The Investigators, Inc. The Lost Doll. Chapter 3.

Well, the night passed quickly and uneventful. Danny was up about 5am and left the house an hour later to pick up the housekeeper. She must start early, or she lives a long ways off. We waited about 15 minutes and then we all headed for the basement. First obstacle was a lock on the basement door I didn’t notice before. I put M.C. up close to the lock to sniff around a bit. Meow.=Wire is attached to lock. He followed it along but it went down into the basement. “He has it rigged to set off an alarm, probably to his phone,” I said, “so he will know if anyone has been in the basement.” “Now what?”, said Kat.

“We go to the basement anyway,” I said, “we’re here to do a job so he’s not locking us out of any part of the house, or we leave.” Meow.=Let me have my toolkit. I dug it out of my backpack and gave it to him. He attached a little device to the wire where it went under the door. Meow.=Now me pick lock. And he did very quickly. “Do you think that device will stop the alarm?”, I asked him. Meow.=It supposed to stop electric city from working. Not sure if it work on this, but we see. “Nothing to lose,” I said, “I would have broken the lock anyway.”

Down we went. Jennifer carried M.C.’s toolkit for him, just in case it’s needed again. There was another lock on this door, but no wire attached to it. M.C. unlocked it quickly and I opened the door. We couldn’t see a thing in there. Kat brought out a flashlight, shining it into the room which was mostly empty, some broken furniture in one corner, a few boxes, a table and a lumpy blanket in another corner. The cats ran over to the blanket. Meow,meow!=It human person here! We all ran over and were shocked with what we saw.

It was an old man, he had been beaten, he was filthy and looked like he hadn’t eaten in a long time. “Let’s get him upstairs quickly,” said Annelie. She is a nurse, almost a doctor really, she just hasn’t completed her studies yet. But she has had a lot of practice with all sorts of situations when she was with Katrina’s gang. We had to carry him upstairs, he was too weak to walk. We took him directly to one of the bathrooms to clean him up. So glad we had Annelie with us for this. Jennifer brought Annelie’s medical kit. He was able to tell us which bedroom was his so I could get him some clean clothes.

Then we brought him to the kitchen and got him something to eat. I think Annelie was about ready to kill the other Danny when he got back. The old man’s name is Danny too, the other Danny is his oldest son. He has been trying to find the family treasure that is hidden here somewhere and when he couldn’t get anywhere he decided to hire us and pretend to be the older Danny. Hard to believe his son could have treated him this way. He was very tired from his ordeal so we put him to bed and Annelie gave him something to help get him relaxed so he could sleep.

“What now Steve?”, asked Kat. “We wait for Danny to get back, and we give him a nice welcome. Maybe we can find out what he has been doing here, before we hand him over to the police.” “Won’t that end our involvement with this case?”, asked Annelie. “Only as far as the young Danny is concerned,” I said, “but remember, the older Danny has said he wants to hire us to locate the doll anyway. So that’s a new case with a new client. There might however, be some overlap, but I don’t think it will stop us completely.” Just then Danny and the housekeeper drove up. The housekeeper came in first and said, “I’m the housekeeper, I go work now.”

“You go sit down on that chair now,” I told her. “No, I go work now,” she answered. So I pulled out my gun which produced a very shocked and worried look on her face. “Go sit down on that chair,” I said again, and Annelie directed her to the chair and sat her down. Then Danny came in. Jennifer kicked him in the stomach and Kat kicked him in the head. He fell against the wall and to his knees, groaning. Then he bent over for a bit, but I could see his arm moving. I nodded to Jennifer. Danny pulled out his gun but Jennifer grabbed his arm and pulled it against her knee. A loud crack and then a scream from Danny. “We found your Dad,” I said to him.

To Be Continued.

©2021 Steve McLeod.