The Investigators, Inc. Mystery of The Disappearing Family. Chapter 1. Rio.

Well, we have had a nice break after our last case in Scotland and we are all anxious to be on another case again. Although, when I mention that Jennifer just looks at me and shakes her head, “no”. I’m not quite sure what she means by that though. The one thing missing from our last case, however, was the fact that we never did find those gems. The Black Wolves followed Callison’s directions carefully, but there had been a forest fire through that area last year which made it very difficult to locate the right landmarks.

They did find a standing stone chimney in one location, though not actually in quite the right spot, and it wasn’t the stone chimney they wanted. That’s where Callison hid the gems, in a loose stone on the outside of a chimney from an old, partially collapsed log cabin. Oh well, guess that means those gems will stay lost, or maybe Callison will remember some other detail that might help find them. She is doing well, but still has some memory problems from those drugs she was given. Mandar and Sienna bought out some of the Wemyss Corporation, adding to their already substantial corporations.

A good friend of Pacca’s is getting married in 3 days so she asked permission to attend the wedding. I said yes but she had to take some of the girls with her. So, Kailey, Mylah, Emily, Sugar, Kelsey, Macy and Jackie went along too. I figured that should be safe enough for a small family wedding. The wedding is taking place in Rio de Janeiro, a rather large city, though not the largest in Brazil. Anyway, after breakfast this morning I received a phone call from the groom to be.

Apparently Pacca’s friend, Anita, her parents and our girls have gone missing. When he went to check their rooms after they were late for dinner he found other people staying in them, so he went to the manager who said those people had never been in his hotel and those other people had been in those rooms for several days. Nico told me they had indeed been staying in those rooms and now he was scared and didn’t know what to do. Pacca had given him our phone number in case anything should happen to them.

I told him we would be there today. I had Sienna book us into another hotel close by under her name so no one would recognize us. After having a leader’s meeting, off we went. Oddly, Jennifer didn’t argue too much as long as there was one ghost with me at all times. Plus she picked Friskie to be my “wife” this time, she always says I need one to keep me in line. Not sure what she means by that. Plus, we are taking several of our cats with us as well.

Misty’s Sneakers will be with me on this one, plus Kat’s Wildcats as backup. The Black Wolves will also be there in the background watching around the area. Sky and Angel will also be with us, so that leaves Kristina to be at home with Jennifer. Cristy is looking into the background of Nico’s and Anita’s families to see if there is some criminal activity that could have led to a kidnapping. I’m certainly sorry now that I didn’t send one of our ghosts along with the first group of girls. But how dangerous can a wedding be?

We are arriving on 3 separate jets this time, with Misty and her team, plus the rest of us, on a commercial jet. Kat and her Wildcats are on one of our jets, so are the Black Wolves. Our third jet is having some maintenance done on it right now but Sienna is bringing one more jet over to help us with leaving if we must do so in a hurry. It has been a while since we were last in Brazil and seeing this city from the air as we came in made me groan when I realized it won’t be easy finding our girls or the others.

The Black Wolves and Wildcats are already here, using our jets is definitely faster but here we are, arriving in time for dinner. That means we won’t be able to do much until tomorrow. Kat followed Nico around for a bit after they got in today, but all he did was go to different hotels looking for Anita and her parents. That’s a good sign actually, it means he likely isn’t involved in their disappearance. So far Cristy and the other computer girls have not found any criminal dealings on either side of the families, and that is also good.

I would think that the girls might have been kidnapped for sex trafficking, but then why take the parents? So, for now I’m ruling out that possibility. However, the manager of that hotel is in on this somehow or he is afraid of the people who did the kidnapping. The Black Wolves are staying in a hotel the furthest away from the hotel in question, but Aari plans to visit with the manager tomorrow and let him know he’s not too happy that one of his young cousins has gone missing.

He will also remind the manager that she was indeed staying at his hotel. That should be an interesting meeting. We got settled into our rooms then went down to the restaurant for dinner. There were some interesting looking people at a large table on one side of the restaurant. Kitty had come in with us, but invisibly, so she went over to that table to listen for a while…

To Be Continued. ©2026 Steve McLeod.