Knee High By The 4th Of July Part 11

When my eyes opened, the birds were singing but the sky was dark. I sat up and my bed swayed under me. The digital clock on my nightstand was blinking 12:00 in an acid red, meaning the power had gone out at some point, and a rip of thunder rolled across the lake and into the house. My heart caromed off its track and hammered around loose in my chest. Was it Monday night or Tuesday morning? How long had I been asleep? Was I alone in my house?

The smell of ozone, followed by a flash of lightning, was unsettling. I forced myself out of the bed and into my kitchen. The battery-powered clock hanging on a nail over the fridge read 7:36, but I still didn't know if it was am or pm. What time had I gone to bed? I scratched at my head and jumped as Tiger Pop brushed against my leg.

"Hey, sweetie. How long have I been asleep?" No answer. I went to my front door, which had been shut and locked. Brad, looking out for me, about a year too late. I opened the inner door and leaned my face against the cool screen. It must be morning, or the screen would still be warm. I watched the first drop of rain hit my garden, scaring up black dust. Then the second drop came, and the third, and as I belatedly realized I had left my car windows open, the sky opened up and emptied her tubs. I ran to my car, rolled up all four windows, and was drenched right down to the inner crotch seam of my cut-offs by the time I splashed back inside. As the rain pounded down, a wicked cold breeze slipped like an icy tongue through the wall of heavy air, and I knew we were in for a mother of a storm.

"Whaddya think, Tiger Pop? Should I wait it out, or make a run for town now before it gets even worse?"

"Whoof," Luna said. To town it was. I considered my run to the car a shower, so I only needed to change clothes and brush my teeth. I got Luna and Tiger Pop fresh food and water and, umbrella in hand, put their vittles in the sheltered area under the house. I also relocated a disgruntled Tiger Pop to that area. When the rain let up, I knew they'd both want to be outside.

My house was still tidy, so there was nothing to do but go into the storm and drive. The sky was black, except for the razors of lightning that cut through it, and the thunder was the only sound loud enough to trump the shovelfuls of rain hammering down. Battle Lake was getting itself cleaned behind the ears, sure enough, and I knew the farmers were going to be elated, as long as no hail came with the package. Their crazy high corn needed to be watered.

The drive to town was slow. At thirty miles per hour, I could just barely make out the hood of my car, and my winds.h.i.+eld wipers were doing more stirring than removing of rain. Sid and Nancy, bless their hearts, had the Fortune Cafe open when I arrived at 8:30, but there wasn't much business in town. The only other customers in the cafe were some out-of-towners and their miserable-looking kids ("But honey, we can play Monopoly in here until the rain lets up!"), Les Pastner, and a waitress from the Turtle Stew ordering some real coffee before her s.h.i.+ft started.

I stepped in line behind the waitress but was distracted by the sound of radio snaps and burps. Les was at the two-top table to my immediate left, fiddling with a small radio poorly hidden in his jacket. To my infinite surprise, he looked to be drinking a marble mocha macchiato, extra whipped cream, hold the cinnamon. Apparently, even militia men are not immune to the finer pleasures life has to offer.

"What're you listening to, Les?"

"Police scanner."

"Any news?"

"Can't hear. The storm is messing up my frequency."

"Mind if I join you after I get my breakfast?"

Les' hair was slicked off to one side with a part you could land a jet on, and his squinty eyes were so deep-set, I couldn't tell what color they were, though the green-gray of his eye bags reflected off their surface. Right now, he looked at me as if I had asked him if I could paint his toenails pink. "Why?"

"You and me need to talk."

He looked around furtively. The waitress had taken her coffee and left, and Sid and Nancy had politely disappeared into the kitchen. Meanwhile, the family had settled into the back room to see if the Parker Brothers could keep them sane. "You said you weren't gonna tell no one you saw me outside the motel." His voice sounded accusing.

"And I meant it. I just want to know if you found out anything else about Dolly and Brando. Did they come to town together?"

Les tried to look tough, like an impenetrable gangsta, but it wasn't an easy look to pull off with whipped cream on your upper lip and a macchiato in hand. "I'm not working for you."

That set me back on my heels. Les had tipped his hand a little too far. "But you're working for someone." It was a statement, not a question. "Who?"

He took another sip of his gourmet coffee and busied himself fiddling with his radio.

"OK, don't tell me who it is. What'd they hire you to do?"

