Beyond the Headlines Page 6

  “He was probably only about eight or nine when this happened. His sister, Elaine, was a few years younger, and she had this little doll that she loved. Carried it with her everywhere. Anyway, we were at a party at Charlie’s house, and everyone talked about how cute she was with her little doll. Charlie thought so too. He picked his daughter up in his arms and kissed her, saying: ‘My favorite little girl.’ Well, I was watching Charles Jr. while Charlie picked up Elaine and her little doll. Everyone around them laughed and clapped. But not Charles Jr. He just glared at them. He looked furious.

  “Later, Elaine came running to her father and mother in tears. She still had the doll. But the head was missing. It had been ripped off and the doll was destroyed. I never found out the real story. But my assumption was that Charles had done it. Because he was jealous and envious at the attention Elaine had gotten from Charlie and the others with her doll. So he lashed out at her by destroying the possession that was the most important thing to her in the world.”

  Stovall shook his head sadly. “Charlie knew his son had a lot of problems, but he kept talking about how one day the kid would grow up and turn out okay. It was like he thought by doing that he could keep up this pretense that Charles Jr. was the heir to the Hollister empire he always wanted, even though everyone knew he wasn’t.”

  I asked Stovall when was the last time he had met with Charles Hollister.

  “Oh, I saw him every day,” he told me.

  “Including that last day?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Well, we talked about a lot of business matters. There was always a lot of stuff going on, decisions that had to made. Then Charlie told me about the other thing he was dealing with at the moment. The stuff with Laurie. The divorce and his will and everything else.”

  “The way I understand it, the will leaving most of everything to Laurie—which he’d done when he was head over heels in love with her in the early years of their marriage—was still in effect.”

  “That’s right. Charlie was going to rewrite the will, cutting her out of it—but he never got a chance to do it before his death.”

  “She still inherits all that?”

  “The current will in effect is very clear. She gets the bulk of his fortune and a controlling interest in Hollister Enterprises.”

  “Unless she’s convicted for murder,” I pointed out.

  “Yes. If that happens, it nullifies her claim to Charlie’s estate. And the estate would go to the next beneficiaries, his two children.”

  I thought about what he’d told me.

  “One thing I don’t understand. If Hollister went to all the trouble to set up this rigid prenup before he married Laurie Bateman to protect his money, why did he change his will after they were married to give her so much wealth and power to inherit?”

  Stovall shook his head sadly. “Because he was in love with her. He was in love with her at the beginning of the marriage, and—as hard as this might seem to believe—I believe he was still in love with her at the end.”

  “Then why did he have a mistress?” I asked.

  “You’re talking about Melissa Hunt.”

  “Why would he cheat on Laurie Bateman if he was in love with her? I’m told he cheated on his ex-wives with other women during their marriages. He didn’t seem to be in love with anyone. He wanted to bed as many women as he could. Which I guess is easy when you’re as rich as Charlies Hollister was, huh?”

  Stovall looked over at the picture on his desk again of the two of them in Vietnam a long time ago when they were both young and had no idea what was ahead for them.

  “Did you ever see the movie Citizen Kane?” he asked me.

  “Sure.”

  “Well, there’s a scene in there in which an old man talks about seeing a pretty young woman in white when he was a young man. He only saw her for a fleeting few seconds, and then she disappeared before he could talk to her. But he said he still thought about that woman practically every day of his life since then. And always wondered what would have happened if he could have met her that long-ago day.

  “It was the same thing for Charlie. We were in a restaurant in Saigon one night, and he saw a beautiful Vietnamese woman sitting there. Charlie fell in love with her at first sight. He wanted to introduce himself to her but—by the time he got up the courage to go over to where she was—she had left. Soon after that, the last U.S. forces pulled out, and we got sent home. He never saw that Vietnamese woman again. But he never forgot her for the rest of his life. He told me that once. How there wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t think of that beautiful young woman in the Saigon restaurant and wonder about what happened to her.”

  “Laurie Bateman was Vietnamese,” I pointed out. “Do you think that was what attracted him to her? Because she looked like this woman did?”’

  “I’ve thought about that. That he saw in Laurie the woman of his dreams. That she was the woman in white for him. Or at least as close to her as he would ever get. That he could live happily ever after with the woman he was always meant to love.”

  “Except it didn’t work out that way.”

  “No, Charlie’s dream never came true.”

  CHAPTER 12

  MELISSA HUNT LIVED in a three-bedroom apartment on the East Side along the waterfront, overlooking the East River and with panoramic views from an impressive balcony outside that stretched the length of her place. The building had doormen, a concierge, and valet parking. Since Melissa Hunt was ostensibly a struggling young actress, I assumed someone else paid the rent for her to live here. And my guess about the identity of that generous benefactor was Charles Hollister. Hey, I’m an investigative journalist. I get paid to figure out tricky stuff like that.

