Little Treasures 6 part 4

Daily pulled open the hatch.

'Fifteen years, and I'm not used to this yet.'

He didn't find little June Thomas curled up in the foetal position, bound, gagged, and shivering. 

'What the hell is this?'

He held the object between his thumb and forefinger. A young officer named Dunnard cut through the silence when no one else was brave enough to offer an explanation.

'Looks like a bunch of numbers, sir.'

'What about what it says at the bottom of the page? Interior?'

'I guess it's a map of the inside of the house.'

Daily shook his head.

'It's a wonder you're not a detective already.'

He waved the paper at Finn.

'What's this about?'

'The gradual degradation of the public education system, Sir.' 

'The numbers, you degenerate, what do they mean?'

'I would explain, Detective, but giving you all that information would be a waste. Sort of like giving a street beggar a hundred dollar bill.'

Daily nodded. 'True, true, it would be useless. I never did understand what was so damned magical about math, anyway.'

Finn bit his lip. ' Magical?'

'Yeah, I mean this stuff for instance, Algebra. Straight addition, subtraction, times tables, no problem, but this? Making up a map with numbers and funny little signs? Hocus pocus.'

Finn exploded.

'There is no such thing as magic! Numbers were created to give the world order and precision, take away the chaos until true beauty was all that remained. I am an agent of that beauty.'

Daily tilted his head.

'So, you're an artist?'

Finn relaxed a little. 'Just a curator.'

'More like a servant, then.'

Finn smiled.

'A proud one.'

Daily started toward the door and handed the map to the dull officer. 

'Get the FBI on the horn, now. I want to wipe the smile of this animal's face.'

Daily stopped in the doorway and called over his shoulder.

'And call in the wrecking crew.'

Finn started.

'No, you can't do that!'

'I have to, Mr. Finn. I'm a servant of the people.'

All that remained when the house was torn apart was a satin ribbon hidden under Finn's pillow.

'What does it mean?' asked Officer Dunnard.

'It means the son of a whore played me like a cheap squeezebox, that's what it goddamn means!'

Mrs. Mertz was appointed to care for the Thomas girls by the lawyer responsible for the family trust soon after Dahlia was sent "on vacation." Their money and sirname afforded them around the clock protection but after a while, the girls came to resent it. Dahlia was the only person whose authority they had ever bowed to, so being under the thumb of a servant, much less a former teacher, was too much to bear and they didn't let a day go by without letting her know. Shirley appointed herself leader of the rebellion, delegating to her sister a series of tasks designed to wear down the enemy. In a thirty-four year career dealing with spoiled children, there weren't many rebellions Greta Mertz hadn't seen, heard, or inadvertently digested, and her first few weeks caring for the Thomas girls offered her no surprises in that regard. Nothing frightened children more than the perceived abandonment of their mother, and they usually responded to this fear much like Greta's rottweiller, Prince, did when a man once tried to burglarize her home. Shirley addressed her through clenched teeth, and Stella responded to every one of her reproaches with a tight-lipped smile that barely masked the contempt beneath it. Greta knew either one of them would cheerfully rip off her fingers if they could. 

Short of physical harm, there was one sure-fire way of getting the better of a seemingly unflappable target, and only Shirley could've come up with it. At eleven-thirty on the same night Shirley was grounded for putting a dog stool in Mrs. Mertz's soup, Shirley dosed the old bat's cocoa with two of her mother's sleeping pills and waited for her to nod off before taking the dog by the leash and leading him downstairs. 

'Open the door, Stell.'

'Oh no, you're not getting me mixed up in this.'

Shirley forced the dog to come to a stop and turned.

'Whose beaureu do you think she's going to find the rest of the pills in when she figures out what happened?'

'You wouldn't!'

'I did.'

'What's wrong with you? You never used to be this mean!'

'Shows what you know, now are you going to help me or not?'

The original plan was to tie the dog to a tree in the cemetary and leave him there to howl his fat head off, which was fine with Stella - the quicker they were out of there the better - but when Shirley plopped the dog into Stella's arms and scrambled over the wall, she dropped another bomb. Stella gawped.

'Where'd you get a key to the crematorium?' 

'A friend.'

Stella took a step back.

'What did you have to do to get it?'

