Page 62 of Hello, Summer
“The question is, who didn’t? I have been on this phone off and on all afternoon, listening to complaints about you.”
“Grayson called, right? Did she tell you I quit?”
“She said you quit a hot second before she was about to fire you.”
“I told you this wasn’t going to work,” Conley said. “Grayson won’t listen to me. She just wants a puff piece about Symmes Robinette’s death. And I’m not about to put my byline on that kind of cotton candy bullshit.”
“We’ll get to that in a moment. I also heard from Charlie Robinette. He’d worked himself up into quite a lather after your visit.”
“G’mama, I only asked him the questions I’d ask anybody else in the same circumstances.”
“I don’t fault the questions you asked, Sarah. It’s your technique. Or lack thereof. You apparently went charging into the law offices of a man who just lost his father this week. And the first thing you do is tell him you find his father’s death highly suspicious! You tell him you’ve called the sheriff and the funeral home, asking them all kinds of inflammatory questions. How did you think he was going to react?”
Conley’s cheeks burned because not only did her grandmother’s criticism sting, it rang true. Seeing Charlie after all these years, so smug and entitled, so dismissive. She hated the wordtriggered,but that’s how she’d felt. She’d lost her objectivity. Maybe if she’d tried to seem sympathetic, even obsequious, she could have lulled Charlie Robinette into giving up the information she was seeking.
“Didn’t you learn anything at all from growing up in this family?” Lorraine pressed. “How many times have I told you that you’ll always catch more flies with honey than vinegar?”
Conley stared out at the Gulf. The bright turquoise shade of the water had deepened, and a light breeze ruffled a stand of sea oats atop the dune line.
“You’re right,” she murmured.
“What’s that? Sit up and speak up, child.”
“I said, ‘You’re right.’ I should have taken my time, buttered Charlie up, and laid it on thick about what a great public servant and war hero his father was. And then asked about the death certificate.”
“At the very least,” Lorraine said. “And you had no business telling him that Kennedy McFall had given you any information about the service or about the lack of a death certificate. You betrayed a confidence from someone whose business depends on discretion. My God, Sarah. That’s Journalism 101, and I never went to journalism school.”
“I guess being married to Pops was like going to journalism grad school,” Conley said.
“Being his granddaughter and being brought up in the newspaper business should have done the same for you,” Lorraine fired back.
“So now what?” Conley asked. “Just have Grayson run Rowena’s piece and be done with it?”
“Don’t be absurd,” her grandmother said. “If there really is a story in Symmes Robinette’s death, I want us to get to the bottom of it.”
“You’re not worried about pissing off his family, alienating the community, and losing subscribers?”
“Of course I worry about it. Your sister worries about it too. But that’s Grayson’s job. It’s your job to go out and get the real story. What’s that thing you’re always saying?”
“Turning over rocks and kicking up dirt?”
“I am worried about something else, though,” G’mama said. “Charlie alluded to some kind of bad blood between the two of you. He claims you’re trying to settle an old score because of some silly teenage prank.”
Conley’s face grew hot. “He called it a silly teenage prank?”
“His exact words. I wasn’t even aware you knew him. I’d heard Symmes and Vanessa shipped him off to military school because of some bad behavior on the boy’s part. What kind of prank is he talking about?”
“I don’t want to get into all that,” Conley said. “All you need to know is that Charlie was a pig. When I started asking him questions about Symmes’s death today, he threatened to ‘grind us into dust.’ What’s that tell you about him?”
“It tells me there’s something he’s trying to hide, but it also tells me we need to be absolutely certain any story we print is impeccably sourced and fact-checked.”
“It will be,” Conley said.
Lorraine nibbled on a cracker with a slice of cheese. “What makes you so sure there really is a story here? And I’m not talking about the fact that Symmes fathered a baby by his secretary while he was still married to Toddie. It might be true, but it is no longer noteworthy or germane to his untimely death.”
“Unless it is,” Conley insisted. “Remember how Granddaddy had us all sit down together to watchAll the President’s Men,way back when he bought his first VCR?”
“He wanted you children to watch a story about two intrepid reporters bringing down a corrupt president so that you could understand thepower and potential of great journalism,” Lorraine said. “I just liked looking at Robert Redford.” She fanned herself and smiled. “I liked him better inButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
