Here’s an excerpt from The Keys of Death that sort of explains the photo above:

David Brightman and his wife, Joanna, had made plans for the next day. They were going to Allerton Park in Monticello. It was October. The trees at Allerton would be gorgeous, and if the weather cooperated it was not likely to be cold.

It was an easy half hour drive from Champaign, south on Route 47, to the park’s main entrance. They’d divvy up snacks, water bottles, and a picnic lunch between two backpacks and set off for the formal gardens, where they would wander around and irreverently rename the statues and attractions. Poor, Lethargic Adam, The Garden of the Scary Blue Dogs, and the Not Lost Anymore Because We Found It Garden. There was an immaculately trimmed boxwood hedge feature that looked like it could have been a maze, but David had renamed it Not Really A Proper Maze Because You Can See Over The Top.

When they had amused one another enough, they would pick up the “yellow trail” (it was a yellow line on the park map) take it about a mile past the Creepy Little House in the Big Woods to the Headless Centaur, which wasn’t really headless but looked that way until you got up close, because the sculptor had, for some reason, positioned the centaur’s head at an incredibly acute angle to its shoulder. From there they would follow the “brown trail” for about a mile until it came to their favorite section of the park. It was a large, circular lawn surrounded by trees, with a concrete plinth in the center for the featured statue, a huge figure by Carl Milles called The Sun Singer.  David and Joanna had come up with numerous names for it over the years: The Flasher, Look, Ma! No Privates, Bloody Great Immodest Git, Nothing to See Here—and so on.

Want more? The Keys of Death, a veterinary medical thriller, is available at amazon in Kindle and paperback editions, barnes&noble (Nook or paperback), and kobo.