Page 140 of Hello, Summer
“Where have you two been?” Lillian demanded when Conley and Grayson walked into theBeaconoffice shortly before five o’clock. “People been calling up here all afternoon, wanting to know what time y’all are gonna put out that special edition.”
“Really?” Grayson asked. “Did you direct them to the new website and tell them to sign up?”
“I did like you told me to,” Lillian said. “But that funeral’s been over for a long damn time.”
“We were doing research,” Grayson said, passing the receptionist’s desk on her way to her office.
“Your research smells a lot like gin to me,” Lillian said with an indignant sniff.
“Have we heard anything from Rowena yet?” Grayson asked, ignoring the dig.
“Oh yeah. She came sailing in here about an hour ago, all dressed in that black widow Halloween getup of hers. Said she had another ‘exclusive’ from Vanessa Robinette.
“Did she get anything good from Vanessa?” Conley asked.
“I guess,” Lillian said. “It’s in the system. I slugged it, ‘Vanessa Gonna Sue.’”
“What?” the sisters said in unison.
“Who’s she suing?” Conley asked.
The phone rang, and Lillian’s hand was poised to answer. “Says she’s gonna sue the first wife, her own son, and some other people too.”
She picked up the phone. “Silver Bay Beacon,shining the light of truth. This is Lillian King speaking.”
Conley pulled her cell phone from her purse and glanced at her emails to see if she’d had any messages from Selena Kwan. No new emails, but she saw that she had a voicemail.
She pulled Rowena’s column up on her laptop, and absent-mindedly tapped the voicemail arrow. The man’s voice was muffled, but the words were clear. “You’re dead, bitch.”
Conley glanced around the newsroom, shook her head and started to delete the message before thinking better of it. Tomorrow, she told herself, she would report the calls to the cops.
She turned back to the laptop and began to read with growing irritation.
“Hey, Gray,” she called to her sister. “Are you looking at this train wreck Rowena calls a column?”
Grayson stood in the doorway of her office. “Yes. And yes, I agree it’s unreadable as is. Just fix it, okay? Michael called. He’s on the way back with some quotes from the governor and from Vanessa’s new campaign chairman. This story is like a damn Hydra. You break off one piece of it and six new pieces grow in its place.”
HELLO, SUMMER
By Rowena Meigs
Your correspondent learned in an exclusive interview today with Mrs. Vanessa Robinette (who was tragically widowed after her husband, Congressman Symmes Robinette, was killed in a recent car wreck) that Mrs. Robinette intends to sue Rep. Robinette’s first wife, Toddie, because she used “undue influence” to unlawfully persuade Symmes Robinette to deed over title to the family’s Oak Springs Farm in Bronson County to Toddie, while Symmes was not entirely in possession of all his faculties due to his terminal cancer.
Oak Springs Farm is a working quail-hunting plantation with eight hundred acres of timberland and is valued at close to $2 million, Vanessa Robinette claims. She said that shortly before his death, while Symmes Robinette was suffering from diminished capacity, his former wife took advantage of him and tricked him into giving the farm to her.
Vanessa said she will sue Toddie Sanderson, as well as her own son, Charlie Robinette, who, she said, duped her husband into believing he should give away the farm, which used to be owned by Toddie’s family, out of guilt over their divorce more than thirty years ago.
Conley spent the next thirty minutes rewriting and trying to fact-check Rowena’s column. She tried calling and texting first Vanessa Robinette and then Charlie. Finally, in desperation, she called Kennedy McFall, whose tone was noticeably cool when she answered her cell phone.
“Yes?”
“Hi, Kennedy. It’s Conley Hawkins over at theBeacon.”
“What do you want, Conley? Are you writing another story trying to make my fiancélook like a bad guy for following his father’s last request?”
“Look, Kennedy,” Conley said wearily. “I don’t know what Charlie’s told you, but I can assure you I do not have some kind of vendetta going against him. I’m a reporter, and I’m covering the news of the day. He might not like it, but that’s my job. Just like it was my job to attend your press conference and print the fact that he reported his mother to the state for elder abuse. Right now, I’m fact-checking Rowena Meigs’s column.”
“That old bat wouldn’t know a fact if it bit her on the butt, but do go on,” Kennedy said. “I’m listening.”
