The Rotary Club Murder Mystery

by Graham Landrum

  I was to learn quite a bit more about Charles (Holly) Hollonbrook, as well as Charles J. Hollonbrook.

  IN WHICH I RECEIVE MORE THAN A MASSAGE

  >> Harriet Bushrow <<

  “You’ll never guess what I’ve done for you,” Maud said when I got back to the house.

  Of course I had no idea.

  “I’ve made an appointment for you with a masseuse.” What on earth could the woman have been thinking of? I’d never had a massage in my life, and I had no idea of such a thing now.

  “Now, Hattie, don’t look at me like that. The notion just struck me this morning, and I went right to the phone and made the appointment-ten-thirty tomorrow morning.” Maud laughed, then she began to explain.

  They have a very lovely country club at Stedbury, and several years ago the town banker insisted that they install a steam room and hire a masseur. Of course, that’s for men and operates only in the afternoons. But in the mornings, the masseur’s wife gives massage to the ladies, although the steam bath doesn’t go with it. The woman’s name is Noralou Passmore. Maud says the girl is well named: She knows more and she passes it on.

  “Get her started on the subject of Charles Hollonbrook, and you’ll hear enough to make your ears ache.”

  And that’s how I came to have a massage from Noralou.

  The Stedbury Country Club couldn’t have been in a more beautiful location. The town is in the Piedmont, and that means that on beautiful clear days, if you are in the right place, you see the Blue Ridge Mountains, hazy and soft to the northwest.

  Well the clubhouse is in exactly the right place for that view. It is lovely.

  When I first walked into the club, I didn’t see a soul. Off to the left, I peeked through a door at the ballroom. It is handsome and freshly done up by a decorator—not my taste—but expensive and impressive.

  To the right of the ballroom was the dining room, with a carpet almost as thick as and about the color of the greens outside. I was wondering how I could find out where to go when a young woman with a stack of tablecloths in her arms came through a swinging door. She told me how to go downstairs and follow the hall to the right and then to the left. And when I did all that, sure enough I was in the right place; and there was Noralou. I introduced myself. “I know,” she said. “You’re the lady from Tennessee that is staying at Miz Bradfield’s.”

  “I’ve never had a massage before,” I said, “and I didn’t know what kind of clothes I ought to put on.”

  “Well, honey,” she said, “for a massage we just take them all off.”

  I judge she meant I took them all off, for she had on one of those warm-up suits—it very likely had been magenta, but it looked to have been through the wash a good number of times. It made her resemble a pink Mack truck.

  “What must I do?” I asked.

  “There’s a dressin’ room right there,” she said. “Just take off your clothes and wrap this sheet around you, and come back here.”

  Well, I did; and when I came out, I know I looked like one of the women at the tomb of Jesus in a Sunday-school pageant.

  “Now get up on this table and lie on your tummy.”

  I have to acknowledge that my “tummy” is not the smallest thing I can lie on. I was glad there was nobody but Noralou to see me trying to get in that position and retain my modesty with that sheet wrapped around me. And no sooner did I get settled than Noralou peeled the sheet back and began working me over, starting with my shoulders and neck.

  “Just relax, honey,” she crooned, “Noralou is going to do all the work.”

  “Oh, that feels good,” I said. “Have you done this kind of work always?”

  “I commenced when I was nineteen, and I’m thirty-nine now. Bill and me have been at the club ten of those years, and I reckon we’ll stay on. The massage business don’t have as good a reputation nowadays with all these ‘massage parlors.’”

  Noralou’s voice rose in disgust.

  “It’s hard on those of us that’s professional. Me and Bill are born-again Christian people and wouldn’t do—you know—somethin’ that wasn’t professional. Massage is a ‘healing art.’”

  Again Noralou’s voice rose, but in a tone somewhere in the neighborhood of holy awe. Well, I saw that she could probably go on about the massage business. While a discourse on massage parlors by a born-again Christian might be very interesting, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

  “With all that trashy, immoral massage parlor business,” I said—and I made it sound right disgusting, which it is—“you are really fortunate to work in such a lovely club.”

