Murder at the Bellamy Mansion by Ellen Elizabeth Hunter

got these broken pickets poking at me every which way.”
    “ OK, don’t move. The paramedics will get you out. Someone did this on purpose,” Jon said.
    I peered closely at the stubs of the old pickets “You can see where they unscrewed the bolts that held the reinforcement railing in place. And they sawed through the old pickets. We would have seen this if we had been looking. But we were too focused on the blood and broken glass to notice.” Then I said to Lonnie, “You must have grabbed the railing when you started down the stairs.”
    “ Yeah, I did that automatically,” Lonnie replied. “Like I always do. Force of habit. Grabbed onto the railing and started down. Next thing I knew, the whole blame thing came apart and was hitting my head and shoulders. Then the big rail came down and trapped me under it. Now I’ve got these sawed off pickets poking at me and I’m afraid to move.”
    From our vantage point in the belvedere, I saw the ambulance pull into the parking lot. The siren stopped its yelping and there was blessed silence. Two volunteers came out of the gift shop, staring at the ambulance in awe and puzzlement. In seconds, racing footsteps and loud voices on the lower staircase announced the arrival of the paramedics.
    “ Up here,” I called. “We’re up here.”
    In seconds the paramedics pulled the demolished railing pieces from off Lonnie and threw them into a pile in the hallway. While one EMT took Lonnie’s blood pressure, shone a light in his eyes, and asked him questions, the other felt his limbs for breaks. In another minute, they had a cuff around Lonnie’s neck, somehow maneuvered him onto a stretcher, and were carrying him down the stairs.
    “ We’ll follow you to the medical center, Lonnie,” I called.
    “ No, you won’t. You’ve got some questions to answer,” a familiar voice called from below.
    Jon and I looked at each other. “Oh, no,” I groaned. And we went down the stairs to find Nick waiting for us.
    “ Have you become an ambulance chaser?” I asked, as I thought how grateful I was that Nick was alone and Diane Sherwood did not seem to be here to fawn over him on this occasion.
    He ignored my sarcasm. Without his habitual sunglasses I could at least see his eyes. He looked very worried, and that gave me a shock.
    “ Are you all right?” Nick asked and grasped me by the shoulders.
    I shook off his hands. “I’m fine. It’s Lonnie who fell. Jon and I,” and I stressed the name Jon, “are fine.”
    “ What were you doing up there?” Nick growled.
    “ We work here. Remember?” Jon responded.
    Nick paused for a second and stared at us. “Yeah, right.”
    Then he turned his back on us and paced down the hallway to a midpoint where he stopped. He seemed to straighten up a little taller, and braced his shoulders. Then he turned and retraced his steps back toward us. What in the world was going on with him?
     
    “ OK. When I heard the call on the scanner for an ambulance here at the mansion, I decided to check it out.”
    Now he was back in his cop’s mode.
    He continued, “I didn’t know what I was going to find here but since you and Jon are involved with this project, I wanted to see for myself what was going on. I didn’t expect to . . . well, I’m glad you and Jon are not injured. Now, tell me exactly what happened here?”
    Jon reminded Nick that we were going to restore the belvedere, and that to do so we had to assess the damage from the shooting. Then he told Nick that Lonnie grabbed the handrail and started down the steps only to have the entire rail fall apart and crash into the stairwell, throwing Lonnie off balance and causing him to fall.
    “ This was no accident,” Jon stated. “Someone sabotaged the reinforcement railing and sawed through the pickets. This was deliberate.”
    Nick circled the stack of broken railing, then kicked at it. “I can see that. I doubt there will be any useful fingerprints with so many hands touching this thing,