Danny and Marshall watched as the attendant at the pet cemetery dug up John Baker’s dog, Frankie. The Rest-in-Pets Animal Cemetery was a dismal patch of land jammed in the back of what used to be a strip mall in Ferndale just outside of Detroit. Darkness was settling on the city, and the tiny headstones sprouted up around them like a miniature vision of some hellish dream.
Like most people, Danny thought of pets as kind of human, so this place, this ragged piece of land filled with the carcasses of once-loved family members, was very quietly giving him the creeps.
Danny had called in the cops and an ambulance for Reverend Bolt. How and why Bolt was there and had been mutilated was something that he did not know. They were all curious but Bolt was in no shape to talk yet.
The morgue’s meat wagon had come for the Bady brothers. They would not be talking at all.
Bellva had confessed to everything she knew. John Baker had stolen a lot of money along with Olittah Reese, who’d had a last-minute change of heart. When the heat was on, he buried it with his dead dog before he was killed.
The cemetery attendant, a young man named Wilson, dug up the grave of John Baker’s dead dog. Wilson told Danny that Mr. Baker had insisted on buying the casket himself and would not let him see what was inside it. By law he had to know, so after a little haggling, Baker had bribed him with a hundred bucks to keep his mouth shut.
Wilson hit something solid and stopped shoveling. “That’s gotta be it,” he said. Wilson put down his spade and scooped away dirt with his hand, revealing a black metal casket. Lifting it up, he pushed it out of the hole.
Danny took over at this point. He forced open the lid and waited for the stench of the dog’s rotting corpse. Instead, he smelled nothing. Inside the coffin were two black vinyl bags. Danny opened the first one and saw it contained neatly bundled packets of bills.
“A buried treasure,” said Marshall. “This shit could only happen in Detroit.”
“You got that right,” said Danny. Danny opened the other bag and found Frankie’s carcass. He quickly zipped it closed.
Wilson sighed and whistled as he realized that he took a measly hundred to pass up a fortune. “There a finder’s fee or somethin’ for this?” he asked.
“No such luck,” said Danny. He lifted the bag with the money in it, then noticed that there was something else in the coffin. He removed several mini cassette tapes and a recorder with a tape inside. It also had a small microphone still plugged in. He stared at it, understanding that John Baker had hidden more than stolen money; he’d buried a secret with his beloved dog. Whatever was on these tapes had driven John Baker to extremes and perhaps caused his death.
“If you don’t play it, I sure as hell will,” said Marshall.
Danny searched the small machine for the play button.
“I should get one of these bundles of money,” said Wilson.
“There’s no reward,” said Marshall.
“There should be,” said Wilson. “That’s a lot of money for there not to be no reward. Maybe you fellas can fix it so’s I get hooked up with one.”
“We’ll do what we can, sir,” said Danny. He pressed the tape recorder’s play button and nothing happened. “Batteries are dead,” Danny said to Marshall.
Marshall couldn’t help but laugh a little as Danny fumbled with the tape machine. Danny saw Wilson run to his attendant’s cart, then come back with several small batteries in his hand. Wilson seemed as eager to know what was going on with the desecrated grave as Danny was.
Danny took the batteries and put several of them in the tape machine. He rewound the tape, then played it. Danny was mesmerized as he listened to the voice emanating from the tiny speaker. He popped in tape after tape until he got it all. When he was finished, he took a deep breath and looked up into the darkening sky. Now he knew everything.