Page 130 of Hello, Summer
“What? Picking up police reports?” Conley lounged on the chair in Grayson’s office, waiting for the hastily called staff meeting to start.
She’d dressed up in anticipation of a long day, wearing slim-cut black slacks, a pale gray silk short-sleeved silk top, and black ballet flats.
“You know what I mean. The light touch. This is the kind of thing our readers can’t get anyplace else. It’s hyper-local, it’s witty, and they’ll eat it up.”
“Wow. Thanks, I guess,” Conley said, unused to any kind of praise from her big sister. “What’s the plan for the funeral today? I should tell you the Atlanta bureau is sending an NBC crew down to cover it, and I’ve been feeding them color.”
“Let’s wait for the others,” Grayson said, glancing at her watch. It was just after nine.
Lillian King breezed into the office ten minutes later.
“You’re fifteen minutes late,” Grayson pointed out.
Lillian plopped a box of doughnuts on top of her desk. “I stopped at Sweet ’n’ Tasty and got us breakfast. A dozen doughnuts means I’m only three minutes late, and you know that’s five minutes early on LKT. Anyway, it’s Saturday, and I hope you know I’m putting in for overtime for all this work I’m doing on my day off.”
Conley looked up from the emails she was reading on her phone. “LKT?”
“Lillian King Time,” Grayson said.
Michael Torpy walked in and helped himself to a pink-frosted doughnut with sprinkles. With one bite, he demolished half the pastry. “What’s up, boss? We talking funeral?”
“We are,” Grayson said.
“Good deal,” Mike said, spraying sprinkles down the front of his rumpled white dress shirt and skinny black silk tie. He’d slicked down his unruly red hair with gel and worn black jeans for the day’s occasion. “Hey, the reason I’m late is I just came by the church. You won’t believe it. There are two different TV trucks setting up camp. People are already lining up outside waiting to get in like it’s a Taylor Swift concert. You know, if old people went to Taylor Swift concerts.”
“Thisisa Taylor Swift concert for these people,” Conley said. “Did you shoot some photos?”
Michael held up the Nikon 35mm camera. “I got two old ladies in folding lawn chairs. They’re both wearingTEAM VANESSAT-shirts, and then I shot the Boy Scouts practicing their honor guard march over in the courthouse square, and some dudes circling the square in a pickup with a huge spray-paintedCHARLIE FOR CONGRESSflag whipping in the wind.”
“Sounds good,” Grayson said. “Okay, now we’re just missing Rowena.”
“Noooo,” Conley and Michael said.
“I know she’s a pain in the ass, but we seriously need her institutional memory today,” Grayson said. “She knows everybody who’s anybody. I want her up front in the church, right behind the family’s pew.”
“If I know Rowena, she’ll shove her way into the family pew,” Conley muttered.
They heard the front door open and then the tapping of their star columnist’s cane.
“Yoo-hoo!” a quavery voice called. “Where is everybody?”
Michael went into the outer office and rolled in another chair. “We’re back here in Grayson’s office, Rowena.”
Rowena Meigs was styled for a state funeral. Her hair had been curled and teased and sprayed into a towering blue-white bouffant. Her face was powdered and rouged, and her eyelids were weighted down to half-mast by glued-on false eyelashes. She wore an age-rusted black silk moirécocktail suit whose rhinestone jacket buttons strained to contain her generous bust. The skirt was so tight they could hear the rustle of the girdle and black pantyhose she wore underneath with each mincing step she took. Even her cane was wrapped in black grosgrain ribbon for the occasion.
“Sit here, Rowena,” Michael said, taking her arm.
“Thank you, darlin’,” she said, handing him her outsize pocketbook, which was suspiciously squirming.
Tuffy popped his head out and bared his teeth at the hapless young reporter. Tuffy’s topknot was fastened with a black grosgrain bow.
“Uh, Rowena, you’re not thinking of taking that dog to the funeral, are you?” Grayson asked.
“I certainly am,” Rowena said, bristling. “Most people find the presence of a dog very comforting in a time of stress.”
The editor shrugged and went back to her battle plan.“Okay,” Grayson said. “The team’s all here, so let’s get started. Rowena, I was just telling the others I want you to sit up front, as close to the family pew as you can get.”
“Of course.”
