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Authors: Graham Landrum

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Harriet Bushrow
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W
hen we were working on the DAR Mystery, Helen Delaporte and Margaret and Lizzie and I had the advantage that we were in our own hometown. There were four of us. So what one didn't know or find out, another did. And we just shared our information the same way people share food at a covered-dish luncheon, and it came out fine. I happened to be the one who was fortunate enough to be there when the last piece of information fell into place—that's all.
But Stedbury, North Carolina, is not my hometown. And no matter how helpful Maud was, I would still be at a disadvantage because I knew nothing about the place.
I tell you, small towns are about the best entertainment a woman with good sense can have. There is nothing at the movies—murder, spies, romance, scandal, heartbreak, comedy, horror—even happy endings sometimes—nothing at the movies that isn't right there in that town keeping people entertained around the calendar. And it is all very instructive, too.
But all the things that happen in a small town pass, and one person will remember this thing, while another will remember that. Still, if the local paper is any good, all the public facts will
be there—just the bare bones, of course. But that would give me something to ask about.
Maud had said that Charles Hollonbrook came to Stedbury after he got home from the Vietnam War. Well, to an eighty-eight-year-old woman, that's not so long ago. And I figured that this little local Gazette was not going to be a big thick thing. So it shouldn't have been too much of a task to run through those back issues—just a few days. I would be interested only in items about Hollonbrook. And I imagined that after a while I would get a good-enough picture of the things related to him, and it wouldn't take any time at all.
That was what I thought then. How little I knew!
The Carnegie Library is on a tree-lined street—not a big building at all—just typical of the libraries Mr. Carnegie used to finance. It looks about like the one he built in 1912 in Gloriosa, Georgia, where I grew up.
Behind the library is a nice shady parking lot, where you can park your car all day and it won't be hot when you come back.
Of course there were steps going up to the front door-who ever heard of a Carnegie Library without steps?—and the two iron lampposts to either side and the huge frosted globes.
The inside of the library was also like the one in Gloriosa—golden oak. We used to think that golden oak was the only thing to have. They tell me that sort of thing is coming back through restoration and all that. Well, Stedbury won't have to restore its library, because it is all there—even to the plaster statue of Athena on a pedestal.
There was that old-time library smell, too—furniture polish, floor wax, old books, and just a whiff of disinfectant from the rest rooms. It felt like something I'd always known.
But some things change. When I went up to the librarian's desk, there behind it on a table was a computer and the librarian, with her back to me, clicking away on one of those little keyboards.
The sign on the desk read, MS. LAURA FOLSOM, LIBRARIAN. So I
supposed that Ms. Laura must be as modern as her computer.
I coughed just a little and said, “Beg pardon.”
Miss Folsom turned her swivel chair around. She looked to be in her late forties, and I pledge you my word she had a yellow pencil behind her ear—a pencil with one of those big erasers stuck on the end of it. I said to myself, Good Lord, she's an old maid in spite of everything! You know they don't make them like that anymore.
But she was just as nice as she could be and said something about what could she do for me and so on.
I explained that I wanted to see the files of the Stedbury Gazette.
Well, they were stored upstairs, all except the last three years. Those were at the Gazette office and would be until the Gazette saw fit to transfer them to the library. She pressed the button on her desk. In half a minute, a nice young man—still had pimples on his face—came up, and I told him the dates I wanted. Then he went off to get those big old books.
Miss Folsom said, “I don't believe you are one of our regular patrons.”
“Oh no,” I said. “I'm a visitor here in town.”
“Then you must sign our guest book,” she said.
I don't know what anyone ever does with a guest book, but everywhere you go you seem to find one. And, of course, I was waiting for my books to come downstairs. So I signed—it was no more than polite to do so.
Well, I tell you! I had no idea what I was asking that poor boy to do when I sent him to get those newspapers. Eighteen great huge volumes. It just seemed that he kept going back again and again to get more of them.
Miss Folsom said, “I believe it would be best if I wiped those things off first.” You never saw such a cloud of dust as rose from those old papers. I apologized for the inconvenience.
“I think,” she added, “that since these volumes are so big and heavy, we'll just let you look at them in the workroom.”
Well that was fine, because I saw right away that I would be taking more than just a day or two to go through all that big pile, and Miss Folsom said I could leave everything there until I had finished.
So I got out my pencil and memorandum book and got right to work.
In the issue of August 21, 1969, I first found the ad in the real estate section: Hollonbrook and Douglass. So that was the beginning of my search.
Then in every issue of the paper there was just ad after ad after ad—Hollonbrook and Douglass. Those young men must have been very aggressive. And I noticed from the properties listed in their ads that whatever they advertised, they soon sold. Of course, some of their deals probably were not so good, but in comparison with other realtors in Stedbury, they were doing mighty well.
Then in September, about a year after Hollonbrook came to town, there was a story about him on the sports page, where I almost missed it. What it said was: “Local Man Proves Himself in Rifle Meet.” The local man was Charles (Holly) Hollonbrook. The story called him a “popular young newcomer to Stedbury and decorated war veteran” and told how he had come back from the Western North Carolina Target Shooting Association's competition with the Bernard S. Thorpe trophy, winning over eighteen contestants.
The next item I found was the birth announcement of a son, James Andrew, to Mr. and Mrs. Charles J. Hollonbrook.
