The Battle of Bayport Read online

  I rubbed my ears. They were still ringing a little even after using the earplugs.

  “Told you,” I said with a grin. “Keep listening to me and we might be able to stop your brain from atrophying after all.”

  “I think I liked you better when you couldn’t hear,” he quipped, stuffing the earplugs back in my ears as we both laughed.

  “Hey, guys,” Jen Griffin called out from behind us, and I could have sworn I saw Joe blush. That was a new one. He was usually the smooth one when it came to talking to girls.

  “Oh, hey, Jen,” Joe said, turning around as she and her friend Daphne walked up with their long Colonial-style dresses swishing over their ankles.

  Yup, that was a blush. Jen must have really gotten to him, but she had a way of doing that, what with her combination of girl-next-door prettiness and the kind of unassuming sweetness that made everyone she talked to feel like they were special. Her friend Daphne was pretty cute too, not that she paid much attention to me. Dating was one subject where Joe always scored a lot higher than I did. Apparently, girls don’t really appreciate detailed discourses on the origins of forensic anthropology or the ramifications of Southern trade route disruptions prior to the Second Continental Congress. Oh well.

  “Hey, Frank,” Jen said, being nice and making a point to include me. Daphne, on the other hand, just raised an indifferent eyebrow and busied herself examining her freshly painted fingernails.

  “Hey, Jen, Daphne. So what did you guys think of the reenactment?” I asked, trying to pick up Joe’s uncharacteristic conversational slack.

  “It was really cool. It felt like we were watching the real thing,” Jen said, looking at Joe.

  “Hey, that’s what we were just saying, right, Joe?” I prodded my brother.

  “Um, yeah,” he mumbled. Oh man, he had it bad.

  “We’ve got to get over to the Resolve,” Jen said. “Daphne and I are playing soldiers’ wives greeting the ship.”

  Daphne’s mom was on the city council, and she had been pretty involved helping out with the reenactment.

  “Okay, cool,” I said. “We’ll see you guys over there.”

  “Maybe we can all go out to the diner after,” Jen suggested, looking at Joe in a way that made it clear the invitation was meant mostly for him.

  I subtly elbowed Joe, who still hadn’t untied his tongue. “Um, yeah, that would be really great,” he said, rather lamely in my opinion, but at least it was better than a blank stare. Jen smiled and started to leave before turning back to Joe.

  “I really like your hat,” she said playfully. “I think it looks cute on you.”

  Joe grinned. The compliment seemed to miraculously revive his confidence.

  “And you look like the loveliest girl in all the king’s colonies,” he replied in what I think he meant to sound like a James Bond accent.

  Sure, it was corny and the accent was terrible, but it got a big giggle out of Jen. It was good to see Joe regain his form.

  “Till we meet again, milady,” he said, then removed the silly red tricorn hat and swept it forward, bowing dramatically.

  Jen curtsied in her Colonial dress, her eyes crinkling with a smile, and walked off laughing with Daphne, who, of course, didn’t bother to say good-bye. That was okay. I knew Joe really liked Jen, so I didn’t mind taking one for the team and being his wingman on a dubious double date with Daphne that night. That didn’t mean I couldn’t give him a hard time now, though.

  “Your British accent is almost as bad as the Don’s,” I said, which reminded me, “What’s up with your general anyway? The Don really seems to be getting into the reenactment.”

  Now that the smoke had cleared, all the “wounded” soldiers had gotten up, brushed themselves off, and joined the celebration. All of them except Don Sterling. The Don hadn’t budged. The battle was over and he was still playing dead on the other side of the field. He seemed to be taking the whole thing very seriously.

  “Yeah, he still hasn’t broken character. That’s some impressive method acting.” Joe laughed.

  “For the Don, at least,” I added.

  “He’s a regular Don-iel Day-Lewis,” Joe cracked, and I groaned. Some of my brother’s jokes are better than others.

  “Wow, he really went all out, he even used squibs,” Joe observed, referring to the exploding blood packs they use in movies to simulate gunshot wounds. Sure enough, a dark circle had appeared over his chest.

