“I don’t care!”, yelled young Danny, “you can’t stop us now!” That was in response to my saying we had found his Dad. At that moment the older Danny came walking into the room. That caused the housekeeper to let out a loud scream of terror! Unfortunately we made some mistakes here. One, we all turned to look at the housekeeper. Two, we failed to check and see if young Danny had any more weapons. He did have another gun and he seized the moment when we were looking at the housekeeper. He pulled the other gun and began shooting quickly.

He managed to shoot 3 times before Jennifer gave him one of her deadly kicks, which silenced him completely. But there were 3 victims. The first was the older Danny, who lay on the floor, he had been shot in his upper leg. The third victim was the housekeeper who sat slouched over in her chair, dead. The second victim was me, I was shot in the shoulder area, but no bones were hit. The police and ambulances were called. The older Danny’s wound wasn’t so bad, the bullet missed the bone. He’ll be okay. Mine wasn’t bad either, just a short overnight stay at the hospital, while the others stayed at a nearby hotel.

The older Danny still wanted us to stay on the case, and he promised to give us more details, which would certainly be nice. A simple case has already meant 2 people getting killed, and 2 others wounded. Older Danny had told us the doll must be in the house somewhere and it is very important to find it. I’m starting to think it’s filled with the family jewels, acquired legally or perhaps illegally. But one thing at a time. Danny dashed my hopes on that one however, by saying there is nothing in the doll that is valuable in itself, but, it can lead to the family inheritance, which is considered to be quite a large amount of gold.

Hmm, can’t fit much gold in a doll, so there must be something that tells us where to look for this gold. And that’s what he mentioned next. Inside the doll is a map showing exactly where to find the gold that was hidden back in the early 1900s by Danny’s great grandfather. No one even knew about it until 2 years ago when Danny found an old letter in the attic that told about the map in the doll. Hmm, something tells me there is nothing to this old rumor.

How come no one knew about it all this time? It’s hard to keep something like that a secret. We went back to the house and found the letter Danny had told us about. It looked authentic enough and written by his great grandfather to his son letting him know about the gold. Apparently the great grandfather buried it before he got married. And it was gold he had robbed from a bank back in 1899. The bank closed it’s doors in 1905. The next day Danny was home again so I asked him, “is it possible that your grandfather found the gold?”

“No, my grandparents and parents were very poor,” he said, “and with all that gold they would have been quite wealthy.” That makes sense, but something about this doesn’t make sense. I don’t think Danny is telling us the truth, except that he does want that doll found, but for a different reason. But what could that be? Then someone drove up to the house. “Who’s that coming?”, asked Jennifer. Danny looked out the window. “I have no idea, never saw him before,” he said.

I told Danny we would go back to our rooms, but if he needed help, just yell. While he went to the door I told the cats to hide and listen in. “Well, Danny old boy,” said the very plump man, “how’s things these days?” “Oh, hi Bert,” said Danny, “keep your voice down, I have company, but they’re down the hall in their rooms right now.” “Interesting to know,” said Bert, “is it those PI’s?” “Um, yes, uh, how did you know?”, said Danny. “I keep track of everything going on around here Danny,” he said with a smile, “have they found that doll yet?”

“Why no, no, they haven’t,” said Danny nervously, “we had some trouble with young Danny, he wanted everything for himself, but he’s dead now, can’t bother us anymore.” “Good, very happy to hear the news Danny,” said Bert, “but don’t try to leave me out of this, I can be a dangerous man when I need to be.” “Oh, don’t worry Bert,” said Danny, “you’ll get your share, I promise you that.” “I never worry,” said Bert, “it’s you that better worry, I don’t like being crossed. Did you tell the PI’s what this is all about?” “Oh no, I wouldn’t do that,” said Danny, “I just told them some made up story. They believed it.” “For your sake they better believe it,” said Bert, “I’ll be in touch.”

To Be Continued.

©2021 Steve McLeod.