The Battle of Bayport by Franklin W. Dixon

a moment during the reenactment, he still would’ve had to bring a musket ball with him, right? It’s hard to imagine someone doing that without it being premeditated. I guess he could be lying to us, but it would be hard to prove without more evidence or an actual confession. We’ll talk to him tomorrow and see if his story changes.”
    We were at another dead end. I stabbed at Aunt Trudy’s Revolutionary War–themed red, white, and blue fries with my fork and thought about Aunt Trudy under her red, white, and blue sun umbrella at the reenactment. Ha! Actually, it was a double “Ha!” I laughed at the image of Aunt Trudy and then had an “aha!” moment—she’d been shooting video of the reenactment! I’d had a hunch Aunt Trudy’s meal would lead to some sort of revelation.
    In all the excitement of the past day, we’d forgotten all about it. It wasn’t likely to break the mystery open or anything—whatever Aunt Trudy caught in the video would have happened in plain sight of a few hundred people, and the police probably already knew about it—but it was still worth watching to see if it shook anything loose. I ran the idea past Frank.
    â€œBeats sitting around and feeling useless!” Frank agreed cheerily.
    â€œTrue. And maybe it’ll at least help us rule out Mikey’s crazy theories.”
    We got the video from Aunt Trudy and watched it full screen on the computer. The angle was pretty wide, so we got an overview of the field without a lot of close-up detail. Even when she zoomed in, the image still captured a big chunk of the action, but there was also a lot you couldn’t see, and the people we wanted to watch weren’t always in the frame. We tried to focus on Mr. Lakin and Mikey along with Amir, Mr. Carr, Pete Carson, Rob Hernandez, and the other suspects on our list. I took notes as we watched, breaking down the reenactment into moments of action we could refer back to.
    Mr. Lakin looked on proudly in his general’s uniform, his saber and pistol swinging from his belt as Bernie handed out muskets to the Colonial militia. Mr. Carr gave a dramatic salute to Mr. Lakin when he got his weapon. Mikey was the next suspect to get his musket. Mr. Carr went over to say something to Mikey after he got his gun, but there was noway to tell what. It looked like they were going over some detail of how to load the musket. Then the camera panned away from Bernie and Mr. Lakin handing out the muskets and went over to the British side.
    A few minutes later, Mikey and Amir were back in the picture, palling around before the battle. Mikey was laughing and gesturing wildly with both hands as he told a joke or something. As the reenactment got ready to start, the infantrymen formed a drill line, and Mr. Lakin made a show of doing inspections. He straightened Amir’s lapel and took Mikey’s musket to examine it before handing it back and moving on to the next soldier.
    Then the chaos started. The first cannon went off, and the whole field got real smoky real fast from all the shooting. With so much going on, it was hard to follow all the action. Knowing what happened next, I almost turned away when Mr. Lakin charged forward on his horse and Don Sterling collapsed. There were so many guns going off at the same time, there was no way to tell from watching the video who’d fired the real shot, and it was too hazy and far away to see if Mikey had done anything unusual when he loaded his musket. The shot could have come from Mr. Lakin’s gun or Mikey’s. It also could have come from Amir’s, Mr. Carr’s, Pete’s, or a lot of the other militiamen as well.
    Frank had that pale look about him again, and I knew he had the same queasy feeling I did. What we’d just watched wasn’t for show. A man had really been shot.
    So far, watching the video hadn’t answered any questions. All it had done for the investigation