  “Mr. Lakin isn’t going to be thrilled about him ruining one of the museum’s best uniforms,” I said, and as if on cue, Mr. Lakin walked up.

  “Greetings, boys. I’d say our little reenactment was quite a success,” he proclaimed.

  “That was some fancy riding, Mr. Lakin,” Joe said, barely containing a sly smile. Joe was a pro at tweaking teachers without them knowing it, but Mr. Lakin was onto him. It’s a good thing the reenactment had General Lakin in a good mood.

  “Ha!” he laughed. “I nearly broke my neck. We would have had to add a new chapter to the history book about the bumbling American general who fell off his horse mid-battle. I think I’m going to be sore for a week.”

  Mr. Lakin rubbed his backside, getting a good laugh out of Joe and me. Victory had our hardest teacher in a light mood.

  “Speaking of rewriting history,” he said, and turned his attention to Don Sterling, who was still lying on his side, apparently reveling in his unscripted role as a fallen British general.

  “Get up and stop showing off, Don,” Mr. Lakin called out. “We’ve got to get over to the ship for the dedication.”

  Mr. Lakin made his way over to Don Sterling. “It’s bad enough we have to suffer through your performances onstage. Now come on, we’re going to be late for our own party. The whole world doesn’t stop for you, you know.”

  Mr. Lakin gave the Don’s boot a kick. The Don didn’t move.

  Joe and I exchanged a glance. Something was definitely not right. Joe knelt down and put his fingers on Don Sterling’s neck like we’d been taught in our first aid course.

  “I don’t think he’s acting,” Joe said after a moment. “It’s hard to fake not having a pulse.”

  THE DEAD DON

  4

  JOE

  AND JUST LIKE THAT, THE make-believe battlefield turned into a real crime scene.

  “Oh my God, he had a heart attack,” someone yelled, and people started to panic.

  Mr. Lakin, used to managing disorderly assemblies as a high school teacher, quickly started trying to calm down the onlookers. Another one of the redcoats was an off-duty paramedic, but it was already too late. The Don was gone.

  Thankfully, most of the reenactors and the crowd had already headed over to the Resolve for the ship’s rededication, so the scene was less chaotic than it could have been.

  Frank and I have a kind of silent shorthand, and we can usually read each other’s thoughts pretty well, which comes in handy at times like this. We looked at each other, and I could tell we were thinking the same thing. A heart attack during the reenactment may have seemed like a logical conclusion. With all the noise and excitement of the reenacted battle, it followed that his heart could have stopped and no one would have noticed until it was too late. Or . . . I looked down at the red blotch on Sterling’s shirt above his heart where his coat had fallen open, the one I had first assumed came from a stuntman’s trick blood pack. Frank and I exchanged another look.

  “It’s not a squib,” he said in a hushed voice.

  “It’s a bullet wound,” I finished the thought.

  “Or a musket ball wound,” Frank amended.

  Frank pulled out a pen and used it to gently lift the lapel of the Don’s red coat so as not to contaminate any evidence. (Leave it to Frank to always carry a pen even while dressed as an eighteenth-century soldier.) Sure enough, there was a hole the size of a .75 caliber musket ball in the fabric above the Don’s heart. Don Sterling’s unscripted collapse from enemy fire hadn’t been an act, and it hadn’t been a heart
attack or any other natural cause. Someone had really shot the Don through the heart!

  The shock of it ricocheted around inside my brain, jolting me straight into detective mode. Where had the shot come from? It definitely seemed like a musket ball had caused the entry wound and not a smaller modern bullet. That meant the shooter was probably one of the reenactors. It was too early to know anything for sure, but it looked like someone had used the reenactment to disguise Don Sterling’s murder. It was hard to imagine anyone could be that devious, but . . .

  Frank and I whispered to each other so we wouldn’t alarm the crowd.

  “Someone shot him right in public during the battle without anyone even knowing,” I said in amazement.

  “If it was one of the soldiers, they wouldn’t have even needed a disguise.” Frank sounded just as stunned by the audacity of it as I was.

