Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution (13 page)

“I slept on much less comfortable surfaces during
my time at war, Lieutenant. By comparison, even that poorly disguised mattress is the lap of luxury.”

“If you say so,” she muttered, and then ordered the largest coffee the place would give her.

She checked in with Irving and Jenny while drinking her coffee and chowing down on a muffin. Her sister had nothing new beyond what Whitcombe-Sears had told her last night—including how George Washington used the six crosses for a spell that staved off death—but the captain did have news and it was all bad. The cross at MCNY had been stolen at midnight, with two NYPD cops and one MCNY security person killed in the same grisly manner as the three security guards in Tarrytown. Irving was fine, as was his ex-partner, MCNY’s security chief, and the third cop who’d been assigned, but Tench Tilghman’s medal was gone.

In light of this, Irving also assigned two uniforms to the Whitcombe-Sears Library and had a patrol car drive by regularly.

It was a short drive over to Fort Ticonderoga for Abbie and Crane. However, they’d barely started down Wicker when Crane, noticing something up ahead, asked, “May we pull to the side, please?”

Following Crane’s glance, she saw a bronze statue in the midst of a traffic circle at the intersection of Wicker Street and Montcalm Street. “Hang on,” Abbie said, and turned right onto Montcalm, pulling into a diner’s driveway.

They exited the car and then walked back to the traffic circle. Now that she wasn’t driving and searching for somewhere to park, Abbie took a more significant look at it. The statue itself was a woman with her left hand upraised. At the base of the statue were four figures.

“I read of this,” Crane said as they approached it. “The figure atop is representative of liberty. The four figures at the base are a Scotsman, a Frenchman, an Iroquois, and a British colonist—or, rather, American, as you’d say now.”

Abbie nodded. “Represents the region’s history nicely, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed.” He turned to Abbie and smiled. “Thank you for the indulgence, Lieutenant. Shall we proceed?”

They got back into the car and continued down Montcalm. En route they passed a small star-shaped structure—the exact configuration of the fort, as it happened. Crane did a comical double take, but Abbie just smiled. “Irving told me about the sewage plant over there.”

“Sewage plant?”

“Yup. They built it scaled down from the same specs as the fort.”

“How droll. Based on what I read of the Pell family, not to mention the statue we just saw, I thought the people of this village to be more respectful of their history.”

“The fort’s not the only history,” Abbie said. “In
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a big paper mill here. I used to think they made pencils, too, since every standardized test I took was with a pencil that said
TICONDEROGA
on the side.” She shrugged. “Turns out those were made from a mine about twenty-five miles from here, and the wood came from somewhere else entirely.”

When they arrived at the parking lot adjacent to the fort, Abbie pulled her car in next to the blue cruiser from the Ticonderoga Police Department and a battered, brown midsized SUV. Both had plenty of white residue on the underside from driving on roads that had been covered in salt to melt snow and ice.

As they approached the star-shaped fort itself, Crane started getting what Abbie had started to think of as his disapproving face, last seen when he heard a tour guide misrepresenting Paul Revere’s midnight ride.

But before he could complain about whatever new slight he’d found, they were greeted by a tall young man wearing a police uniform, and a stooped-over old man with much paler skin than the cop, who wore a black wool coat and carried a wooden cane. It didn’t take Abbie’s skills as a detective to work out who had the cop car and who had the beat-up SUV.

Looking at the cop, Abbie said, “You must be Investigator Ruddle.”

“Call me Paul.” Ruddle reached out a hand,
which Abbie shook. She’d been amused to learn that the Ticonderoga Police Department used the title of “investigator” rather than “detective.”

“I’m Lieutenant Abbie Mills, and this is our consultant, Professor Ichabod Crane.”

After giving Abbie a firm handshake, Ruddle did the same with Crane. “A pleasure, Professor Crane. Where do you teach?”

“Oxford, though I’m on sabbatical at present in order to consult on Lieutenant Mills’s ongoing investigation.”

The older man gave a papery chuckle. “I like that—‘left-tenant.’ That’s so British.”

“This,” Ruddle said, “is Theodore Provoncha. He’s one of the docents of the fort.”

“Call me Teddy. So I’m told that you people think someone’s out to steal our Independence Cross.”

“I’d say it’s definite, Mr. Provoncha,” Abbie said.

