( 2011) Cry For Justice by Ralph Zeta

dad may have hid in the tapestry?”
    She dabbed at her teary eyes once more and quietly blew her nose with a tissue from her purse. She shook her head. “It couldn’t have been very big or thick. You know? I looked behind the tapestry once, out of curiosity, and there was nothing there but the old wool and silk material. The tapestry itself is fairly old. It was a work commissioned by King Louis XV of France. It depicts a Chinese emperor enjoying his meal. It’s big and colorful but not particularly pretty, if you ask me. And it’s not very thick. You can’t hide anything inside it.”
    “So what do you think your dad may have meant?”
    “To be honest,” she said as she put away the tissue in her bag and got out a fresh one. “I don’t know. But I know this much: if my dad told me there was something valuable in that tapestry, you can bank on it. He would never have lied about something like that not to me, anyway.”
    “With all due respect, Amy, in your dad’s case, you can’t rule out anything.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “This may sound harsh, but it is something you must consider.”
    “Okay…,” she said in a halting voice, as if fearful of where this conversation was going.
    “Your dad was convicted of a massive financial fraud. He is an admitted embezzler a con man. Con men, by nature, are expert liars. Their stock in trade is deceit. Their world is nothing but smoke and mirrors.”
    She nodded and lowered her head, maybe a little embarrassed by the cold reality conveyed by those words. I had hit a nerve, but I wanted Amy to be sure.
    “Your dad disappointed you, your mother, and a great many others. Most of his world was a well-conceived lie. So you must consider, especially after looking at the tapestry and not seeing any evidence of this ‘policy’ he supposedly hid, the possibility that this insurance may have been...” I decided to choose my words carefully here. This girl had been through enough already. “. . . let’s just say, perhaps, not entirely the way he described it? That maybe there is nothing of real value hidden in it?”
    She thought about it for a moment, cocked her head sideways, and glanced at me with hopeful eyes. “Not knowing the kind of man he really was, the kind of father my dad really was, I guess I, too, would come to that conclusion, Mr. Justice.”
    “Please, it’s Jason. Mr. Justice was my dad...” I made her smile.
    “Sorry.”
    “Go on.”
    “This may sound foolish, but I trusted my father implicitly. He never broke a promise. Not once. I believe what he told me about the tapestry. I am convinced he hid something valuable in it, and I will continue to believe that until the day I die.”
    “Because he told you so.” This caused her to straighten her back, as if I had pushed the wrong button. And maybe I had.
    “No,” she said firmly. “Not because my father said it, but because my father promised .” Her finger jabbed at the table right near where my arm was resting as she emphasized the words “father” and “promised.”
    I got her point. She was convinced that Daddy hadn’t lied to her. Fine. But what the hell could you hide in something like a tapestry? They aren’t stretched on a frame where you can stash a document or some small item inside the framing. Tapestries are normally hung on some sort of decorative rod and left to drape freely down a wall, which was how she described this one.
    “Tell me something,” I continued. “What else besides the tapestry is missing from your mother’s home?”
    “You name it,” she said with a flick of a slender hand. “Everything that had any value. My mother’s jewelry is gone. I checked. And she had a lot of it: diamond earrings, necklaces, rings, gold everything. It’s all gone.”
    “What about art? Anything like a larger piece?” I was thinking of items that maybe were more difficult to move and convert to cash. The sort of thing that leaves a paper trail.
    “Quite a few pieces,