Page 27 of The Executioners Three

It was seven o’clock, and Freddie’s eyes were crossing. She’d come home after prepping for tomorrow’s prank with her friends, and since then, she’d done nothing but read The Curse of Allard Fortin: How Murder Shaped His Legacy. In other words, she hadn’t opened her English or APUSH homework.

Unfortunately, she doubted her teachers would accept “saving Berm from a potential murderer” as an excuse for not turning in essays.

In The Curse of Allard Fortin, Edgar Fabre (yes, Freddie had, in fact, remembered the name correctly) described a diary from his blacksmith ancestor—the same blacksmith ancestor whose journals on bellfounding had allowed Mom to re-create the Allard Fortin mausoleum bell.

Fabre claimed there’d been one more diary, and this one described a dark curse that José Allard Fortin had cast over three of his servants.

And it was through this curse that he had murdered his way into being the most powerful man in the region.

Real penny-dreadful-worthy stuff. Definitely good source material for an X-Files episode, complete with blood oaths and unkillable Executioners to boot.

Unfortunately, also impossible, since—ya know—spirits and blood oaths and curses weren’t real.

All the same, that didn’t mean someone very real couldn’t be inspired by such tales. And Freddie was really starting to think that she might have found the key connective tissue for her killer here.

The sound of a car door slamming drew Freddie out of her frowning thoughts. She blinked. Rubbed her eyes. Then scrabbled from bed toward her window, where, like a total creep, she peeled back her blinds and squinted at Sheriff Bowman’s house.

Theo Porter was standing outside his car. He wasn’t walking toward his aunt’s front door, but he was instead staring at Freddie’s house. Even from here, Freddie could see the bruises marring his Romeo face.

A scrub of his hair. A shift of his weight. A glance toward Bowman’s door. A glance toward Freddie’s house. Then finally, he slid his hands into his pockets and loped toward the front porch.

Freddie’s lungs loosened. Distantly, she noticed her room had gotten hot.

“What are we looking at?” Mom whispered.

Freddie jumped halfway to the ceiling. “Oh my god, where did you come from?”

“Oh, I see,” Mom said, pressing in close to the window. “We’re looking at the sheriff’s nephew.”

Jeez, did everyone know Theo was related to Bowman? Freddie’s heart thundered in her ears. She glanced at her bed, where her archives contraband sat in plain view.

“You should go see him,” Mom murmured, still gazing out the window.

“Huh?” Freddie laughed a bit too forcefully. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you like him.”

“I like Kyle Friedman.”

“Really?” Mom snorted. “So you just made out with Theo onstage because…?”

“To prove a point!” Freddie’s hands flew to her burning cheeks.

“Wow.” Mom shot her a flat-eyed stare. “If that’s how you kiss to prove a point, I can’t wait to see how you kiss someone you like.”

“Can we please stop talking about this?” Freddie grabbed her mom’s elbow, hoping to lead her from the room. “I like Kyle Friedman, and that’s the end of the story. He’s nice, he’s beautiful, he’s popular—”

“And maybe if you say it enough, you’ll start believing it.”

Freddie glared. Mom grinned.

But then she caught sight of the archives book on Freddie’s bed. “ The Curse of Allard Fortin, ” she read. Then she flipped free from Freddie’s grasp and hurried to the bed. “Where did you get this? I thought all copies of this book had been pulped.”

Freddie blinked. This was not what she’d expected Mom to say. And if Mom didn’t realize it had come from the archives… then there was no reason for Freddie to implicate herself now.

“The library,” Freddie half squeaked. “I got it from… the library. What do you mean it was pulped?”

“Oh, the Allard Fortin family was not happy when that book was printed in the 1940s.”

“Printed,” Freddie said, noticing that word. “Not… published?”

“Yeah, no publisher would print that. So Fabre here invested all his own money to print copies of a book he swore would transform the Allard Fortin legacy. And the Allard Fortins in turn sued the guy for libel. They won too. It ruined him, and he went bankrupt.”

“Whoa.” Freddie shuffled to the bed, a thousand ideas now colliding inside her brain. “I mean, I guess I understand why they would sue? It says on page one that José Allard Fortin was a murderer.”

Mom chuckled. “Yeah, it does say that.”

“Have you read it?”

“No. Technically no one should have, either, since the books got pulped. In fact, I’m shocked any copy survived, and I don’t understand how it wound up in the local library.”

“Haha, right.” Freddie twittered nervously. “But then, how do you know what the book is about if you haven’t read it?”