A clear stream of words came out of the radio, though it sounded distant. Les pulled up the antennae and readjusted them like they were metal chopsticks and he was trying to pick up a tiny ball of rice.

"Was it a male or female who hired you, or both?"

"... Big Ole statue missing from Alexandria ..."

Les' eyes got big, and he tuned in the information stream cackling from the radio.

"It's just gone. What does someone want with a big Norwegian statue?"

There was a crackle, and then a response from another officer, or the dispatcher. "Ransom? Or maybe Chief Wenonga was getting lonely." Followed by a chuckle. "No scalp on this one?"

"No blood. I repeat, no blood. The statue has just disappeared."

I had been leaning into the radio and so jumped when Les slammed it against the tabletop, spilling his coffee. "G.o.d bless it! This is not how it was supposed to go!" He ignored the mess he had made and stormed out of the Fortune Cafe, radio in hand.

Sid reappeared from the kitchen. "What was that all about?"

I shook my head in amazement. "Les' police scanner. Someone took Big Ole out of Alexandria."

"No way!" She wiped her hands on the towel she was carrying, and I was shocked to notice she was wearing a skirt. "Well, it looks like our bad luck is spreading around a little. But why is someone stealing schlocky statues?"

I bristled at the "schlocky," but made a joke of it. "Maybe they want to build the world's biggest mini golf course?" Inside, though, my thoughts were spinning. I had a.s.sumed that Chief Wenonga had been stolen to strike a blow for PEAS, and the missing Bill Myers dressed as a Native American had lent credence to that theory. Now, Bill had been found, and a non-Indian statue had been stolen. This was clearly about the statues, and not the politics, which pointed the finger squarely at Brando. But how was Dolly involved?

"I don't think it's for mini golf. Where do you hide twenty-plus-foot statues?"

Good question. "I dunno, Sid. Can I get a sun-dried tomato bagel with provolone cheese, to go? And maybe a Diet c.o.ke. I have a feeling it's going to be a long day."

"Sure thing, shug." Sid wrapped my food in waxed paper and filled a to-go cup with pop, and I went back into the rain. It had let up from "firehose in the sky" to "water pressure in the average double-wide," so I gambled I wouldn't need my umbrella to dash the fifteen feet from the front door of the Fortune to my car. I lost that bet. I was soaked, for the second time that day. The temperature was 74 degrees, according to the bank's LCD screen, so at least it wasn't a miserable soaked.

I drove to the library and shook off inside. I fired up the front desk computer and began searching, starting with "Big Ole Alexandria Minnesota." The first link pulled up an attractive (if you like the Nordic type) picture of big Ole, horned-helmet on his head, blonde, shoulder-length locks cascading into his beard and moustache. He carried a wussy-looking spear in one hand and a s.h.i.+eld in the other, with his sword strapped at his waist. He wore a skirt that would make Paris Hilton proud. It was bright yellow and skimmed the upper thighs of his unusually long legs. It also highlighted nicely the fact that one leg was raised and stepping forward, as if to say, "I have conquered this land, and I did it in a skirt." It was suggestively s.e.xy, in a h.o.m.oerotic sort of way. Me, I preferred tall, dark, and handsome. There was something nagging me about that statue, though. Something familiar.

I read the caption and was brought up to date on Alexandria history. The town called itself "The Birthplace of America," due to the Kensington runestone found nearby in 1898 under the roots of an aspen tree by Olaf Ohman, an illiterate local farmer. The markings on the 202-pound stone were believed to be a runic inscription describing a Viking expedition in 1362, a date well-preceding Columbus' "discovery" of America. Controversy followed the discovery, with Ohman's veracity being called into question.

In 1948, the Smithsonian displayed the runestone, where it stayed for about twenty years until the museum decided it was a fake, returning it to Minnesota. Unfortunately, the curators had scrubbed off with a wire brush all the microevidence that could have dated it. It was apparently quite a scandal, with differing conspiracy theories as to why the museum had scrubbed the stone.

Before the Smithsonian biffed and at the high point of the positive runestone publicity, Alexandria commissioned a twenty-eight-foot fibergla.s.s statue of Ole Oppe, better known as the Viking, Big Ole. Big Ole began his existence at the World's Fair in 1964 before moving to Alexandria. I searched three more sites using "Big Ole" as the search term, and finally found what I was looking for under "Ole Oppe": the statue had been built by one Fibertastic Enterprises out of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

h.e.l.lo, Brando Erikkson. Why, pray tell, are you stealing your own statues? And why scalp Liam Anderson?

