The Final Reveille: A Living History Museum Mystery (3 page)

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.

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.

I suggested we return to the visitor center for some refreshments and to watch the battle. By the time I finished guiding Cynthia, Portia, and Maxwell back across the street, the battle was over and both the living and dead soldiers were walking off the field with smiles on their muddy faces. I glanced at the weekend's schedule that I'd taped to the back of my notebook. Their next scuffle in the cow field would be tomorrow.

“I'm so sorry you missed the battle, Cynthia, but you can still tour the camps. Or if you'd like to catch your breath in the visitor center where it's cooler, you're welcome to.”

She patted her forehead with a tissue and shook her head. “No, I think I'm ready to go home.”

The usually upbeat Cynthia Cherry looked pale, and I felt a twinge of alarm. I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Are you feeling okay?”

She smiled. “Yes, of course. I'm sure it's just the heat.” She patted my hand, and the diamonds and sapphires on her dinner ring sparkled in the sunlight.

“
Woof
!”

I saw Hayden walking Tiffin, our brindled corgi. Both of them looked tiny weaving around and among the soldiers. When the little dog saw me, he broke into a run, pulling Hayden behind him.

“Look who's here,” Cynthia cried. Her weariness seemed to be forgotten. She tousled Hayden's sandy blond hair and bent down to scratch Tiffin under the chin. The little dog rubbed his cheek into her palm like a cat.

My father was a few steps behind my son and dog. He wore a Union Army flak jacket with jeans and running shoes. My father had the same color hair as my son, although his was more gray than sand-colored now. He was a short man with a potbelly laugh and a twinkle in his eyes that made some wonder if he was an overgrown leprechaun. He wasn't. As much as my father reveled in the comparison, he was closer to a jovial Napoleon, as his family was of French descent not Irish.

Cynthia shook hands with my father. “It's so nice to see you again, Roy.”

My father kissed her hand. “It's wonderful to see you too. You get younger by the day.”

Cynthia's crepe paper–like skin blushed. “I've been using a new face cream.”

“It's working wonders,” he praised.

Hayden reached into his shorts pocket and pulled out a musket ball. “Look what I found, Miss Cynthia.”

She leaned over to ooh and aah at Hayden's discovery.

“Ms. Cambridge,” Maxwell said from behind me into my ear.

I jumped. I hadn't realized he was that close.

“I'm sorry to startle you. I wonder if you have a moment to speak to me,” he said.

I felt uneasy. I couldn't remember a single time Maxwell had asked to speak to me privately since I'd turned him down for a date two years ago. “Sure.” I led him a few feet away.

“I'm glad we have a chance to speak while my aunt is occupied.” Maxwell touched his silver hair.

I glanced back at Cynthia and my father. He was turning on the old French charm and flirting shamelessly. I knew it was harmless. My mother had been the love of my father's life, and he hadn't looked at another woman since the day she died twelve years ago. Besides, he was at least twenty years Cynthia's junior, possibly more if I was ever able to pinpoint Cynthia's age other than somewhere upwards of eighty.

“You are?” My brow shot up.

“Yes, you see I'd like to talk to you about my aunt's health.”

“Her health? Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Aunt Cynthia is a proud woman and would not be happy that I told you this, but she's ill.”

My chest constricted. “Ill?” I glanced back at Cynthia, who was grinning down at my son. Hayden waved his arms in the air as he told her a story at his usual hundred miles a minute rate.

“She's suffering from congestive heart failure.”

I gasped. “I had no idea.” I chewed on my lower lip. That explained Cynthia's unusual tiredness during the tour. “Why didn't she tell me?” Cynthia was like an elderly and doting aunt to me. She had gone way above the call to make the transition to life on the Farm as comfortable as possible for Hayden and me. She never turned down one of my requests. Not that I ever asked for anything the Farm didn't absolutely need, but I knew other museum directors who had a much harder time getting their benefactors to loosen their purse strings.

“She didn't want to worry you.”

For good reason, I was worried. “Is there anything I can do?”

He shook his head. “Little by little, I have been taking over Aunt Cynthia's affairs to prepare for the transition.”

I didn't like the sound of this, not the least little bit. “Transition?”

“It's time for Aunt Cynthia to rest and enjoy the time she has left. Soon I will be handling the charitable contributions from the Cherry Foundation. As part of the transition, I'm reviewing all of our contributions and will decide which of those contributions we should continue”—the corners of his mouth tipped up in a little smirk—“and which we shouldn't continue. I think you will agree that my aunt has been more than generous to your little farm here.”