  “You’re right. With so many muskets going off at the same time, no one would have been able to tell that one of them wasn’t firing blanks,” I concurred.

  Frank nodded gravely. “Not until it was already too late.”

  “There must have been more than a hundred shots fired. It’s going to be a nightmare to even begin trying to figure out which gun fired the real one,” I said, unable to hide my frustration.

  Frank wrinkled his forehead as he considered the dilemma. “The Don was shot in the chest, so it had to have been someone shooting at him from the American side, right?”

  That narrowed down the list. Not that it did us much good. We were still left with a whole regiment full of suspects!

  “But who? It could have been any of them,” I said.

  “It’s pretty brilliant, really,” Frank said begrudgingly as he began to break down the killer’s possible thought process. “Someone could have hidden in plain sight along with all the other Colonial soldiers and secretly loaded their gun with live ammunition. The killer would have guessed that when the Don collapsed, everyone would think it was just part of the reenactment.”

  “They guessed right. He even fooled us,” I admitted. We’d been duped along with the rest of the town. It felt like being on the receiving end of a cruel prank. I was mad. Frank was too.

  “It’s murder by reenactment, “ he said with disgust.

  Murder by reenactment. The killer must have thought he was pretty smart. With so many muskets going off, there was no way to tell which reenactor had fired the live round. Someone had shot one of the town’s most prominent residents with the entire town watching and walked away without anybody knowing. It was pretty much the perfect crime.

  Or it would be if they got away with it. Frank and I had learned a long time ago not to underestimate your adversary in our line of business, but I had to admit, I was particularly impressed with our perp so far, whoever he was.

  As soon as I realized I’d already thought of the killer as “our perp,” I knew Frank and I had just found our next case. I looked at Frank. He knew it too. Unfortunately, so did Chief Olaf.

  “Don’t even think about it, Hardys,” his voice boomed.

  As Bayport’s top cop, Chief Olaf was well acquainted with our extracurricular detective work, and I think he saw us as a fairly routine thorn in his ample side. We’ve discovered that the police usually like to think they’re the ones doing their own jobs. Mostly, I think the chief is jealous that we’ve caught more criminals in Bayport than he has.

  “Did either of you see who shot him?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  “No, Chief,” I replied. “It could have been anyone in a militia uniform who fired a gun.”

  “Well then, as much as I might like to see the Hardy boys locked up and out of my hair, neither of you are suspects, seeing as you’re wearing red”—Chief Olaf pointed to my British infantry coat and then to Frank—“and Mr. Sterling obviously wasn’t killed by a cannon. That means you are free to go. And by free to go, I mean please leave immediately and get away from my crime scene as fast as your nosy feet will carry you.”

  “But—” Frank tried to object but didn’t get far.

  “That’s a direct order, Hardys!” Sometimes even the chief gets a little confused and treats us more like disobedient deputies than civilians. He likes to give us a hard time, but mostly he’s all hot air. He’s always treated us fairly, and I figure he even secretly likes us, at least when we aren’t annoying him too much. He just sighed when he saw us lingering around with the crowd that had formed a little farther away from poor Don Sterling’s body.

  He tried to ignore Frank and me while he shouted out orders to his officers. “Get on down to the ship and bring back everyone in a reenactor uniform, and keep everyone else down there on the dock as potential witnesses. Somebody must have seen something.”

  Mr. Lakin looked stricken. “Now hold on a second, Chief. Can’t all that wait? We’ve got practically the whole town and guests from as far away as London down there, waiting for us to open the museum. This is a monumental event in Bayport history!”

  “So is murder,” Chief Olaf replied grimly. “I appreciate how much the museum means to you, Rollie, but the festivities will have to wait. I know you and Don weren’t exactly the best of friends, but have some respect for the man. A person has been killed. A person, I might add, just about everyone in town has seen you arguing with lately.”

  “Are you implying that I’m a suspect?” Mr. Lakin sounded genuinely shocked. “That’s outrageous, Chief.”