I flipped back to my computer and Googled "Fibertastic Enterprises." I had tried this search earlier, but had not dug deeply. This time, I was going to find something, even if I had to read all 1,314 hits. The first hit was the same home page for the Stevens Point company that I had come across in my original search. The next hundred or so were links to the websites of communities that had purchased statues from Fibertastic and were crediting the company. Among these were links to Chief Wenonga in Battle Lake and Big Ole in Alexandria. It was at link number 132 that I hit pay dirt in the form of a brief article in the online English version of the Mumbai Mirror out of Bombay. The article was t.i.tled "Gandhi Falls on Jain Pa.s.sersby, Injuring Many": A group of six Jain devotees, on a pilgrimage to Shatrunjaya Hills, were injured as the twenty-three-foot statue of Mahatma Gandhi they walked under fell on them. The statue had been commissioned in the late 1970s by a wealthy Brit named Bobcat Perham and intended as a reminder of Gandhi's sacrifices. Fibertastic Enterprises, a Wisconsin, United States, company, built, s.h.i.+pped, and installed the statue. The statue's fall appeared to be an act of G.o.d.

The article included a picture of the Gandhi statue, presumably taken before it had toppled over. In the photograph, the statue looked unusually robust, given Gandhi's historically emaciated appearance, and strangely familiar. I contemplated that as I ran the name of the town through my memory. Shatrunjaya Hills. When Johnny had called from Wisconsin, he had said Dolly Castle had taken the study-abroad program to Shatrunjaya Hills, India.

The mystery was solved!

Brando, who for all I knew had a hand in creating the Ronald McDonald statues Dolly had vandalized, had built a statue that had injured innocent bystanders. Dolly, swept up in the cause of the unfairly injured Jains, was doling out her own form of weird punishment by stealing his statues. I wondered if her group, PEAS, even existed or was just a front for her as she skulked around Battle Lake and Alexandria, publicly humiliating Brando while he was in town to celebrate a Wenonga-less Chief Wenonga Days.

It was time to confront one Dolly Castle, woman to woman.

Mrs. Berns was only too happy to open and run the library by herself. "Kennie and I need to meet, anyhow."

That stopped me cold. "What're you and Kennie meeting about?" The two normally didn't get along well, except when they believed a profit was at stake. Their last joint venture was old-lady beauty contests, which had developed a strong niche market but never took off like they had dreamed. I didn't want them to be dreaming their sordid entrepreneurial dreams in my library.

She shuffled away from me. "Never you mind."

I followed her. "Are you two going to start another business?"

"We're just going to hang out and talk."

"But you don't like Kennie."

Mrs. Berns cackled. "I didn't like my last husband, either, but that didn't stop me from enjoying his company, if you know what I mean. Now stop worrying and go save your boy."

"OK, but remember, if anything happens to the library, we're both out of work."

She gave me a curt German "Ach!" and sent me on my way. My first stop was the Battle Lake Motel, where I was grateful to see Dolly's black Honda still parked. The rain must have kept her inside. I pulled my car into Halvorson Park and debated whether to knock on her door and just straight up ask her what was going on or to hide in the rain and follow her when she finally left. I decided on subterfuge, and settled in for a wait. About forty-five minutes pa.s.sed, and the inside of my winds.h.i.+eld was becoming foggy. It was raining too hard to leave the windows down, so I started my car and turned on the defrost. I fiddled with my k.n.o.b until I tuned in 92.3, the cla.s.sic rock station out of Alexandria. Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" blues-rocked over the airwaves, and I took it as a good sign.

Shortly after that, I saw the doork.n.o.b on room number 7 jiggle, and Dolly's head popped out and then back in. When she emerged a minute later, she carried an aqua-blue umbrella. She dashed through the downpour into her car, too engrossed in staying dry to notice if she was being watched or followed.

When Dolly pulled out and drove past Halvorson Park, I let one car slip between us before following. As far as I knew, she didn't know what my car looked like, but better safe than sorry. She was heading through town, and the traffic was light, likely due to the storm. She stopped at the intersection of 78 and 210, and kept driving south on 78. When she turned east shortly after 78 briefly divided into double-lane, I wondered where she was headed. If she was returning to Wisconsin, this wasn't the quickest way to 94. This back road offered only a Bible camp, Inspiration Peak, and farms.

