The Final Reveille: A Living History Museum Mystery Read online

  Cynthia’s eyes sparkled. “Yes, and it’s the perfect location for your wedding. Do you mind visiting the village first, Kelsey?”

  “Of course not,” I said hesitantly. My Mama Spidey sense was piqued. Whenever Hayden insisted he wanted to do something so adamantly, I knew he was hiding something from me. Usually it was a frog in the bathtub. I smiled, hoping to put Portia at ease. “Actually, this is a great time to visit the Farm since most of our guests are watching the reenactment. It won’t be nearly as crowded as it will be after the battle.”

  Portia gave me a half smile in thanks.

  I guided the trio down the pebbled path that led to Barton’s mock village. The path stopped at Maple Grove Lane, which divided the Farm’s property in half. On the west side of the road was the visitor center, my cottage, and a handful of outbuildings. It also held the grazing pasture for our five cows and two oxen, which was currently the location of the battle. During the reenactment, the animals were staying in the south pasture, as far away from the reenactment’s noise and uproar as possible without leaving Barton property.

  The east side of the road held the Barton family home (a three-story brick colonial), the main barn, and the village. The village was a quarter-mile circle of six buildings. Only Barton House was original to the property. The rest were relocated to the farm piece by piece from other parts of Ohio with the intention to preserve them. After transport, they were reassembled on the property as enormous three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles. Cynthia’s Cherry Foundation fronted the money for the moves and reassembly of all of those buildings, which included the church, schoolhouse, two homes, a carpenter’s workshop, and a general store.

  The largest of those building was the whitewashed, single-steepled church. It was Cynthia’s pride and joy. As we approached, the church looked like it was ready for its beauty shot. Its pointed steeple stood in a backdrop of the bright blue summer sky. Beyond the church were the homes of our villagers, seasonal workers who played roles of men and women living in northeastern Ohio in the mid-nineteenth century. In honor of the reenactment, they were spending the entirety of June living in the specific year of 1863.

  Laura Fellow, a high school history teacher and my partner in crime since we met in first grade, sat outside of the church under a massive chestnut tree, carding wool. She wore a blue shirtwaist and skirt that went all the way to the ground. A pale cameo closed the collar at her throat, and she’d parted her strawberry-blond hair down the middle and pinned it into a bun on the back of her head. Despite the near-ninety-degree heat and stifling humidity, she looked a cool as can be as she spoke with a young teenager in droopy cargo shorts and a band T-shirt two sizes too big for his thin frame. The only indication that she might be warm was the rosy color on her plump cheeks.

  As we approached, I heard a snippet of Laura’s conversation with the young visitor. “A cell phone you say. I’ve never heard of such a thing. What does this cell phone contraption do?”

  The teen held a smartphone in his hand and waved it back and forth in front of her face. “It makes calls? You make calls, don’t you?” the boy said with a malicious twinkle in his eye.

  I suppressed a smile. He didn’t know who he was messing with. In addition to being my best friend, Laura was one of my best first-person interpreters. She knew her nineteenth-century American history backwards and forwards and never broke character in front of a guest.

  Laura smiled sweetly and her green eyes sparkled. “Oh my yes, I make calls. Every time I call on a friend I bring them a pie. I’m well known for my pie crust. I know I should be more modest, but it’s the best crust in the village.”

  The boy yanked at his shorts, which were threatening to fall off. “How can you take a pie on a call?”

  Laura cocked her head, and as the sunlight broke thought the chestnut’s thick foliage it fell on her red-gold hair, giving her a deceptively angelic appearance. “By calls you do mean going to visit a friend or neighbor at his or her home, do you not? Because that is what I mean when I say calls.”

  The boy scowled. “This is lame.” He stalked away.

  Laura rose when we approached. “Good afternoon. Welcome to Barton Farm.”

  Cynthia tapped the end of her cane into the grass. “Laura, I enjoyed seeing you put that whippersnapper in his place.”

