“What happened in there?” Hailey asks.
“I squeezed him like a kitchen sponge,” I laugh.
We’re standing outside the doors of the mayor’s mansion. I’ve just completed a tense follow-up meeting with Mayor Fliggle. I wave down to Officer Lestrade, who’s waiting at the curb in his cruiser.
“Why don’t we have Officer Lestrade arrest the mayor right now?” Hailey asks.
“Well, technically the mayor didn’t steal anything,” I sigh. “He just moved something out of sight. It never left the room. He probably planned to move it out of the building secretly when he picked up Untitled Number 14.”
“He admitted he moved the painting?”
“Not until I asked to see the heels of his boots,” I say, smiling. “There were a half dozen perfectly round dents in the heel of his right boot, which I’m sure match the size of the nail holding the missing hook. He moved the hook, then used his boot as a hammer.”
“How’d you figure that out?” she asks.
“Well, it just never made sense that an art thief would need to steal a hook. I should have thought more about the missing hook when we first got to the museum. He must have broken the window with his boot, too, so everyone would think the painting was gone. Pretty clever.”
“So our mayor’s a thief?” Hailey asks, shocked by the idea.
“Well, he is a politician,” I observe. “Of course, he claims that the artist, McGuffin, actually gave that painting to him, not to Mrs. Bagby. They argued about it at the time, and it eventually led to their breakup. I guess this was his opportunity to get back what he thought was always his.”
“I can’t even picture the two of them in the same room.”
“It was a long time ago,” I conclude with a shrug. “I guess hard feelings last a lifetime. He says he eventually would have split the money with her, but I doubt it.”
“So we’re just letting him go?”
“Not exactly. I agreed not to tell my whole story to the Baskerville Daily News on the condition that he did three things.”
Hailey waits. “Do you want me to start guessing?”
I start down the steps for Officer Lestrade’s cruiser. “The mayor is going to pass an emergency funding bill next week. The Baskerville police department will soon have plenty of money for new equipment, the cameras in the museum will finally get hooked up, and the science lab at our school will soon have thirty new microscopes.”
“Not bad, Sherlock,” Hailey says, clearly impressed. “Now let’s go celebrate with some flat-rabbit stew.”
Now that Mrs. Bagby has gobs of money for a fabulous retirement, and since the mayor has promised to stick to the terms of our agreement, I plan to honor my end of the deal and keep the details of this case quiet. I do, however, plan to use the index cards in my pocket to persuade Jessie to help me write a new oral report on a famous artist named Arthur McGuffin. I bet it makes Miss Piffle’s eyebrow dance a jig.
