Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Friday Fun With Coffee. #1 Odd Days.
Good morning and Happy Friday to all of you! It is a beautiful, partially sunny morning here. The trees still look beautiful with their frosty white branches. This frostiness is lasting a long time, which is fine, it looks beautiful out there. Though I am happy to be inside looking out right how. Still, it is quite mild with a temperature of 9F (-13C). There has not been much bird activity yet this morning, and that is certainly odd. Several goldfinches were here yesterday.
But just in the trees, they did not come down to the feeders. There were a lot of evening grosbeaks here yesterday as well, for about 5 minutes, then they left and never returned. There were also a couple pine grosbeaks here yesterday, but they also stayed in the trees, and they left with the evening grosbeaks. Very odd winter indeed.
Kind of reminds me of an odd restaurant I stopped at one time years ago. I went to this small town bright and early just for something to do that day. It had several restaurants, but only one that was open early. That is fine, it looked nice, and it overlooked a nice lake. In I went. The sign said to seat yourself. So I did. A waiter came over. “You are supposed to wait to be seated,” he said. “The sign said to seat yourself,” I told him. He went to check and turned the sign around.
“You are supposed to wait to be seated,” he repeated. There must be an echo in here. “The sign said to seat yourself,” I said again. I figured it must be polite to repeat yourself at this place. He just looked at me. “Do you want something?” he asked. That is usually why someone comes into a restaurant. I did not say that however. The waiter should say something like, “what may I get for you”. Oh well.
“I would like some coffee and a menu,” I said. This should be interesting, I thought to myself. He brings the coffee and menu. Hey, not bad. Things are improving. It took a while for him to return however, and there was only one other person in there at the time. He comes back. I give him my order and ask for a refill of my coffee.
“Refills are only free with a meal,” he said. “I just ordered my meal,” I said. “But you ordered the coffee before,” he said. “I just ordered my meal and it said the coffee is included,” I reminded him. “But you ordered your coffee before,” he said again. This guy is going to lose his tip soon. “Then forget the refill, I will just take the free coffee that comes with the meal,” I said.
He thought for a moment, then left. He comes back with more coffee. “The boss said you can have free refills since you ordered a meal,” he said and left again. He has not smiled once yet. He brought my breakfast. I had ordered whole wheat toast. He brought me rye toast. “I ordered whole wheat toast,” I said. “We do not have any whole wheat,” he said. “I do not want rye toast, I will take white instead,” I said.
“I am sorry, you cannot change your order after we bring your food,” he said. “I did not change my order, you did,” I reminded him. He just looked. “Bring me some white toast,” I said politely. He came back with my white toast. “I will have to charge you extra for the toast,” he said. “May I have that?” I asked, and he handed me the small plate with the toast.
I took the toast off and put it on my plate, and put the rye toast on the small plate. “Would you mind holding this plate?” I asked politely. He took the plate. “I did not order that toast, it must be for someone else,” I said, “and I am not paying for someone else’s order.” He just looked at the toast, then walked away. He comes back. “Where is my juice?” I asked.
“Sorry, we have no juice today,” he said, “but I will have to charge you for it anyway since it comes with the meal.” He walked away. I stared. He brought me the bill and left. He did charge me for the juice. I paid and said, “since you charged me for juice I didn’t get, I subtracted your tip from the total,” I said and left. He was just staring. Odd things happen to me, is what I am trying to say. Sigh. Have a great day everyone and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2023 Steve McLeod.
The Investigators, Inc. The Major Case. Chapter 2. Mystery Man.
After the Major left I went and told the others the rest of what Major and I had just talked about. “We will need to go at this very carefully,” I said, “if the kidnappers suspect we are looking for her, then they will know that the Major hired us. That will mean sure death for Macey. So, we do not use our scramblers, we just have to be careful how we talk, and do most of our talking about the case outside. But we will take the new scramblers just in case we can use them at times.
Inside we send notes to each other, on paper, then destroy the paper. We will arrive in teams and we do not know each other. We will pretend to meet and spend time together once we are there. Sky, Crystal, Kristina and I will go first, with Muffin. Annelie, can you work your laptop over there? They might have someone smart enough to hack into your laptop.” “If they can do that,” she said, “then I will retire for good!”
“Okay, you, Rock, Benson, Carine, and Astrid, with MC, will be in team 2,” I said, “then Galyna, Angel, Tracy, Marlene (one of our new nurses), and Sigurbjorn, will be in team 3, with Storm. Chung, Saranna and Bridgette (our other new nurse) and Ilda, will stay here, but will be ready to come if we need them.” We actually managed to get a commercial flight early the next morning which will take us to a larger island close to the one we want.
From there we will use a boat for travel to the island, or other islands if needed. Baldwin would have a boat ready for us by the time we got there. The others will use regular boats that travel among the islands. I then called Crandall to get his take on things. “No need to worry about the Major, Steve,” he said, “he is on the level with this. And Macey would never do this herself, she loves her dad, she really does.
And she does not need the money, the Major’s whole estate is hers. He even offered to give her half of it when she turned 20, but she turned it down. Her two brothers have a good place in the organization and lots of cash to go with it. Plus, it was partly their idea to give Macey all the inheritance. And it would be death for them to go against their dad, Victor would never stand for that.
Do what you want to their enemies, but you never touch anyone inside the organization, no matter what.” “Thanks Crandall,” I said, “that helps a lot.” “I can help you with something else too,” he said, and went on to tell me. “That is good to know,” I said, “I appreciate all your help, and if you come up with any more information, let me know quickly.”
“I will sure do that Steve,” he said, “wish I could come along, but those kidnappers might know me.” “Yes, it would be too dangerous for you, and for Macey,” I said. We hung up and then it was off to bed for all of us, our day would be starting early. Two hours into our flight and we hit some turbulence, not fun for this guy. It didn’t seem to bother the girls though. Meow,meow.=Man behind watch us.
“Yes,” said Crystal, “I have noticed that too.” Her and Kristina were sitting ahead of us and turned around most of the time talking to us. Once the turbulence ended the man who had been watching us fell asleep, or at least had his eyes closed. Muffin disappeared before I had a chance to stop her, I knew what she was planning. One of these times she will get caught, I am sure of it.
She came back after a bit with the mans wallet. I still do not know how she does that so easily. Sky just giggled. I looked through the wallet, not much interesting here. Wait, what is this? I recognized a small logo on the inside of his wallet. I pointed it out to Sky, she just frowned. Then I showed Crystal and Kristina.
Crystal recognized it right away. He had no money with him, not unusual these days, except he had no credit or debit cards either. Possibly he kept those in a separate holder. There was also a phone number written on a piece of paper, so Sky quickly copied it down. Then I sent the wallet back with Muffin who quickly dropped it in the aisle by the man and returned to us.
A flight attendant found it and returned it to the man. Finally we landed and hopped aboard our boat and headed off to our vacation destination. That is what we are calling it for now. There was a mix up at the hotel and we ended up with just one room instead of two. Sky thought that would be better anyway, and she might be right. All the others arrived and settled into their rooms. That man from the plane was also at our hotel, that was something I did not like…
To Be Continued.
©2023 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 