"Dipper! Dipper! Dipper!" Mabel yelled as soon as her twin had entered the house along with Soos and Wendy.

"There's just been a break in the case! I just got off the phone with that news place!" She paused and giggled to herself. "Ha, that rhymed. . ."

"What did you find out?" Dipper asked.

"I asked Sandra what location that phone call came from; and get this! Whoever called, called from inside the Shack!"

Wendy felt the weight on her chest lifted. Now that they were so close to finding the culprit her dad was no longer needed to be questioned. Now there was no way for her dad to find out about her adventures with the Pines Twins.

"This is awesome Mabel! Did you check the security footage?" Dipper asked happily.

Mabel rolled her eyes. "Well, duh. I was gonna check the footage but the tape was missing. I even checked the camera to make sure that Stan didn't forget to remove it, but it's all gone."

Dipper bit on his lower lip and scratched the top of his head, silently reviewing all of this new information to himself.

"Have you tried dusting for fingerprints?" Wendy suggested with a shrug.

Mabel snapped her fingers, her eyes lighting up at the idea. "Genius!" she exclaimed.

"We do have the stuff to dust, right?" she asked Dipper. He nodded.

"Great!" Soos said, looking relieved. "We'll have whoever did this caught in no time!"

"But we need to hurry," Wendy cut in. "Remember, we only have a few hours left to solve this case or else Stan will end up in prison. . . again."

    . . . . . . . .

After furiously dusting away on every phone in the house, Dipper arrived back in the living room holding all of the new evidence.

"Did you find anything?" Soos asked, turning away from the cartoon he, Mabel, and Wendy had been watching.

"Er. . . I don't know. I couldn't find anything. There weren't any fingerprints. . . at all!" Dipper replied, showing them the blank slips of paper in his hands.

Mabel took the papers from him and skimmed over them herself.

"What the. . .? He's right, no prints," she muttered, sounding just as confused as her brother.

Soos looked worriedly at Wendy.

"What now?" he said feebly. "We only have a few hours left."

Wendy patted Soos on the shoulder.

"We tried everything we could, there was nothing else we could do," she said, trying her best to cheer him up.

"Yeah," Dipper said quietly. "We tried."

Stan walked into the room, hanging up his jacket on the coat rack.

"Hey kids," he said, forcing a smile. "Find anything?"

Everyone solemnly shook their heads.

Stan exhaled slowly. "Okay, I just wanted to thank you guys anyways. I know you did the best you could manage."

Everyone exchanged warm smiles in return.

"And besides," Stan continued. "You got further in the case than those two buffoons this town calls the police!" He chuckled and playfully elbowed Dipper, who laughed too.

"Anything you need us to do?" Mabel offered.

"Um, I guess I could use your help in lugging those wax figures back into the storage room," Stan replied.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Before they could get to work, Stan complained about his back pains and disappeared into the Gift Shop while the kids were left to do the work.

"Of course he bails on us just before the actually work part of it kicks in," Wendy said angrily. She wasn't exactly sure how to maneuver the trolley she had been given to move the statue of Sherlock Holmes.

"It's Stan, you get used to it," Dipper said under his breath as he carried out the statue of William Shakespeare. Mabel left behind him, leaving Soos and Wendy to deal with Sherlock.

"We came so close," Soos said sadly. "We could've solved it if we had more time."

"Yeah," Wendy nodded. She looked over at the pictures and scraps of evidence pinned to the wall with tacks and pieces of tape. She looked closer at some pictures of the stage. Her eyes grew weary as she whispered, "Uh, Soos. . .I think we need to show Dipper this."

"What is it?" Soos asked timidly. He peered over her shoulder as Wendy pointed at the pictures.

"In this frame, everything looks normal, right?"

Soos nodded.

"But in this next frame, one of the wax statues is gone. And that was just ten minutes or so before that person called the station. What was inside the shack at this exact time and doesn't leave fingerprints?"

Soos's face turned ghostly white. "You- you think it was the-"

Wendy gulped and nodded, "It was the-"

"Oh, please don't use the W-word, it's quite distasteful," said a voice in a cold English accent.

Soos and Wendy whirled around to see the statue of Sherlock Holmes had come to life and was currently removing himself from the trolley Wendy had set to the side.

"It was you the whole time!" Soos exclaimed, pointing a trembling hand at Sherlock.

Wendy reached a hand to her back pocket where she kept her axe. Luckily, she was standing in a position so that Sherlock wouldn't notice her reaching for her weapon.

"Why would you want Stan arrested?" Soos whimpered as Sherlock began slowly stepping towards them, cornering them against the end wall of the hallway.

