Page 86 of Hello, Summer
“I have questions,” Conley said. “That’s my job. I assume it’s yours too.”
“That and keeping the peace and running the jail and fighting with the county commission to give me enough funding to do my job,” Goggins said. “But yes, I have questions too. Tell me yours, and I’ll answer to the best of my ability.”
“No bullshit?”
He smiled. “As little as possible.”
“Okay. First, do you have a cause of death from the medical examiner?”
He tapped the document on his desktop. “It’s still preliminary, but it looks like Symmes Robinette suffered a fatal head injury consistent with the impact of his vehicle flipping over at high speed. Probably sustained when his head hit the steering wheel or dashboard. As you know, the subsequent fire left very little other evidence.”
“About the crash. Any thoughts on what could have caused it?”
“Again, the fire didn’t leave us a lot to work with as far as the vehicle was concerned. We talked to the dealer in Tallahassee who sold the car to the congressman. It had been serviced regularly. A local mechanic who did minor maintenance said everything was in order with the Escalade when Robinette brought it in for an oil change last month.”
“Okay. So. Relatively new car. No traffic that night. Do you get why I’m seeing sinister?”
“I didn’t say there was no traffic that night,” Goggins protested. “You told one of my men you didn’t see any other cars as you arrived on the scene. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any.”
“Correct.” She tapped the end of her pen on her open notepad. “Did your man talk to Margie Barrett?”
“That’s the widow lady who lives on the property near the crash site?”
Conley nodded.
“Yes. He talked to her. She told him she didn’t hear the crash or see anything. That house is a good ways off the highway, according to Poppell.”
“I just came from there myself,” Conley said. “At first, she told me the same thing. Then she remembered that when she took her dog outside to pee way after midnight, he was agitated. The dog is mostly blind, so she thought he was hearing or smelling a possum or a raccoon in the trees. But then she heard two men arguing loudly. And then a woman’s voice. After that, she heard car doors slamming and a car racing off.”
“She told you that?” he said sharply. “Wonder why she didn’t tell my investigator?”
“We kind of hit it off,” Conley admitted. “It turns out she and her late husband used to bank with my dad.”
His leather chair creaked as he leaned back in it and reached for the cell phone on his desktop. He tapped a key. “Poppell? I need to see you in my office.”
Five minutes later, Walter Poppell, the deputy who’d interviewed her the night of the crash—and who’d hit on her during her last visit—strolled through the sheriff’s door.
He glanced over at Conley, then did a double take. “Oh, hey,” he said, smirking.
“Poppell, you remember this lady? Sarah Conley Hawkins? She was a witness at the scene of Symmes Robinette’s wreck,” Goggins said. “And she’s a reporter for the newspaper over in Silver Bay.”
“Yes, sir,” Poppell said. His right hand rested lightly on his holstered weapon, and his broad face looked anxious.
“Margie Barrett, that lady who lives in that farmhouse near the crash site, just told Ms. Hawkins here that she heard two men arguing that night, up by the highway. And a woman’s voice too. Did she mention anything about that to you?”
“No, sir,” Poppell said, shaking his head vigorously. “Said she wasasleep when the wreck must’ve happened and couldn’t hear from her bedroom because of a noisy air conditioner.”
“This was earlier in the night,” Conley said. “Sometime after midnight.”
He shrugged. “She never said nothing like that to me.”
“I reckon you need to go back out there and interview her again,” Goggins said, his face stern. “And make sure you ask her about all night. What did she hear earlier? Or see? Go ahead and canvass the whole area again. Knock on doors and ask questions. Find out if anybody else heard or saw two men arguing that night. They might have had a woman with them.”
“But I already talked to everybody out that way,” Poppell objected.
“Talk to ’em again. Just do it.”
“Yes, sir,” Poppell said. He slunk out of the office, leaving the door ajar.
