But to get on with it, Maud and I chewed over the names on Paula Stout’s list.
The name of Frank Nicholson was new to me. But when I asked Maud about it, she laughed and said, “There’s nothing there,” and I asked why.
“Because he’s a jeweler. I’ve known him for years. He didn’t deal in antique stuff: But when I had my silver collection, he was always asking if I had added anything to it. He really knows quite a lot about old silver, and he helped me sell the collection after Jay died.”
“But why would he want to know the whereabouts of Charles Hollonbrook?” I wanted to know.
“I’ll ask him.” Maud picked up the phone and called the man.
There had been something about the lease on his shop that he wanted to talk about with Hollonbrook personally.
So I crossed Nicholson off the list as harmless, along with the Episcopal rector.
And those Rotarians—I just hadn’t thought about it, but every last Rotarian in Borderville had known when Charles Hollonbrook would be in town. They would have been notified and reminded—reminded for a month at least—so that there would be a good attendance for the glorious district governor.
Now I wouldn’t like to think of Rotarians committing murder, but all the same—I know Lamar Bushrow, that old darling—of course it never would have happened, but Lamar would have come mighty close to killing any man who made improper advances to me.
So with all those Rotarians in Borderville, if there was one who had some connection with Stedbury, North Carolina—well, there might be something. Or again, there is the annual weekend at the Greenbriar when the Rotarians get together. And there could be more than one of the Borderville Rotarians up there with pretty young wives. And if Chuck Hollonbrook went off to the Greenbriar, that would be such an opportunity for Alice Hollonbrook to go off with her sweetie from Baltimore. And suppose that good old Chuck Hollonbrook started something last year at the Greenbriar and wanted to continue it at the Borderville Inn!
You see, you could imagine all sorts of ways to explain how a Borderville Rotarian would have a motive. I began to think that perhaps I ought to write to Henry Delaporte or Fred or somebody else in Borderville and alert them to see if they could find out something along those lines.
But that was beside the point just at this time. What I needed to do was right there in Stedbury.
There is no way an eighty-eight-year-old woman can get very much out of a boy of nineteen. I couldn’t get anything out of my own son when he was that age. And specially if the boy had anything to do with his father’s death, there would be no chance to get him to talk in any way that might tell me something. But perhaps the mother would be a different matter. And if the boy was involved, I was pretty sure the mother would be involved, too. Any way I looked at it, I wanted to talk to Charles Hollonbrook’s first wife.
So I looked in the phone book and found Linda Hollonbrook at 619 Mountain View Drive. Maud told me how to get there. Just before I left about ten o’clock Monday morning to see what I could do, I said to Maud, “Now, darling, don’t be surprised if I sound crazy when I call you in a little bit. Just hold the phone and don’t say anything until I hang up.”
Of course, it was a long time ago, but it seemed to me that Lamar junior, when he got his first old car, could make it backfire by turning off the ignition and then turning it back on right quick. I could hear that old thing going bang bang, and I would know that boy was passing in front of his girlfriend’s house three blocks away.
I didn’t know whether that would work with my DeSoto or not, but I could try. So, sure enough, when I was still about two blocks from 619 Mountain View, I turned the key in the ignition and then turned it back right away; and that dear old car made a very satisfactory bang. I did it again, and again. Then I did it one more time as I was getting close to 619, killed the engine and let the DeSoto coast to a stop about three feet from the curb in front of Mrs. Linda Hollonbrook’s house. It was a good thing there was no traffic on that street.
Then I pumped the gas pedal too many times before I turned on the ignition, and, sure enough, I had flooded the carburetor, so I was able to put on a good show of not being able to get the old thing started.
In case anybody was looking, I pouted a little and said, “Oh dear!” several times. I got out of the car and looked up the street and looked down the street and hesitated before I started tentatively up the walk.
