Page 13 of The Executioners Three

The next day, Freddie scoured the entire Village Historique for any “secret bells” hiding in the buildings while the other volunteers helped Mom assemble the pageant stage.

But alas, there were no hidden bells or cymbals or gongs or anything at all that might produce a reverberating clang! to fill the forest.

What Freddie did find, however, was that all the fairy lights in the schoolhouse had fallen down.

Which was Vastly Annoying, and Freddie blamed Divya for the mess.

After all, if Divya had only helped Freddie on Thursday afternoon, then Freddie might have done a better job and the wind would not have obliterated her handiwork.

Freddie made sure to point this out to Divya when the girl arrived after lunch so they could finally venture to the archives.

“It is not my fault,” Divya declared as she marched beside Freddie through the forest. (Yes, this time, they took the proper trail instead of a shortcut.) “And besides, I’ve already given you Lance for a whopping two weeks, so we are more than even.”

“Harumph,” Freddie replied.

“Harumph,” Divya agreed, and for a time they stomped along in grumpy best friend silence. Freddie had her bike and pushed it by the handlebars. Divya had her Birkenstocks, which remained totally improper for the terrain.

Eventually, the silence was too much for Freddie. “Hey, did you see today’s paper? The Sentinel released the dead guy’s name.”

Divya made a pained grunt. “Yeah, I saw. It was Dr. Fontana. He took care of my hamster once, you know.”

“Oh.” Freddie’s stomach sank. “I’m sorry. I did not know.”

“It’s alright,” Divya said, even though Freddie could tell it wasn’t. And she understood why: it was one thing to find a faceless dead guy. It was quite another to find out you knew him. But before Freddie could pull a Dr. Born and ask how it made Divya feel, they reached the archives.

“Oh thank goodness,” Divya cried. “I’m freezing. It’s heated, right?”

“You betcha,” Freddie said in her brightest voice, pushing aside all thoughts of helpful counselor tactics or dead veterinarians.

“Gotta keep all those documents at a balmy sixty-five degrees.” Mom was very particular about this.

Meanwhile, the Bermians had been very particular that these archives not interfere with the aesthetic of City-on-the-Berme, so it looked like a woodsman cottage set off from the Village by half a mile.

Although, it was also not a historically accurate woodsman cottage. The lone window beside the narrow front door was framed in bright red paint, making it the sort of place one expected Keebler elves to topple out of rather than historians with advanced degrees.

Mom really liked to complain about that red paint.

Freddie tromped up to the wooden hut. A sign at the side read Les Archives and its roof was only a few inches above Freddie’s head. This building was—anachronistic or not—her mother’s pièce de résistance: a collection of all primary documents regarding Berm’s history.

When Patricia Gellar had first taken over as director, it hadn’t just been the Village that was a mess with its dilapidated buildings and overgrown paths.

There’d also been boxes upon boxes of journals and ledgers and letters just stashed in random garages around town.

Including, apparently, Kyle Friedman’s garage—although Freddie had forgotten this fact until her mom had reminded her yesterday.

And Freddie had remembered that trip to gather forgotten documents even more vividly when she’d wound up at Kyle’s house last night.

After leaving the cul-de-sac, the Prank Squad had convened in his family’s basement to watch a bootlegged version of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me .

(Bootlegged! Wow, Kyle really was such a Bad Boy.)

Laina had finally relaxed into her usual self by then, and she’d even managed to crack a few self-deprecating jokes when Will Ferrell’s character had fallen down the hill and been “very badly injured.”

“That’s what I should have said in the woods,” she’d joked. “Perhaps you could toss me a Band-Aid or some antibacterial cream!”

Everyone had laughed, Divya loudest of all.

Once Freddie had gotten home again, though, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the tolling bell. Or of the crows. Or of Laina’s scream. Or, most disturbing of all, of the dead guy she’d found in the trees who’d apparently been a vet from Elmore, Dr. Bob Fontana.

The paper that morning had said he ran marathons and had left behind no surviving family members to mourn him. Which meant he also had no one left behind to think, Hey, that’s weird. Why would Bob kill himself the night before he had a long run planned? Maybe I should look into that.

There was only Freddie to look into it, and although Divya might tease her, Freddie was the Answer Finder and she was going to get to the bottom of this.

Freddie wriggled her keys from her hoodie pocket, and in moments, the door groaned open to reveal an empty room with an open hatch in the middle of the floor. A ladder slunk down into darkness.

