Page 87 of Hello, Summer
“Dumb-ass,” Goggins muttered under his breath. He returned his attention to Conley. “What else?”
“Did you know Robinette had terminal cancer?”
He blinked. “Where did you hear that?”
“Vanessa Robinette told me this morning, when she came into the office to complain about my intrusive questions. She said her husband was suffering from chemo brain and couldn’t sleep, which was why he was driving around way out in the country at three in the morning.”
“What she told us too,” Goggins said. “Gotta say that’s a new one on me.”
“Sheriff, have you or Poppell talked to the rest of Robinette’s family?”
“We talked briefly to the son, Charlie. He wanted to be present when we spoke to his mother. He didn’t have a whole lot to say. He was understandably broken up by his father’s death.”
“I meant his other family,” Conley said.
“I’m not getting your drift.”
“His ex-wife, Toddie, and their two kids. I forget their names. They live right down the road here in Bronson County on a quail-hunting plantation called Oak Springs Farm.”
“I know the place,” Goggins said cautiously. “They invite me andmy department out for a dove shoot every fall. Nice folks. You say she used to be married to Symmes Robinette? I’ll be damned.”
“The marriage broke up in 1986 when Robinette got his twenty-five-year-old congressional aide pregnant,” Conley said.
Goggins raised an eyebrow. “And that’d be the present Mrs. Robinette? I’m surprised this is the first I’m hearing about that.”
“The divorce and remarriage was apparently hushed up at the time,” she said. “Toddie and the children were exiled out here to Oak Springs, and Vanessa and her kid stayed in Silver Bay.”
“Well, then, that’s old news,” Goggins said. “Don’t see it has any bearing on Symmes Robinette’s death.”
“You’d think so,” Conley agreed. “Except for the strange fact that a week before he died, Robinette suddenly deeded over a farmhouse and a big chunk of valuable timberland to Toddie, for one dollar ‘and other considerations.’ But before you tell me the congressman was just tidying up his affairs before his impending death, you should know that when I asked Vanessa about it this morning, she acted shocked. And pissed.”
Goggins gave her a patronizing smile. “Are you suggesting that Vanessa Robinette had something to do with her husband’s death? On what basis? That she was pissed that he literally gave away the farm to his ex-wife?”
“I think it’s worth noting,” Conley said. “I went out to Oak Springs this past weekend. It’s what, five miles from here?”
“If that.”
Conley was tapping her pen on her notepad again. “I’m wondering if Symmes was trying to reconcile with his first wife.”
“And I’m wondering how you think Vanessa Robinette managed to arrange her husband’s death in a one-car accident when she was miles away, asleep in her own bed.”
Conley jumped on that last statement. “How do you know she was at home?”
“She told me. Once we got the accident victim’s identity verified from the license tag, I drove over to her house at Sugar Key myself, to notify her what had happened.”
“And what time was that?”
“Probably around 8:00 a.m.”
“Five hours after the wreck,” Conley said. “Plenty of time if you were doing something sinister.”
“You’re skating on thin ice,” Goggins warned. He scribbled something on the margin of the report he’d been looking at. “Since you’re here, let me ask you a question. I understand your grandmother employs a woman named Winifred Churchwell?”
“Winnie. Yes. She’s worked for us most of my life. She helped raise my sister and me. Why do you ask?”
He held up a sheet of paper, then whisked it back into the folder on his desk. “Were you aware that she did a stint in federal prison for assaulting Congressman Robinette?”
“Yes,” Conley said. “What about it? You’re not trying to say Winnie had something to do with Robinette’s death, are you? That’s crazy.”