  “Well, me and Bill do all right,” Noralou observed with considerable satisfaction.

  “I’d imagine you have a very high-class clientele here,” I said.

  “You hit it right, there,” she agreed. “The club don’t have but only very select members. Of course, some of them—but I won’t say anything about that. Lots of rich people in this club, and me and Bill do all right.”

  “Maybe you knew that poor gentleman that committed suicide in Borderville last month.”

  “Mr. Hollonbrook.” Noralou said it as if she had just adjusted her frame of reference and was ready to go.

  “Yes,” I said, “I believe that was his name.”

  “Mr. Holly Hollonbrook, poor soul. Killed hisself up there in Tennessee. Is that the town you come from?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well what do you know?” This, of course, was not a question, but a prelude.

  “Why, I’ll say I knew that poor soul—know Miz Hollonbrook a lot better—real nice lady—always gives a real good tip. But I can tell you, she had a lot to put up with about him—poor soul—taking his own life that way! But he’s paying for it now.” She kneaded away for a moment in silence.

  “And such a fine-lookin’ man!” she continued. “It seemed like he about had everything. But still everybody has their own private life. And the Good Book says we hadn’t ought to judge.”

  “Are you saying he wasn’t just what he ought to have been?” I suggested.

  “Well,” Noralou admitted, “now that you mention it, I have to say he sure wasn’t. It’s a terrible thing when somebody takes their own life, but let me tell you, there’s folks in this town that thinks he done us a favor when he killed hisself.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked. There was no need to urge Noralou, but I did so anyhow. Her pause was only artistic punctuation.

  “Honey, it was women.” Noralou made it sound like something out of the garbage can.

  “Now I know what men are like,” she continued, “and I guess I’m as forgiving as the next one. But there’s a limit. Folks talk about him and his first wife and how he divorced her to marry the one that’s now his widow.

  “I don’t have a thing against her, mind you. She’s a member here and just as nice as you please. Always generous and nice. And the divorce and all that happened before me and Bill came to work here, but they say she was his secretary. Some say she caused the divorce, and some say it was the first wife’s fault; and it was only natural with a pretty secretary that she would be the second misses.

  “But that don’t excuse him.”

  By this time, Noralou had peeled the sheet clear down below my hips and was working away at the small of my back. It just felt wonderful, but I was so interested in what the woman was saying that I didn’t pay much attention to what she was doing.

  “I guess you mean he had affairs,” I said.

  “Affairs! I couldn’t begin to tell you.”

  But she did begin, and did a right good job of it, too.

  “It was about five years ago,” she said. “We had this new pro here at the club. Now pros are men just like any other men. And working at a golf club, you see pros make passes now and then. But Bucky Patterson had this cute little wife, Desiree, and he was just crazy about her. He spent every penny he had on her, and she was a doll.

  “Bucky was good-looking, too—brown wavy hai
r and blue eyes and good buns. She had no call to turn her eyes to another man.

  “But that Chuck Hollonbrook! Him with his Lincoln Continental and his Rolex watch. Not much of a golf player, but he’d swagger into the club with his golf bag like he was Arnold Palmer.”

  “Noralou,” I said, “I don’t think you liked him.”

  “Roll over,” she ordered, giving a little pat to my behind. There hadn’t been a pat like that in a long, long time.

  “I’ll tell you, Bucky Patterson was as nice a fellow as you would ever want to meet. He just had stars in his eyes whenever that wife of his came around.

  “So what happened was that Mr. Hollonbrook began sucking up to Bucky—the way some men do to professional athletes. It was ‘Bucky’ this and ‘Bucky’ that and ‘Come on, have a drink on me.’

  “Not that Bucky was the kind that was in the bar all the time, or Mr. Hollonbrook, either. But it started in the bar.

