Murder at the Bellamy Mansion (8 page)

Scarlett Barrett was our older half-sister whom we had only met for the first time a little over two weeks ago when she appeared for our wedding. We would have met sooner but, as Aunt Ruby had just said, Scarlett had witnessed a murder important to a case the FBI was building, and they’d kept her in the Witness Protection program for six years – to ensure their case, and to ensure her safety.

“
She’s eager to get on with her life and to make up for those lost years,” Aunt Ruby explained.

Melanie and I looked at each other. “I’m all for people claiming their happiness,” Melanie said.

“
Me too, Aunt Ruby. Count me in. Have they set a date? Will we all be going to New York?”

“
They are insistent that the wedding be held here in Wilmington, girls. After all, we are Scarlett’s only family now that the Barretts have passed. And they have set the date: Valentine’s Day. Scarlett wants someplace very special.”

“
Oh, Valentine’s Day will be so romantic,” Melanie gushed. “I know, we can have a heart theme.”

“
I don’t understand why they are not planning their own wedding,” I said.

“
Because, Ashley, we are here and they are not. Ray has got his hands full with the declining stock market. And Scarlett is busy going to auditions. True to her word, your mother-in-law, Melanie, Nelda Cameron called around and got Scarlett interviews with the most important producers.”

So Nelda had made good on her promise to Scarlett. That’s one brownie point for Nelda, I thought.

Our older half-sister Scarlett had been a Rockette before witnessing the murder which stole a huge chunk of years out of her life. She is a singer, a dancer, and an actress.

Ray is a future’s trader, whatever that is, and the youngest member of the New York Stock Exchange. Ray’s only living relative is his sister Kiki.

“
Kiki will come, won’t she?” I asked.

“
Yes, Scarlett says she’ll be here with bells on.”

“
Bells, indeed. That peculiar woman,” Melanie huffed.

Kiki and I had shared an apartment with two other girls when we were students at Parsons School of Design in New York. Melanie had never been able to “get” Kiki although Kiki had gone on to become an internationally famous interior designer, the kind of woman Melanie ordinarily admired.

“
With the economy the way it is right now,” Melanie said, “the demand for lavish weddings isn’t so great anymore. There will be cancellations. We should be able to find them a nice place.”

“
I know,” I exclaimed. “The Bellamy Mansion. We’ll hold it at the Bellamy Mansion.”

“
But darling girl,” Aunt Ruby protested, “with that awful shooting of poor Willie, do we want to hold a wedding there? Our guests might be too frightened to attend.”

“
Nick assures me the PD is providing a strong uniformed police presence in the area,” I said.

“
Nick? Have you seen him?” Melanie wanted to know.

“
Yes. He and that viperous Diane Sherwood came to our house on Friday to question us. As if we would know something about the shooting while we were miles away.”

“
The Bellamy Mansion is the perfect place to host a romantic wedding,” Aunt Ruby said.

“
Anyway,” I said, “Willie doesn’t have an enemy in the world. I think this shooting was just some psycho gun-nut who would have aimed for anyone who was up in the observatory. Or even on the ground. And surely by Valentine’s Day they will have caught the shooter and life here will go back to normal.”

“
I wouldn’t count on that happening,” Melanie said.

9

Later that Sunday afternoon, Jon returned from his game, jubilant about his golfing prowess. He looked so cute in his golf shirt, and even cuter when he stripped to shower, that as soon as he was squeaky clean, I just had to cuddle with him. The cuddling escalated into the best kind of making out.

At four-thirty we headed out to the medical center to visit with Willie. On the drive, I told Jon about Scarlett and Ray’s upcoming nuptials.

“
Way to go, Ray!” he cried, punching the air. He turned to me and smiled, “We guys have to move fast if you want to tie the knot with one of you Wilkes girls. And don’t I know that from experience. I delayed one second and you were snapped up.”

At the medical center we found Willie in a good mood, no longer fussy, memory recovered, and eager to tell all.

“
The detectives have not been here yet today,” Esther told us, “so you are the first outside of the family to hear all this.”

Jon and I got settled in vinyl chairs and gave Willie our full attention.

“
You sure are looking good for someone who was shot just four days ago,” I said.

“
The Hudson males always were handsome boys,” he quipped. “Never had any trouble getting the girls.”

Esther pretended to swat at him. “And praise the Lord, they’ve got hard heads.”

“
So tell us what you remember about that morning,” Jon said.

“
Well, I got to the mansion early, long before Lonnie and Dwayne put in an appearance. The caretaker was there, working over the holiday and he let me in. Said he was catching up and that anyway he had to open up for the party rental folks.

“
See, there had been a New Year’s Eve party at the Bellamy the night before. So the rental folks came early on New Year’s Day to collect their tents, chairs and tables, and such. They were all out in the parking lot, loading the vans. But as I climbed those long stairs up to the roof, I came upon one of them. He seemed embarrassed to be caught wandering around the mansion on his own. He was coming down the stairs from the belvedere.”

I was all ears. Who was this person? Were his motives as innocent as wanting to get a panoramic view from the top of the mansion? “Did you speak to him?” I asked.

“
Yes. Asked him could I help him. He said, ‘no,’ he was just leaving. I asked him what he was looking for. He went on with some long song and dance ‘bout how he was a history major at the university, and how he was just poking around hoping to see something of interest. Looked too old to be a college student to me. So, all the while he’s backing away, and then he turned and ran back down the stairs.

“
But when I got up into the belvedere and looked down, I did not see him around the rental company vans. Still, he could have been inside, folding up the chairs, or whatever.”

Esther handed him a large plastic cup and held it for him while he sipped water through a straw.

“
What happened then?” Jon asked. I knew he wanted to know if Willie had seen the shooter.

