by R. G. Belsky
“One story people who worked for him tell is about his longtime secretary who asked for a day off to attend her granddaughter’s first piano recital. She was told no. She called in sick and went anyway. Hollister hired a private detective to track down people who saw the woman at the recital. Then he summoned her to his office and personally fired her after years of dedicated service.”
“It wasn’t so much the day off,” Hollister explained later, “but the fact that she lied to me about it. She was disloyal. I won’t tolerate disloyalty from anyone.”
Then there was a prominent business rival, a man named Max Gunther, whose company lost a big city contract to Hollister. Gunther accused Hollister of dirty tricks and unscrupulous tactics and even making payoffs to city officials to get his way. Gunther vowed that one day he would get back at Hollister; he declared he would get his revenge in one way or another.
Also, there was supposed to be a federal investigation into Hollister’s dealings—by the SEC and maybe the tax people, too—because of questionable investments, missing pension funds, and a suspicious money trail that even led to secret bank accounts around the world. Nothing had been proved yet, but it certainly sounded like he was under federal scrutiny at the time of his death.
There was plenty of dirt, too, about Charles Hollister’s personal life. Including the woman he was having the affair with when he was killed
“Her name is Melissa Hunt,” Maggie said. “She’s a model/actress, like Laurie Bateman. Except much younger. In her twenties. Charlie Hollister seemed to like young girls.”
“I wonder at his age if he could …”
“Still get it up?”
“It does seem like that could be an issue for a man his age.”
“Whether he could or not,” Maggie said with a laugh, “I’m not sure it mattered much to Melissa Hunt. All she probably cared about was how much he was worth.”
“What else do we know about her?”
“She’s a real looker. Surprise, surprise. She’s married, or at least she still was when I checked. Her husband was in the process of filing for divorce against her. He claimed in the divorce papers she’d been unfaithful with another man. And that man was none other than Charles Hollister.”
“Melissa Hunt’s estranged—and presumably enraged—husband could be a suspect in the Hollister murder,” I pointed out. “Jealousy is always a good motive for murder.”
“But Laurie Bateman could have killed him out of the same jealousy. And she had another motive Melissa Hunt’s husband didn’t have. Money.”
I’d reported on the air the previous night the news I’d gotten from Janet about Hollister planning to rewrite his will to cut off Laurie Bateman from inheriting his fortune and control of the Hollister businesses.
“You’re still left with this one basic fact, Clare: if Hollister divorced Bateman, she would only get a small amount of money under the terms of the prenuptial agreement she signed before the marriage and the new will he was preparing. But if he was dead, she’d inherit pretty much all of it as his wife. Sorry, but Laurie Bateman is still the best suspect out there for the murder.”
Maggie went through a lot more material I’d asked for about Hollister’s background and life history.
Charles Hollister had been married twice before Laurie Bateman. Three times, technically. But the first one didn’t actually count.
“Her name was Janice Novak, and he’d met her in California in the seventies right after he’d been discharged from the Army after spending a year in Vietnam,” Maggie explained, reading from her notes. “Apparently celebrated by getting drunk and high on smoking pot with this Novak women. At some point, they decided it was a good idea to drive off into the desert and get married at a wedding chapel in Las Vegas. Which is exactly what they did. Then the next day, after they sobered up, they went back to the wedding chapel and got the marriage annulled.”
“Wow, talk about a wild one-night stand, huh?” I said.
“Wife #2—or his first real wife—was a woman named Susan Daily. This one lasted nine years, but it ended badly. She had psychological problems that got worse as the marriage went on. Eventually, he had her committed to a psychiatric hospital before finally divorcing her. From what I found out, she was in such bad shape no one ever knew if she even realized the divorce had happened.
“His next marriage to Karen Sykora was the one that lasted the longest. Although the people who knew him said he played around a lot with other women during the marriage. Hollister clearly had an eye for the ladies. But they stayed together as man and wife until Laurie Bateman came along. He divorced Karen Sykora, married Bateman, and … well, the rest is history.”
Maggie also had detailed notes about how Charles Hollister had acquired his fortune. It happened at an early age, not long after he’d left the Army. He came up with an idea for a new microchip concept that revolutionized the computer industry. It was the seventies when most people didn’t have computers in their homes or businesses yet. That all changed when Hollister launched his computer company, which made him a fortune. From that he expanded into all sorts of other fields—media, book publishing, pharmaceuticals, real estate, a chain of fast-food restaurants around the country, and he’d recently even bought a New York City newspaper, the New York Chronicle. That was what he’d been talking about in that phone message he left just before he died. The idea was he planned to use this newspaper to build himself up into a formidable media political force—as well as a business force—the way Rupert Murdoch had done with the New York Post, Wall Street Journal and Fox News.
The one constant in all this had been his longtime business partner, a man named Bert Stovall. Stovall was the CEO of the Hollister corporation. People who knew him said he was the exact opposite of Hollister. While Hollister loved being in the celebrity limelight with all his fame and wealth and success, Stovall kept a low profile behind the scenes. But everyone agreed he was very good at his job. “Bert’s the guy who makes the trains run on time for Charles Hollister,” was the way one longtime business analyst described it.