Shirley gave her a shove.

'Not THAT. Jesus! What do you think I am?'

Stella blinked. Shirley turned the key in the lock. 

'Just don't let go of the dog til I say so, Bird Brain.'

The further they got from the porthole window on the entrance wall, the darker it got, and neither Stella nor Prince were fans of the dark.

'Can't you shut that mutt up?'

'He's scared. Why can't we turn on the lights in here?'

'Why don't we just find the nightwatchman and ask him for a torch?'

After a few more steps, the dog plonked down onto his stomach and no amount of prodding or poking from either one of them would get him moving. 

'Screw it. We'll just have to carry him,' said Shirley, 'I'll grab the front end, you grab the back.'

'Why do I get the bad end?'

'You're always getting things ass-backwards.'

Shirley got the hulking beast, who by now was whimpering loud enough to be heard even by the residents in the yard, around the neck.

'Okay, wrap your arms around him just below his thing, and lift when I say so.'

Stella closed her eyes and mercifully got the dog in the right place.

'1,2,3, LIFT!'

They managed to carry the dog five or six more steps before Stella, finding her second wind, lifted the dog too high and knocked Shirley over, sending the dog barelling into a collection of statues. The statues fell like dominoes and the dog ran around a corner, only to return seconds later, yelping like every cat he'd ever harrassed had ganged up and come at him waving scalpels.

'I'd better get the dog.' Stella hopped from foot to foot then ran.

'COWARD!' 

Shirley followed the direction in which the leaning ladies were pointing and found a back room. She turned on the light. The room was filled with memorials of all shapes and sizes, each reflecting the economic status of the family who had commissione it, but one statue stood out. It was at the very back of the room in a corner, behind three huge Roman Gothic reproduction jobs. It was all white. Life sized. Shirley ran her fingers along bevilled edges that mirrored the natural curls of a little girl. A little girl June's age.

Stella burst into Mrs. Murtz room just on daylight with Prince panting at her heels. The dog made three attempts at leaping up onto the bed before he finally made it, face planting onto his misstress's lap in a dead faint. Stella managed to spew out what had happened before she joined him.

Daily picked up Finn from the cells on his way to the graveyard and although he drove so fast that he made the fifteen minute trip in just under seven, he was in no hurry to get out of the car once he got there.

''What am I going to find?'

'Art, detective. Art.'

Officer Dunnard stood back and waited for as long as he could, which was somewhere in the ballpark of sixty seconds. He walked over to the car and tapped on Daily's window. Daily sighed and rolled it down.

'Yes.'

'Sir you might want to, uh, brace yourself.'

'How bad is it?'

'I've never seen anything like it.'

'That's not saying much.'

Daily and Dunnard escorted Finn to the crematorium in cuffs, and found the store room at the rear in half the time it had taken Shirley Thomas. Daily walked up to the statue, took a deep breath, and whistled.

'The likeness is uncanny.'

'Merely a reproduction,' said Finn, 'the sitter was the masterpiece.'

Daily walked around the statue. 'What did you do to her?'

'If you're asking me whether I molested the girl, the answer is no. That's what I wanted to protect her from.'

'Protect her?'

'She was a rare gem in a world full of modern, costume crap, and I wasn't going to stand by and see her locked in a box or passed around to all and sundry.'

'You were keeping her for yourself.'

'I thought we were past this. I'm keeping her for EVERYONE. She is nothing less than the eighth wonder of the world, but as I told her, the world isn't ready for her yet.'

'Oh, I think the world's ready now.'

'I disagree.'

Daily pushed the statue back and forth.

'Where is she, Finn?'

Beads of sweat dotted Finn's forehead, but he didn't answer. Daily pushed harder.

'Where IS she?'

'Please...'

'WHERE?'

'Here! She's here!'

'Here WHERE?'

'In this room!'

'Thank you.'

Daily shoved the statue to the ground. A piece of plaster flew up and hit Finn in the eye and lodged there, but that wasn't the reason he screamed. He fell to his knees, bleeding on himself. Daily didn't move to help him. The nut job with one less eye was the least of his problems. At his feet, swathed in layers of bandages now brown with residual body fluids, smelling sweet and rotten as a six month old vase of flowers, was little June Thomas.