My muscles tensed. I willed my body to relax. I didn't want Maxwell to see that this conversation upset me, although it did. A lot. “I hope you will ask Cynthia for input to find out which organizations she would like to continue to support.”

He sniffed. “She's run the foundation for nearly forty years. It's time for someone with fresh eyes to take over. Of course, I wish it were under better circumstances. I hate the thought of my aunt being ill.”

I bit my tongue to hold back a smart remark.

“However, I believe that we need to focus our contributions on organizations that help society as a whole.”

“Barton Farm does that. We are dedicated to educating the community.”

He wrinkled his nose as a Confederate soldier walking by spat tobacco juice into a juniper bush. “I suppose that's something you will have to prove.”

My mouth felt dry. “That sounds like a threat.”

The corners of his mouth tipped up in a half smirk once again. “It's not a threat, just a statement of fact. In this economy, we can't throw away the foundation's money on organizations without lasting power.”

I felt my hackles rise and my volume jump to just short of yelling. “Lasting power? That's one thing Barton Farm certainly has. We share Ohio and American history with our visitors. Look around you. We have nearly four hundred guests here today, and this is only the first day of the reenactment.”

“That may be, but I know in general your ticket sales are down.”

I clenched my jaw because it was true. Would Cynthia share this information with Maxwell? If he was taking over the foundation, I suppose she had to. “What are you saying?” I asked.

Maxwell checked the time on the designer watch on his wrist. “Let me put it this way: I'm not going to put more money into a sinking ship, or in this case, a sinking museum.”

Portia called over to us, “Maxwell, we're ready to go. Your aunt is tired.” She supported Cynthia with her arm.

Cynthia smiled and kissed me on both cheeks before allowing Maxwell and Portia to escort her to the parking lot. Watching her shuffle away between them, I felt a horrible sense of dread. Cynthia looked small and frail. It was the first time that I ever allowed myself to see that side of her. I always thought of her as a powerhouse of a woman who did and could do anything. For the first time, I let myself wonder how the Farm would survive without her support and the support of her foundation. It wasn't a pretty image.

Five

The next morning before
the break of dawn, the reveille startled Tiffin and me awake, causing us to tumble onto the floor in a giant heap of human, corgi, and blankets.

I scrambled into a sitting position, and the corgi yelped as I sat on his paw. “Sorry, buddy.” He scowled at me. I picked up Tiffin and placed him back on the top of my bed and tucked my blankets and sheets around him. He snuggled down into his little nest and then wasn't the slightest bit concerned about all the commotion outside.

The reveille came again, and I massaged my temples. “War waits for no one,” I muttered.

I found a fresh Barton Farm polo shirt and a pair of relatively clean jeans and threw them on. When I stepped out of my bedroom, I found Dad downstairs in the living room giving himself an insulin shot in the belly. Dad was a type 1 diabetic. On the coffee table beside his blood sugar meter sat a mug of coffee and a copy of
North and South
. “Quite a ruckus you have going on out there.” He put the syringe away.

Hayden's tabby cat, Benjamin Franklin, watched Dad's movements with his one good eye. I wouldn't be surprised if Frankie didn't plot to steal one of my father's syringes. The wily feline was notorious for stealing small pieces of property and burying them in his litter box. My watch was his latest victim. I could not bring myself to wear it again.

“That's one way to describe it,” I said with a yawn. The clock in the kitchen read five thirty. I groaned. I had a long day ahead. Another hour of sleep would have been appreciated. The conversation I had with Maxwell the day before came rushing back to me, and I felt sick to my stomach.

“Coffee?” Dad asked.

My tummy rolled.

“How does your son sleep through that noise?” Dad asked.

“It's a trait he inherited from his father. Eddie can sleep through a foghorn going off in his ear.”

Dad frowned. He was not a fan of my ex-husband.

The bugle went off again, and I was actually relieved to hear it. I didn't want to get into another argument with Dad about my son's father.

I grabbed my notebook from the coffee table and slipped it into the back pocket of my jeans. “I'm going to do a quick walk around.”

Tiffin ran to the door and shook his tailless rump at me.

I laughed. “You can come too.” I lifted his leash off of the peg by the door but didn't attach it to his collar.

It was before dawn, and the sky was just beginning to lighten over the treetops to the east. A white-tailed deer leaped out of the woods and ran behind my cottage. I wondered if she was disturbed by the early-morning wakeup call too.