I turned left to follow Dolly, and my radio lost its signal. I fiddled with static before the entire mechanism bopped out and began screeching. This happened often in my little Toyota, particularly when it rained. I punched the volume b.u.t.ton off and sniffed in the wet green of the Minnesota gra.s.sland jungle. To the south of the road was a herd of wet and grazing buffalo, and to the north were rolling hills dotted with sumac and prairie gra.s.s. The bucolic scenery was all covered in sheets of wet gray, the rain falling so fast that it ran downhill instead of being absorbed by the parched ground.

I was getting relaxed following Dolly, and suddenly, as I crested the last hill before the Peak, the supper club nestled at the base of Inspiration Peak, she was out of sight. She must have turned left on the gravel road right before the Peak because the blacktop road stretched straight and curving to the right was empty. I pulled into the dinner club's parking lot and considered my options. If I followed the gravel, I could either drive straight, past farmhouses, or turn right, up to the Inspiration Peak parking lot.

I had been to Inspiration Peak a few times before, mostly in the fall when the leaves were a blazing quilt of reds, golds, and oranges. At 1,750 feet, about 400 feet above the surrounding landscape, Inspiration Peak was the highest point in Otter Tail County and the third highest point in all of Minnesota. The rumor was that Sinclair Lewis wrote some of his social criticism there, and that he had named this highest summit in the glacially carved Leaf Hills. It was a gut-busting straight-up hike to the top of the Peak but worth every ragged breath. You could see nearly thirty miles in every direction on a clear day.

Was it possible Dolly was just out here for some sightseeing and hiking? Unlikely, given the rain. Still, I might as well check out the dead-end parking lot at the base of the Peak so I could rule out her having taken that route. I swung a right, heading up the paved driveway, and wasn't surprised that the parking lot was empty. I looped around to head back down the hill when a darker shape in the woods off to my right caught my eye. I rolled down my window and squinted through the rain, making out what appeared to be a hatchback pulled up off the road and under an enormous sheltering pine. It was Dolly's car. What was she doing at Inspiration Peak during a rain shower?

s.h.i.+t. I was going to have to get out and see what was up. In the spirit of staying undercover, I drove my car the half mile to the Peak Supper Club's deserted parking lot, left my Toyota behind the dumpster, grabbed my flashlight, and dragged my miserable b.u.t.t out into the rain. The downpour had tapered off to a steady shower, and at least it was warm, but it's never fun to be wet in clothes. At least Dolly would be easy to follow in the mud, I consoled myself glumly as I sloshed along. I backtracked to her car and was unsurprised to find it empty. Fresh hiking boot tracks, filling up softly with rain under the protection of the hardwoods, led off trail and into the woods.

The oaks and pine kept the worst of the rain off of me, but the musty smell of wet leaves and pine needles clung to me. It wasn't long before I felt a crawling sensation at the back of my neck-a woodtick, looking for room and board. I pulled it out of my s.h.i.+rt and squished its rubbery body with my thumbnail before flinging it into the woods. It was all over now. I had woodtick fever, head to toe, inside and out. Every branch brus.h.i.+ng against my skin, every raindrop trickling down my naked arm, every tingle in my scalp was a hungry woodtick looking to plunge its fangs into my flesh and grow corpulent, blue-gray and lethargic, like a vampiric blueberry dangling from my defenseless body. Ugh. I was so caught up in my paranoia that I didn't notice the yellow sign warning me that I was leaving state park grounds.

I also didn't notice that the landscape was changing from hardwoods and some pine, to pine and some scrub, to marsh fern and fringed loosestrife-native swamp plants. I was heading into uncertain ground, and it wasn't until my feet made a sucking noise as I pulled them up for a step that I truly looked around. Dolly's hiking boot trail was still in front of me, though harder to follow now that the trees were no longer protecting it from the rain. And I was definitely entering a swamp. I could tell by the lay of the land and by the boggy, canned-fish smell in the air. Behind me was the Inspiration Peak parking lot, now nearly a mile back. In front of me was my one chance to free Johnny. I had no choice but to continue, and to add leech fever to my list of worries.

