The Battle of Bayport (3 page)

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.

W
E'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.

“If you see this Mr. Lakin, please inform him that I'd like to seek an audience with him posthaste.” He handed me a gold-embossed business card with the name
DIRK BISHOP
and the words
ANTIQUES & ANTIQUITIES
.

“Any specific message you'd like us to relay when we see him?” Joe went fishing for more information, but Dirk Bishop didn't take the bait.

Bishop looked down at Joe's private's uniform dismissively. “No. I'd say these matters are above your rank.”

He turned abruptly and started walking up the path to the park. After a few steps, he stopped to look back over his shoulder at the USS
Resolve
docked in the harbor below.

“Rather a shame, indeed. I had so hoped to speak with Mr. Sterling,” he mumbled absently to himself before continuing on his way.

“Well, I guess that's our Londoner,” Joe said after he was gone and we'd started walking back down the hill to the harbor.

“Strange guy,” I observed.

“Rude dude too,” Joe added.

“Him showing up from England right after the Don's
death could be a coincidence or it could be connected somehow. We'll have to keep an eye on him, see if we can find out what he wants to talk about with Mr. Lakin,” I told Joe.

“Speaking of Mr. Lakin . . . ,” Joe began.

“I know,” I said wearily. “He has to be a suspect, but I just can't believe Mr. Lakin would do it.”

I knew where Joe was going with this, and I didn't like thinking about one of my favorite teachers maybe also being a murderer. I hoped we could prove otherwise, but I wasn't going to let my feelings compromise our investigation either way. I was going to follow the evidence wherever it led, even if it led back to Mr. Lakin.

“I don't like it either, but we have to consider the possibility,” Joe told me. “Chief Olaf is right; their beef gave him a motive, and everyone saw him charge at the Don, firing his pistol right about the same time the Don was shot for real. We can't eliminate him as a suspect.”

We were quiet for a minute, letting the information sink in while we made our way through the harbor toward the
Resolve
. I wondered if Mr. Lakin really hated Don Sterling enough to kill him. And could he really be brazen enough to gun a man down in cold blood with the whole town watching? It was hard to imagine. Not just because he was my history teacher, but it would take a pretty good shot to hit a moving target from a galloping horse. Then again, Mr. Lakin had already displayed hidden talents by even riding a horse in the first place, although he had almost fallen off in the process.

Joe echoed my thoughts. “I'm not convinced Mr. Lakin could make that shot even if he wanted to. I think he'd be too smart to take such a difficult shot from horseback and risk missing the Don and hitting someone else. So either Mr. Lakin is secretly an expert marksman or I don't think he's our shooter.”

I hoped Joe was right.

“Well, right now it looks like he's the chief's number one suspect,” I said.

We both knew Chief Olaf had been wrong before.

“So who else wanted Don Sterling dead?” Joe asked the obvious question we'd need to answer to solve the crime.

At the start of a new mystery, Joe and I like to review the facts, figure out what we know, what we don't, and who to look at to start filling in the blanks. Some cases were pretty straightforward. This wasn't one of them.

“Besides half of Bayport? It's not hard to find people around here with motive,” I replied. “Don Sterling wasn't exactly citizen of the year.”

“Well, we know who had the means and the opportunity, but that doesn't help us much, since it includes just about everyone on the American side of the reenactment,” Joe observed glumly. “At least half of them probably have reason to hate Don Sterling. Mr. Carr and the rest of the Bayport Players actors couldn't stand him. Pete Carson and Rob Hernandez both lost their jobs when he shipped the furniture factory overseas, and Amir Kahn and a bunch of
other Bayport High kids had parents who did too.”