  Melissa Hunt herself looked like something straight out of a casting call for a sexy young movie star. Blond, beautiful, statuesque figure, and a sultry voice. I thought about how incongruous a couple she must have made with Charles Hollister. But then I remembered how rich he was. Apparently having a lot of money can get you an attractive woman like Melissa Hunt. Who knew?

  I’d had a bit of trouble getting in to see her when I first called. She claimed she didn’t even know a Charles Hollister. I pointed out to her that I’d checked the building records and found that the apartment she lived in was paid for by Hollister. I also said that the police had told me she was having a romantic relationship with Hollister. And I added that with Hollister dead, the publicity about their relationship could only help her career at this point. I think that was the thing that convinced her. In the end, she agreed to meet me and gave the okay to the doormen and the concierge and all the other building personnel to let me up to her place.

  So there I was, sitting in her living room on the thirty-sixth floor and talking about her and Charles Hollister.

  “The police have already been here,” she said.

  “I figured they would.”

  “They asked all sorts of questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Mostly about the relationship Charles had had with his wife, Laurie Bateman.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Not much to tell. Charles hardly ever talked about her with me.”

  “Did he seem happily married?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, happily married men don’t usually carry on an affair with a woman like you on the side as his mistress.”

  She smiled slightly at first when I said it. But then she got defensive. About my reference to an affair and describing her as Hollister’s mistress.

  “It wasn’t like that with Charles and me. I wasn’t just another fling in the sack for him.”

  “What were you then?”

  “He was going to marry me.”

  “That’s what he told you?”

  “Yes, many times. He loved me. I don’t care whether you believe me about that or not. I know it was true. Is there anything else you want
to ask me? To be honest, I’m not sure exactly why you came here and what you think you’ll get from me.”

  “I’m trying to find out who killed Charles Hollister,” I said.

  “His wife. The police have already arrested her for it.”

  “They did. But I’m not convinced she’s the killer. I’m looking for someone else who might have wanted him dead.”

  Melissa Hunt looked shocked when I said that.

  “Wait a minute … you can’t suspect me!”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’ve got absolutely nothing to gain from Charles’ death. His wife, Laurie Bateman—if she isn’t convicted—will inherit the biggest chunk of his estate. I’m the other woman. I’m left out in the cold. I’m not even going to be able to stay in this apartment once the rent checks are due. What possible reason could I have for killing Charles Hollister?”

  “How about your husband?”

  “Wayne? He’s my ex-husband. We got divorced.”

  “Okay, your ex-husband. I heard he was furious at Hollister for taking you away from him. Do you think he might have been furious enough to have murdered Hollister over that, Melissa?”

  “No, Wayne’s all talk and no action.” She smiled. “He’s a loser. I would have left him even if I hadn’t met Charles. I can do better than Wayne. And I did. I did a lot better with Charles Hollister. Except now it’s over.”

  “Do you know if the police questioned your ex-husband about Hollister’s death?”

  “Why would they want to talk to him?”

  “As a suspect in Hollister’s murder.”

  “They’ve already got the person who did it: Laurie Bateman.”

  I sighed. She was right. This wasn’t particularly helping me in advancing the story. But I pressed on in the hopes of getting any kind of useful information out of her.

  “You spent a good deal of time with Charles Hollister. Can you think of anything different or unusual that happened in the time you spent with him at the end?”

  “Well, Charles was very preoccupied.”

  “Preoccupied how?”

  “He was talking all the time about that newspaper he bought.”

  “The New York Chronicle?”

  “That’s right. It was all he had on his mind, even when he was with me. He was almost obsessed with everything about the newspaper business. I think he fancied himself as becoming a media baron or something. He’d accomplished so much else in the business world, I guess that was his next goal. Even when we were in bed, he would get up to talk to people at the paper. He was determined to learn everything about the newspaper business. I remember one night I heard him telling someone on the phone he wanted to change ‘the wood.’ I asked him afterward if he was talking about a fireplace, and he laughed. He said ‘the wood’ was a newspaper term for the Page One headline. Can you believe that?”

  I smiled. That brought back a lot of memories for me of my own newspaper days before I got into TV news.

  “It’s called that because in the old days of Linotype machines the Page One headline actually was hammered out of wood,” I said. “But they still refer to it in the newsroom as ‘the wood.’ Or sometimes, it’s called ‘the splash’ as well. But hardly anyone says the Page One headline. Not at a paper like the Chronicle.”

  “Another time he talked about the ‘lobster.’ It took me a while to realize that wasn’t about …”

  “A seafood dinner? No, that’s what they call the overnight shift at a newspaper. From midnight to early morning.”

  “Anyway, he learned all those newspaper terms and used them all the time. He prided himself on knowing all the jargon. He said he wanted to be a real newspaperman, not just a guy who owned a newspaper.”

  A real newspaperman? Maybe Charles Hollister hadn’t been a totally bad guy after all. I wondered what would have happened if he’d lived to turn the Chronicle into the kind of political and editorial voice he was hoping to make it.

