“I want to publicly thank the medical examiner for acting so quickly,” Hines said. “This report will dispel any hurtful rumors that some have tried to promulgate on the blogs.”
He announced that the funeral would be the following Monday at St. Joseph’s Church, the downtown church founded in 1891 as a place of worship for Pensacola’s Creoles and blacks. Sue had been one of the parish’s biggest benefactors and sang in its choir.
When asked about the status of his trial, Hines said, “The state attorney’s office has said they are reviewing the case and will have an announcement next week after meeting with my lawyers and the judge.”
He looked directly into the camera. “I’m hopeful they will dismiss the charges and end this nightmare for my family.”
I called State Attorney Hiram Newton to find out what they were debating. I needed that trial to happen and soon.
Newton and I had once been friends. We coached AAU basketball together when his stepson was attracting attention from college coaches. Over the years, I reached out to him and his assistants when I came across things that didn’t quite look right, such as a county administrator giving “surplus” equipment to a fraternity brother, a city councilman voting to give a contract to his nephew’s firm, or an escort service tied to a state lawmaker.
But when I reported on the high percentage of prosecutions of black teens in comparison with their white counterparts, Newton blew a fuse. Our research found young white males had a much greater chance of being offered pretrial diversion or work release than black teens. Newton didn’t like being portrayed as a possible racist and said his office handled each prosecution fairly on a case-by-case basis.
The ACLU and NAACP tried to get the U.S. Department of Justice interested, but Newton had too much political clout. We no longer talked. He assigned Assistant State Attorney Clark Spencer to deal with me, which was fine. I liked Spencer more, and over beers the assistant state attorney once admitted, after I pledged to never repeat it, that he was happy I did the article on the prosecution disparity.
When my call was answered, the receptionist sent me to Spencer, even though I had asked to talk with Newton.
“What’s this crap that you’re reviewing the Hines case?” I asked. “What’s there to review? He’s a crook.”
“Holmes, I’m ready to try the case, but the boss is worried his wife’s death will make it hard to find a fair jury,” said Spencer. “Hines’ attorneys are going to place the blame on the missing executive director of the Arts Council.”
“What about the mystery bank account and the ATM withdrawals?” I asked. “And the series of cash deposits in his personal bank account?”
“They will try to convince the jury that the deposits were his gambling winnings from his trips to Biloxi.”
I said, “Funny, he never mentioned that before.”
“Yeah, well his attorneys are good, but I think I can poke holes in their arguments,” he said. “However, Newton knows the case isn’t a slam dunk—gosh, I hate how he always uses basketball lingo—and he doesn’t like to lose cases.”
“Clark, we need the trial to happen sooner, not later.”
He said, “I agree but Newton will make the call.”
Spencer asked that I stop by his office after Sue’s funeral on Monday. When I hung up the phone, I dialed Dare. The call went directly to her voicemail. I informed her about the medical examiner’s report and asked her to call if she had any questions or wanted to talk. I hoped she would.
In the meantime, at the Insider we were focusing on the sales of the Best of the Coast issue. The advertising cancellations had slowed down, and Roxie shifted over to the ads for Best of the Coast. We needed to book the ads soon and give Mal and Teddy enough time to design them.
Best of the Coast picks were based on an online poll where our readers voted on the best restaurants, burgers, doctors, politicians, nail salons, and just about everything else the greater Pensacola area had to offer. The first year we received about three hundred ballots and sold a little over $7,000 in ads. This year we had over ten thousand votes cast. Summer needed three weeks to count all the ballots.
Summer, Roxie, and Mal reviewed the winners with me on Thursday.
“If I get started today, Mal and I think we can easily reach sixty grand in sales, which would be a 20 percent increase over last year,” said Roxie. “Even better, we think we can get them to prepay before the issue runs.”
Both Roxie and Mal wanted me to give Summer more hours to help track the sales and ad approvals, handle invoicing, and manage the collections for the special issue. They also wanted me to give her a bonus for doing the extra work.
Summer would never ask. She was the only one who knew the paper’s bank account was on life support. She blushed as they talked about her, almost shrinking.
“Summer did the best job yet handling the tallying of the votes,” said Mal. “I don’t have the time to track all this crap. I’ll be lucky to get all the ads finished and approved in time.”
The other big task was gathering the email addresses for the winners. Roxie said, “The more prep work Summer does making sure we have the right emails and mailing addresses, the more ads I can sell.”
“You don’t have the time to do the administration and accounting stuff,” Mal told me. “Besides, you’re shitty at it.”
I raised my hand. Typically, we had set aside 15 percent of the total Best of the Coast sales for a bonus pool, which usually went to Mal, Roxie, and Teddy because they put in the extra work. However, the most we had ever sold was fifty grand in ads.
“I’ve been meaning to give Summer a raise,” I said. “Let’s do this. Summer, we will pay you two and a half percent of the total