Hollister had two children, a son and a daughter—both with his previous wife Karen.
The daughter, whose name was Elaine, had disappeared from Hollister’s life many years ago, people said. Moved out of the country and lived abroad. No one knew much more about Elaine Hollister.
His son was a different story. Charles Blaine Hollister Jr. worked for his father’s business as an executive vice president. He had always been presumed to be the heir apparent when Hollister died or got old enough that he decided to step aside. Although, from what I now knew about his father leaving the largest part of his business empire to Laurie Bateman in his will from a few years earlier, Hollister must have had second thoughts about that.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Maggie said when I brought that up. “Charles Jr. is supposed to be a real piece of work. Arrogant, not particularly bright, and living pretty much off of his family name. The word is that people in the Hollister companies call him ‘Chuckie’ instead of ‘Charlie.’ Because of the ‘Chuckie’ horror movies. About the maniacal doll. You couldn’t get rid of him, no matter how hard you tried. He was always there. Making your life a nightmare. Well, that’s how they feel about ‘Chuckie’—or Charles.”
“Hard to get rid of someone when their father owns the business.”
“Yep. It sounds like Hollister protected the kid more than a few times over the years even outside the business.”
“What do you mean?”
“A while back, Charles Hollister Jr. was arrested for drunken driving in a hit-and-run case. He ran over a guy crossing the street, then sped away without stopping. A witness got the license number and the cops picked up Charles an hour later. Even with the extra hour, he still blew 2.0 on the DUI test.
“The victim lingered in a coma for a few days, before finally dying. Charles was then charged with vehicular manslaughter. But a funny thing happened. First, the DUI test was thrown out
by a judge who said the cops didn’t read him his rights clearly before they administered it. Then the witness who said he’d gotten a clear look at the car’s license plate wasn’t sure about that anymore. Charles said he didn’t remember hitting anyone. And, even if he did, it was a tragic accident. In the end, he made a deal and got off with probation and a fine.”
“You think Hollister paid off the witness and used his influence on the judge to get the charges dropped?” I asked Maggie.
“Duh, what do you think?”
I nodded. This was all interesting. I wasn’t exactly sure how, but Charles Blaine Hollister Jr. might be the best possible alternative to Laurie Bateman as Hollister’s killer. I played that around in my head for a while, and then tried to talk it through with Maggie.
“Charles Jr. always thought he’d be the heir apparent to his father’s financial empire,” I said. “But then the father wrote a will that left the bulk of everything to his current wife, Bateman. Hollister was likely planning to change his will again because of the pending divorce to Bateman, but when?
“From what we know, the previous will—the one so generous to Laurie Bateman at the expense of his son—was still in effect. Maybe the kid didn’t know about the divorce or his father’s plans to rewrite the will again to leave Bateman out of it. So he decided to take things in his own hands. To claim the inheritance he thought was rightly his. He murders his father.
“But he makes it look like Laurie Bateman did it. That’s the key to the murder for him. He needs her to be convicted of Hollister’s murder. That way she can’t claim any of the fortune because a criminal isn’t allowed to profit from their crime. Once she’d been convicted, the estate would presumably go back to Hollister’s next closest heir. Which would be Charles Jr.” I smiled triumphantly. “Makes sense, right?”
Maggie shook her head no.
“You’re forgetting about one big flaw in that theory of yours, Clare. The one that has the kid as the murderer and Laurie Bateman just an innocent victim who’s been wrongly accused.”
“What’s the flaw?”
“The flaw is that Laurie Bateman was the one found standing over Hollister’s body at the crime scene.”
“Right …”
I made a list of the people I wanted to talk to after Maggie left my office. It was a pretty long list.
Bert Stovall, Hollister’s right-hand man.
Victor Endicott, the private investigator who took the secret pictures of Hollister with his young girlfriend.
Melissa Hunt, the girlfriend.
Melissa Hunt’s jealous husband.
Max Gunther, a disgruntled business rival.
Susan Daily, Hollister’s first wife.
The two Hollister children, Charles Jr. and Elaine, who apparently had seen a large portion of their inheritance go to Laurie Bateman in the current installment of his will.
Plus, a lot of other people Hollister had done business with in recent years and were unhappy with him.
I originally planned to talk to Karen Sykora, Hollister’s previous wife—but I found out she’d died a few years after their divorce.
Still, I had a pretty impressive list of people—and potential suspects maybe in Charles Hollister’s murder—to deal with here.
I could feel the excitement and the adrenaline rising in me, the way it always did when my instincts told me I was on the trail of a big news story.
Sure, my exclusive on Laurie Bateman being arrested for the murder of her husband—and the fact that they were in the process of divorcing when that happened—had been a great get for me.
But what if Laurie Bateman was innocent?
And I could find the real killer?
Now that would be an even better story!
CHAPTER 11
BERT STOVALL HAD lost more than a lifelong business partner when Charles Hollister was murdered. He’d lost a lifelong friend. Stovall told me that when I went to see him in his office at the building at Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street called Hollister Tower, where most of Hollister’s businesses were headquartered.
