Free Treasured Dreams by Kendall Talbot Page A

place it on the floor.
    Nestled within the custom-built crate, the monkey statue was resting in a bath of cotton wool. Under the harsh lights, it shone with a magnificent glow. Although Alessandro had been looking at it for weeks, he was still astonished at how perfectly crafted the piece of treasure was.
    â€˜ Wow, Alessandro, è magnifico .’ Leonardo didn’t drag his eyes from the gold as he spoke.
    â€˜Where’d you find it?’
    â€˜Sorry, but that’s classified informazioni .’
    Lorenzo cocked his head. ‘Come on, you can tell us.’
    â€˜No. We can’t.’ Ginger said it with authority.
    That was another thing he adored about Ginger. She could switch from carefree and joyous to forthright in the blink of an eye.
    Lorenzo shrugged as if he didn’t care, but Alessandro knew that the secrecy ate at him. Whenever Alessandro had come to work with his lunch in a paper bag, Lorenzo always had to know what was inside. Alessandro liked the lunch guessing game, but this was a thousand times more impressive.
    Alessandro glanced at his watch. Professor Sezoine should be here in about twenty minutes. Their timing was perfect. ‘We’ll have to work together to lift it out.’
    Alessandro pressed a button at the side of the table to lower it to the bottom position.
    Between the four of them, they managed to wriggle their gloved hands beneath the statue and stand it onto its base. From there, it was relatively easy to lift it onto the bench.
    Professor Sezoine arrived and went straight to the statue that now stood proudly in the centre of the room. He had a woolly head of grey hair that scrambled in all directions, and a beard to match. His eyebrows were enormous tufts of grey fluff that nearly consumed his eyes when he frowned, which he was doing now as he pointed at the decorations over the statue.
    â€˜This work is exquisite.’ The awe in his throaty voice was unmistakable. ‘Where did you find this?’
    Ginger shot Alessandro a glance.
    â€˜We are not at liberty to say at this point.’ Alessandro shifted from foot to foot.
    â€˜Right. You said that on the phone.’
    Alessandro caught Ginger’s eyes, and she bulged them at him. It was exciting to be sharing this moment with her. As he was the only one who didn’t scuba dive, he hadn’t had the pleasure of unearthing a treasure yet. Today, he and Ginger were receiving front-row seats for the removal of the monkey’s head.
    â€˜This is Thoth, the god of knowledge.’ The professor’s mouth was barely inches from the gold. ‘He is usually depicted in one of two ways. The ibis head or the baboon head. The baboon is a form of A’an, which is the god of equilibrium. You have the ibis-headed Thoth here.’ He pointed at the three men with ibises for heads that were carved into the body of the statue. ‘The fact that a baboon head is on this statue means he is the guardian. But of what?’ He waggled his eyebrows in a fluffy grey two-step.
    â€˜You can’t tell from the pictures?’ Ginger’s voice elevated a notch.
    Professor Sezoine glanced at her momentarily before he blinked a few times. ‘Patience,’ he said, before he returned to the statue. ‘I have never seen a statue of Thoth with both the baboon and the ibis. It is always one or the other. Never both.’ He finished his sentence with a low hum in his throat. Alessandro caught Ginger’s twinkling eyes, and she winked at him. It helped to alleviate the tension in the room that was as crisp as static electricity.
    Sezoine made one indecipherable noise after another as he scrutinised the statue. He paused on a symbol, and Alessandro’s heart pounded in the silence as he waited for the professor to reveal the significance of the engraving.
    â€˜Can you tell how old it is?’ Ginger made her impatience obvious.
    â€˜Mmmm,’ Sezoine mumbled. ‘It’s