“I heard something about it.”

Rumble started laying out stencil types. They had to be plastic so one could see through them, but they broke all the time.

“As you know, Floyd, I’m on the board.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The overwhelming matter that must be taken care of is how badly is the statue damaged, how do we go about restoring it and how much will it cost.”

Rumble hadn’t gone into the cemetery to look yet. Nor would he bother at all unless he was offered the job.

“He paint any of the marble base or just the bronze?” Rumble inquired.

“Mostly the bronze.” Just the thought of it made her sick. “But he did paint the top of the base to look like a basketball floor. So yes, some of the marble was involved.”

“I see. So he’s standing on a basketball floor. What else?”

“Well, the worst part. He painted a basketball uniform on him, tennis shoes and the whole bit, and changed his race.”

“Sounds like we got two problems here,” Rumble said as he tossed out another broken letter and the diamond saw in a corner started cutting through stone. “To fix the marble, I’m going to have to chisel it down and put on a new surface. As for the bronze, if we’re talking about oil-based paints . . .”

“Oh we are,” she said. “I could tell. Nothing spray-painted here. This was all done in thick coats with a brush.”

“We’ll have to strip that down, maybe with turpentine, then refinish with a polyurethane coating so we don’t get oxidation.”

“We’ll study this, then,” Miss Sink announced.

“We should,” Rumble said. “Eventually we’ll have to get Jeff Davis in my shop. I can’t be doing all this work on him in the middle of a public cemetery with people all over the place. Means we’ll have to hoist him up with a crane and a sling, lower him in a truck.”

“I ’spect we should close the cemetery while you’re doing all this,” Miss Sink said.

“During the removal, for sure. But I’d do it now anyway in case other people get ideas about other monuments. And I suggest you get security patrolling around there.”

“I’ll get Lelia to take care of it.”

“In the meantime, I don’t want anyone touching that statue. Now that’s saying you’re asking me to fix it.”

“Of course you’re the one, Floyd.”

“It will take me a day or so to get it out of the cemetery, and then I don’t know how long after that.”

“I guess all this is going to cost a pretty penny,” the parsimonious Miss Sink said.

“I’ll be as fair as I can be,” Rumble said.

Bubba had no intention of being fair. There had been too much trauma and disruption for him to even think about sleep, and as soon as the detective had left with lifted prints and other evidence, Bubba had returned to his shop. He had cleaned up fast and hard, anger giving him boundless energy while Half Shell bawled and bawled and ran around in circles and jumped up and down from the overturned barrel.