of news gathering. There were always more questions, not enough time. What her story really needed, she decided, were photos that illustrated the schizophrenic nature of the late congressman’s complicated domestic life.
“Lillian?” she called.
The receptionist looked up from her own computer. “What now?”
“Can you look in our photo files and see if we have any old photos of Symmes Robinette with his family? Maybe at a ribbon cutting? Or some local function?”
“I’ll look,” Lillian said warily. “But those files are a big mess. We had a leaky roof a couple of years ago, and some of ’em got wet and ruined. No telling what’s in there.” She got up and walked slowly toward the bank of ancient gray file cabinets flanking the right side of the newsroom.
Finally, Conley was satisfied with her work—or as satisfied as she would ever be. She yawned, got up, walked around the room, and looked over Michael’s shoulder as he was working on his own story about Charlie Robinette’s announcement.
“I found this,” Lillian said, tossing a couple of black-and-white photos on her desk.
In the first photo, dated 1984, Symmes Robinette had a full head of dark hair and was standing in front of an American flag, his hand on a Bible held by an attractive woman beaming up at him. Taped to the back of the photo was a typed-out cutline: SILVER BAY RESIDENT C. SYMMES ROBINETTE SWORN INTO CONGRESS WITH WIFE EMMA TODD (“TODDIE”) AT HIS SIDE.
“This is perfect,” Conley said. She picked up the next photo, dated 1988, which showed Robinette, standing with a group of men, holding a ceremonial shovel. The cutline for this one said: U.S. REP. SYMMES ROBINETTE MARKS CONSTRUCTION OF NEW VETERANS ADMINISTRATION CLINIC.
It struck Conley that this must have been shortly before Winnie had flung a handful of her sister’s ashes at Robinette.
“That’s all you could find?” Conley asked.
“I was lucky to find these,” Lillian said.
“Wish I had a photo of Robinette with Vanessa and Charlie,” Conley said.
“Oh, we got something like that,” Lillian said casually. “The funeral home sent it over to run with the obituary. I told Kennedy McFall that was gonna be an extra $150, but she said that’s what Vanessa wanted and she didn’t care what it cost. I’ll email it to you.”
She went back to her own desk, and a minute later, Conley was looking at a black-and-white wedding photo of Symmes and Vanessa Robinette, staring blissfully into each other’s eyes. Symmes wore a suit and tie with a white boutonniere and had his arms wrapped around Vanessa, who wore a short white dress and a floral headpiece. The Capitol Rotunda was in the background.
“Jackpot,” Conley said, rubbing her hands together. She clicked to see the second photo, which was of the Robinette family gathered around a Christmas tree. Charlie was a gawky preteen, with traces of acne and braces on his teeth.
At four o’clock, Grayson strolled into the newsroom. “How’s it coming?”
“I’m done,” Conley said. “I just shipped my story over to you.”
“I need five more minutes,” Michael chimed in. “Waiting on a callback from Charlie Robinette’s campaign chairman. He knows I’m on deadline.”
“You got it,” Grayson said. “I’ve already laid out the page. As soon as I’ve copyedited both pieces, you can show me how we upload your video.”
Michael continued typing, nodding his agreement. He held up his cell phone, indicating he had an incoming call.
* * *
“Done!” Michael yelled five minutes later. “I just have to double-check the spelling of Miles Schoendienst.”
“Schoendienst?” Conley looked up from her computer. “He’s Charlie’s campaign chairman?”
“Yeah. You know him?”
“Not personally,” Conley said, “but I know he’s the retired president of the railroad and that he was one of the developers of Sugar Key—and that he built the mansion Symmes and Vanessa live in there for a ridiculous bargain price.”
Michael looked up at Grayson. “Should I put that in my story?”
“Not for tonight,” Grayson said. “Let’s get the digital edition out, then you can follow up on that for tomorrow’s print version. Right now, I need you to sit in my office and walk me through this video stuff.”
“I’ll hang out here in case you’ve got any questions,” Conley volunteered.
* * *
Shortly after six, Grayson and Michael emerged from the office, grinning and high-fiving.
“It’s done,” Grayson said. “We pulled the switch. It’s out there in the ozone.”