  Laura simply smiled. “It’s kind of you to say. It is nice to see you, Cynthia.” Laura nodded at Maxwell, but didn’t pay him the same compliment.

  “Portia, this is Laura Fellow, one of our twelve first-person interpreters in the village.”

  “Interpreters?” Portia looked just as confused as the teen had been.

  “We’re kind of like the reenactors, except we don’t have guns,” Laura said.

  “The first-person interpreters dress up in period clothing and act out the part of someone living in this part of Ohio in the mid-nineteenth century. That boy who was just here was trying to make her drop character.” I felt the sunrays beat down on my dark hair, and I lifted my heavy braid off of my neck and stepped into the shade. “We also have third-person interpreters. Those are people who work here and wear Barton Farm polo shirts like mine. Many of them are crafters who make the crafts and goods we sell in the gift shop using only nineteenth-century technology.”

  “That means no power tools,” Cynthia said. “Isn’t it fabulous? Everything is made by hand.”

  Portia had a strange expression on her heart-shaped face, but before she could reply, Maxwell screamed.

  Three

  “What? What is it?” I demanded.

  He hopped from foot to foot. “Bee!” Maxwell screeched.

  “Where? Where?” Portia shrieked.

  Ashland covered her face like she couldn’t watch the scene unfolding before her.

  “Are you stung?” Cynthia asked. Her voice was high-pitched.

  Maxwell flapped his hands back and forth.

  “Maxwell!” Cynthia cried. “Calm down! All of your excitement will only attract the bee.”

  Maxwell froze in place, arms held straight out in front of him in a universal gesture to stop. I doubted the bee could read hand gestures.

  “Are you stung?” Cynthia asked again.

  He shook his head and dropped his arms.

  Laura choked back a laugh. I shot her a look.

  Cynthia started coughing uncontrollably and tapped her cane into the grass. Portia patted her back.

  Laura pulled an unopened water bottle from her basket. “Here.”

  Cynthia took a long swallow. She cleared her throat. “Thank you. Maxwell’s allergic to bees. We just learned this a few months ago when he was stung on my estate. He gave us quite a scare, and we rushed him to the hospital.”

  “You were never stung as a child?” I asked in disbelief. Hayden was only five and had been stung on at least three occasions.

  Maxwell scowled at me. “No.”

  Cynthia seemed to have recovered from her coughing fit. “Maxwell wasn’t one for playing outdoors as a boy.”

  “It’s a serious allergy, and I’m glad to know about it,” I said. “We’ll skip the garden path to be sure. The gardens are teeming with bees and other insects this time of year. Maybe we should avoid the Barton House too. Our gardener, Shepley, keeps his beehives back there.”

  “Why would you keep beehives? Don’t you care about the visitors that you are putting in danger?”

  I smoothed a stray hair back into my French braid. “Yes, we care about the visitors, and the hives are twenty yards behind the main house. There is signage to warn any guest who might have an allergy. At the same time, we want to be historically accurate. The Barton family kept bees the entire time they lived on the property. The honey they made was sought after, and they even shipped it back to Connecticut, where they were from originally, to sell in the markets there.”

  Maxwell glowered. “History won�
�t matter if someone dies.”

  “Let’s go inside the church,” Cynthia said. “Kelsey, do you mind if I guide them through the church? It’s my favorite building.” Some of the twinkle was back in her eyes. “I’m going to do my best to convince them this is the perfect place for the wedding.”

  “No, of course I don’t mind,” I said. “I’ll wait outside.”

  “When’s the wedding?” Laura asked.

  “As soon as possible,” Maxwell said. Portia nodded in agreement.

  After they went inside the building, I notice Ashland hovering a few feet away. “Ashland, why don’t you go check on the reenactment?”

  She blinked. “Yes. Right away. I’m sorry.” She hurried down the path back to Maple Grove Lane.

  Laura watched her go. “What’s she sorry for? I swear, Kelsey, that girl is not cut out for this job, or any job really.”

  “She’s still learning,” I said defensively.