Despite the lack of light, I could hear the rustle of the soldiers and their families starting their day. I walked through the maple tree grove that hid my cottage from the view of the rest of the Farm.

Children played quietly in their night dresses, and women started campfires. Tiffin lifted his long nose in the air as the first whiff of bacon floated our way. Next to a gas lantern, Abraham Lincoln trimmed the edges of his beard with a straight razor in front of a round mirror tacked to a tree trunk.

A few feet away, our second famous reenactor, Walt Whitman, scratched lines into a leather-bound diary with the stub of a pencil. His long white beard dipped onto the paper as he wrote.

Tiffin ran ahead of me, looking back every few leaps to make sure I continued to follow him. He took the responsibility of herding, even if it was just herding me, seriously.

As much as I loved the reenactors being there to draw a crowd to my small living history museum, I was happy to cross the street and stroll around the sleepy deserted village. My interpreters wouldn't report to work for another three hours. As the Bartons' three-story brick residence came into view, I could imagine what it must have been like nearly two hundred years ago when a growing family of eight lived in the home. In my mind's eye, I saw the boys in the family frightening their sisters with frogs and crickets hidden in their pockets. I imagined their mother admonishing them and their father trying to hide his smile behind his newspaper.

To me, those moments—the day-to-day lives of people who called the valley home—were what Barton Farm was really about. The battles and politicians were important, of course. They changed history and lives with their outcomes and laws. Those touched me as a historian, but they didn't touch me as person in the same way the small details of daily nineteenth-century life did.

The small details and the children who should know about them were the reasons I had to do everything within my power to keep Barton Farm open, even if it required me to speak to Cynthia directly about the Farm, the foundation, and her illness. Cynthia was kind, but she was a proud woman and would not be happy that I knew of her failing health.

The first building on the village side of Maple Grove Lane was the barn. I waved to Jason as he guided one of the cows into the pasture with a rough rope. The interpreters called Jason “Barn Boy” since he was seldom seen outside of the barn. He was a quiet kid who studied animal husbandry at a technical college in a neighboring county. What he lacked in social skills, he made up for in his connection with the Farm's animals. They all adored him. Even my pampered corgi Tiffin preferred Jason to me.

The shy teenager simply nodded to me in return.

Tiffin ran toward the barn to greet his friend, and Jason knelt down and hugged the dog.

I smiled and headed toward Barton House. Outside the house sat a spinning wheel that one of the interpreters had forgotten to put away the night before. Luckily, it had not rained or the wheel could have been damaged. I would have to remind the staff to lock all the artifacts inside their assigned buildings before they left each night. I made a note in my notebook before returning it to my pocket.

The sky was lighter now, and in the dim light, I could make out the tent covering the brick pit. To my surprise, I saw what looked like the pit's tarp sitting in front of Benji's worktable. That was unusual. Benji never left the pit uncovered at night. If she did, the mud would dry out, and it would take her half the morning to get it into brickmaking condition again.

I sighed and made another note. We were having an unseasonably hot June, and I was sure the exposed mud was dried solid. Benji would have to saturate the pit before the Farm opened and stomp it for a good twenty minutes if she had any hope of showing our guests how to make bricks today.

As I drew closer to the pit, I saw movement. I wondered if it was possible one of our barn cats had cornered a defenseless chipmunk or mouse in the mud. But I saw the form was much larger than a chipmunk or a cat …

A blond man squatted inside the pit.

“Excuse me, sir, what are you doing? You shouldn't be over here. The village doesn't open until ten.”

The man stood, and when he did I saw another person in the pit. That person wasn't moving. Fear clenched inside of my chest, and I took a step back.

I focused on the second man's feet. They were the size of bread loaves and bright red. The inflated toes were bordering on grotesque, and I had to look away.

The first man, the live one, stared at me. “This isn't what it looks like.”

What does it look like?
my brain asked. It looked like a dead body. My mouth felt dry.

“I saw him down here,” he said, “and I hopped in to see if I could help, but he was already gone.”

“What happened?” I asked, fully aware that my voice was two octaves higher than normal.

“Bee stings, I think. I got stung a few times myself.”

“Bees?” A shiver traveled up my spine. Against my better judgment, I stepped closer to the pit and peered at the man's face. I saw my worst fear. “He was allergic.”

“You knew him?”

“Yes, I knew him. It's Maxwell Cherry.” Shaking, I reached into my pocket for my phone and called 911.