He stared at her. “Yes.” She could sense another rise of hostility in him; she felt certain he was wondering, Has this woman been looking me up? Checking out my credentials or my past?
“You said you were from here,” she said. “Logical assumption.”
Of course, she had been looking him up.
She didn’t blink. Liars, she believed from television, moved their eyes downward or to the left or right.
She kept her eyes on his.
He nodded.
“So, you were friends with Richard Highsmith?”
He looked away for a moment and then met her gaze again. “Yes. We spent a lot of time here together. We used to walk through the woods, making up our own stories. We told ghostly tales in the old cemeteries and graveyards, had campfires...ate pizza and played ball. All the things kids do. Then we grew up and went our separate ways. We became the kind of friends who follow each other’s careers, and call or write once in a while. Still friends, always friends, but leading separate lives.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
He nodded again. “I hadn’t seen him for a while. But I gather I would have soon. His campaign manager told me I was going to be invited to a political dinner.”
They were both silent for a minute.
“Maybe Lizzie was a long-ago ancestor,” Mo suggested.
“Yeah, I thought about that, too. I can get people started on tracing his ancestry,” Mahoney said. “But I have a feeling it didn’t have anything to do with his family. What I was hoping is that you might know about some legend or local story that has to do with a Lizzie or a Beth or Elizabeth.” He offered her a wry smile. “Grace was telling me that you know local history and legend like very few others do.”
Mo shrugged off the compliment, but took a minute to think.
“We have headless horsemen, women in white, Native American spirits and all kinds of legends,” she began. “You’re probably familiar with them all,” Mo said. “And historically, we have the tragic story of Major Andre, hanged as a spy. He was a spy—against the Americans—but even those who brought about his execution were sickened by it. He was just so charming that everyone loved him. Supposedly—”
She broke off, and he leaned forward. “Yes?”
“Well, supposedly, he fell in love with a local girl while he made his way through the area,” Mo said. “His captors liked him so much that while he was imprisoned, they let her in to see him. There’s a copy of a drawing done at his hanging that’s alleged to have his mystery woman in it. Hang on, I’ll find it. She’s usually called Andre’s secret love—he’d fallen for the woman who eventually married Benedict Arnold—but this was later and I think the relationship was more...real. Sometimes she was referred to as his Kat or his Molly—or his Lizzie.”
She hopped up and went to one of her bookcases, searching through her historical reference material until she located the book on Andre. Flipping through the pages, she found the picture and passed the book to Mahoney. “This was written in 1820, but it’s not public domain. The author was a man named Caleb Van der Haas. His family has kept up a copyright on it—adding forewords, extra chapters, info on the area with every new edition. My copy actually belonged to my mom and it was her mom’s, printed about 1920. But you’ll notice, Agent Mahoney, that in this rendition of the Andre hanging, the caption says ‘Andre’s Lizzie weeps as her beloved Major Andre swings to the hanged man’s dance.’”
He studied the picture, then looked up at her. She thought he’d continue with the subject they’d been discussing.
“Aidan,” he said instead. “Please just call me Aidan.”
She nodded. For a moment their eyes met, but she glanced away quickly. She wasn’t sure she liked him being so courteous and engaging. She could feel herself blushing, afraid that he could sense the effect he had on her.
Mo took a step back, leaving the book with him, and nearly tripped over Rollo. The dog seemed to need to be close to both of them.
“Where do you think this Lizzie—if that was her name—might be buried?” he asked.
His attention was all on the book. He hadn’t noticed her reaction or her embarrassment, and didn’t, apparently, feel any of that sweet and blazing chemistry himself.
For a minute she went blank.
Then she saw that he was staring at her again, waiting for an answer.
Her tongue didn’t want to work.
She pretended to weigh the question. “Well, not in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,” she said. “It wasn’t built until 1849. And we’re assuming a lot. She might have died and been buried elsewhere. But if she really did exist, and her name was Lizzie and she did die here, she might be buried at the Old Dutch Church or the old graveyard that belonged to St. Andrew’s.”