Chapter 8 #2
Maybe it was better if she didn’t text her friend. Or, she decided as she read the text that had surprised her, her mother. Though that one hurt her heart. Thankfully, it was just a good-morning-I-love-you text, but still. She was tempted. So tempted.
But no. It was better to go no-contact until this whole thing was over and she was back in Missouri.
They—she didn’t know who “they” were in this context—could track where texts came from these days, and she did not want anyone knowing she’d magically teleported to New York overnight. She’d never be able to explain it.
So no answering texts. Sighing, she stuffed her phone back into her hip pocket and slumped on the wall, looking around her at the glowing splendor of the brightening morning.
Nothing muted or faded about the shades of this autumn day.
Orange, yellow, and red fairly screamed from every tree and bush, lay scattered on the ground at her feet, danced across the blacktop of the road with each playful puff of breeze.
The sky above was a lovely cornflower blue, practically glistening as the sun lifted off the horizon.
Fluffy clouds glowed clean white in contrast.
A beautiful autumn day. She felt herself softening at the loveliness of it.
Thus, when a middle-aged lady in tweed tights and a baggy, cowl-neck sweater parked a zippy little SUV in the side lot, climbed out of the vehicle with a book bag slung over her shoulder, and paused halfway up the walk, Esmie only smiled at her.
“Can I help you, miss?” Followed quickly by, “Are you alright?”
Esmie lifted her phone. “I was hoping I could charge my phone. I don’t have a cable, though. Do you have extras here for public use?”
The lady smiled, relieved. “We sure do. You come right in, Miss…?”
Thinking quick, she substituted her mother’s name. “Tilda.”
“What a lovely name. Well, Tilda, you come inside, get warm, and get that phone charging, and I’ll get some coffee going. Do you drink coffee?”
“Oh, I have a Gatorade.” She pulled it halfway out of her hoodie pocket. “Is it okay to have it in the library?”
“If it’s closed, yes. If it’s open, only at the tables.”
“Okay, great. I won’t open it just yet, then.”
“Come on in. Oh,” the lady paused and smiled, “and please call me Kate.”
Kate unlocked the door and stepped inside, holding the door open for Esmie to step through, then led the way further in.
She clicked on lights as she went, and Esmie looked around in wonder as she followed, delighted by the whimsy of the place.
It was a lovely old library with wood shelves, old-fashioned, highly polished wooden tables, a chandelier in the middle of the open main room, and a gorgeous, sweeping librarian’s desk, also highly polished wood.
“This place is beautiful,” Esmie said, her voice dreamy.
“Have you never been?”
“I’m from out of town. Just passing through.” She avoided chuckling at the truth of the statement. “But this is like everyone’s dream of a library.”
“Thank you,” Kate said, her voice warm. “We certainly love it. Now, do you want something to read while your phone charges? I can’t actually lend you a book to take out if you’re an out-of-towner, but you can certainly read something while you’re here.”
Uneasy now, she tried to think how to get at the plat maps without drawing undue attention from literally the only other person in the building.
“Uh… do you mind if I just… sort of… look around? This place is so beautiful…?”
“Sure, sure! Go right ahead.” Kate went behind the librarian’s desk. “In fact, why don’t you just leave your phone with me, and I’ll charge it back here. That way, you don’t have to keep your eye on it in case someone else comes in. You can look around all you want that way.”
Brightening, she gladly handed over her phone. “Miss Kate, you’re a lifesaver. Thanks so much.”
“We aim to please.”
Grinning, she left the librarian’s desk, walking slow and trying to take in all the details like she had all the time in the world and nowhere else to be.
She moseyed up one row of books and down another, plucked one from the shelves, put it back, selected another, put it back.
Where would the plat maps be? Probably not in regular circulation.
Was there some sort of map of the building’s layout?
She didn’t want to ask and have to explain why she wanted to look at plat maps.
So she walked around aimlessly for a bit until she came to a stairway with a little arrow sign pointing down that read “Special Collections” and “Map Room”. That sounded promising. She glanced back toward the librarian’s desk, but she couldn’t see it from here. Perfect.
