The Investigators, Inc. Mystery of Avina. Chapter 12. Kat.

We were going to keep our latest prisoner with us and head to the US for the other 2, but Kat was sick again and I was worried about her. So we dropped off Rock with some of the team to handle the first prison “break” while the rest of us headed home with our prisoner and Kat. I knew Rock could handle this one without any problems. I called ahead to Chung to tell him about Kat.

He was worried too, Kat had been getting sick quite often lately which is not good. She seemed to settle down about half way home, but for some reason I was still worried. There is just too much happening right now. Is it all related, or are these things happening just a coincidence? We took Kat to the clinic right away and Mriya was well enough to check her out.

She found the problem quite quickly, something that her and Chung had been discussing before, Kat was being slowly poisoned! But how? We always check our food to make sure it is okay, so how could it happen? I think it is the same person who messed with my medication and Baldwin agreed. We were already heading back to the US when Chung called me with the news about Kat. How could anyone get poison just to Kat and not to the rest of us?

I had asked Muffin to stay with Kat and guard her and she was very willing to do that for me. She was sleeping curled up with Kat but woke up after a while and was looking around. She noticed the pills that Kat takes sitting on the table by the bed so she went over and holding the bottle in her paws, she put her mouth around the cap and unscrewed it.

Then she sniffed it, but did not notice anything unusual. She sat on the bed for a while but her thoughts kept coming back to those pills. She finally went and pushed the bottle over and starting sniffing again. We have a nurse working at the clinic, she has been there for 4 months now and she came in right then. “Bad cat,” she said angrily, “that is dangerous playing around with pills!”

Muffin began to growl at her when she woke up Kat to give her some medication. “Stop that!”, yelled the nurse. “Muffin, what is wrong?”, asked Kat sleepily. Meow,meow!=Pills have poison, me think nurse do it! The nurse was not able to understand Muffin. Kat pressed her buzzer. “What are you doing?”, asked the nurse, still in an angry tone. Chung came in with a guard.

Meow,meow!=Poison in pills! Me think it nurse. Chung told the guard to take the nurse out. The nurse began yelling and struggling with the guard but he took her out. Chung sniffed the pills. “Yes, some of them appear to have poison, but not all of them,” he said. He took the needle that the nurse was going to give Kat and left the room. Kat called Baldwin to tell him what happened.

He ordered a couple more guards to the clinic and gave orders that no one but Chung or Mriya were allowed in Kat’s room. Chung discovered the contents of the needle was poison also, just enough to make Kat worse, but not kill her. Someone wants Kat to die slowly, that sounds like the way Avina would do things, but it would be kind of stupid for her to do that right now, and Avina is much too intelligent to do anything that would interfere with her plans right now.

We stopped and picked up Rock and the others. Before leaving for the next prison I told everyone what has been going on with Kat. Then on to the next prison where things went very smoothly again and we were soon on our way back home again. It will feel good to have all of this behind us, but, we still have the trade with Avina yet, and I still do not trust her. But we made plans and contacted Avina to set up our trade time at the park.

Rock, Jenny, Sigurbjorn and Rossana joined me for the trade with Avina. Before we got to the park John phoned me. “Hmm, that is quite interesting,” I said to him. The 5 of us arrived at the park with the prisoners. The rest of the team was not far away however. When we met Avina I told her that Krissy comes to us first. Oh, she was angry with that, but she said okay and Rossana quickly took Krissy away. We then gave the prisoners to Avina, she smiled nicely and thanked me for helping her, then they walked away. So did we, but this was not over yet…

To Be Continued.

©2022 Steve McLeod.