Page 40 of Hello, Summer
“I also need to talk to the district medical examiner. I don’t suppose you’re in Rotary with him too?”
“Nope. But maybe George McFall would know something.”
“From the funeral home?”
“Yeah, if the body’s been released. George McFall has probably seen more corpses in his lifetime than any M.D. you can name.”
“But what if there’s, like, criminal evidence?”
“Then I think the medical examiner calls in the state crime lab. But you’re not thinking there’s something criminal going on with Symmes’s death, right?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s just… odd. Do you think George would talk to me?”
“He’d talk to you all day long about Florida State football or the evils of cremation versus burial in a $5,000 coffin, but I have no idea if he’d talk to you about what killed Symmes Robinette,” Grayson said.
“Is he in Rotary with you?”
“Yeah. He’s president this year.”
“Great. How about you work your way down the Rotary membership roll, call up all your good-old-boy buddies in town, and ask them really nicely to talk to your sister about how Symmes Robinette died.”
“There are lots of women in Rotary now, you know. It’s not just men like it used to be.”
If she stayed on the phone with her sister much longer, Conley thought, she might pull her eye muscles from rolling them so hard and so often. If that was possible. This was something she’d make sure to ask George McFall about.
“Good to know,” she said. “Do you have Rowena’s phone number?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you please text it to me?”
“I will, but you can’t call her this late at night.”
“Duly noted,” Conley said. “One more question. When’s payday?”
“Friday. But we usually hold a first paycheck back for new hires.”
“Not this time, Gray,” Conley said. “Not if you want my byline in next week’s paper.”
14
HELLO, SUMMER BY ROWENA MEIGS
MAY 1986
Reliable sources are saying that our own U.S. Representative Symmes Robinette has filed for divorce from his high school sweetheart and bride of twenty-four years, the lovely and charming Emma “Toddie” Sanderson Robinette.
Toddie Robinette is a beloved member of Silver Bay society, where she has been active in the Women’s Assistance Guild, the Silver Bay Presbyterian Church, and the League of Women Voters. She is past president of the Silver Bay Elementary School PTA and the Griffin County High School Athletic Association.
Although details of the split are being kept verrrrrry quiet, Toddie’s friends are heartbroken for her. The Robinettes’ darling home on Spruce Street has been put on the market, and over the summer, Toddie and the children, Hank and Rebecca, will move out to the country.
Your correspondent has been hearing whispers that Symmes Robinette, who spends most of his time these days attending to government business in Washington, D.C., has an especially close“friendship” with a vivacious young brunette aide in his congressional office. We will, of course, report any forthcoming details as they emerge.
In the meantime, the good old days of summer have returned with a vengeance. Mr. and Mrs. V. B. Connors entertained members of the smart set with a dinner dance at the Silver Bay Country Club Saturday night. (V. B., or Bubba, as he is known to one and all, is the newly elected president of the state bar association, and his darling wife, Suzan, is a phenom on the tennis courts!) Tables were resplendent with gorgeous arrangements of pink mums, white tea roses, baby’s breath, and cymbidium orchids. Ladies were chic in the latest summer silks and florals, and their spouses looked elegant in white dinner jackets. Is there anything handsomer than a Southern gentleman in a white dinner jacket? Your correspondent was smitten, y’all!
Conley leafed through the next few pages of the 1986 bound volume of theBeaconfor more tidbits about Symmes Robinette’s divorce, but as luck would have it, the issue was the last one in the volume she’d dragged from the sagging bookcase in the corner of the cluttered newspaper office.
Sighing, she went back to the bookshelf to look for the next volume. It was a hopeless chore. TheBeaconhad been in existence for over a hundred years—so there were dozens and dozens of heavy, leather-bound volumes—none of which were shelved in any kind of order. She spent the next half hour running a finger over the dusty spines of the books, each of which was stamped in gold with the volume number and year, but the search was useless.