“Does that mean I can go home?” Lillian picked up her pocketbook and headed for the door. “My husband’s been texting wanting to know what’s for supper.”
“Go on, get outta here,” Grayson said. “You guys go on too,” she added, gesturing at Conley and Michael. “Great job, team. I mean it. I didn’t know if we could do this digital thing, but this feels good. Really good.”
“Um, maybe I shouldn’t ask, but do you know how many folks are on your email subscriber list?” Conley asked.
“Last I checked, we had about six hundred,” Lillian said.
“That’s all?” Grayson’s face fell. “I thought it would be at least twice as many as that.”
“We might want to work on our social media marketing,” Michael said tactfully. “Like, does the Beacon even have a Facebook page? Twitter account? That kind of stuff?”
“Not really,” Grayson admitted. “We had a summer intern who started a Facebook page a couple of years ago, but then she went back to school, and nobody here knew the password for the account.”
“Oh-kay,” Michael said. “Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll scrub the old page, and we’ll put up a new one that all four of us can post to. Then after we get off deadline for the print edition, we’ll tackle Twitter. If that’s okay with you?”
“If we gotta, we gotta,” Grayson said resignedly. “It just seems like a lot of extra work, you know? I mean, who’s gonna write whatever we put up? Who’s gonna read it?”
“We can all write posts,” Conley said. “Once you get used to it, social media doesn’t really take that long. And believe me, it works. Most papers have whole departments that do nothing but social media. We need to let our readers know what stories we’re working on. What’s going on in the community. And we need to hear from them about what they want to know. The more interactive we are, the more readers—and subscribers—we’ll get.”
“More subscribers mean more advertising,” Michael pointed out.
“I guess.” Grayson looked unconvinced.
“Hey,” Conley said. “We just did something here. We put out a real digital edition. With breaking news. That’s huge. What do you say we go celebrate? Michael? Have you got plans tonight?”
“Not really,” Michael started to say.
“Not tonight,” Grayson said hastily. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of.”
“Like what?” Conley asked.
“Tonight doesn’t work for me, okay?” Grayson said. “Maybe later in the week. Now, all y’all scoot. We don’t have the budget for overtime.”
34
Michael turned to Conley after the boss had left the building. “Should my feelings be hurt that she doesn’t want to celebrate with me?”
“I don’t think it’s you she’s avoiding. It’s me. Sibling rivalry, plus I think she’s got some personal stuff going on.”
Michael nodded. “You mean like the reason she’s sleeping in her office every night?”
“You figured that out, huh?”
“I
came in early one morning a couple of weeks ago and caught her sacked out on the sofa in there. She made up some kinda lame excuse about how she’d stayed late working. But it wasn’t the first time. Kinda weird, though, that she wouldn’t tell her own sister if she’s having issues.”
“You obviously don’t have any sisters,” Conley said, laughing.
“I’ve got a couple of brothers, but they’re way older than I am,” Michael said.
“Grayson and I are not what you’d call close,” Conley admitted. “Part of the issue is that my grandmother pretty much forced her to hire me. She’s pissed about that, but she’s also pissed because she knows I’m only working here temporarily.”
“So you’re really actively job hunting, huh?”
Conley sighed. “Yeah. I made it clear from the start that this was just a temporary gig. And Grayson made it clear she didn’t want me to work here. It was our grandmother’s idea. She thought Grayson would welcome the help and that once I got settled, I’d want to stay. But I’m too old to live with my grandmother, and I can’t make a living working at the Beacon.”
Michael started gathering papers into his backpack. “Damn. Well, selfishly, I wish you’d stay. Today was great. Awesome! But I get it. I’m sure it’s a huge step down for you after working at a big-city daily paper, working at your family’s crummy little weekly.”
She smiled wistfully. “You know what? Just now, working on this Robinette story, writing a mile a minute, the adrenaline pumping? That wasn’t crummy. It reminded me of why I got into the business.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “Guess I’ll go home, grab a beer, and watch the ball game. See you tomorrow?”
“Maybe I’ll head out myself and take a long walk on the beach. Maybe I’ll even fix myself a drink and watch the sunset. But I’ll be here in the morning. Bright and early,” she promised.
Hello, Summer Page 25