  “First there would be just Bucky and Mr. Hollonbrook—for a cocktail before going home to dinner. Then it was Mr. and Mrs. Hollonbrook—Alice, her name is—and Bucky and Desiree—cocktails, of course—and then dinner here at the club, the four of them.

  “I don’t know when Mr. Hollonbrook and Desiree began shacking up, but I know when Bucky found out. Bucky had this friend who was going to the Augusta Open, and Bucky went down there with him. Well, the friend got sick and Bucky had to drive him home earlier than he had expected.

  “When Bucky got to the house, the papers were laying on the front porch, and the mail hadn’t been brought in for three days. No Desiree! Bucky started calling around—coudn’t imagine what had happened. Thought maybe her mother had got sick—or maybe a death of some relative.

  “And then … .”

  Noralou would rate pretty high on my list of storytellers. And then—indeed! She wanted me to ask—to be her stooge, so as to throw the emphasis on the climax.

  “Well, go on,” I said. “Tell the rest.”

  “Mr. Hollonbrook drove up in front of the house and let Desiree out. That’s what happened. And as she came tripping up the walk with her little overnight bag and her suitcase, who should open the front door but Bucky!

  “I’d give a pretty to have been there.

  “Poor Bucky! Miz Bushrow, he idolized that girl. And this day and age, when a man is like that, a woman hadn’t ought to play around. No ma’am.

  “What made it worse, you see, is that Mr. Hollonbrook was on the board of the club. And Jake Robinson, that was the club manager then, was one of these kind that knows where his bread is buttered. I mean him and Mr. Hollonbrook was like peas in a pod, they was so close.

  “Poor Bucky! Next time he got a chance, him and Mr. Hollonbrook got into a fight down by the ninth hole. It must have been a regular knock-down-and-drag-out. Mr. Hollonbrook had a bruise on his cheek bigger’n a biscuit and downright purple. And poor Bucky got his lip cut something awful. Why, they had to take stitches.

  “And that Jake Robinson—he was the meanest old thing anyway, and a few months later they caught him stealing money from the club, and that was the last of him—but anyhow, Jake Robinson, being hand in glove with Mr. Hollonbrook, he tried to fire Bucky on the spot.

  “And Bucky said he was going to sue the club for breach of contract. And Jake said if he did, Mr. Hollonbrook would have Bucky up for assault and battery. And Bucky said if Mr. Hollonbrook did that, he would name Mr. Hollonbrook in his divorce suit, and there were a good many other things he could tell about Mr. Hollonbrook.

  “Maybe you don’t think that put the monkey on somebody else’s back!

  “Well, so Jake said the club would buy Bucky’s contract, and Bucky said that wasn’t good enough. Then Jake said he could get Bucky a job at a club in Florida. So that sounded pretty good, and Bucky took it.”

  “My goodness,” I exclaimed. “Now the pro,” I said. “What did you say his name was?”

  “Bucky Patterson.”

  “Bucky,” I mused. “Is that his real name?”

  “Real name—Buchannan.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And where did you say he went?”

  “Playa Grande Club, near Lauderdale.”

  Now that’s a good long distance from Borderville, and the whole story took place a long while ago. Nevertheless, Mr. Buchannan Patterson was an item of interest.

  “And did Bucky and his wife get back together?” I asked.

  “Lord, no! He got that divorce, and she and him both left town.”

  “And what about Mr. Hollonbrook?”

  “He faced it out. You never saw such a thing in your life.”

  “Didn’t folks talk about it?”

  “Honey, you can bet your sweet life they did. But Mr. Hollonbrook with his money, and Miz Hollonbrook taking it cool as you please, it kind of passed over. And then some said that little Desiree was just a fool. And to tell the truth, she was. I don’t know what become of her.”

  “Did Bucky marry again?”

  “He might have, but I doubt it. You never saw anybody so broke up as he was.”

  Maud had certainly been right about Noralou. But whether or not it had gotten me anywhere, I was not certain.

