G’mama was talking animatedly on the phone when Conley walked into the kitchen.
Winnie’s transistor radio was propped on the windowsill, and Buddy Bright was prattling on about the upcoming memorial service in Washington for Symmes Robinette.
Conley went to the cupboard, found a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts, tore open the foil wrapper, and took a bite of the corner of the pastry.
“At least let me put that in the toaster for you,” Winnie said, but Conley resisted.
“I like ’em this way. It’s even trashier than if it’s toasted.”
Winnie rolled her eyes in response.
Conley leaned against the kitchen counter, unashamedly eavesdropping on her grandmother’s telephone conversation.
“Harriet, Harriet. Let me stop you right now,” Lorraine said. “Is there anything in that article that’s untrue? You might not like what we published, but that does not make it filth. So no, I’m not going to fire my granddaughter, who happens to be an award-winning investigative journalist. And I’m not going to ‘make’ Grayson publish a retraction. She’s the managing editor, not me. And I happen to trust her judgment implicitly.”
“She’s been getting calls like this all morning,” Winnie whispered. “Can’t even drink her coffee in peace.”
G’mama listened patiently. “I’m sorry you feel that way. The Beacon values all its subscribers, but of course, if you don’t want to get the paper anymore, we’ll cancel your subscription. Which means you won’t get any more grocery store coupons. No, I don’t think we do offer refunds. All right, Harriet. Love to Smitty. See you at church.”
G’mama put the phone down and penciled a hash mark on the back of an envelope. Conley counted eight of them.
“Winnie says you’re having a rough morning?” She pointed at the envelope. “Are those all cancellations?”
“No. These are people I’m making a note to shun after this. Harriet Steinmach is the only one who actually canceled.”
“Well, thanks for sticking up for freedom of the press,” Conley said, brushing a kiss on her grandmother’s cheek. “Are you mad at us for running the Robinette thing?”
“Of course not! That special edition you all put out last night was wonderful! It’s making people sit up and take notice, which we haven’t done in a long time. Pops used to say that was a newspaper’s job—not just to report the facts but to get them thinking about the facts, asking questions, get ’em riled up. I loved the ads too, once I got used to them flashing and blinking at me.”
“That’s all Michael’s doing,” Conley said. “He really is a whiz kid.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t awake when Sean left last night,” G’mama said, picking up her coffee cup. “Did you two have a nice walk?”
Conley poured her own coffee, avoiding meeting her grandmother’s probing eyes. “Very nice. We sat out on the beach for a long time, just drinking our wine and watching the sunset.”
“I saw he finally bought an ad too,” G’mama commented. “Maybe that’ll make some of our other local businesses do the same.”
“Hope so,” Conley said, swallowing her coffee. “I’d better get in to the office. Lots to do before the print deadline tonight.”
“Wonder if they’ll show Symmes Robinette’s funeral on television,” Lorraine said.
“I happen to know NBC will have somebody at the service today,” Conley said. “And that reminds me. We’ll need to pull photos of the memorial service off the wire.”
She rinsed out her coffee mug and set it on the counter.
“When are you seeing Sean again?” G’mama asked.
“Not sure. I’ve got a crazy-busy week ahead.” She debated whether to tell her grandmother about the deal she’d worked out with the Atlanta paper and the network but decided to clear her arrangement with Grayson first.
She was driving down Main Street, headed for the office, when she saw a blue-and-white Bronson County sheriff’s vehicle parked in front of Kelly’s Drugs. She parked beside the cruiser and pushed through the door, setting the bells tied to the door handle jingling.
Skelly was behind the pharmacy counter, deep in conversation with the deputy she remembered from the accident scene and from her later encounter at the sheriff’s office, Walter Poppell.
Poppell looked up and gave her a smirking finger wave. Conley sat down at the soda fountain counter and turned her back to him, although she could still see the conversation in the back-bar mirror.
After a moment, she got up, went behind the counter, and fixed herself a glass of water. Ten minutes later, she saw Poppell leave, and Skelly walked over slowly, installing himself behind the counter.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
Skelly fiddled with a stack of laminated menus. “I guess it’s okay to tell you. I mean, he didn’t say not to. They wanted a list of all the prescriptions I filled for the Robinettes, going back for the past two years.”
She leaned in. “Really? Plural? Symmes and Vanessa? Did you give it to him? I mean, are there any HIPAA regulations prohibiting that?”
“He said it’s a criminal investigation.”
“I know you can’t tell me anything about Vanessa’s meds, but what about Symmes’s? He’s dead now, so the rules don’t apply anymore, right?”
He poured himself a mug of coffee. “Want one?”
“Thanks, but I’m already buzzed, and it’s got nothing to do with caffeine. Come on, Skelly,” she pleaded. “Vanessa herself told me about Symmes’s cancer and said he was on chemo. She even blamed ‘chemo brain’ for the fact that he’d get up in the middle of the night and go driving around. She said he wasn’t thinking right when he deeded over the quail-hunting plantation to Toddie.”
Skelly tugged at his ear, a nervous gesture she remembered from their childhood.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “This doesn’t feel right. It’s an invasion of his privacy. I’m sorry, but I really can’t tell you anything without Vanessa’s permission.”
