Page 107 of Hello, Summer
I’ve had an offer from NBC, but since I talked to you first, here’s what I can offer theAJC.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.