That would make the boy old enough to be a suspect. I hated to think the son would murder his father. But we read about that sort of thing all the time, and Maud had said the father kept the boy short on money.
So I made a note about young James—to look into later, you understand.
The next September, there was another trophy from the rifle competition. I would say shooting a rifle at a target is an
appropriate recreation for a man with the drive and competitive spirit I was beginning to admire in Charles Hollonbrook. And all the time, there were ads, ads, ads. He was driving right along in his business—he was obviously the kind of man who just has to win.
Then in the spring of 1974, I came across this: HOLLONBROOK ORGANIZES HANDGUN CLUB. That's the headline. Then the story went on: “Charles (Holly) Hollonbrook, popular realtor and firearms enthusiast, invites all interested in handgun marksmanship to join the recently organized Stedbury Handgun Club.” There was more, giving date and place of meeting and all that, and it was stated that “an immediate effort” would be made “to secure an arrangement with the Stedbury Police Force for the use of the municipal pistol range.”
I used to shoot a pistol. Papa thought every young woman should know how to shoot, and he would take me out to the farm, where I would shoot tin cans off the fence. I never was very good at it, but I felt very raffish and worldly shooting like that.
Well, to get back to that pistol-shooting club of Charles (Holly) Hollonbrook's, that was very interesting because Hollonbrook was killed with his own gun. And somebody in that club might be able to shed some light on how that could happen. So I made a note to investigate the club.
The next thing I found was a story about a new industrial plant that was coming to Stedbury. Charles (Holly) Hollonbrook—in those days, the Gazette always put the parentheses in the middle of the name—was quoted as knowing all about it. And two days later, there was an editorial congratulating Charles (Holly) Hollonbrook for bringing Featherstone Plastics to Stedbury. The Gazette seemed to think that Charles (Holly) Hollonbrook had done it almost alone.
You would think that after bringing a business like Featherstone to town, Holly and his partner would be as happy as pigs
in the mud. But just a month later, I noticed from the ads that Hollonbrook and Douglass weren't partners anymore. And there, don't you see, was something I needed to look into.
Now you folks reading this are probably going to say that I was just letting my imagination run on and on, as I found something suspicious in nearly everything I picked up about Charles Hollonbrook in the Gazette. But the imagination is where important things happen. Columbus imagined that the world was round. And Edison imagined that an electric light would work. And what about men on the moon? Remember when that only happened in the funny papers? Well, all of that starts in the imagination.
Imagination is like dough rising. It just works and works until it rises to a proper condition. Then the cook punches it down and lets it work again until it is right for the oven.
I kept on looking and found the birth announcements of the two Hollonbrook girls. I suppose a feminist would insist that they were just as likely to murder their dad as a boy would be, but I didn't think so.
The next thing I found was the divorce. That was in the legal notices. Hard times can cause divorce, and too much success can cause divorce. I could only speculate, but in this case I was laying the blame on success.
I just read till my eyes were tired, and then it was 4:45. I had worked right straight through since nine o'clock except for lunch at a little restaurant with Maud. And now the library was about to close. Miss Folsom came up to the table where I was working. She had a book in her hand. It was
The Famous DAR Murder Mystery.
“You are Harriet Bushrow,” she said.
I had to admit it.
“It is such an honor to have you use our library!”
It flashed all over me that I had made a bad mistake when I had written my name in that guest book. I might have known
that a librarian would recognize it. And then it wouldn't take her ten minutes to figure out why I was reading all those old Stedbury Gazettes. And soon it would be all over town.
“Would you please autograph my personal copy of
The Famous DAR Murder Mystery?”
she said, “I would be so grateful.”
So that was that.
I spent another day in the library and found that Holly had been in the Junior Chamber and had participated in their follies as a chorus girl! And then he got married again, to Miss Alice Ritchie—married in the Methodist church. Of course, that would be the same church the first wife belonged to. It had been almost two years since the divorce and was the first marriage of the second wife, so nobody could criticize her. But I bet a lot was said about
him
.
There were other developments: He showed up on the committee for the annual charity drive, and the next year he was the chairman of that committee. A little later, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hollonbrook (without the parentheses from here on) were on the committee for the New Year's dance at the country club. A few months later, Mr. Charles J. Hollonbrook was elected to the vestry at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. And he was on the board of the Salvation Army. Surprising? Not at all. It was just what I would have expected.
Of course, the files lacked three years of coming up to the present. During that time, Holly would have been president of the Stedbury Rotary Club and just this year district governor.
I found that I had made quite a few notes of things I ought to think about. I had just about decided that Stedbury wasn't very different from Borderville. Matter of fact, probably not all that different from the town where you live.
Back at Maud's house that evening, as I looked over my notes, I found that I hadn't turned up any surprising facts, but I had formed a definite picture in my mind of Charles Hollonbrook's personality.
Whatever else he was, it was forceful the way he came into
this little town and started up from nothing. Little towns don't always welcome that kind of thing. Most times, little towns think they exist for the benefit of the people who are already there. There will be one big, important family, along with another that is not quite so big or important. These two families won't like each other, but they will agree that outsiders should stay away unless the outsider has formed an alliance with one of the families through marriage. Inlaws have to be accommodated, but even in the case of inlaws it takes a long time to be naturalized.
BOOK: The Rotary Club Murder Mystery
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