She gave him a sheepish grin. “I figured you’d say that, but I had to ask, just in case.”
Skelly touched her hand. “Can we talk about last night for a minute? I’d really like to understand these mixed signals I’m getting. I mean, one minute we’re rolling around on the sand and you’re ripping off my pants, and five minutes later, it’s like nothing even happened.”
“God, I hate this stuff,” Conley muttered.
He raised an eyebrow. “Stuff? Like talking about emotions? Admitting you care for somebody and want to be with them?”
“I should never have told you any of that juvenile stuff about my crush and the condom. Any of it. It was teenage fantasy.”
“Then why did you?” He didn’t look away, so she did, gazing out through the drugstore’s plate glass window at people strolling by on the sidewalk outside.
Conley glanced at the old red Coca-Cola clock on the wall, with its THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES logo.
“Grayson’s gonna kill me if I’m late to work,” she said. “It’s deadline day, and we’re still chasing a huge story.”
He clamped his hand over hers. “Can you at least answer my question before you run off to chase your Pulitzer Prize?”
“I don’t know. Talking about old times, maybe I was feeling sentimental.”
“Nope,” he said. “Not buying it.”
“Okay. Maybe I was still curious. About what I’d missed out on that night at the country club dance.”
“That is a completely lame, bullshit answer.” His hand didn’t move.
“Skelly.” Her voice was pleading. “I know you’re looking for more. You deserve more. But right now, I need to concentrate on work. I wasn’t going to say anything earlier, but this Robinette story is blowing up. My old boss at the AJC called this morning and wants me to freelance a Sunday piece about it. While I was on the phone with him, the NBC bureau chief in Atlanta called. She wants me to cover the story as it unfolds. And then CNN called too. Their offer was bullshit, but still…”
He slowly lifted his hand, releasing hers. “What you’re saying is this story is your ticket out of Silver Bay. And the Beacon. And your family drama. And it’s a one-way ticket, party of one. Right?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is, there are no jobs in print journalism right now. Nobody’s hiring, at least at my career level. I’d sort of halfway thought about trying to make the switch to broadcast, but that didn’t seem realistic. Now there’s a possibility that this NBC thing could work into something more. Like a real, full-time job with boring stuff like benefits.”
“And way more prestige than working for your family newspaper in some swampy Florida backwater,” Skelly said.
Conley slid off the barstool, snatched her backpack off the counter, and hitched it over her shoulder. “Ambition isn’t a crime, Skelly, and I won’t let you make me feel guilty for having it.”
The bells jangled noisily as she pushed her way out the front door.
“Neither is loyalty,” Sean Kelly said to nobody in particular.
She was about to make the turn into the Beacon’s parking lot when she spotted the Bronson County sheriff’s vehicle half a block ahead, making a left into an auto body shop. She sped up and parked the Subaru on the street.
The lot in front of the shop was lined with relics from another time. There was a rusting black hulk of a 1950s-era pickup with a white scripted SILVER BAY AUTO BODY logo on the door—complete with a four-digit telephone number. An olive-green 1970s fastback Mustang rested on four rotted-out tires, and a perky little orange 1960s VW bug missing its doors sat beside it. The bug’s rounded bumpers sported fading but groovy pink and yellow daisy decals, and the interior of the car had been completely stripped. She’d always lusted after that car.
Conley’s phone buzzed, and she glanced down. The text was from Grayson.
WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? SHIT IS HITTING THE FAN.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard. Working on Robinette story. Talk soon.
She checked her emails, hoping to see some kind of correspondence from Selena Kwan about the NBC offer. Her phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Roger Sistrunk. One sentence.
Do we have a deal or what?
She bit her lip. She didn’t want to burn any bridges with her old boss, just in case, but she also needed Sistrunk to recognize her value. She began typing.
I’ve had an offer from NBC, but since I talked to you first, here’s what I can offer the AJC. Onetime use only of the Charlie Robinette video, a Sunday piece, including my firsthand account of being first on the scene of the fire and still photos of the fire. I’m willing to file follow-up pieces as the story unfolds, for a price to be determined. My price is $1k. My colleague Michael Torpy, who shot the video will need $250. Let me know what you decide. Best, C.
She went back to watching the front door of the auto body shop. What was a Bronson County sheriff’s deputy doing in Griffin County? It couldn’t be a coincidence that the same deputy had just visited Kelly’s Drugs looking for a list of Symmes Robinette’s meds.
Her phone buzzed. She read the incoming text from Sistrunk and smiled.
Damn it, Hawkins. It’s a deal. Twenty inches, $1k, by 5:00 p.m. Thursday. Tell Torpy he’s got a deal too. Don’t fuck this up. Okay?
Okay, she typed back. Love you too. Xoxo.
When she looked up again, Poppell was emerging from the auto body shop. He held a large brown paper grocery sack in his meaty hand. The top of the bag had been folded over and secured with bright red tape. He placed the bag on the seat of the cruiser, closed the door, and drove away.