The rain was finally easing off, and I c.o.c.ked my ear to listen for any sign of Dolly stopping or backtracking on me. Nothing but the soft sound of rain and some far-off thunder. I plodded gingerly forward, putting my sandal-shod feet on fallen sticks where possible and sinking into the muck where it wasn't. I took solace in the fact that Dolly didn't seem to be having any better time of it than me, judging by her footprints. A half-mile later, I was through the swamp and back into the relative comfort of emerald-green prairie gra.s.s and shoulder-height red sumac. That is where I lost the trail.

I searched frantically, starting at the last footprint and working outward in concentric circles. When I started hitting the swamp again on the far side of the circle, I began to worry. I strode away from the swamp and to the highest hill in front of me, careful to stick close to the ground and make as little noise as possible. From my poor excuse for a perch, I could see an abandoned farmstead in front of me and Inspiration Peak looming behind me. I didn't see any movement in the farmstead, but it was worth a look-see since I had come this far.

I made my way carefully toward the sagging barn, its red paint faded to a rusty brown. The back of the barn was facing me, a tired silo on one side and on the other, an abandoned farmhouse, its front windows years ago shattered by some teens, undoubtedly, or maybe a drunken Sinclair Lewis. Some proud oaks surrounded the old structures, but here were no other buildings. A dirt road, churned up and hazardous from the rain, led away from the buildings. From this distance, I couldn't tell if the road had been used recently.

I was near the abandoned farmstead, sticking close to the ground and behind sumac shrubs, when I spotted movement. It was Dolly, leaving the house. The entry was doorless, so she simply walked through the opening and toward the barn. She strode briskly, confidently, not like she was exploring but rather like she was finis.h.i.+ng up business.

I studied the short distance between the barn and me. The only cover left was prairie gra.s.s, but thankfully, there were no windows on the backside. As if on jungle patrol, I made a quiet dash toward the barn and reached the rear without seeing anyone else move. I dropped to all fours, my bare knees soaking up mud and moisture from the drenched ground, and crawled to the side of the building. I couldn't hear any human movement, and so I hugged the ground tighter and wormed my way along the side, meaning to peek at the front.

I continued, unmolested, until I made out the soft murmurings of voices. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but it was clearly a man and a woman talking, and they sounded angry. I risked poking my head around the front and saw that the entire face of the barn was exposed, the sliding door having fallen or been taken off its roller long ago. I noticed that second. What I noticed first was the two huge, sandal-clad feet sticking out of the front of the barn. Twenty-eight-foot, fibergla.s.s-Norse-warrior big.

It was Big Ole, and he was in pieces. Did Dolly have Chief Wenonga here, too? I tried to peek around at the silo, hoping to spy a shock of black hair poking over the top that I had maybe missed before. I didn't get my head too far before Dolly came storming out, followed by Les.

"We agreed on $2,500," Les was saying gruffly. I hadn't gotten a good look at him before I ducked back around the corner, but I could hear rage in his voice.

"I said I'd pay you $2,500 in exchange for two very specific things. You've only delivered one."

"One big one! Not one person saw me or my brother leave with that statue. That's worth $2,500 alone!"

I bet Dolly was going to say something really important then, something like, "But you messed up getting Chief Wenonga and forced me to murder Liam Anderson, so you're only getting $1,250 and be lucky you're getting anything, and I never even kissed Johnny Leeson because he said he loves Mira James who's for sure way better in bed than I could ever be," but I would never know because at that unfortunate moment, a crow squawked behind me. An evil, murderous squawk that would have scared any normal human being out of her skin. I jumped out and landed plop on the ground near Dolly and Les. They both looked at me like I had just fallen out of a cow's behind.

"Hi." That's all I could get out before Les lunged at me, loaded for bear. He had munitions strapped across his chest in an "X," a knife belt around each skinny thigh, a stun gun at his hip (why hadn't I brought my own blessed stun gun?), and a sword in a scabbard at his back. He landed on top of me and quickly spun my arms and his legs around in circles, twisting my body in some elaborate half-nelson-crossface-chickenwing arm lock, accompanied by high-pitched Bruce Lee karate sounds. When he had wrestled me into an ungainly position, confident that I could not move, he demanded, "How do you like that, missy?"

Too bad Les was not a gifted wrestler. He mostly had himself tangled and me by the wrists. A flick of each, and I stood up and he fell harmlessly off of me. "It was kind of gross, Les. So, you stole Big Ole?"

Air escaped Dolly in a frustrated whoof. "Jesus, Les. What was that? I thought you were going to hurt her. You need to be more careful."

