Hello, Summer

by Mary Kay Andrews

  G’mama grasped his hand. “It’s good to see you again, Artie. How’s Verna?”

  “She’s good. Busy with the grandkids and volunteering at church,” he said. He gestured at Conley. “And who’s this young lady? Seems like I see a family resemblance.”

  “This is Sarah Conley, my other granddaughter,” G’mama said. “She’s working with Grayson at the Beacon.”

  “Temporarily,” Conley put in.

  “I’m guessing, Miz Lorraine, you want one of your sunsetter drinks, and Gray, you’re Tanqueray and tonic, I know, but what about you, Miz Sarah Conley?”

  “Maybe just a seltzer with a slice of lime, please. I’ve got a long night ahead of me,” she said. Grayson sighed dramatically. “Make mine weak, but yes, a Tanqueray and tonic is just what the doctor ordered.”

  After their drinks arrived, Grayson took a pen from her pocketbook and began doodling on the cocktail napkin.

  G’mama peered at her from across the table. “What’s that you’re drawing?”

  “Hmm? Just starting to think about my story budget for the digital edition. Conley and Mike will share a byline, and then we’ll hold a slot for whatever Rowena comes up with for her column.”

  G’mama stirred her drink, sipped, and nodded her approval. “That was an extraordinary moment at the funeral today, didn’t you think? When Charlie acknowledged Toddie and her children?”

  “I think he got some kind of sick satisfaction out of rubbing them in Vanessa’s face,” Grayson said.

  “I was watching her at the moment he made that bullshit statement about forgiveness,” Conley said. “I couldn’t see her face from where I was sitting, because she was staring down at her lap. Charlie definitely didn’t help Symmes reunite with the other family out of the goodness of his heart.”

  “Then what’s his agenda?” Grayson asked. “You know he’s got one.”

  “I think it’s about power. The Little Prince wants his father’s seat in the House. And he’ll mow down anybody who gets in his way. Even his own mother,” Conley said.

  G’mama looked across the room and waved. “Look. Here’s Sean.”

  Skelly’s unknotted tie hung loosely around his neck, and he slipped out of his blazer and hung it on the back of the chair. The bartender arrived at their table a moment later with a cold draft beer and a small bowl of mixed nuts.

  “Thanks, Artie,” Skelly said, taking a long gulp of beer. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Man, I needed that,” he declared. “Whose idea was it to have that reception at a church that forbids alcohol?”

  “The altar guild had no choice. The Baptists have the biggest church downtown,” G’mama told him. “And the best parking.”

  “How come y’all left so early? You missed the fireworks.”

  “George McFall kicked me out, and Gray got hounded out by a bunch of old biddies,” Conley said. “What fireworks? What happened?”

  “I’m just messing with you,” Skelly said. “I didn’t actually see any bad behavior. From what I could tell, Team Charlie and Team Vanessa staked out territory on opposite sides of the gym, with the food tables in the demilitarized zone. It was all very genteel.”

  “It was weird as hell, if you ask me,” Conley said, sipping her seltzer. “I saw poor Toddie and her two kids looking totally adrift.”

  “I can’t imagine why they turned up today,” G’mama said. “It must have been terribly awkward for them.”

  “Toddie and I spoke briefly as she was leaving,” Skelly said. He pointed at Conley. “She’s pretty upset with you.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “She seems to think you sicced the sheriff on her.”

  “I did no such thing,” Conley said indignantly. “I only pointed out to Merle Goggins that Symmes’s wreck happened right down the road from Toddie’s farm, and I mentioned that she told me, the other day when we met in your store, that Symmes went out there for a visit not long before he died and told her that he was going to deed the property over to her.”

  “Are you saying Toddie had something to do with the accident?” Skelly asked. “Come on, Conley. I’ve known her most of my life. I don’t think she’s capable of anything like that.”

  “Until the day I tricked you into driving me out to Oak Springs Farm, you hadn’t seen her in, what, more than thirty years?” Conley reminded him. “Can you definitely say she had nothing to do with Symmes’s death?”

  “We don’t even know how he died,” Skelly said.

  Conley let out a long breath. “We do now. He hit a deer.”