It was a very decent house—not as big as the other Hollonbrook house or as stylish, but the man had given his divorced wife and his children a pleasant and adequate home—possibly the very same house in which they had all lived before the divorce. And if it was debt-free, it was more desirable than the house in which Alice Hollonbrook was living.
I heard the door chimes and waited less than a minute for the door to open.
It could be no other than Linda Hollonbrook, and I am afraid I understood why Holly had discarded her. She was in her early forties—naturally, she would be. She had been pretty once, probably in a healthy, unspoiled way—slightly pug nose, china blue eyes, otherwise-undistinguished features. If the face had been happy, she would still have been attractive. But the corners of her mouth sagged, suggesting a surly discontent. The Little Orphan Annie hairdo would have been wrong on anybody, but it had to be worst on her.
“Darling,” I said—she was just a slip of a thing, no more than five foot two—“my old car seems to have broken down right here in front of your house. Would you be a real dear and let me use your phone?”
She nodded and opened the screen door.
“Oh, you are just an angel,” I said, “allowing a complete stranger into your home this way. But gracious me, I must tell you my name. I am Ms. Hattie Gardner.” That was my maiden name, but I didn’t see any need to tell her I was the old lady in the Famous DAR Murder Mystery. Besides, lots of married women nowadays go around by their maiden name.
There was nothing else the woman could do but say, “I am Linda Hollonbrook.”
“‘Beg pardon,” I said, just as if I didn’t know already.
She said it again, and I echoed, “Hollonbrook.”
“Now if you’ll just let me use your phone,” I went on. And she led me to the hall, where the phone was on a little table. “Oh, and here is the directory,” I said. I just kept my chatterbox going so she wouldn’t have a chance to ask me a question I could not answer. I pretended to have trouble finding the number and turned one page several times, looking up and down both sides of it like a complete idiot. Then I called Maud’s number the way I had planned. Maud picked up the phone on the second ring.
“Hello, is this Andy’s?” I said quickly, so that there wouldn’t be any chance that Maud would say something that Linda Hollonbrook would hear. It is so easy for another person to overhear a voice on the phone, and Linda was standing not four feet from me. I looked her in the eye with an innocent stare as much as to say, How could you possibly think I am anything other than a poor old stupid woman?
I told “Andy” my probtem—the car just went bang bang several times, and then it stopped. Of course I paused now and then to give “Andy” time enough to ask me a question. But no, I assured him, the car hadn’t made any funny noises other than the bangs. After a little bit of that, I put my hand over the mouthpiece and said to my blank-faced hostess, “Honey, Andy wants to know your address here.”
She gave it to me, and of course I repeated it with the numbers in the wrong order so that she would have to correct me. By the time I had completed the call, I had her pretty well convinced that it was by accident that I had insinuated myself into her house.
“My dear, I am eighty-eight years old,” I said, apropos of nothing. I saw she wasn’t going to invite me to sit down. So I added, “And it is just so sweet of you to let me sit down here in your lovely home until Andy gets here to start my car.” Then I plopped myself down in the most comfortable chair in her living room.
“Now don’t you let me stop you from whatever
you’re doing. Just go right on. I’ll be just fine here,” I said, beaming with a beatific smile.
Of course the poor woman was not going off and leaving me, a complete stranger, alone for a minute. She sat down on the davenport, which was what I wanted her to do.
“I don’t believe I caught your name,” I said, taking my hankie out of my purse and patting the perspiration on my forehead and throat.
“Hollonbrook,” she said.
“Do I know that name?” I said, applying the hankie to the back of my neck. “Seems to me I’ve heard it.”
She looked as if she was taking a dose of Epsom salts as she replied, “You have probably heard of my former husband, the realtor, Charles Hollonbrook.”
I looked surprised. “Oh, I suppose so.” I paused just long enough so that it would seem that I was recollecting some little thing about Charles Hollonbrook—maybe the fact that he had another wife. “And darling, do you have children?” I went on.
“I have three.”
