Page 71 of Hello, Summer
As she rounded the courthouse square downtown, she saw the faithful drifting out of Sunday services at the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches, the women dressed in summery floral dresses, the men in short-sleeved shirts, jackets slung over their shoulders, children skipping along behind, clutching their Sunday school art projects. The square was otherwise deserted, except for a frail-looking elderly woman seated on a bench, feeding popcorn to pigeons near the Confederate statue.
Conley parked at the curb outside theBeaconbuilding and turned to the Jack Russell, who’d rode into town in the passenger seat, staring out the window, wagging his tail in enjoyment of the impromptu ride-along.
“C’mon, Opie,” she said, and the dog hesitated but then hopped down onto the pavement.
TheBeaconoffice was dark and silent.
She flicked on the lights, and after unpacking her laptop and research supplies, she sat down at her assigned desk and consulted the text message Kevin had sent the night before, with Symmes Robinette’s local address—21 Sugar Key Way.
She typed the address into the search bar on her laptop and waited. The first hit came up on the county’s tax rolls. It showed that the title to the home at that address had conveyed to Vanessa Robinette two years earlier, which meant that the sale had been completed after Robinette’s last congressional campaign.
The county records showed that the seller, Sugar Key Corp. Ltd., sold a 4,228-square-foot home on a half-acre waterfront lot with five bedrooms, five baths, a three-car garage, and a swimming pool to Vanessa Robinette for the sum of $260,000.
“Damn. I want a deal like that,” Conley murmured aloud.
Opie, who’d been dozing at her feet, looked up and thumped his tail in agreement.
For comparison, she typed in the addresses for the lots on either side of the Robinettes’ bargain beach house.
The house at 19 Sugar Key Way sold six months prior to Robinette’s, for $1.95 million, and the house at 23 sold in November of 2018 for $2.1 million.
Checking Robinette’s financial statements from 2016, she saw that for a man who’d spent his last forty years in public service, the congressman had managed to amass an impressive fortune.
He had a SEP account with a balance of $3.3 million and had stocks that, at the time of the filing, were worth another $6 million.
She ran a finger down the list of stocks Symmes owned, noting that most were blue-chip stocks, with a modest number of tech stocks and bank stocks, along with stock in a company called, oddly enough, Sugar Key Holdings.
Among his personal assets, he’d listed a home at 2331 Trinity Street in Silver Bay, which he’d purchased in 1980, for $32,000. She knew the house must be only a few blocks from G’mama’s house on Felicity Street.
According to the assets list, Robinette also owned a home on eight hundred acres of land in Bronson County, with a valuation of $2 million. Was that Oak Springs Farm? She jotted down the address of the property. If so, where had Toddie moved after the divorce? Surely she wasn’t renting from her ex?
Conley went to the Bronson County tax assessor’s website and stared at the screen for a moment. She typed in the address for the parcel of land listed as an asset by Robinette in his last financial disclosure statement, and when the deed listing came up, she had to blink and reread the listing twice.
Symmes Robinette, it appeared, had conveyed title to the eight-hundred-acre parcel, plus a house, to Emma Todd Sanderson, as of May 8, less than a week before he’d died in a fiery car wreck, for the sum of one dollar “plus other considerations.”
Emma Todd had to be Toddie Robinette, who’d probably reverted to her maiden name after her divorce from the congressman.
“Son of a bitch,” she whispered.
She looked around the office for the printer, then realized she didn’t know how to sync it up to her laptop to print. Instead, she took a screenshot of the property assessor’s card.
Her stomach growled, and she did a silent fist pump. It never failed; whenever she was working on a story and hitting on all cylinders, she became ravenously hungry. And, she realized, she hadn’t had any breakfast. Or lunch.
She prowled around the empty office, looking for something to eat. The break room refrigerator was disappointingly barren except for a suspicious-looking carton of greek yogurt and a soggy, half-eaten sandwich. Of course there were no vending machines, and she knew, without looking, that nothing would be open around the square on Sunday morning.
Her eyes lingered on the closed door of her sister’s office. As a kid, Grayson had been a notorious snack hoarder. Winnie complained bitterly over all the times she’d found random bags of half-eaten Cheetos under Grayson’s mattress and Snickers bars hidden in her underwear drawer.
Luckily, the door to Grayson’s inner sanctum was unlocked. In her starved condition, Conley would have picked it without a single pang of guilt.
She walked directly to the desk and pulled open the deep middle drawer. Jackpot! Strewn among the stray paper clips, Post-it notes, and pencils, she found a veritable snack smorgasbord. There were Cheetos and Snickers, of course, because they were her sister’s classic childhood comfort foods, but in addition, she’d stockpiled granola bars, bags of peanuts, even those cute little prepackaged cheese-and-cracker combos.
There was, Conley thought, alotof snackage here. She swiveled around in Grayson’s desk chair and spotted a mini-fridge under the console table behind the desk. Opening the fridge, she found containers of orange juice, bags of grapes, baby carrots, packages of sliced turkey, and tiny, round, red-wrapped cheese wheels.
She thought back to the previous day, when she’d spotted a pillow and blanket on the sofa here. She got up and opened the door to the room’s tiny coat closet. The pillow and blanket were neatly folded on the closet shelf, but the clothes rod held a plastic dry cleaner’s bag containing several dresses, skirts, blouses, and suit jackets. A laundry basket on the floor held more folded clothing, including lingerie and gym clothes. Four pairs of shoes were lined up on the floor.
In the bathroom, she spotted her sister’s hair dryer and curling iron, as well as a bag of toiletries.
Grayson, she realized, was living here. In her office. Not just taking the occasional power nap or grabbing a meal because she was too busy to go home to Tony.