She hurried down the steps, then turned on the light at the bottom.
Garish fluorescents unlike the pleasant lighting upstairs clicked on, then buzzed almost angrily, flooding the concrete floor and metal shelves with harsh light.
Talk about culture shock. This level felt like a completely different building from the one above.
Eyes wide, she stepped as quietly as she could, as if afraid of an echo, down the middle of the shelves, looking for anything that looked like a Map Room.
Finally, between a gap in the shelves, she saw a little sign that said “Maps” and turned that way.
The shelves were somewhat dusty, but they were labeled neatly enough by year.
She followed back and back, moving deeper into the building until she worried they wouldn’t go back far enough.
The books were thick and weirdly long, and they looked heavy.
Frowning, she kept going, back through the 1800s.
Finally, just as she began to despair, her eyes widened as she saw 1791 and then… nothing. An empty spot. Dammit. Where was 1790? That’s when the entry in the journal was.
She was about to throw a hissy fit when she realized there was a piece of paper taped to the side of the shelf where the map book should be.
FOR 1790, SEE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS TABLE
Rolling her eyes, she left the Maps section and headed for the other side of the basement.
Sure enough, the section was labeled “Special Collections”.
She stepped through the stacks and found a table with a weird circular display in the middle, several books propped around the circumference.
The one facing her looked to be about local history.
The one next to it was a biography on Washington Irving.
One was, perhaps obviously, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Ah, there was the plat map on the opposite side.
She hurried around the table and tried to pick up the big book, but it was too hefty.
Instead, she sort of guided it to the flat part of the table, then opened the long cover and flopped it over.
Unfortunately, she had very little idea what she was looking at, so it took her nearly an hour to find the section of town where the old church had been.
Then, she cursed. She wasn’t looking for the church.
She was looking for the battlefield. Rolling her eyes, she flipped ever more pages until she found the right section, then eagerly scanned for the nearest house.
The closest property belonged, of course, to the van Tassels, but the nearest house belonged to someone named Vinke.
She looked around the table and found a pen, then jotted the name on her hand, then jotted the direction from the battlefield—due west. She’d never make it that far on foot, though.
It was at least ten miles to the battlefield from the library, and another few miles to where the house used to be, to guesstimate from the map.
She’d have to call an Uber or something.
More money from her emergency card. Another New York pinpoint she’d have to explain.
Oh, well. It had to be done. She had to get to that house, whether it still stood or not. The Hessian’s horse surely ended up there. It was the only place she knew to look next for the head.
Decided, she wrestled the plat map back onto the round thing, put the pen back where she got it, then headed back upstairs. She stopped at the librarian’s desk, but Kate wasn’t immediately visible. She was just getting impatient when the lady popped out from the back and smiled brightly.
“There you are, Tilda! I was just getting worried about you. Thought you’d gotten lost.”
“No, ma’am. I was just enjoying the ambiance. This place really is lovely. Is my phone charged?”
“Absolutely. Here you go. Did you find anything you just couldn’t live without?”
She chuckled and stuck her phone in her pocket. “Not exactly.” She thought about the book on local history and inspiration struck. “I did see a book on local history, though, and was reading about that big battle? The Hessian?”
“Oh, yes,” Kate said, grinning. “I thought you had the Look.”
“Guilty as charged.” She tried to look sheepish and was pretty sure she succeeded. “I just came from Salem yesterday. Trying to hit all the hotspots on the coast, you know.”
“I do know. I did something similar as a girl your age.” Kate nodded. “What did you want to know?”
“I’m not sure, really. I just saw something about a house that was close to the battlefield. The, uh… what was it… the Vin—”
“The Vinke estate?”
“Yes, that’s it.” She hid her hand in her hoodie pocket, hoping its dampness wouldn’t sweat away what she’d written. “Do you know anything about it?”
“I do, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the Headless Horseman.
” She reached below the line of vision of the desk, then laid a trifold brochure on the desk.
An austere-looking but still elegant colonial-style building was framed by scrollwork and pretty script on the front. “You should take the tour.”
Her eyebrows rose. “The what?”