  “A deer? Jesus! That’s it? A deer killed him?”

  “Not technically. The medical examiner thinks he was dead before he hit the deer. From what I understand, Symmes had toxic levels of fentanyl and alcohol in his system. He was either dead or in a coma when the car struck the deer.”

  Skelly nodded. “Makes sense, I guess. He had a fentanyl patch, so maybe one or more of his other meds had some kind of interaction.”

  “So he did have a fentanyl patch,” Conley said, seizing on the pharmacist’s slipup.

  Skelly swore softly under his breath. “You tricked me.”

  “I didn’t,” Conley said, glancing from her sister to her grandmother. “Did y’all hear me trick Skelly?”

  “Not me,” Grayson said, laughing. “You gave up that information on a strictly voluntary basis.”

  “It’s not funny,” he said. “You can’t quote me as saying anything about Symmes’s prescriptions. I could lose my license. I could lose the store.”

  “I won’t,” Conley said hastily. “You only confirmed, off the record, what I already knew. I swear, Skelly, I didn’t mean to try to trick you.”

  He downed the last of his beer and reached for his jacket. “Miss Lorraine, can I give you a ride out to the beach? I’m afraid I need to get back to the store now.”

  “That would be wonderful,” G’mama said. “I hate to bother you, but I know the girls are on deadline, and I’m not exactly sure where Winnie’s gotten off to today.”

  “No bother at all,” he said, standing to pull out her chair.

  “I’ll walk you out to the car,” Conley said.

  “While you do that, I’ll just go powder my nose,” G’mama said tactfully. “And I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

  * * *

  “You have to know I wouldn’t do anything to intentionally harm you or your family business,” Conley said as Skelly strode away from the bar. “Skelly! Are you listening to me?”

  He didn’t turn around. “I heard you, all right.”

  She grabbed at the hem of his jacket. “Hey! Slow down.”

  He stopped in his tracks. His face was expressionless. “I said, ‘I heard you.’”

  “But you don’t really believe me?”

  “I don’t know what to believe. You’re so damn determined to break the next big story, I’m not sure what you would or wouldn’t do to get a scoop.”

  “I wouldn’t betray a confidence. I wouldn’t deliberately hurt my oldest friend in the world. Somebody I care deeply about,” she said, staring up at him.

  They’d reached the club lobby, and suddenly, members were streaming in through the front door, still dressed in their funeral clothes, all marching determinedly toward the bar after three harrowing, booze-free hours in church.

  “Okay,” he said, shrugging. “I believe you.”

  Her cell phone rang and when she glanced she saw that her old friend, the unknown caller was back. She let it ring.

  “Don’t you need to answer that?” Skelly asked, gesturing at her pocketbook.

  “Just a crank call,” she said.

  “All set,” G’mama said as she walked up to them.

  Skelly half bowed from the waist. “Your carriage awaits.”

  “Maybe I’ll call you when I’m off deadline,” Conley said just as Skelly and Lorraine pushed out the doors and into the parking lot.

  52

  “Where have you two been?” Li
llian demanded when Conley and Grayson walked into the Beacon office shortly before five o’clock. “People been calling up here all afternoon, wanting to know what time y’all are gonna put out that special edition.”

  “Really?” Grayson asked. “Did you direct them to the new website and tell them to sign up?”

  “I did like you told me to,” Lillian said. “But that funeral’s been over for a long damn time.”

  “We were doing research,” Grayson said, passing the receptionist’s desk on her way to her office.

  “Your research smells a lot like gin to me,” Lillian said with an indignant sniff.

  “Have we heard anything from Rowena yet?” Grayson asked, ignoring the dig.

  “Oh yeah. She came sailing in here about an hour ago, all dressed in that black widow Halloween getup of hers. Said she had another ‘exclusive’ from Vanessa Robinette.

  “Did she get anything good from Vanessa?” Conley asked.

  “I guess,” Lillian said. “It’s in the system. I slugged it, ‘Vanessa Gonna Sue.’”

  “What?” the sisters said in unison.

  “Who’s she suing?” Conley asked.

