Page 63 of Hello, Summer
“Who didn’t?” Conley said. “I never forgot that scene when the confidential informant meets Bob Woodward in that dark parking garage and tells them to ‘follow the money.’ That’s what I intend to do. Follow the money.”
“What money is that?”
“Symmes Robinette owns a house on Sugar Key, where, from what I’m told, waterfront houses start at two million. His house in D.C. is in Georgetown. I looked it up. The median price of a home there is one-point-six million.”
“Good Lord! I had no idea. How can any of these politicians afford to live like that and maintain a house back in their district?”
“That’s what I want to know. Robinette didn’t come from a wealthy family, right?”
“Not really,” Lorraine said. “Symmes’s mother was widowed when he was quite young, I believe. She worked in the mill, over in Plattesville, and her second husband was a plant manager.”
“Where’s Plattesville?” Conley asked. “I keep hearing about it, but I know I’ve never been there.”
“It’s mostly gone now,” Lorraine said. “But at one time, it was a thriving neighborhood on the west side of Varnedoe. There was a blue jeans factory and a big railroad switchyard. You could ask Winnie about Plattesville. She grew up there. Most of the homes and churches were torn down in the early nineties, after it was condemned by the state due to chemical contamination from the industries there. There were all kinds of lawsuits and accusations about cancer-causing agents in the water.”
“So that’s what Winnie meant when she said Robinette was responsible for Nedra’s death?”
Lorraine looked startled. “When did she tell you that?”
“Just now,” Conley said.
“Winnie almost never talks about Nedra or what happened to her.” Lorraine toyed with the hem of her scarf. “It was a terrible thing. The railroad operated a huge switchyard in her neighborhood. For decades,they stored hundreds of barrels of caustic chemicals there. Eventually, they abandoned the site, but there was a retention pond on the property, and over the years, the chemicals seeped into the soil and leached into the water. Winnie told me there were drainage ditches that wound all through the neighborhood. Winnie and Nedra and the neighborhood children played in that water. Their grandmother grew vegetables in that contaminated soil.”
“And that’s what gave Nedra the cancer?”
“It was so horrible,” G’mama said, shuddering. “Nedra’s husband, Ed, was a no-account drifter. By the time she was thirty, she was raising those three little boys by herself. And then she got sick. I can’t remember the kind of cancer, but it was quite rare. She was having excruciating abdominal pain. By the time she was correctly diagnosed, the cancer was so advanced, there wasn’t much they could do. As it turned out, there were other, similar cancers diagnosed in people who’d grown up around Plattesville and that chemical dump.”
“A cancer cluster,” Conley said.
“There was a young lawyer, a woman who worked for some environmental action organization. Randee something. She heard about the cancer cases, organized the families who’d been affected, and started filing suits against the railroad.”
“Let me guess. Symmes Robinette represented the railroad.”
“Of course,” Lorraine said. “He was already making a name for himself around this part of the state. And he was in the state legislature by then. Politically connected through and through.”
“What happened to the lawsuits?”
“Some of them were settled out of court. Those people were poor, and most of them were poorly educated. Their family members were sick and dying, so it was easy for the railroad to throw a few dollars their way and make them go away.”
“And Nedra’s case?”
“If you think Winnie is stubborn, you should have met Nedra! As sick as she was, she refused to settle, because by then, it was a matter of principle. So Symmes played the long game. He was a master at foot-dragging. Every time the judge would set a date for a hearing, Robinette wouldclaim he had to be in Tallahassee on state business, and the judge, who, I suspect, was one of his cronies, would grant him a continuation. Poor Nedra died before she ever got her day in court.”
“That’s so sad,” Conley said.
“Winnie told me the state came in and paid all the families a nominal amount of money for the homes that they tore down. Nedra was always certain that she’d prevail in court and that her boys would be provided for after her death, but none of that happened.”
“No wonder she hates Robinette,” Conley said.
G’mama craned her neck and looked toward the stairway to make certain the housekeeper wouldn’t overhear the next part of their conversation.
“There was an incident…”
They heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, and Lorraine stopped talking. But when she spotted their visitor, her bruised face was wreathed in a smile.
“Sean Kelly! Oh my goodness. What a nice surprise!”
Sean carried a bouquet of brightly colored zinnias in an old jelly jar in one hand and a bottle of white wine in the other. He put the jelly jar on the table, leaned over, and kissed the cheek that Lorraine offered. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop in to make sure Conley delivered your prescription.” He touched the bruise on her cheek. “Have you taken up boxing since I saw you last, Miss Lorraine?”