  Laura rolled her eyes and hid the water bottle back inside her basket. It would not do if any of the Farm visitors saw her drinking from a plastic bottle. “Maxwell and Portia are certainly an odd couple. You know a pretty young woman like that would only marry him for Cynthia’s money.”

  I sighed. “Laura, that’s not nice.”

  She shrugged. “It’s true though. When Cynthia goes, Maxwell’s going to be the richest man in the county, maybe in the northeast corner of the state. He’s probably disappointed she’s held on this long.”

  “Laura!”

  She changed the subject. “That bee probably came from the brick pit, though, not Shepley’s hives. They’re burrowing in there again to escape the heat. Benji was stung in the foot earlier this morning.”

  Benji, one of our third-person interpreters, specialized in making bricks by hand. I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked down the pebbled path to the brickmaking area. I spotted Benji holding a hand-formed loaf of mud over her head. She threw the loaf into the nine-by-thirteen wooden brick mold. The family watching clapped.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. I had some antihistamine in my first-aid kit and gave it to her. Benji’s a trooper. You should see her toe, though. It swelled up to the size of a lemon.”

  “Did someone file an incident report?” I asked.

  In the early summer, a New Hartford city employee had reprimanded the Farm for not reporting injuries and incidents and slapped us with a hefty fine, which Cynthia ended up paying. I never wanted to be in that position again and had drilled into the staff that even the smallest accident needed to be filed in an incident report. Now the township complained I reported too much.

  “I radioed Ashland and she came over and filed one. I knew you would be too busy with the North and South duking it out.”

  I relaxed. “You’re right. Before Cynthia arrived I was in the middle of breaking up a fight over a canteen.”

  Laura grinned. “Wars have started over less.”

  The teenaged boy who had been trying to make Laura crack jumped out of a rhododendron bush. “Ah-ha! I heard you say first-aid kit and radio.”

  “My dear,” Laura said with all the confidence in the world. “The first-aid kit is nothing new, and the radio was invented in 1860.” The lie slipped off Laura’s tongue as if she was simply pointing out the grass was green.

  I inwardly groaned and prayed the teen wouldn’t Google radio only to find that it wasn’t invented in 1860 as Laura claimed but several decades later.

  “Oh,” he said, deflated. Confusion crossed his face.

  After the boy left, Laura turned to me. “Don’t give me that look.”

  “What look?” I asked.

  “That holy anachronism look. So what if I told him the wrong date? If he goes home to look it up to prove me wrong then he’ll never forget when the radio was invented. In that case, we taught him a history lesson, right?”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Is this how you teach?”

  “Absolutely,” she said with a grin. “Remember, my friend, people will believe anything if you say it in just the right tone.”

  I grimaced. “Regardless, I hope that misinformation doesn’t come back to haunt us.”

  Laura laughed. “Kelsey, you worry too much.”

  I pulled my shirt away from my body, hoping a nonexistent breeze would cool me. I didn’t know how Laura could stand the dress she wore, not to mention the corset and petticoats underneath. “Someone in every operation needs to be the worrier. It might as well be me.” I noticed that the family in front of Benji’s station had moved on. “Can you wait here in case Cynthia and Maxwell come out? I want to check on Benji.”

  She nodded. “No problem.”

  “Hi, Kelsey,” the young brickmaker greeted me. Benji had her black braids pulled away from her face with a wide headband. Sweat glistened on her forehead as she scraped the excess mud off her worktable. She’d worked for Barton Farm as a crafter every summer since she was a junior in high school. As a Farm veteran, she had her choice of the crafts, which included candle dipping, basketweaving, and pottery, but every year she returned to the brick pit even though it was the hottest, filthiest, and most labor-intensive demonstration of them all.

  I picked up her display brick, which was already fired in the Farm’s kiln. The bricks Benji made that day would also be fired if they passed her inspection. The weight and consistency of the homemade brick felt so different than manufactured ones. Unlike the mass-produced materials, no two homemade bricks were identical. Benji also had a machine-made brick on her table to allow guests to see and feel the difference between them.