“That’s one of the toughest things about getting old, you lose a lot of friends,” Stovall—who looked to be about the same age as Hollister, in his seventies—said to me. “A lot of it you expect. Cancer. Heart attacks. I’ve said too many goodbyes to people I cared about in recent years. But nothing like this.
“Charlie was my oldest friend in the world. We were in our early twenties when we met. Can you believe that? And we stayed close all these years. In business. And as friends. But now … he’s gone. Just like that. And his death all seems so senseless; that’s the hardest part of all for me to accept. It shouldn’t have happened.”
Stovall had agreed to meet me, but insisted he wanted to do the interview off camera. Which didn’t surprise me much once I’d heard from Maggie how he was low key, always behind the scenes of Hollister’s business dealings. The public didn’t know much about Stovall, but he’d been at Hollister’s side for all the years and all the deal making and all the building of the vast worldwide Hollister empire. Which was why I wanted to talk with him. I figured he could give me a close-up view of what Hollister the man was like—and maybe even provide a clue about the events that led to his death.
“I’ve known Laurie for a long time,” he said when I asked him about Laurie Bateman. “I was there on the night Charlie met her. It was at a celebrity charity event in Los Angeles. Charlie was being honored for a big donation he’d made to fight breast cancer or a similar cause. She was one of the celebrity guests. There were plenty of big names there, actors and actresses who were bigger than she was.
“But Charlie only had eyes for her. He spent the entire evening staring at her and then talking to her. Later, they went out together for a drink. Charlie had his yacht there, and he invited her aboard it for a cruise that weekend. She accepted and … well, the rest you know. Everyone made fun of them. Said Charlie was a dirty old man and she was only interested in his money. But he and Laurie didn’t care. Charlie loved her, and she loved him too. Or at least I thought she did.
“Listen, I was aware they’d been having problems recently. I knew it wasn’t all happiness and love and fun between them like they portrayed their marriage in the media. But I never expected anything like this. Who would? Charlie murdered, and Laurie in jail for it. My God! I want to believe she didn’t do it. I want to believe it was someone else. It would make it easier to accept.”
I suddenly realized that he called Hollister “Charlie.”
“Everyone else always called him Charles,” he said. “But to me he was Charlie. That was the guy I had known all my life. Charlie Hollister, just another kid like me back at the beginning trying to figure out what to do with our lives. So even after all this time and all that has changed, he was still ‘Charlie’ to me.”
I asked him about any enemies—business or otherwise—who might have wanted Charles Hollister dead. I included Max Gunther, the business rival I’d read about earlier who was involved in a nasty legal feud with Hollister.
“There were a lot of people who didn’t like Charlie.” He shrugged. “At times for a good reason, I guess. Charlie could be a tough businessman. You have to be, otherwise people will take advantage of you. But it wasn’t just people he dealt with in the business world who had a gripe against Charlie. Other people did, too.
“When you’re rich like he was, people are jealous. Like Bill Gates. Or Warren Buffett. There’s plenty of people who don’t like billionaires out there these days. Blame them for everything wrong in society, want them to pay unreasonably high taxes and all that sort of thing.
“No billionaire is a perfect person, but few others are either. The Charlie I knew was a lot like everyone else. He had good points and bad points. But he was my friend. I knew the real Charlie Hollister. I knew the man pretty much all my life. He was a good man and a good friend.”
I noticed a picture that was positioned in a prominent place on his desk. There wer
e two men in the picture. Young men, in Army uniforms. Sitting on sandbags in front of a bunker in South Vietnam. They looked a lot different now, but I realized one of them was a young Bert Stovall. The other man in the picture was Charles Hollister. I asked Stovall about the picture.
“That’s when we met,” he said to me.
“In Vietnam?”
“In 1972. Before the final pullout of U.S. troops, a year later. We were there at the end of that war. Both of us had gotten drafted, so we had no choice. It was a crazy time.”
Stovall stared at the long-ago picture, seemingly lost for a few seconds in his own thoughts and memories of that time. Then he turned back toward me.
“Did you know Charlie was a hero over there? He got a medal for bravery.”
“What did he do?”
“Shot a Viet Cong soldier who was trying to put a live explosive charge into a building filled with U.S. soldiers. The blast would have killed a lot of us. But Charlie saw the Viet Cong doing it, confronted him, and ordered him to drop the bomb. When he didn’t, Charlie shot him to death. The explosive was never detonated. Yep, he saved a lot of lives. Not many people know about that story. But I do because I was there. I was one of the people whose life Charlie saved that day.”
At one point in our conversation, I brought up Hollister’s son. I was interested in finding out more about him.
“Charles Blaine Hollister.” Stovall sighed. “Charles Jr. The prodigal son.”
“What is your relationship with him like?”
“In a word: difficult.”
“Why is that?”
“Charles is a troubled person. Always has been. All the way back to when he was growing up. And he never got much better as he grew older.”
I remembered the story Maggie had told me about the traffic accident where his father had helped him beat the charges—and I wondered if there were more legal issues like that in the Hollister son’s past.
But instead, Stovall told me another story, a relatively minor incident involving Charles Jr. that had happened many years ago. He told me it kind of summed up what kind of a person Hollister’s son had always been, even at an early age.
