13 Hangmen (16 page)

“Did you call Dad about the porch?” Angey asked.

“He must be out of satellite range,” Julia said. Placing her hands on her hips, she peered up to where the deck used to be. “That's not going to be cheap,” she said.

“Maybe we could rebuild it ourselves,” Mikey said.

“We made that tree house with Pablo and his dad last summer,” Angey reminded her. “And it came out great.”

“Appreciate the handyman spirit,” Julia said. “But this definitely looks like a job for a professional. The problem is
finding one. We don't even have a copy of the Yellow Pages yet.”

Tony knew very well they could now look up handymen online. But he took full advantage of the fact his mom was blanking on the cable guy's visit by telling her about the hardware store over on Hanover Street. The corner hardware back in Ann Arbor had a bulletin board at checkout with the business cards of all the local carpenters and plumbers—remember? Maybe this one did too. He'd be happy to run over and check.

“You're just trying to weasel out of more work,” Mikey said.

Actually, I'm trying to get to Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe.

“Couldn't hurt,” Julia said. “Besides, we need a tarp or something to cover up the holes where the deck separated from the wall. It looks like it might rain.”

“
We'll
go,” Mikey said.

“We haven't had a break all day,” Angey said.

“But you don't even know where it is,” Tony said.

Julia suggested all three of them go. Her heart had definitely gone out of sanding the floors of her new studio. About all she could manage right now, while she waited for their father to get home, was a long hot bath.

Crap! Now how am I going to get that update?

“I'm still on the cell,” Tony reminded Julia. “You know, just in case—”

“In case what?” Julia said. “A miracle happens?”

Tony totally ditched Mikey and Angey at the hardware store. As soon as the twins had plucked a few business cards off the handyman bulletin board, he suggested they grab a tarp and some bungee cords in Building Supplies while he priced rat traps for the cellar over in Pest Control. But he immediately looped back up Plumbing and ducked outside. Served them right. They were always ditching
him
.

Crap!
The front door of Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe was locked, the
CLOSED
blind drawn, the purple awning rolled up. Tony checked his watch. Just past six. He peered into the darkened display window, just in case Sarah was waiting for him behind the counter. All he could see, though, was his own reflection. Did his face look thinner? Maybe a
little
thinner.

An odd plink on the sidewalk behind him.

An old-fashioned key on a purple ribbon. Tony looked up. No one was there, but a second-story window was open. He tried the key in the door. It worked! He let himself inside. Empty. But a book was lying open on the slate counter. He took a peek at the front cover:
Balthazar's Comprehensive Guide to Historic Boston
. He scanned the page Sarah must have been reading. Sights of Interest in the North End. His eye caught a paragraph subtitled “Hangmen Court”:

Possibly the North End's most notorious Colonial address. In Puritan times, the magnificent oak in its courtyard was used to hang horse thieves, murderers, and witches. When the original homestead burned to the ground, a labyrinth of taverns and inns sprang up around the tree to cater to spectators, making Hangmen Court the preferred lair for pirates and smugglers. These were razed in the mid-18th century and replaced with brick town houses. In the 19th and 20th centuries the court served variously as a tenement district for fugitive slaves, Irish clans, persecuted Jews, Italian immigrants—

The wall of books opened. It wasn't Sarah who emerged from behind it. It was a woman Julia's age. But that was where the similarity ended. Julia looked like a regular TV mom, whereas this woman looked like she couldn't decide whether to be a punk rocker for Halloween or an evil witch. She was dressed in a purple-and-black plaid miniskirt, black army boots, black stockings, black T-shirt with a purple peace sign, and black leather jacket. And her hair, which was severely bobbed with razor-straight bangs, was dyed so black it looked, well, purple. Plus she was eating a grape Popsicle.

“You must be Tony,” she said. “I'm Mildred Pickles.”

“Proprietress,” Tony stammered.

“I see you got my text,” she said.

“
Your
text?” Tony replied. “Where's Sarah?”

“She had to leave for her shift at work,” Mildred said. “But I'm totally up to speed: You've got a hot pawcorance over at Thirteen Hangmen Court that conjured your dead uncle Angelo. You need a nine to fire the thing up, but you have to be thirteen to use it. No grown-ups allowed. You're wondering why the old dude next door—Hagmann—is jonesing for the house so bad.”

That was pretty much it, in a nutshell. Tony decided to trust her.

“I think Hagmann might even have
killed
Angelo to get his hands on the place,” he said. “He got my dad hauled down to the station on a bunch of trumped-up murder charges, but I'm pretty sure it was to cover his own tracks. This other kid I conjured, Solly, says the Hagmann family has been after Number Thirteen for generations.”

“Wouldn't surprise me,” Mildred said. “They've certainly been involved in some pretty sketchy behavior for generations—thirteen, to be exact. But not always under the name Hagmann.”

“You lost me,” Tony said.

“It doesn't strike you as odd?” Mildred said, tapping the page Tony had just read in
Balthazar's
. “The similarity, I mean, between Hagmann and hangman?” She reached under the counter and pulled out another book.
Payne's Compendium of the First
Families of Boston
. “I did a little down-and-dirty genealogy this afternoon, when I got back from Wiccan practice. Turns out, the Hagmann family of Boston only traces back to the mid-1700s, having moved to the North End from Worcester. Before that, there's no trace of the name. There was, however,
another
family living in the North End called Hangman, dating all the way back to the first Puritans to settle Boston. Three guesses where they lived and what the family business was.”

“You mean the Hagmanns were literally hangmen?” Tony said. “Like with hoods and nooses?”

“Coincidence? I don't think so,” Mildred said.