  The phone rang, and Lillian’s hand was poised to answer. “Says she’s gonna sue the first wife, her own son, and some other people too.”

  She picked up the phone. “Silver Bay Beacon, shining the light of truth. This is Lillian King speaking.”

  * * *

  Conley pulled her cell phone from her purse and glanced at her emails to see if she’d had any messages from Selena Kwan. No new emails, but she saw that she had a voicemail.

  * * *

  She pulled Rowena’s column up on her laptop, and absent-mindedly tapped the voicemail arrow. The man’s voice was muffled, but the words were clear. “You’re dead, bitch.”

  * * *

  Conley glanced around the newsroom, shook her head and started to delete the message before thinking better of it. Tomorrow, she told herself, she would report the calls to the cops.

  * * *

  She turned back to the laptop and began to read with growing irritation.

  “Hey, Gray,” she called to her sister. “Are you looking at this train wreck Rowena calls a column?”

  Grayson stood in the doorway of her office. “Yes. And yes, I agree it’s unreadable as is. Just fix it, okay? Michael called. He’s on the way back with some quotes from the governor and from Vanessa’s new campaign chairman. This story is like a damn Hydra. You break off one piece of it and six new pieces grow in its place.”

  HELLO, SUMMER

  By Rowena Meigs

  Your correspondent learned in an exclusive interview today with Mrs. Vanessa Robinette (who was tragically widowed after her husband, Congressman Symmes Robinette, was killed in a recent car wreck) that Mrs. Robinette intends to sue Rep. Robinette’s first wife, Toddie, because she used “undue influence” to unlawfully persuade Symmes Robinette to deed over title to the family’s Oak Springs Farm in Bronson County to Toddie, while Symmes was not entirely in possession of all his faculties due to his terminal cancer.

  Oak Springs Farm is a working quail-hunting plantation with eight hundred acres of timberland and is valued at close to $2 million, Vanessa Robinette claims. She said that shortly before his death, while Symmes Robinette was suffering from diminished capacity, his former wife took advantage of him and tricked him into giving the farm to her.

  Vanessa said she will sue Toddie Sanderson, as well as her own son, Charlie Robinette, who, she said, duped her husband into believing he should give away the farm, which used to be owned by Toddie’s family, out of guilt over their divorce more than thirty years ago.

  Conley spent the next thirty minutes rewriting and trying to fact-check Rowena’s column. She tried calling and texting first Vanessa Robinette and then Charlie. Finally, in desperation, she called Kennedy McFall, whose tone was noticeably cool when she answered her cell phone.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi, Kennedy. It’s Conley Hawkins over at the Beacon.”

  “What do you want, Conley? Are you writing another story trying to make my fiancé look like a bad guy for following his father’s last request?”

  “Look, Kennedy,” Conley said wearily. “I don’t know what Charlie’s told you, but I can assure you I do not have some kind of vendetta going against him. I’m a reporter, and I’m covering the news of the day. He might not like it, but that’s my job. Just like it was my job to attend your press conference and print the fact that he reported his mother to the state for elder abuse. Right now, I’m fact-checking Rowena Meigs’s column.”

  “That old bat wouldn’t know a fact if it bit her on the butt, but do go on,” Kennedy said. “I’m listening.”

  “Rowena’s reporting that Vanessa says she’s going to sue Toddie—and Charlie—over the Oak Springs Farm title. Do you know anything about that?”

  “I know Vanessa texts Charlie several times a day with all kinds of deranged threats,” Kennedy said. “Frankly, we’ve lost track of everything she’s pissed off about.”

  “Do you happen to know who her attorney is?”

  “No.”

  “Would Charlie know?”

  “Probably, but he’s in a meeting with the governor right now, and I’m not about to disturb him just so you can assassinate his character in print.”

  Conley was beginning to lose patience. “Tell me one sentence I’ve written about Charlie Robinette that is inaccurate. Okay? Quote me the place where I’ve engaged in character assassination. If Charlie and his mom don’t like what the Beacon has written about this family, maybe they need to look in the mirror. Because I don’t make the news, Kennedy. I just report it.”

