Page 43 of Hello, Summer
“Exactly,” Conley said. “I was reading some of your columns in the back issues of theBeaconfor research—”
“How nice,” Rowena said. She pointed at the portrait of the stern-faced, white-bearded man hanging over the fireplace mantel. “That’s my great-grandfather-in-law, you know. Judge Culver W. Meigs. He was a highly influential man. Served in the Florida legislature. The party wanted him to run for Congress, but my husband’s great-grandmother Lilla put her foot down and said she was not about to let the judge go traipsing off to Washington, D.C., and consort with who knows what kind of people. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Conley said.
“Oh yes,” Rowena said airily. “All the Meigses were dedicated to public service. And I like to think that in some small way, I’ve carriedon the family tradition. I think journalism is a noble calling, don’t you, Sarah Hawkins?”
“I do,” Conley said. “I was reading your column from 1986, where you broke the news that Symmes was divorcing his first wife. I imagine that caused shock waves back then.”
“It was a huge story!” Rowena said. “Absolutely thrilling! All the other reporters around the state were justfuriousthat a little ol’ society columnist from Silver Bay had scooped them. Your granddaddy wasterrifiedI was going to get hired away by the papers in Jacksonville or St. Petersburg.”
“I’ll bet,” Conley said.
“Of course, I wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving Silver Bay, which has been the Meigses’ home for generations, but your granddaddy didn’t know that. I simply told him that I would need a substantial raise to justify staying on at theBeacon,and in the end, after a lot of hemming and hawing, I received a ten-dollar-a-week raise.”
“Wow,” Conley said. The old lady was a master blackmailer and manipulator.
“Which made me the highest-paid staffer on the paper,” Rowena said smugly.
“How did you find out about the divorce?” Conley asked.
Rowena took a bite of doughnut and chewed. She dunked the rest of the doughnut in her coffee cup and stirred it around a bit until the pastry dissolved in the hot coffee, which she promptly drank.
Finally, she gave an arch smile. “A true journalist never reveals her sources,” she said, giving her guest an exaggerated wink.
“It’s been nearly forty years. And Symmes Robinette is dead,” Conley pointed out.
“Welllll…” Rowena stared up at the ceiling for a moment. Conley followed her gaze and saw that the immense crystal chandelier directly above her head was caked in decades of dust and generations of spiderwebs.
“She passed away a few years ago, so I suppose it wouldn’t be breaking a confidence to tell you that it was Myrtis Davis.”
“I don’t think I know that name,” Conley said.
“She was in real estate here for years,” Rowena said. “I think she and Toddie were Kappas together at Ole Miss. Or maybe it was Auburn. Myrtis was lovely. A real go-getter. Anyway, I happened to bump into her downtown one day, and she was absolutely distraught. She’d just come from the Robinettes’ house. Toddie had called her to say she was selling the house because she and Symmes were getting a divorce and could Myrtis come over and give her an idea of what it should list for.”
“Did Toddie tell her the cause of the split-up?”
Rowena gave her an appraising glance. “How old are you, Sarah?”
“It’s actuallyConley,if you don’t mind. And I’m thirty-four. Why?”
Rowena shook her head and gave that tinkly laugh again. “I just find it hard to believe that a girl your age can’t guess why a middle-aged married man, living alone in a place like Washington, D.C., in a passion pit like the United States House of Representatives, would decide to dump his boring, old, small-town, middle-aged wife.”
“There was another woman?”
“Howdidyou guess?” Rowena picked up the second doughnut, bit in, and rolled her eyes in ecstasy. “Aren’t these just the yummiest doughnuts in the world?”
“Um, I guess.”
“Symmes didn’t have to look too hard to find himself a newer, younger companion when he got ready to trade in Toddie,” Rowena went on. “Vanessa was, what? Twenty-four? Working as acongressional aidein his office. My spies told me she was really just a glorified typist.”
“In a column you wrote at the time, you referred to a ‘vivacious brunette.’ Was that Vanessa?”
“None other,” Rowena said. “Symmes, the naughty boy, didn’t even try to hide the fact that they were carrying on. It was an open secret in Washington. Of course, poor Toddie had no idea. Write this down, Sarah. The wife really is the last to know.”
“And that’s why they split up? Because he was having an affair?”
“Well,” Rowena said, her blue eyes glittering maliciously. “Toddie might could have overlooked a little dalliance. These things do happen. But she really couldn’t ignore the fact that Vanessa was pregnant with Symmes’s bastard child.”