  “Hi, Benji. Laura said you were stung in the toe this morning. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” She walked around her waist-high table and showed me her toe. On her right foot she wore a sock and tennis shoe. On her left foot, she wore a purple flip-flop. The second toe on her left foot was the size of a large strawberry. At least it wasn’t as big as a lemon as Laura had described it. “The bees are back in the pit,” Benji said. “It’s my fault. I should have checked before jumping in. I just wanted to get in early and get the mud ready since I knew so many guests would be here for the reenactment.”

  As she spoke, a bee dive bombed the pit behind her, a five-by-five hole in the earth framed on all four sides by wooden boards. The bee burrowed into one of the tiny holes he or one of his friends had made there.

  Another bee leaving its mud homestead buzzed my ear. I waved it away. “We’ll take care of this, Benji.”

  She wiped her brow with a pink bandana. “I guess being stung is part of the job, and I can take it. I’m a little worried about the visitors, though. What if one of them is stung? We don’t know who might be allergic.”

  Her comment made me think of Maxwell. “No, we don’t.” I stepped out of the way as another batch of tourists strolled up to her station.

  Four

  I returned to the church yard just as Cynthia, Portia, and Maxwell reemerged from the building. Cynthia leaned heavily on her nephew, who helped her down the cement steps.

  To my surprise, Sgt. Wesley Mayes, alleged canteen-stealer, stomped up the pebbled path. I sighed. I had hoped the battle of the canteen had ended. But instead of walking up to me to complain, he headed straight for Portia with a scowl on his face.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Portia looked stricken. “Wesley, it’s nice to see you. I didn’t know you’d be here.”

  “Like hell you didn’t. You know my regiment’s schedule just as well as I do.”

  Portia gripped her ponytail for dear life.

  Laura whispered into my ear. “Uh-oh.”

  I shot her a look. Laura winked as she placed a straw sunhat on her head and tied the blue ribbon underneath her chin. She was a dead ringer for Little Bo Peep—if Little Bo traded in her sheep for a heavy dose of sarcasm.
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  Maxwell scrunched up his face. “Portia, who is this man?” Maxwell looked him up and down. “Besides someone playing dress up.”

  Portia’s eyes darted this way and that. “Maxwell, this is my … umm …”

  “Can’t you even say it?” Wesley wanted to know.

  Portia shot Wesley a pleading look to no avail. Even angry, Wesley was handsome. It struck me seeing Wesley and Portia so close together what a more attractive couple they made than Portia and Maxwell did. I wondered what the story was behind their relationship but quickly decided I didn’t want to know.

  Cynthia stepped forward. I noted that she leaned heavily on her cane for support. It was the first time I’d ever seen her do that, and I felt a twinge of worry. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Cynthia Cherry,” she said. “This is my nephew, Maxwell Cherry. Kelsey’s the Farm director, and this is one of our interpreters, Laura Fellow.”

  Laura curtsied, and I made a “cut it out” gesture.

  “Who might you be?” Cynthia asked.

  Wesley glared at Portia. “Why don’t you tell them who I am?”

  “Wesley’s a friend.” She blushed and looked the sergeant straight in the eye. “And Maxwell is my fiancé.”

  “Your fiancé?” Wesley looked like Portia hit him in the stomach with one of Benji’s bricks. “Did he wave money from the Cherry Foundation at you?”

  Portia opened and closed her mouth, but no words came out.

  He scowled. “Now I know why I wasn’t good enough for you, Portia. You had a millionaire waiting in the wings.” Tears welled in the corners of his eyes as he did a precise military turn and headed back to the battle.

  “Do you feel like you just witnessed a bad remake of Gone with the Wind?” Laura whispered.

  Maxwell glared at Portia.

  “Maxwell, I’m so sorry, I can explain,” Portia said.

  He was tight-lipped. “We will discuss this later.”

  Cynthia looked confused. “Portia, who was that young man?”

  Portia licked her lips, and she looked at Maxwell, all the while tugging at her hair.