“
Well, up in the belvedere, I was paying no mind to the folks on the ground. I started prodding for dry rot, and believe you me I found aplenty. We have really got our work cut out for us, Jon, restoring those window frames.”

“
Yeah, it looked that way to Ashley and me when we gave the belvedere a cursory inspection right before the wedding,” Jon replied.

“
Anyway, I kinda lost track of time. Maybe about twenty minutes went by. I was making notes, and taking pictures. Drawing big Xs with white chalk on those windows that we definitely have to remove and take to the shop to rehab. Next thing I know, something kinda caught my peripheral vision. A flash. Motion.”

He gave us a level look. “You know I wasn’t facing that way. The next thing there was an explosion and it felt like something slammed me out of this world. Then nothing. Nothing till I woke up in this bed on Friday morning.”

I reached over and squeezed his hand. “And we are so thankful you did wake up, Willie,” I said. “It’s a miracle that you made it.”

“
It sure is,” Jon agreed.

“
Praise the Lord,” Esther said.

10

We met Lonnie Hudson at the Bellamy Mansion early on Monday morning. The sun was up and shining brightly. The day would be sunny and dry, pleasant, a perfect day for working in the belvedere to resume the assessment that Willie had begun the day that he was shot.

“
For eighteen-sixty, the plumbing system at the Bellamy was far ahead of its time,” Lonnie told Jon and me as we ascended the stairs to the attic. He led us to the tank room on the third, or attic, floor. Lonnie was explaining how the system had functioned when the Bellamy family had moved into the house in February of eighteen-sixty-one, on the eve of the Civil War.

The tank room was a corner room on the attic level, tucked under the eaves at the rear of the house. With a low pitched roof and windows that were set about knee high, the room was cramped and gloomy. The tank itself was a large lead-lined reservoir, clad with oak planks. On display in the room was an old-fashioned sitz tub, but that would not have been where the Bellamys had bathed. In their day, the house had been equipped with a warm water shower in the bathroom directly below the tank room.

Lonnie explained, “Today this tank is as dry as dust because at some point the original plumbing system was replaced with city water. But way back when, the family got their drinking water from a well and their washing water from a cistern.”

The well and cistern were unused now. The openings were sealed with heavy covers. And they were clearly visible in the rear yard.

“
Warm water showers were unusual for that era,” Jon said, “and as you say, well ahead of their time.”

“
Where did your great-great-grandfather learn how to construct such a sophisticated plumbing system since they were so uncommon?” I asked.

“
Wilfred was a literate man,” Lonnie boasted. “He learned to read as an adult. Then as a father, he taught his children to read. So all the Hudsons have been a literate family going back to the antebellum period.

“
Wilfred found the plumbing design in a book written by a famous architect of the day. That’s the way the story’s been told in the family. And he was clever enough to know how to take that design and turn it into reality. And just like my pa, Wilfred relied on his sons and grandsons to assist him in his plumbing business.”

I did not tell Lonnie that Willie had confided he was considering giving his son a greater role in running their general contractor’s business. I’d let Willie do that. And Willie was right: Lonnie deserved a greater participation in running the operation.

“
This is how the plumbing system worked back then,” Lonnie told us. “The Bellamy butler, a young man named Guy who was a slave and also drove the carriage, would hand pump water from the cistern and force it up here to fill this tank.” He indicated the boxy tank. “Down in the kitchen there was a large copper boiler. As needed, the water would flow down through pipes to the boiler where it was heated. Through a system of draw and stop cocks, the warm water flowed to wherever needed in the house. The bathroom was located under this tank room, so cold water could flow down there directly through a cold water pipe.”

“
You must be proud of your ancestors,” I said.

Lonnie gave us an aw-shucks grin. “I’m very proud of my family. The Hudsons have always been first rate citizens. We sent soldiers into every war, starting with the War for Independence.”

“
You have every reason to be proud,” Jon said. “But we can’t avoid the belvedere any longer. We need to go up there and view the damage from the shooting.”

“
I’ll never forget finding my pa up there,” Lonnie said with a shudder. “I dread going back up.”

“
Lonnie, I’ll understand if you want to appoint someone else to handle this,” Jon said kindly.

“
No, no.” Lonnie shook his head. “It’s like getting back on a horse after you’ve been thrown. Or getting back on a plane after there’s been a crash. It’s something I’ve got to do. I’ll be all right.”

Jon clasped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you will. OK, let’s get this over with.”

We were standing at the bottom of the stairwell to the observatory. The attic hallway was broad and had served as a play area for the Bellamy children. The children’s bedrooms flanked either side of this floor as well, small rooms, one right after another. Dr. and Mrs. Bellamy had been blessed with ten children, nine of whom survived childhood and lived into adulthood.

There were windows in the hallway that admitted a paucity of light into the bedrooms. Then inside the bedrooms, there were floor-level windows that opened out under the eaves. Had the children found their rooms spooky, I wondered. They were spooky now. The rooms were now securely locked. Through the hallway windows one could see into the small rooms that were being used for storage.

In one room, lath was exposed. A project for a future day, I wondered. How could the museum ever raise seventy-five thousand dollars to pay off an old debt when it was hard pressed to raise funds for restoration?

At the far, south end of the attic floor, a loft area overlooked the Market Street side of the portico. Originally conceived to be used as a trunk room, the Bellamy children had appropriated the area for a doll house and a stage for plays. Now, as part of a museum, the platform held old-fashioned leather-bound trunks that would have been common to the Civil War period.

Jon led the way up the stairs to the belvedere. The staircase was very steep and narrow, the treads shallow. He stepped out onto the landing while Lonnie and I mounted the steps. There was a railing at the edge of the landing that separated the rooftop chamber from the stairwell. A second, security railing had been erected to bolster the original railing which had come loose with age and the many hands that had grasped it for support.