She filled Tony in on what she had learned from
Payne's Compendium
just before her Popsicle break: The very first hangman of Boston didn't even have a last name when he set foot on American soil. He was just some orphaned street urchin named Abel, indentured to John Winthrop. (Winthrop was, of course, leader of the group of Puritans who established the settlement of St. Botolph's Town—soon to be shortened to Boston—on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630.) One of Winthrop's first orders of business was to get Abel, along with every other able-bodied male, to start clearing land for the Massachusetts Bay Company. This work crew met with very little resistance from the local Massachusets, mainly because eighty percent of them had died from the smallpox Myles Standish had given them a decade
earlier—including their sachem, Chickatawbut. In fact, one of Winthrop's first acts as governor was to condemn Obbatinewat, Chickatawbut's son, for practicing heathen rituals on what was now Christian land. As the colony didn't yet have a professional hangman, Winthrop had Abel perform the gruesome task using the oak in front of a
curious stone altar
. The rest of the heathens were duly banished from the peninsula, and Winthrop awarded the land around the altar to his second-in-command, Jebediah Pickles.

That's right, Pickles.

Fast forward to 1639. Jebediah's oldest daughter, Mildred, was accused of witchcraft because she was visited by “demons” on her thirteenth birthday. Winthrop instructed Abel Hangman—as he was now known—to string Mildred up from the oak in her own front yard. Though Mildred and her family managed to escape to Salem, Abel identified the midwife, Margaret Jones, as a member of Mildred's evil coven. She was properly tried and hanged for sorcery, and Abel was rewarded with the now-vacated Pickles home for his service to the community.

The Hangmans prospered at Hangmen Court until the witch trials of Boston drew to their spectacular close in 1689. That's when Ethan Hangman was convicted of falsely executing innocent women for sorcery in order to confiscate their property. Which was when the Hangmans took flight in the middle of the
night to escape their own noose. Which was also when a family named Hagmann turned up in Worcester and opened a rope factory. “But all they had really done was shift an
n
from the middle of their name to the end,” Mildred concluded.

“They were chased out of Boston for murder?” Tony said.

“Not before falsely accusing my very own great-great-great-plus-grandmother of witchcraft,” Mildred said. “Want a Popsicle?”

“I'm on a diet,” Tony said.

The door jangled. In walked Sarah, dressed in her Colonial-maid getup. “Hi, Tony,” she said. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetie,” Mildred said. “How was work?”

Mom? Sarah is Sarah
Pickles
?

“Tourists,” Sarah said, sighing. She turned to Tony. “Did Mildred give you the skinny on the Hagmanns and Hangmen Court?”

“Tony thinks one of them iced his uncle and pinned it on his dad,” Mildred said.

“Better call the cops,” Sarah said. “Any Popsicles left?”

“I still don't have a motive,” Tony said.

“Isn't it obvious?” Mildred said. “The Hagmanns are wicked desperate to get the Hangman family homestead back.”

“Even though they stole it from
our
family to begin with,” Sarah said.

“But the original house burned down,” Tony said, tapping
Balthazar's
as a reminder. “And then whatever inn or tavern took its place was flattened by the city to build the town houses that are there today. What difference would it make to Benedict Hagmann or any of his ancestors whether they own Number Fifteen or Thirteen?”

“He's right,” Sarah said.

“Dang,” Mildred said. “You want grape or cherry?”

Tony's pocket started cuckooing. “Sorry,” he said. “I just got this thing. I haven't quite figured out how to get it to vibrate.” Julia calling. “I gotta take this,” he said. “Mom might have news about Dad.”

While Tony answered his phone, Mildred opened the bookcase and went upstairs. Sarah slumped into the Cleopatra lounging sofa, pulled off her white cap, and fanned her face with it.

Julia didn't have news. But the twins were all freaked out about losing him. They claimed to have tried calling and texting him a half dozen times (which was true), but he hadn't answered (also true). Where was he? Tony admitted he had just finished chasing a dead-end lead. Julia told him to hoof it back to the house, pronto. She was out of excuses about where Michael might be for dinner. She saw no choice but to come clean to the twins; and she wanted Tony to be there, for moral support. He told her he was on his way.

“I gotta go,” he said to Sarah.

“I'll text you if we dig anything else up,” Sarah said. “Unfortunately, I've got another shift tomorrow. Sunday's a big day for us.”

“Where exactly
do
you work?” Tony said.

“I'm a tour guide at the Paul Revere House,” Sarah said. “Volunteer. They can't pay me till I turn sixteen in August. But I don't care. I'm way into history. And heavy metal. And beagles.”

That explained her Colonial-maid outfit. And her age.

“Me too,” Tony said. “Well, the history part, anyway.”

“Then you should stop by the museum sometime,” she said. “I'll give you a behind-the-scenes tour.”

“That'd be great,” Tony said. “Sometime.”

When I'm not so busy trying to save my dad by catching a murderer.

Oh, great. Old Man Hagmann was out in his front yard spraying his rosebushes with whatever toxic chemical he'd bought at the sidewalk sale. Now that Tony was trying to avoid him, he couldn't swing a cat without hitting him. He pulled out his cell phone and pretended to be deep in conversation.

Hagmann stepped directly into his path. “So?”

Tony said he'd call right back—as if he knew anyone in Boston except, maybe, the Pickleses—and snapped his phone shut. “What?” he said.

“So have they officially charged your father with Angelo's murder yet?”

“Back off, Benny,” he said. “You may have everybody else fooled, but not me. I've got my eye on you.”

“What are you talking about?” Hagmann said, startled.

“My dad's so-called motive, for one,” Tony said. “Antonio DiMarco married Isabella Saporiti for love. And my dad loved Zio Angelo. The only family that's been trying to get its hands on Number Thirteen—for
generations
—is the Hagmanns. So what's
your
alibi?” Oops. He hadn't at all meant to lose his cool and tip his hand. But it had been a long day.