“Because you know Berm! The locals were as angry as the Allard Fortin family about that book and Fabre’s claims. Sure, thirty years had passed when I moved to town, but a few people still remembered what happened.”

“Was… Dad one of those people who remembered?”

Instantly, Mom’s body locked up. Her grip on The Curse of Allard Fortin turned white-knuckled.

And Freddie felt it as her own body did the same. You’re breaking the rule! Thou shalt not discuss Frank Carter!

Yet Freddie knew she had to be a good Answer Finder. She had to figure out how Dad had possessed the poem from a book that supposedly no longer existed. (A book that had been in the archives unbeknownst to Mom, and that must have—at some point—been tucked away in Kyle Friedman’s garage.)

“Um,” Mom began, still holding the book for dear life. “Yes. I suppose… Frank probably mentioned it.”

Freddie bit her lip. Tamp it down. Then shrugged as casually as she could. “Did he ever talk about a poem from the book? About executioners?”

Mom flinched.

“Huh.” In a detached movement, Mom sat stiffly on the edge of the bed. Seconds slid past as, millimeter by millimeter, she softened her hold on the book, placing it on her thighs.

Then she patted the space beside her, and Freddie complied.

“Frank did, now that you mention it.” The words slid out, hollow, while Mom stared into the middle distance.

“Shortly before his death, he mentioned Edgar Fabre in passing. He said the guy had written a poem, and did I know about it. I…” She swallowed.

“I didn’t, though. And unfortunately…” She trailed off.

Freddie feared that was the end of the story. That she would get nothing more. That she’d opened Pandora’s box for no reason, and now feelings would crush out the task at hand.

But then, to her shock, Mom actually did resume. “Unfortunately,” she said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper, “I never learned why Frank wanted to know about that poem. And I… well, I hate that he probably never got an answer before he died.”

“Oh,” Freddie breathed. Her throat was suddenly very tight. Very dry.

“Oh,” Mom agreed. Her face had a choked-up look.

The tense, nostril-flared lines of someone trying not to cry.

“He was like you, Fred, you know that? He had the same incredible instincts as you, and if there was ever a problem, then Frank had to solve it. I just… well, I never learned what problem sent him searching for answers about Edgar Fabre and that poem.”

Freddie rocked back on her butt. She felt like she’d just been hit with a monsoon.

A double whammy of monsoons, actually, because there was so much information revealed in this one conversation.

The fact that Dad had investigated Edgar Fabre—who, if Dad’s note was correct, hadn’t died like people believed.

The fact that Dad had been convinced that there was some important lead inside “The Executioners Three.”

But above all—by a lot—was the fact that Mom was saying Freddie was like her dad.

That they both had these magical guts—and that they both were Answer Finders.

Deep down, Freddie had always known that.

Why else would she be following in his footsteps?

But she—and Mom too—had been so effective at tamping all that down.

To have Mom break the rule so suddenly…

Freddie made herself swallow. Made herself keep pushing while she still had the chance.

“Sheriff Bowman said I was like Dad too. On Saturday. But she made it sound like… like it was a bad thing.”

Mom heaved a sigh so heavy the bed bounced. “Yeah. I’m not surprised. Frank wasn’t easy to work with.” Mom met Freddie’s eyes, and hers were a different color from Freddie’s because Freddie had inherited her own from this father she’d never known.

“The problem with your dad, Fred, was that he couldn’t let things go. If he thought he was onto something, it consumed his whole life. And while sure, that made him a great sheriff…”

“It made him a terrible husband,” Freddie filled in. And a terrible boss. And a terrible dad .

Mom didn’t respond, but Freddie didn’t need her to. Freddie knew it was true. She had grown up knowing it, even if those words had never fallen so directly from her mother’s or Steve’s mouth.

Frank Carter was a guy in some photos who occasionally remembered birthday cards and came by on Christmas mornings. But that had been the entire extent of his presence in Freddie’s life—and she’d always known it wasn’t because he couldn’t be there, but because he hadn’t wanted to.

Before Freddie could say anything else (not that she really knew what to say anyway), her mom lifted The Curse of Allard Fortin . “So, um, why are you reading this?”

“Oh, right.” Freddie frowned. Focus on the task at hand . “I, uh, have a school project on… bellfounding,” she lied. “And with the fête coming up, I didn’t want to bother you . ”

“I could literally talk about bellfounding in my sleep, Fred.”

“That would be funny to watch.” Freddie closed her eyes and feigned sleeping. “The ratio of tin… to… copper… changes…”

“The… color,” Mom picked up with a snore, “of… the… verdigris… and strength… of the bell.”