“Wait-wait-wait-wait.” Divya’s hands shot up. “The archives are underground?”

Freddie’s eyebrows bounced high. “What did you think?”

“That this was it.” Divya motioned to the interior of the hut. “And that there just weren’t very many things inside.”

Freddie laughed, head shaking. “There’s tons of stuff inside! Aisle after aisle… And it’s all down there.” She pointed into the hatch. “As is forced-air heating. So come on. This place gets spooky after sunset.”

“Because it’s not spooky now?” Divya watched with open skepticism as Freddie hunkered through the hatch. “I mean, I’m sorry, Fred, but this is like something out of a—”

“ Goosebumps ?” Freddie offered. She hit the flagstone floor and fumbled along the nearby wall for the light switch. Flip. A series of fluorescent bulbs hummed to life, revealing a long, bunker-like tunnel filled with twenty-one rows of documents.

The only disruption in the curved ceiling and shelves was a central support beam where a legally required emergency phone, first aid kit, and fire extinguisher were fastened.

“No, not Goosebumps .” Divya’s clogs clanked on the ladder rungs.

“ X-Files ?”

“No.”

“ Scooby-Doo ?” Freddie was really reaching now.

“No,” Divya intoned. Her feet hit the floor. “I was going to say Northanger Abbey .”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Freddie! It was my book club pick last October. Did you not read it?”

“Right! North Hanger Abbey !” Freddie had not read it.

“Northanger.” Divya glared as she strutted past. “You’re a great disappointment to me.”

Freddie cringed. That was fair.

She towed Divya toward the left wall, to where a desk held piles of books and loose papers. “So this is everything my mom could find on nineteenth-century shipping in the area. She came this morning before we set up the stage. And while you study those, I’m going to dig up stuff on… well… stuff.”

“Oh lord,” Divya groaned. “I know that face.”

“What face?”

“Your Pee Eye face. But what you’ll find about a murder that wasn’t a murder in here, I don’t know.”

Freddie batted her lashes. “I’ll be four rows down, Madame Srivastava, if you need anything. And remember.” She shook a finger in Divya’s face. “Don’t steal records. No documents can leave the archives.”

“As if.” Divya gave another shudder.

While Divya got to work examining the old tomes, Freddie went straight for the PC near the middle of the room.

It took a while to boot up because the beast was almost a decade old and ran on MS-DOS, meaning it had only a super-primitive archival program and no mouse.

But Freddie didn’t need a mouse to get answers.

She typed in what she needed, exactly as her mom had taught her, first opening the main directory and then the archival software her mom used.

Soon, a blue screen was blinking at her with a menu. Freddie hit 1 on the keyboard, bringing her to a keyword search. Then she typed in bell and watched as the computer spat out a list of relevant documents.

It was a lot, and most had nothing to do with the Village Historique but instead referred to bells on various shipping vessels and lighthouses all along the lake’s coast. In other words: not useful.

So Freddie narrowed her search to bell + Berme .

This was a much shorter list, but perhaps unsurprisingly, almost all of the documents were recent additions to the archives—as in, written and added by Mom since 1980 when she’d commissioned the replica bell for the mausoleum.

There were, however, four journals from the famed blacksmith who’d kept detailed recollections of his bellfounding for José Allard Fortin.

After scribbling down their locations, Freddie set off down the aisles.

All four were in the same location. All four were also in French.

However, to Freddie’s surprise, tucked next to the diaries was a book titled The Curse of Allard Fortin: How Murder Shaped His Legacy.

She’d never heard of it, and with a title like that, it was only natural she’d slide it off the shelf and take a peek.

It was a simple hardcover with a worn black jacket and a faded title in yellow sans serif font. The author’s name was listed as Edgar Fabre, and when Freddie creaked open the book, she found it had been published in 1949.

After that was a short table of contents.

And after that, a poem.

“Aha!” Freddie thrust up a pointed finger. “Eureka! And gesundheit!”

“That’s not what gesundheit means,” Divya called from several rows over.

Freddie ignored her, hunching forward to study the poem—which she would bet a lifetime’s supply of Quick-Bis biscuits was the one Kyle had seen as a kid. Meaning this book must have been one of the many documents once living inside his garage.

And no wonder poor Kyle had been traumatized. The title alone made Freddie’s blood run cold.

THE EXECUTIONERS THREE

When northern wind gusts

Through trees bare of leaves,

Take heed and take watch,

For Executioners Three.