“Oh, my dear, you must enjoy your children. Are they still young?”
She could hardly fail to talk about them after that—unless she had decided to be downright uncivil. Besides, women without husbands are that much more tied up in their children.
“My oldest, Jimmy, is nineteen. His sisters are eighteen and fifteen.”
“I suppose the two oldest are in college.”
“Linda Jean has just graduated from Stedbury High. I am thinking where I’ll send her this fall, but I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Oh, my dear, you should reach a decision. Here it is June, and I believe there is often some difficulty with the colleges—can’t get in and so on.”
“Well,” she admitted, “my former husband is recently deceased, and we are waiting for the estate to be worked out before we decide.”
“Oh, yes,” I seemed to remember, “your husband—former husband, that is—didn’t he—didn’t I read that he was killed?” You can bet I was watching her very closely in spite of the kindly look in my weak old eyes.
“He took his own life,” she said.
I clicked my tongue in sympathy.
“He was not very good to the children,” she broke out. “He wanted Linda Jean to go to the junior college at Estonia. He never seemed to care for any of the children—specially Jimmy. But there’ll be plenty of money now. Jimmy has this chance to go to California and get into television.”
Just then a girl in baby-doll pajamas came into the room. I glanced at my wristwatch. It was 11:20. The girl paid no attention to me. She had a regular haystack of dyed hair—had pimples. I couldn’t help thinking that at her age I was at Catawba Hall, required to be up, dressed in school uniform, and have my bed made by 6:30. Then it was breakfast and chapel at 7:30. But Mama used to let me stay in bed until seven in the summer. It was a different world.
It turned out this was the youngest, Donna.
“Where are my jeans?” the girl demanded—and there was such a surly tone to her voice.
“They are in the dryer,” her mother said. “I washed them this morning. You can probably take them out now.”
The child flounced off to some other part of the house—utility room, I suppose.
“Your daughter is very attractive,” I said.
Linda Hollonbrook actually smiled. “She is going to be a singer,” she said. “Now that we are going to have money, I am going to see to it that my children have the things they should have had all along.”
The smile had vanished, and in its place there was a look not of hate but perhaps something like victory. The poor woman was just consumed with the feeling that Charles Hollonbrook had wronged her.
“And is there much money?” I asked. It takes a good deal of nerve to get away with a question like that.
“Oh yes,” she replied, apparently eager to talk about it.
“You know,” she said, “Mr. Hollonbrook had the Ducky’s restaurants in Maxwell and Eunice and here in Stedbury. And then there’s Hollondale. Yes, Holly really knew how to make money; he just didn’t want to give any of it to us. I had to beg him for the least thing. He made the biggest fuss over the children’s teeth, and he was just stingy as can be about the girls’ ballet lessons. And then when Jimmy was having so much trouble in high school—the teachers were so indifferent they wouldn’t help him—his father refused to send him to military school. Jimmy would have been so handsome in uniform. Holly said Uncle Sam could be Jimmy’s military school.
“And he could spend any amount on Alice,” she continued. “But that’s all changed now. They haven’t found any will, and that means my children will get their share, after all. But it is going to be a while yet. They are still looking for a will. But they’ll never find it.”
Not find a will? She seemed very emphatic. Was it just speculation—a fantasy fulfillment of her dreams? Or did she know whereof she spoke? I didn’t have time to wonder about that just then.
I heard a car come up and stop.
“That must be Andy,” I said. Of course it wasn’t—because there wasn’t any Andy.
Then the screen door opened, and I heard, “Hey, there’s an antique car out there!”
He was talking about my DeSoto. I guess it’s something when you drive a car until it’s an antique.
The young man was the noteworthy Jimmy. He was sallow—hollow-cheeked—stringy blond hair, none too clean-looking—hanging down in a ponytail halfway past his shoulders—earring in his ear—jeans, of course—torn so that there were just threads holding them together over his thighs—not tall—maybe five foot four or five.