"He locked us away just because we weren't earning him enough money! Do you know what it's like to wait in the dark for years, just hoping for someone to open that bloody door?!"

"I'm sure Stan didn't mean to," Soos said nervously when he found there was no way of escape now. "He didn't know you were alive."

"How did he get you guys in the first place? Did he steal you or what?" Wendy asked, gripping her hand tightly around the handle of her axe. She just had to find a better angle and keep Sherlock distracted.

"He bought us alright, but with stolen money!"

"Huh, figures," Wendy muttered. She leaned down to Soos and whispered "run when I say go."

Soos nodded without looking away from Sherlock. Wendy slung her axe so it cut into the wax figure's arm, then turned so Sherlock was now pinned to the wall where she and Soos had just been standing.

"Go!" Wendy yelled, using all of her strength to hold back Sherlock, who was writhing under the axe's rusty blade.

Soos ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction down the hallway.

Sherlock finally broke free of the axe, leaving an arm stuck to the weapon. Using his free arm he knocked the axe out of Wendy's hands.

"Nice try, little girl, but it's going to take a lot more than a little axe to defeat me!" he snarled.

Wendy gasped and ran in the same direction as Soos, only this time running into the Gift Shop and climbing up the latter to the roof. Her boots slid on the roof tiles, causing her to slide and nearly fall, but she caught onto a window just before her feet ran out of tiles.

Wendy ducked behind the chimney and waited. She couldn't hear anything except for the faint whistling of the wind.

Maybe I lost him, she thought hopefully, peering around the side of the chimney, then gasping as Sherlock's remaining hand attempted to grab her by the shoulder.

Wendy fell back on the tiles, nearly sliding off the roof. Now Sherlock had her trapped with her back facing the edge of the roof.

Sherlock's wax mouth curved into an unpleasant grin as he swung the axe over his shoulders and said, "any last words?"

"Yeah," Wendy said followed by a quick gulp of air, "watch your step!" She kicked Sherlock and ducked out of the way so he was knocked to the side of the roof. Forced to drop the axe so he could hang onto the edge with his one arm, Wendy was now the one with the axe.

"You can't stop me!" Sherlock howled with am an angry scowl now painted on his face.

"I just did," Wendy said nonchalantly, placing her boot on top of Sherlock's fingers and proceeding to shove him off the roof.

Sherlock let out a long yell as he fell to the ground and landed on the ground in a heap of hot, melted wax in the summer heat.

Wendy removed her hat and wiped the sweat that had beaded on her forehead.

"Glad that's finally over," she muttered, walking back down to the Gift Shop. When she arrived she walked into a massacre of melted wax along with Dipper, Mabel, and Soos in the middle of a lecture with Stan.

"I can't believe you kids destroyed my wax figures!" Stan bellowed.  "Wait, where's Sherlock? That was my favorite one!"

"Uh. . . he kinda fell off the roof," Wendy said sheepishly.

Stan looked flabbergasted.

"How did Sherlock get on the roof?!"

"That's what we've been trying to explain to you, Grunkle Stan!" Mabel said exasperatedly.
"The wax statues came to life and tried to kill us!"

Stan heaved a sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

"What am I supposed to tell those two idiot cops now. . ."

"Well we did figure out who did it and it-" Dipper suddenly looked as though he realized Stan wouldn't believe him "-it. . . it was me. I called the police as a prank. I was mad that you grounded us, and I'm sorry," Dipper said quietly.

Stan didn't immediately respond to what Dipper had said, he only stared him down with a look filled with disappointment. After what felt like an eternity, Stan finally spoke.

"First off, I take offense to the fact that you literally tried to get me in jail, and secondly. . . I've never felt so proud!"

". . .what!"

Stan's eyes were lit up as if he had received the greatest gift of all time.

"I always thought you were a total wimp as a kid, but now you're finally standing up for yourself like a real man!" he exclaimed, giving Dipper a slap on the back. Dipper looked far beyond shocked, he couldn't believe what he was hearing from his uncle.

"You're actually okay with this?!" Mabel said, her mouth dropped open.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Stan said happily. "Looks like Dipstick is finally growing up!" He laughed and left the room with a look of pure glee on his face.

"This. . .was definitely not how I expected this case to end," Soos said tiredly.

"You could say that again," Wendy agreed.

"This was definitely not how I expected this case to end."

"Soos, I didn't mean that literal- ugh, whatever. Never mind."

A/N:

Sorry this took so long to be completed, I was a little busy wrapping up Triple Pines.

Hope everyone enjoyed this chapter, and have an awesome week!

Bye!

~Cath