Provoncha smiled. “Please, it’s Teddy.”

Abbie did not return the smile. “The point is, four other Independence Crosses have been stolen, with six murders as collateral damage.”

That got Provoncha’s face to fall. “Oh my goodness. That’s horrible.”

“We agree,” Abbie said. “That’s why we’d like to augment your security.”

“I don’t know about that.” Provoncha started walking toward the fort. “But let me show you around the place, and show you our security.”

“That would be great.”

As they approached the fort’s interior—which Abbie really hoped was heated, as it was about ten degrees colder up here than it was in Sleepy Hollow—Crane said, “Excuse me, Mr. Provoncha—”

“Please, it’s Teddy. You folks from downstate are too damn formal. I blame the city, myself.”

“Be that as it may—Teddy, I wonder if you can explain to me how you are permitted to refer to this monstrosity as a re-creation of Fort Carillon.”

“It’s actually Fort Ticonderoga,” Provoncha said. “Carillon was the French name. The British changed the name when they took it during the French and Indian War.”

“Yes, and after the Seven Years’ War—God knows how the other phrase came to be—the colonists continued to refer to it by the name given it by their allies, the French, rather than the name given it by the Crown, their enemies. Regardless, this looks
nothing
like the fort as it was during the revolution.”

“Well, it does have the same configuration—”

“Oh, bravo, you managed to re-create the fort’s largest distinguishing feature, but at the expense of verisimilitude
anywhere
else. It was not all stonework, for a start, the emplacements are
mis
placed, and—”

“Surprised you know so much about it,” Provoncha interrupted as they went through a passage to the interior courtyard. “What is it you teach at Oxford?”

“History,” Crane said tightly, “with an emphasis on the Revolutionary War period.”

“Surprised you call it that.” Provoncha smiled. “I always heard that you Brits referred to it as the colonial revolt or some such. Also surprised you teach it, since your side lost and all.”

They arrived in the courtyard, which Abbie thought was beautiful, but just seemed to annoy Crane more.

“The only ‘side’ I’m on, sir, is that of the truth. This courtyard was never this wide open, as it was used for storage.”

Provoncha stood right in the center of the open area, the early-morning sun casting long shadows from the fort’s walls. “You have to understand, Professor, they didn’t have cameras back in those days, so the Pell family, who did the reconstruction work back a hundred years ago, only had old drawings to go on. And—well, not to put too fine a point on it, but people weren’t as all-fired concerned with hundred percent accuracy back in those days. As for this courtyard, we like to keep it as an open space, ’cause this is where we have a lot of our workshops, not to mention our fife-and-drum corps.”

“Fife and drum?”

Bursting into a huge smile, Provoncha said, “Oh yes, they’re quite impressive. During the season, they come out and perform several times a day, and they’ve traveled the world. They played at the 1939
World’s Fair and the 1980 Winter Olympics. Just an amazing group, playing standards of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

That brought Crane up short. Abbie couldn’t help but smile. And also shiver, as they were still outside. She was starting to understand why the fort was open to the public only in the warm-weather months.

“What standards might those be?”

Provoncha chuckled. “Tell you what, when this is over, I’ll give you a CD.”

“I look forward to hearing it. Still—”

“Still,” Abbie said quickly, “for now we’ve got bigger problems.” She gave Crane a look.

To his credit, he looked contrite. “Of course, Lieutenant.”

“Come on this way,” Provoncha said, leading the four of them the rest of the way across the courtyard and then slowly up a flight of steps. With his cane, Provoncha took them slowly, so Abbie waited at the bottom of the stairs.

Crane dogged Provoncha’s steps, asking what instruments the fife-and-drum corps played.

Ruddle shot Abbie a glance. “He always like that?”

“Not at all.” She smiled. “Sometimes he’s pedantic.”

Laughing, Ruddle said, “Uh huh. Consultants are always a pain in the ass, ain’t they?”

“Oh, he has his moments. I can honestly say I wouldn’t have survived the past few months without him.”

Once Provoncha and Crane got to the top of the stairs, Abbie and Ruddle followed suit. “Now then,” Provoncha said, unlocking the door to one of the galleries, “this is where we keep the mementos of the removal of the cannon from this fort to Boston for the Siege of Boston.”