I eyeballed Dolly. "You don't want him to hurt me? I could spill the beans about all this." I waved my arm to encompa.s.s the sandaled feet and generous thighs of Big Ole, lying on his back in the shade of the barn. I also glanced quickly up his skirt-neuter, I knew it-but I think my peek was suave enough that Dolly didn't notice.

"I don't want anyone hurt. I never did."

"Especially the Jains?"

Dolly's sea-green eyes narrowed. She was mud-up-to-her-knees, her sodden strawberry blonde hair was escaping her ponytail and plastering itself to her cheeks, and her hands were on her hips so tight I thought they might leave bruises. "Especially the Jains. You know about the statue in India?"

"I only have theories. The one thing I can tell you for sure, though, is that Johnny Leeson is in jail for something he didn't do."

"What?"

"Johnny was arrested yesterday. A dead body was found at his cabin on Silver Lake, some guy from Wisconsin named Liam Anderson. Sound familiar?"

"No." Dolly said this with genuine surprise in her voice, followed by a wave of concern on her face. "They think Johnny killed him?"

"They do. And this Liam Anderson is missing a chunk of his scalp, a chunk that matches the hairy mess found at the base of Chief Wenonga's statue. Whoever killed Liam Anderson probably also stole the Chief, and it follows that whoever stole the Chief, also stole Big Ole."

"See!" Les exploded. "I told you we shouldn't take Ole so close to Wenonga disappearing! You said no one would connect the two, that the police wouldn't be involved. Crazy woman. Crazy Indian-lovin' woman."

"Calm down."

"You two took Ole, but not Wenonga?" That would be like breaking into a chocolate store and only taking the money. "Dolly, you know Les has been following you since you got to town, don't you?"

Dolly's hands left her hips and hung at her sides. She suddenly looked very, very tired. "Not me. Brando. I hired him to follow Brando and get enough information to pin the Chief's disappearance on him." At this point, she glared at Les. "He didn't get me anything."

This was why Les hadn't earned his full $2,500-he had s.n.a.t.c.hed Big Ole but hadn't dug up any information on Brando. It made sense. The two times I had seen Les skulking around in the shadows, I had a.s.sumed he was following Dolly, but Brando was at both locations both times. "Why do you think Brando stole Wenonga?"

"Not think. Know." Dolly shook her head with resignation, swiping her hair off her face and tucking it back into her ponytail. A reluctant smile played at the corners of her generous mouth. "You're quite the snoop, you know that?"

I shook my head. "I prefer to think of myself as curious. Johnny isn't really involved in this, is he? If you tell me what's going on, I can help to get him out of jail."

Dolly appeared to weigh her options before she began talking. Her speech was fast, too fast to take notes if we had been in cla.s.s. "I was in Shatrunjaya Hills, India, last semester, leading a study abroad cla.s.s. While there, I got involved with a group fighting the corporate invasion of the country. McDonald's was the obvious face of this rampant capitalism, and that's where we concentrated our energies. It was small-time civil disobedience at first-cutting off the arms of Ronald McDonald, spray-painting anticorporate messages on the side of the corporate offices, staging protests outside the front doors of the restaurant while dressed as mad cows.

"Then, someone in our group blew up a McDonald's. No one was hurt, but I realized that it had gone too far. I packed up and was getting ready to leave when I heard about the Gandhi statue. I had been pa.s.sing it every day on my way to cla.s.s, and one day, it just fell over. It hurt some people, Jains on their pilgrimage, but it seemed like an accident. That is, until a local investigation revealed that the statue was structurally unsound. It was only a matter of time until it fell. That's when Brando flew onto the scene, greasing palms and swis.h.i.+ng away with the evidence before any charges could be pressed. The court costs would have put him under."

"Did you and he meet there?"

"No. And it was just coincidence I ended up hired in Stevens Point, where Fibertastic Enterprises is housed. But once that fell in my lap, I knew it was karma. It was up to me to right the wrongs that had been done by Brando Erikkson's company in India. I just didn't know how, at first."

I shook my head knowingly. "And you came up with the plan to humiliate Brando by stealing his statues?"

"Humiliate him? Wouldn't that be rather childish? No, after researching, I found out that the Gandhi statue, the Big Ole statue, and the Chief Wenonga statue were all made from the same mold. It followed that all three had the same structural deficiencies, and if I could prove that, I could prove that the Gandhi statue falling wasn't an accident. Brando would be forced to pay up."