  “What does any of this have to do with his death anyway?” she asked. “His wife murdered him. Listen, you said you were going to shoot some video of me for TV news. Let’s go on air and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about my relationship with Charles Hollister. Like you said, the publicity will be good for me. It will probably get picked up by TMZ and a lot of other places. Bring in your video people and let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER 13

  MENTION THE TERM private investigator and most people—including myself—think about an image of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe or someone else out of an old movie or a Mickey Spillane crime novel. Wearing a crumpled old raincoat, a fedora pulled down at the brim, working out of a cramped little office in a run-down building—and carrying a gat.

  Victor Endicott—the private investigator who took the pictures of Hollister in bed with Melissa Hunt, then gave them to Laurie Bateman before Hollister’s murder—wasn’t like that at all.

  When I went to see him, I was surprised to find out his office was a corporate suite in a high-rise building on Park Avenue South, near Madison Square Park.

  I was greeted there by a pleasant-looking red-haired woman in the reception area. She asked me to sit down for a minute on the couch while she alerted Endicott I was here. The couch was long, with big cushions and covered in plush velvet. It looked like something out of Home Beautiful. I sank into it and looked around the rest of the place. There were expensive-looking paintings on the walls; a stack of publications like Forbes and The New York Times and Wall Street Journal spread out on a coffee table in front of me; and soft classical music playing through a stereo system. Not at all what I expected. More like an office for a financial company or a high-priced realty firm than a private investigator.

  The receptionist returned and told me to follow her. She led me down a long hall of offices until we came to a large conference room. There was a big round table in the center of the room, surrounded by leather chairs. I sat down in one of the chairs and waited for Victor Endicott.

  Endicott himself turned out to be a lot different than I expected, too.

  He was wearing a three-piece pin-striped navy-blue suit, a red tie, and a pale blue shirt with fancy cuff links. He gave me a big smile as he came into the room. The kind of smile that he no doubt put on for all his prospective clients. Endicott had almost no hair on top of his head, either because he had lost it or it had been shaved. But he had a lot of hair on his face in the form of a bushy goatee that covered his chin. The weird juxtaposition made him look like a colorful character, but also a bit scary. I wondered if his other prospective clients felt the same way the first time they saw him.

  Yes, I was a prospective client.

  At least as far as he was concerned at the moment.

  I had told his office when I called that I wanted to hire him as a private investigator.

  I figured that was the easiest way to get a meeting with him.

  Now I had to figure out how long I wanted to keep going with this phony story before I got to the real reason I was there.

  “How can I be of service to you?” Endicott asked.

  “I think I need to hire a private investigator.”

  “Well, lucky you came here. By a strange coincidence, that’s what I do for a living.”

  He smiled when he said it. Like it was a joke he’d used countless times before to ease the fears of his clients. It was a clever move. Endicott was clearly a clever guy. Based on what I’d found out about him, I didn’t like Victor Endicott or what he did. But I did have a feeling he was good at his job.

  “Now you said on the phone when you called the office before that you wanted me to look into someone for you. Tell me more details about what it is you’re looking for.”

  I didn’t have any more details.

  I didn’t have much more of a phony story.

  “I lied about that,” I said. “I made that all up so I could have an excuse to get in here and talk with you. You see, I’m actually …”

  “A reporter,
” Endicott said.

  His smile was even wider now.

  “How did you know that?”

  “I’ve seen you on TV. Your name is Clare Carlson. You’re quite famous these days, you know. If you’re going to try to pull off an undercover operation like this, it’s important that the other person hasn’t already seen you in another situation. Like all over the TV screen. Just a little investigative tip for you, Ms. Carlson.”

  He didn’t seem mad at my attempt at subterfuge though, more like he was simply amused by me.

  “What I really want to do is talk about the pictures of Charles Hollister in bed with another woman that you took for Laurie Bateman.”

  “I’m sorry, but the ethics of my profession don’t allow me to discuss the details of any case or client I handle.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Mr. Endicott, your PI license has been suspended three times for questionable activities. Ethics don’t seem to rank very high on your list of priorities.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know, but only under one condition.”

  “That I don’t use your name?”

  “No, that you do use my name. Just don’t say the information came from me. I don’t want clients to think I’ll reveal stuff about them publicly. But what the hell, this could be good publicity for me. So you just say you got the information from someone else, not me. Is that a deal?”

  Like Melissa Hunt, Endicott wanted to score good publicity over his involvement in the Laurie Bateman story.

  Well, no matter how I felt about it, that’s the business I was in.

  Giving people publicity on the air.

  I told Endicott we had a deal.

  “Yes, Laurie Bateman hired me to find out if her husband was cheating on her,” he told me then.

  “How did Bateman wind up hiring you?”

  “She knew me. I’d done things for her husband.”

  “You worked for Charles Hollister?”