  Now this was getting interesting. Of course Mr. Lakin would have to be a suspect, but I don’t think Frank and I really wanted to face the fact that one of our favorite teachers might really be capable of murder.

  “Now, I don’t mean to single you out, Rollie, I’m just pointing out the obvious,” the chief told him. “So far as I’m concerned, everyone in a Colonial costume who fired a gun is a suspect. I have to look at every possibility, and a few hundred people just saw you galloping at Don, shooting off your pistol like you were Buffalo Bill.”

  “Excuse me, Chief,” Frank interrupted. “Buffalo Bill Cody wasn’t born until the mid-1800s, so he couldn’t have been present at a Revolutionary War battle. Paul Revere would be a more fitting reference, since he’s famous for riding a horse to let everyone know the British were coming, although I don’t recall him also being known as a gunman.”

  Sometimes Frank can’t help himself when it comes to correcting historical discrepancies. Mr. Lakin nodded proudly.

  “Well spoken, Frank,” our teacher said, taking a break from his indignation at being called a murder suspect to praise his star pupil. I don’t think Chief Olaf held Frank’s devotion to historical accuracy in quite the same esteem. If eyes could shoot laser beams, his would have. He took a deep breath and had to collect himself to keep from yelling.

  “Joe, please get your brother out of here before I arrest him for provoking an officer.” Chief Olaf took another deep breath and turned to Frank. “You’re volunteering at the museum, right? Well, make yourselves useful and get down there to help them close up shop. Everything on that ship is potential evidence, and I don’t want a bunch of people wandering around mucking it up.”

  “Yes, sir!” we both said in unison, seeing our chance to escape the chief’s wrath and carry on our investigation without directly antagonizing him. He sighed again. I think he realized his mistake.

  “And no snooping!” he yelled after us as we left the park.

  Behind us, we could hear Mr. Lakin protesting to the chief. Our history teacher seemed a lot more concerned with the delay to the museum’s opening than Don Sterling’s murder.

  BRITISH INVASION

  5

  FRANK

  WE’D BARELY MADE IT OUT of the park when we were intercepted by a tall, slim man in a pin-striped suit hurrying up the path.

  “Excuse me, but judging by your uniforms, I’m guessing you gents know the lay of the land around here,” he said in a crisp British accent, a real one. “Do you happen to know where I might find Mr. Sterling?”


  That was an odd question. Word about the murder definitely would have been all over the dock by now. Either he somehow hadn’t heard or he was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Don’s corpse.

  “Mr. Sterling is still up at the park,” Joe said, trying to puzzle out what the odd stranger with the accent wanted. With the Don dead, any new information we could gather might help us figure out who wanted him that way and why.

  “Splendid. Can you point me in the right direction?” The man glanced down at a gold watch that probably cost more than my dad’s car. “My flight from Heathrow was delayed. I’ve just now arrived, and I had hoped to speak with him as soon as possible.”

  “The park is up there”—Joe pointed back the way we’d come—“but I don’t think Mr. Sterling is going to be doing much speaking.”

  “Now see here, young man,” he snapped, “I can assure you Mr. Sterling will, in fact, be very eager to hear what I have to say.”

  “Um, what my brother means to say is that Mr. Sterling won’t be speaking to anyone. He, uh, died unexpectedly during the reenactment.” I figured it was up to the police to decide what they wanted to tell the public about the murder, and I didn’t want to divulge too much anyway until we knew what our friend from England wanted with the Don.

  “Dead, you say? What a shame. I’d very much hoped to speak with him, and it’s a rather long way to travel to find the man you’re supposed to meet with is deceased.”

  The man didn’t seem all that concerned with the circumstances of the Don’s death, just the inconvenience it caused him. This was getting to be a trend.

  “Do you know, by chance, who else I might be able to speak with about some of the, uh, items recovered during the ship’s restoration?” he asked, drawing his eyebrows into a kind of question mark.

  “Mr. Lakin is running the museum, but I don’t think there’s going to be much museum business going on, not today at least,” I said, thinking about how upset Mr. Lakin had been when Chief Olaf put the kibosh on the opening.