Page 142 of Hello, Summer
“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 theBeaconthat 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.
Bronson County sheriff Merle Goggins said the congressman’sdeath remains under investigation. He said foul play is not suspected.
Robinette’s namesake and heir presumptive to his now vacant seat in the U.S. House, C. Symmes “Charlie” Robinette Jr., startled many in the overflow crowd at Silver Bay Presbyterian Church on Saturday, when, while delivering the eulogy, he acknowledged the presence of his father’s “secret family” in the church—including Symmes Robinette’s first wife, Emma “Toddie” Sanderson, and her adult children, Hank, fifty, and Rebecca Robinette, forty-eight, who were seated only a few pews away from Vanessa Monck Robinette, fifty-nine, Robinette’s widow and the mother of Charlie Robinette, who has also announced her intention to run for her late husband’s seat.
During his eulogy, Charlie Robinette said his father only divulged the existence of his first marriage and the children from that marriage recently, following his diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The family kept Rep. Robinette’s cancer diagnosis a secret from all but his closest friends, Charlie Robinette said, because his father “didn’t want to be a poster boy for cancer.”
Vanessa Robinette has said she brought her husband back to Silver Bay earlier in the spring because she wanted him to spend his last months in the comfort of his own home.
But the younger Robinette said his mother spirited the ailing congressman away from world-renowned physicians treating him at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, returning him to Silver Bay, where Vanessa Robinette deliberately cut Symmes Robinette off from all contact with the outside world, keeping him a virtual hostage in the couple’s lavish Gulf-front home in Sugar Key. Charlie Robinette said that in the final months of his father’s illness, his mother confiscated the congressman’s cell phone and instructed Sugar Key security guards to deny Charlie Robinette admittance to the gated community.
A bitter family feud has erupted in the wake of Symmes Robinette’s death. Earlier this week, on the same day Symmes Robinettewas being memorialized with full honors in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., his son skipped that event, instead calling a press conference to announce that he had asked Florida officials to investigate Vanessa Robinette for elder abuse.
Today, Vanessa Robinette toldBeaconcolumnist Rowena Meigs she intends to sue both Charlie Robinette and Toddie Sanderson over ownership of Oak Springs Farm, the eight-hundred-acre Bronson County quail-hunting plantation that Symmes Robinette deeded to his ex-wife two weeks before his death.
Vanessa Robinette told theBeaconthat her son and Toddie Sanderson exerted undue influence over her husband while he was suffering from diminished faculties to persuade him to deed over the farm, with an estimated value of $1.8 million, to Toddie Sanderson. Ms. Sanderson, seventy-six, had leased the property from Robinette for decades, following her uncontested divorce from the congressman.
Reached Saturday night, Toddie Sanderson said it was Symmes Robinette’s idea to sell her the farm, which was originally owned by her family, for one dollar “and other considerations” because “he had a guilty conscience and wanted to make things right after the way he ripped me off in the divorce settlement.”
“Gray?” Conley swiveled around in her chair to face the open door of the editor’s office. “I’m still waiting on callbacks from Charlie and Vanessa Robinette, and then I’ve got to merge Mike’s stuff into my story. Did Rowena call in from the party at Sugar Key?”
Grayson walked out into the newsroom. “About an hour ago. I cut Lillian loose to go home after she typed it into the system.”
“Was it as bad as usual?”
“Worse. We got a full description of what the governor’s wife was wearing, as well as what the caterers were wearing, what kind of flowers were floating in the swimming pool, and how chic Vanessa looked. There were also some blurry photos of the crab salad on the buffet and of Tuffy peeking out of a potted palm on the veranda. It’s gonna take major surgery to make chicken salad out of this batch of chicken shit.”
“Sorry, but you’re going to have to whip it into shape yourself. I’ve got at least another hour’s worth of work on the main story,” Conley said, glancing at the clock on the newsroom wall.
“Me? I’m no writer,” Gray protested.
“And I’m no miracle worker. There’s no way I can get to Rowena’s column and finish the main story. Either fix it yourself or leave it for next week’s edition when I can get to it.”
“Ugggghhhh,” Gray moaned. “This is why I went to law school. So I’d never have to set foot in a newsroom.”
“And it’s why you make the big bucks,” Conley said. “My advice? Hold your nose and get busy.”
54
Change was in the wind. He could feel it, had been feeling it since he’d awakened that morning, anxious, moody, tense. Hi-Fi felt it too, had reached out and given him a wicked scratch on the face before retreating under the sofa in the apartment. Buddy Bright didn’t believe in astrology or moon phases or any of that woo-woo crap. He believed in his gut. And his gut told him change was on the horizon.