Abbie winced. They had just gotten Crane
off
the subject.…

The room was decorated with fake wood on the walls that made the room look like it was trying to be a log cabin. There were display cases all over, painted with yellow trim, containing various items ranging from weapons to uniforms to jewelry to other decorative arts.

Crane found himself drawn to a weapons display, which included a flintlock musket and a flintlock pistol, both hanging in the open. Most of the exhibits were under glass, but the two weapons were simply hanging on hooks. Abbie hoped they were better secured when the museum was in season.

After staring at the pistol, and at the “Brown Bess” rifle, which had a bayonet attached to the top of the muzzle, Crane turned to Provoncha. “These are remarkably well preserved. Almost as if they haven’t changed in two and a half centuries.”

Abbie couldn’t help but notice the wistful tone in Crane’s voice when he uttered that last sentence.

“Well, to be honest, we’re pretty sure those two were never fired. They were donated by a wealthy local who found them in her attic. She suspects that one of her ancestors purchased or was issued the weapons and never had the chance to use them in combat. It’s hard to believe now, but these weapons marked the pinnacle of firearms technology in their day. They seem quaint and antiquated now, but being able to fire a musket ball from a distance changed the very face of combat.”

“Yes,” Crane said dryly, “I’m familiar with the intricacies of the weapons of the era.”

Provoncha shook his head. “Sorry, occupational hazard. I walk into this room, I go into tour-guide mode. Anyhow, the Independence Cross you wanted to know about is right over here.”

He led them to a display case. Abbie saw a portrait of Henry Knox, identifying him as the first-ever United States secretary of war. A placard described the removal of sixty pounds of cannon from Ticonderoga and bringing them to Boston, which Crane had mentioned in the car.

To Abbie’s relief, Crane didn’t carry on about any inaccuracies in the text. Instead, he stared at the cross. It was a simple piece of metal that looked just like the Red Cross logo, with each spoke of the cross of equal length. Abbie pointed and asked, “What are the scratches on the side?” It was a deliberately obtuse question, since she knew from Al Whitcombe-Sears via Jenny that they were runes.

“Not sure.” Provoncha shrugged. “Prob’ly some kind of design the French silversmith preferred.”

“Excuse me?”

Abbie whirled around, her hand instinctively going for her weapon. She saw a woman in her late thirties or early forties standing in the same doorway they’d come in.

However, Provoncha’s face brightened, and Ruddle didn’t seem put out by the woman’s presence. Her status as friendly was confirmed by Provoncha’s words. “Oh, hello, Stacy!”

“What’re you doing here, Teddy? And Paul? What’s going on?” Stacy seemed genuinely confused.

“Sorry, Stacy, but these people are from Sleepy Hollow, and they’re looking into some thefts. Turns out the other medals like Henry Knox’s Independence Cross were stolen, and they’re worried that this one’ll be targeted next.”

“All the others are in New York, aren’t they? Or in D.C.?”

Crane spoke up. “Actually, they are all in New York or its environs at present, as the one from the District of Columbia was in a traveling exhibit. And that was one of the ones that was taken.”

“Yeah, but they’re all down in New York.” Stacy was oddly insistent.

Something felt off to Abbie. And then it hit her. “How’d you get here?”

Stacy blinked. “Excuse me?”

“There’s only one parking lot, and it’s got Teddy’s car in it, as well as Paul’s cruiser. Only way you could be surprised to see the two of them is if you came here some other way, or were already here before we all arrived. Unless you decided to take a stroll in twenty-degree weather.”

Provoncha turned to face Abbie. “Lieutenant Mills, what’re you getting at? Look, I get that you’re a police officer and naturally suspicious, but I know Stacy, and she’d never—” He cut himself off and suddenly stumbled forward. Abbie noticed that he was suddenly sweating. While the gallery wasn’t as cold as it was outside, it was still chilly enough that he shouldn’t have been sweating.

Ruddle stepped forward. “Teddy, you okay?”

“I—”

Then Provoncha started to burn. Smoke wisped off his clothes, and then a fire started somewhere under his maroon sweater. Abbie watched in horror and disgust as it spread quickly, until suddenly his entire body was enveloped in flame. He only had time for a brief attempt at a scream before he burned to ash. The fire died as quickly as it expanded, leaving only a pile of black ash on the floor.