The Investigators, Inc. The Case of Carmeline. Chapter 4. Planning the Rescue.

Well, we managed to get in and visit with Carmeline, though we didn’t have much time, only 10 minutes, which meant we couldn’t talk about much of anything important. However, we did tell her we would be taking her out of this prison later that day. Celestine, who is a friend of Carmeline, and I, will be leaving soon, but we would be back. Also, we brought Sky and Kitty in with us, though they remained invisible. They did show themselves to Carmeline though, but no one else would be able to see them.

That is a very handy thing that our ghosts can do. We also brought in 3 cats and they will stay with Carmeline, along with Sky and Kitty, who will protect Carmeline until we return. We can’t take her out with us right now, even though it would be possible, because we would likely be arrested by the police before we were able to leave the country. And everyone would know that we have rescued her. This is something we want to keep a secret for as long as possible, that way it would be hard for them to blame us.

Mostly though, I’m wanting to keep it a secret from Carmeline’s brother. I’m quite certain he is the one who sent us the warning note. Anyway, no matter what, we will not be taking Carmeline home with us at the moment. Instead, we will be using one of Mandar’s secret hideaways for a while until we see what happens. Vlora, who works for Mandar, will meet us there with teams 4 and 5 from Mandar. We haven’t used his teams for a long time since we have such a large team ourselves. But, we need to keep things business as usual at home, so we can’t take too many away to guard Carmeline.

However, the ghosts and cats will stay with her, as will some of the girls we have with us right now. I will shuttle back and forth with Sky just so I can make an appearance around the chateau too in case we are still being watched. Anyway, we are presently waiting for the guards to return and let Celestine and I out of here, our 10 minutes has already passed. Perhaps Carmeline is right, maybe they don’t intend to let us out. At that point, the two cellmates who were both rather big women, got up and came over and said something to us which we didn’t understand.

“They want you to move,” said Carmeline, “they said it was time for my exercise. That’s their way of saying they want to beat me again.” I told the women to sit down and leave us alone, which they likely didn’t understand. “They do understand English,” said Carmeline, “I don’t want them to hit me again.” She said that in a pleading tone with tears in her eyes. “Remember what you can do, my dear twin brother,” said Sky smiling. I told the women again to sit down. I didn’t really want to fight them though, that would give the authorities a perfect reason to keep us here.

“Okay Miss Kitty, it’s time to show yourself,” I said. Suddenly there was a large jaguar next to me growling at the two women and they backed up and then climbed to the top bunk! Only they could see Miss Kitty, any security cameras would not pick her up. I turned to Carmeline and said, “You don’t need to worry about them anymore, they won’t hurt you with Sky and Kitty watching you while we’re gone.” Carmeline was puzzled by the reaction of the two women since she only saw Kitty standing there, not Miss Kitty the jaguar.

Friskie had also come in with us, but she stayed in the office, invisibly, to see what was being planned, if anything, against us. She communicated with me that the warden, or whatever she calls herself, isn’t planning on letting Celestine and I leave the prison. How nice of her. I told Sky to go get Friskie and bring her back here to join us, which she did right away. “Sometimes I think maybe this is a dream,” said Carmeline, “I, I, just don’t see how it’s possible.”

“Don’t worry about it right now,” said Celestine as she sat beside her with her arm around Carmeline, “just know that we are here to get you out, and you know that I would never lie to you.” “Yep, we made a promise to each other when we were 8,” said Carmeline, “we would never lie to each other and I have kept that promise too. I’m scared Celestine, very scared. I know my brother did this to me. He killed our parents himself, I’m sure of that. He wants the whole inheritance for himself and he can have it too, I just want to be free again.”

She was really crying now with Celestine and Friskie comforting her. Sky and Kitty were angry and wanted to start a fight, but I reminded them we needed to be careful so we could get Carmeline out of here and to safety without the authorities being able to prove we took her out of prison with us. Finally I asked Sky to take us out, which she did and returned to the cell right away. We got into the van where Rock and Sherry were waiting for us and off we went.

Meanwhile, “Where did those two visitors go?” asked the warden. “They just disappeared,” said a man. “That’s impossible, people can’t just disappear!” she retorted. Then she sent the guards back to check on things. They found the cell door was still locked, but we were not inside anywhere. They asked the two cellmates of Carmeline what happened to the visitors, but they just frowned and said that no visitors had been in today.

The guards then took them back to the warden for a talk, but they still insisted that no one had come into the cell today. So they checked the security tape but strangely enough it showed Celestine and I going back outside to our van after talking with the warden, instead of following the guards. The guards, however, insisted that we had gone with them to visit Carmeline. The warden then went with them to the checkpoint and the two guards there also said that we had not come past them today.

That’s when the warden had those two original guards locked up. We left Storm, Ginger and Sneaker with the girls too, they are really helping Carmeline. When we got back to our hotel room it had obviously been searched and we expected that, so we didn’t leave anything important for them to find. Mac told us that the police had been around and searched each of our rooms and everyone cooperated with them without arguing.

They even searched each of the vans without finding anything, but we do have a way of hiding things in those vans where they can’t be found, without literally taking the vans apart, which they didn’t do. And, we still have Kat, Kristina and Angel, so they can help hide things right in the open. And they did. Now to finalize our plans for getting Carmeline out of that prison, which shouldn’t be too hard. However, getting her out of the country might be more difficult, though we could keep her invisible. But, they might try to keep us from leaving anyway, which is why we need a plan.

To Be Continued. ©2026 Steve McLeod.