  “You report it with your own personal slant,” Kennedy retorted. “Because you’re still pissed off that Charlie broke it off with you, what? Twenty years ago? That’s a long time to nurse a feud, Conley. Maybe you need to grow up and get over yourself.”

  Kennedy disconnected before Conley could offer her own version of her ugly history with Charlie Robinette.

  “Aaaarrrgghhh!” she moaned, burying her head in her hands.

  Michael had been working on his own story but turned around and regarded her with sympathy. “Getting stonewalled?”

  “At every turn,” she said grimly. “Can’t get Vanessa on the phone, and I can’t get to Charlie. But I really need to get confirmation for Rowena’s column.”

  “Have you tried reaching out to Toddie?” he asked.

  “She’s my next call, but I’m apparently on her shit list,” Conley said with a long sigh.

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” the young reporter enthused. “I’d way rather be hated than ignored.”

  She laughed despite herself. “You’ve got a great future in this business, Mike.”

  She called Toddie’s cell phone, and when there was no answer, Conley left a voice mail. A minute later, Robinette’s ex-wife returned the call.

  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Toddie began.

  “Skelly told me you were upset that I sicced the sheriff on you,” Conley said quickly. “But I didn’t! All I did was point out what you’d told me yourself—that Symmes had visited you on the farm not long before his death. Goggins said he’d been to Oak Springs Farm several times. He knew how close it was to the crash site.”

  “Of course I know the sheriff. We invite all the fire and sheriff’s department folks over every year for a dove shoot,” Toddie said. “But I resent the insinuation that I had something to do with Symmes’s death. My kids and I gave him the only happiness he’d had in the last few weeks of his life, and now you and that woman have managed to make that look like some kind of crime.”

  Conley had to bite her tongue to keep from repeating the same things she’d been telling people all day. Instead, she pressed on with her questions.

  “Vanessa told our columnist today that she intends to sue you and Charlie, claiming you had undue influence on Symmes while he was of diminished capacit
y.”

  Toddie laughed hoarsely. “Let her sue. Deeding the farm over to me was entirely Symmes’s idea. And don’t forget, he was the one who reached out to me, not the other way around. It’s not my fault that he had a guilty conscience and wanted to make things right after the way he ripped me off in the divorce settlement.”

  “Have you heard from her attorney?” Conley asked.

  “Not a peep,” Toddie said. “This is just a pathetic ploy to get publicity for her campaign. The woman will do anything to get attention. Threatening to sue me? And her only child? On the day she buries her allegedly beloved husband? Not exactly the work of a grieving widow, is it?”

  Conley’s fingers were flying across the keyboard of her computer. “Did Symmes tell Charlie that he intended to deed the farm over to you?”

  Toddie hesitated. “How should I know?”

  “Charlie was the one who initially made contact with you, so I thought maybe Symmes shared his intention with his son.”

  Conley heard a deep, masculine voice. “Mom? Who are you talking to?”

  Toddie’s voice became muffled, but still audible. “It’s that girl who works for the newspaper in Silver Bay. She says Vanessa is going to sue me.”

  “Hang up, Mom,” the man’s voice urged. “You don’t need to talk to her.”

  Click.

  Conley put her phone down. She’d been kicked out of a funeral, yelled at, ignored, and hung up on. Just another day in the life of a small-town journalist.

  53

  LONGTIME LAWMAKER LAID TO REST AMID SWIRLING CONTROVERSY

  By Conley Hawkins and Michael Torpy

  Silver Bay, Florida—Veteran local congressman C. Symmes Robinette was laid to rest here Saturday, but peace—among the feuding family members and constituents left behind—remains an elusive commodity.

  Questions linger both about the manner of Robinette’s death and the paradox of his personal life.

  The seventy-seven-year-old congressman was killed in the early morning hours of May 11 in a fiery one-car wreck in rural Bronson County, after his 2020 Escalade struck a deer. The district medical examiner’s office has not officially ruled on the cause of death, but sources have told the Beacon that Robinette was either already dead or unconscious at the time of impact and that toxic levels of fentanyl, an opioid painkiller commonly prescribed for advanced cancer patients, and alcohol, were found in his bloodstream.