She recognized the bag and the tape from her days covering cop shops. They were used to secure evidence.
Jesse Bayless wore wrinkled blue coveralls. He was standing in a work bay near the crumpled remains of a late-model black Escalade, wiping his soot-blackened hands on a shop towel. She recognized the car too. It had become Symmes Robinette’s funeral pyre.
“Hey, Jesse,” she said.
He looked up sharply. “Oh, hey, Sarah. Didn’t see you standing there.”
Jesse was the youngest of Nedra’s sons. He had a fringe of graying bangs cut straight across, Buster Brown–style, and dark brown eyes that drooped at the corners. Even the bands of tattoos protruding beneath the cutoff sleeves of his jumpsuit didn’t make him look menacing. He looked, she thought, like the human embodiment of a Bassett hound.
“I just came in. Right after that sheriff’s deputy left.”
“Nothing’s wrong with Aunt Winnie, I hope.”
“Nope. I just left the house an hour ago. She’s as ornery as ever.”
“You’d be ornery too if you’d had to raise a bunch of sorry characters like the three of us,” Jesse said with a chuckle.
“Don’t forget she helped raise me and Grayson too, so make that five kids,” Conley said. “Hey, what was that deputy from Bronson doing here? Was it about that?” She pointed at the Escalade.
He picked up a tool from the workbench and began wiping it with the shop rag. “Yeah.”
“I saw he was carrying an evidence bag. What was in it?”
“Not sure I’m supposed to say,” Jesse replied. “Anyway, you were there that night, right? You and Sean Kelly?”
“Not when it happened, but right afterward,” she said.
“You think Robinette was already dead? Before the fire started? I asked that Poppell dude, but he said it was none of my business.”
“He wasn’t moving,” Conley said. “His head was slumped forward. I could see some blood, but whether he was just unconscious or dead, I don’t know.”
“Kinda hope he was alive,” Jesse said, his gentle demeanor putting the lie to his words.
She had no response to that, remembering Winnie’s equally harsh response to the news of Robinette’s gruesome death.
“Bet I know what he was doing over there in Bronson County that night he was killed,” Jesse said.
Conley raised an eyebrow. “Really? What’s that?”
“Booty call. The old shitbird was chasing after some young blond chick.”
“Come on, Jesse,” she said. “He was seventy-seven and dying of cancer.”
“I’m telling you, I saw him myself. At the Waffle House, two or three weeks ago. They were holding hands.”
He went back to the workbench, picked up his cell phone, and scrolled through his camera roll until he found the frame he wanted. He held it up so she could see it.
The photo was a blurry side view. A gaunt, older, balding man was seated in a booth, the younger woman across from him. A curtain of blond hair concealed half her face, but yes, the couple’s hands were intertwined on the tabletop.
“What do you think this proves?” Conley asks.
“Speaks for itself,” Jesse said. “I was there. I seen the way he was looking at that girl.” He wiped the phone on the seat of his coveralls and put it back on the workbench. “And now I’m not the only one who’s seen it.”
“You still hate Robinette.” It was a statement, not a question. “You sent that photo to his wife?”
The mechanic shrugged. “If he’d done to your family what he did to mine, you’d hate him too,” Jesse said. “My mom’s been gone close to thirty years, but I’ll never forget how sick she was, the way that cancer ate up her insides. Robinette got rich off the money the railroad paid him to cover it up. But my family? My mama got the grave, and Aunt Winnie got sent to prison. So yeah. Hate ain’t a strong enough word.”
“Fair enough, I guess,” Conley said. And then she repeated her earlier question. “I’m still wondering what was in that evidence bag the deputy was carrying.”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. It was the driver’s-side mirror. It was hanging halfway off anyway.”
“Did Poppell say why he wanted it?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“What’s the Escalade doing here anyway?” Conley asked. “The accident happened in Bronson County.”
“Yeah, but we’ve got a towing contract with them. Griffin County too,” Jesse said. “After they peeled what was left of the old bastard off the upholstery, they called, and we towed it over here to the garage.”
Conley shivered, thinking of the visual. “What happens to the car now?”
“Poppell said it’ll probably get towed to the state crime lab for more tests. His wife don’t want it, so if the state doesn’t come get it, we’ll sell it for scrap.”
“Did Poppell ask any other questions about the car?” Conley asked.
“He wanted to check the glove box, but like I told him, if there was anything in there, it got burned up in the fire.”
Her phone buzzed with another text from Grayson.
?????
“I’d better get to work,” she said, stashing her phone in her pocket. “Thanks, Jesse,” she said, extending her hand, but he shook his head. “Naw. You don’t wanna shake hands with a nasty old grease monkey.”
She took his hand anyway, pumping it vigorously. “Always a pleasure, Jesse.”
He followed her through the shop and out into the parking lot. It was just after nine o’clock, and the air was already as thick and hot as tomato soup.
“Hey, Conley,” he said as she was about to get into her car.
She whirled around, hoping he’d thought of some other nugget of information. “Yes?”
“That Subaru. Does it get good mileage?”
“Gets great mileage,” she said. “Don’t forget to call me if you think of anything else about that Escalade.”