  Anyhow, I got myself dressed again and asked Noralou how much I owed her. And do you know, that sweet Maud had told her to add my massage to her bill there at the club. So I gave Noralou a five-dollar tip. I certainly wouldn’t know, but I hoped that was a handsome tip. I wouldn’t want Noralou talking about me.

  Maud had arranged to meet me in the club dining room for lunch. She was already seated at the table when I got there. That girl was always pretty, but it just seems that age was good to her. She was a picture in a gray silk suit with a frilly white blouse and great big pink pearl ear bobs and necklace—fake, of course—I don’t even know if real pearls are ever pink. But they ought to be, for they certainly were becoming to Maud.

  Her sweet blue eyes were just flashing as I came to the table; I could tell she had something really exciting to tell me. But she said we should order first.

  I selected the chicken-salad croissant, and Maud ordered quiche. Then as soon as the girl had left with our orders, Maud said, “You’ll not guess who wants to talk to you.”

  Well, I couldn’t imagine. So I told Maud I would just give up.

  “It’s the widow,” she said.

  At first, I didn’t get the idea, but Maud explained that Mrs. Alice Hollonbrook had called and wanted to talk to me.

  I want you to know that was a surprise to me. I had been wondering how I could work it around so it would seem natural for me to talk to her and ask her a lot of questions—and most of all about her alibi—and here she had called me! But then I reflected that Ms. Folsom at the library had penetrated my disguise.

  Well, if it had got me access to Alice Hollonbrook, perhaps it was not such a bad thing that Ms. Folsom had published my presence to Stedbury.

  MY STORY

  >> Alice Hollonbrook <<

  Perhaps you are surprised to see that I have joined the staff and am contributing my bit to the story of how my husband’s murder was disguised as suicide and how the murderer was found.

  I warned Mrs. Bushrow that it was a bad idea to include me in the number of narrators. You see, it removes me from the list of suspects—but this is what she wanted, and this is what it is going to be.

  In a way, it is appropriate that I should participate in the Rotary Mystery, because I am what was formerly called a Rotary Ann, the widow, in this case, of a Rotarian—one who was president of his club and governor of his district. And, I hasten to add, regardless of the peccadilloes and larger flaws of Holly’s character, he was truly supportive of Rotary and was a good officer. Though his tremendous ambition was certainly served by the offices he held, I assure you that in his official activities he actually did put service above self.

  I suppose Rotarians are only like the rest of us with all our faults. But there is something about Rotary that brings out the best in its members.
Rotary calls for the same amount of loyalty to the local club as any other organization does: attendance—oh how loyal Holly was to that—dues, committees. Rotary could justify itself merely at that level when you think of fiftytwo meetings a year. And as a visitor, I have heard some of their programs; frankly, most weren’t that good. Still, look at it this way: Those programs, good and bad, on topics of local importance, keep a cross section of community leaders informed about city government, schools, industrial developments, and many, many other things of real usefulness.

  Rotary is above all a service organization. The Stedbury Rotary Club built the ball field for the Boys Club, gives five thousand a year to Theater Stedbury, provides loans at low interest to college students from our area, assists the Janie Boyer Home, the Shelter for Battered Women, and the Downtown Association, which is fighting civic decay—not to mention the annual Rotary Charity Fund and assistance to the Salvation Army.

  That’s just what Rotary does at the local level. And believe me, it doesn’t stop there. Rotary is truly international. It has clubs all over the world and promotes exchange of ideas by sending and receiving teams of experts to and from everywhere. Last year, the Stedbury club was visited by a team from Venezuela—just delightful people, whom we got to know and like. Although they were here to study and did study, it would have been worth the effort if the visit produced nothing but friendship.

  And don’t forget the Paul Harris Foundation. Its funds are used for various things, but most recently they have been used to combat polio worldwide. In fact, polio has been virtually eliminated through the work of the Paul Harris Foundation.

  I don’t think that the organization’s reputation should be tarnished merely because an individual Rotarian may not have been a paragon. Rotary simply represents what is best in the way we live today. And if there is something wrong, it is wrong not with Rotary but with us.