Alice was short; Paula Stout was short; Linda was short; and here Jimmy Hollonbrook was short, too. Had Charles Hollonbrook been short? Was that part of his problem?
When I was a girl, I was very popular. Often was the time that I had five young men sitting at my feet on the porch at Catawba Hall. That’s how I learned “the art of conversation.” I talked, and I didn’t talk about myself or other girls. I talked about the young men who were calling on me. And believe me, I complimented them highly—asked all about them—and thought it was just wonderful, whatever it was.
There’s hardly anybody that doesn’t need encouragement at some time or other. And it is so easy to give it to them. Why, I bet that Linda and Holly would still be married if she had just built up his self-esteem. You know we used to say, “Trains run on steam, but men run on self-esteem.”
But that’s getting away from the point, and it is an important one. Of all the boys that courted me, there wasn’t one that was shorter than I was.
I don’t know what it is about short men. They can be just as handsome, brainy, thoughtful, fine in every way, but I’ve noticed that a good many of them are sensitive about their height.
Well, I was tall, and that’s not supposed to be a good thing for a woman. Yet it never crossed my mind to regret it.
But to get back to Charles Hollonbrook, it could be that being short had something to do with his drive and his insistence on excelling—specially in the sexual area.
So here was the son. I wondered what he would look like with his hair combed and cut—in a business suit—and without that earring in his ear.
“My, he’s good-looking,” I said in an aside to his mother.
That surprised him.
“Come around here and let me get a look at you,” I went on. “Your mother tells me you are interested in television. You must act in plays quite a lot.”
“He’s interested in production,” his mother said. “He has a camcorder, and you should just see the excellent videotape he has made—he’s just a natural at it.”
“Your mother was telling me your father passed away recently,” I said.
“Yeah.” He said it rather awkwardly, but there was no regret in his voice. I wanted to ask him whether he had been with his dad much recently. But that would have been more than even I could get away with.
I felt I had learned all I could learn at that moment
. The boy could easily have gotten hold of his father’s gun and all that, and Paula Stout had said that Jimmy knew when his dad would be in Borderville. But could Jimmy work out a way to kill his dad in a locked room? Absolutely not.
I didn’t have a very high opinion of the mother’s brainpower. But it was no secret that she hated her former husband—no doubt spent her spare time thinking about it. There is no end to the meanness and old-fashioned spite a woman can scheme up if she keeps at it long enough.
And don’t forget: The whole lot of the Mountain-View-Drive Hollonbrooks were ecstatic over the prospects of spending Holly’s supposed wealth. I could believe that murder was not beyond the pale for that family—if they thought they could get away with it. Not at all beyond the pale, with that snarling mother wolf and her ravenous litter.
Since “Andy” would never come, it was time for me to engineer my graceful exit.
“Young man-” I said, then broke off. “What did you say your name was?”
“him.”
“Young men are so good with equipment and machinery and things like that,” I said, holding out my car keys. “Just take these and see if you can’t get my car started so I can get away and leave your poor mother in peace.”
And of course he did get it started, because there was nothing wrong with it except a flooded carburetor, and that had adjusted itself.
He was very interested in my car. Lots of interest in it and none in me, although I am an antique, too.
So I drove away. I don’t know what they thought of me, but that doesn’t matter.
KIMBERLIN MAYBURN
>> Harriet Bushrow <<
Maud had a nice lunch waiting for me when I got to the house. She has this lovely breakfast room that looks out to the garden of a neighbor across the street, and it’s just as pleasant as can be.
We were sitting there with our iced tea. I had told Maud all about my visit with Linda Hollonbrook. She laughed and said, “Harriet, you are the beatingest thing I ever saw,” which I could take in two ways: But I can tell you a thing or two about Maud. One time at Catawba Hall, she … but I had better not get into that.
The Rotary Club Murder Mystery Page 10