Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
The Investigators, Inc. The Lost Doll. Chapter 3.
Well, the night passed quickly and uneventful. Danny was up about 5am and left the house an hour later to pick up the housekeeper. She must start early, or she lives a long ways off. We waited about 15 minutes and then we all headed for the basement. First obstacle was a lock on the basement door I didn’t notice before. I put M.C. up close to the lock to sniff around a bit. Meow.=Wire is attached to lock. He followed it along but it went down into the basement. “He has it rigged to set off an alarm, probably to his phone,” I said, “so he will know if anyone has been in the basement.” “Now what?”, said Kat.
“We go to the basement anyway,” I said, “we’re here to do a job so he’s not locking us out of any part of the house, or we leave.” Meow.=Let me have my toolkit. I dug it out of my backpack and gave it to him. He attached a little device to the wire where it went under the door. Meow.=Now me pick lock. And he did very quickly. “Do you think that device will stop the alarm?”, I asked him. Meow.=It supposed to stop electric city from working. Not sure if it work on this, but we see. “Nothing to lose,” I said, “I would have broken the lock anyway.”
Down we went. Jennifer carried M.C.’s toolkit for him, just in case it’s needed again. There was another lock on this door, but no wire attached to it. M.C. unlocked it quickly and I opened the door. We couldn’t see a thing in there. Kat brought out a flashlight, shining it into the room which was mostly empty, some broken furniture in one corner, a few boxes, a table and a lumpy blanket in another corner. The cats ran over to the blanket. Meow,meow!=It human person here! We all ran over and were shocked with what we saw.
It was an old man, he had been beaten, he was filthy and looked like he hadn’t eaten in a long time. “Let’s get him upstairs quickly,” said Annelie. She is a nurse, almost a doctor really, she just hasn’t completed her studies yet. But she has had a lot of practice with all sorts of situations when she was with Katrina’s gang. We had to carry him upstairs, he was too weak to walk. We took him directly to one of the bathrooms to clean him up. So glad we had Annelie with us for this. Jennifer brought Annelie’s medical kit. He was able to tell us which bedroom was his so I could get him some clean clothes.
Then we brought him to the kitchen and got him something to eat. I think Annelie was about ready to kill the other Danny when he got back. The old man’s name is Danny too, the other Danny is his oldest son. He has been trying to find the family treasure that is hidden here somewhere and when he couldn’t get anywhere he decided to hire us and pretend to be the older Danny. Hard to believe his son could have treated him this way. He was very tired from his ordeal so we put him to bed and Annelie gave him something to help get him relaxed so he could sleep.
“What now Steve?”, asked Kat. “We wait for Danny to get back, and we give him a nice welcome. Maybe we can find out what he has been doing here, before we hand him over to the police.” “Won’t that end our involvement with this case?”, asked Annelie. “Only as far as the young Danny is concerned,” I said, “but remember, the older Danny has said he wants to hire us to locate the doll anyway. So that’s a new case with a new client. There might however, be some overlap, but I don’t think it will stop us completely.” Just then Danny and the housekeeper drove up. The housekeeper came in first and said, “I’m the housekeeper, I go work now.”
“You go sit down on that chair now,” I told her. “No, I go work now,” she answered. So I pulled out my gun which produced a very shocked and worried look on her face. “Go sit down on that chair,” I said again, and Annelie directed her to the chair and sat her down. Then Danny came in. Jennifer kicked him in the stomach and Kat kicked him in the head. He fell against the wall and to his knees, groaning. Then he bent over for a bit, but I could see his arm moving. I nodded to Jennifer. Danny pulled out his gun but Jennifer grabbed his arm and pulled it against her knee. A loud crack and then a scream from Danny. “We found your Dad,” I said to him.
To Be Continued.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Wednesday’s Wanderings. #26
Good morning on this very dull, cloudy day. It’s very heavy, dark clouds today, which makes it hard for good pictures. My camera kept telling me to use the flash. Right. Like I’m going to use the flash when I’m outside trying to get pictures of birds. The first flash and there would be no more birds. But my camera doesn’t seem to understand that. Oh well. I took pictures anyway. The birds, however, were not being very cooperative this morning. Even Theodore wouldn’t come up on the deck, she just stayed walking around on the ground looking for…whatever turkeys look for this time of year. She did talk for a little while though, so that was nice.
A male hairy woodpecker showed up this morning, the first male of the season. But he would not come out in the open where I could get a picture of him, until after I came back inside. The blue jays cooperate the best for pictures. The chickadees and nuthatches are around a lot, but they move so fast that it can be a bit difficult to get their pics. The white-breasted nuthatch is getting more friendly all the time. Actually, there are 4 of them now, maybe 5, but I’m not quite sure. But one of them is more friendly than the others, so I want to try and get him onto my hand if possible.
For me that would be exciting, since I have never had a white-breasted nuthatch on my hand. I have had lots of the red-breasted nuthatches on my hand however. It’s going to take a lot of time and patience for this one, but I’m going to try. I know you’re probably getting tired of seeing blue jay photos all the time, so today we have two different species. I think perhaps I will have to change the name of Wednesday’s post. I named it this to reflect my “wanderings” down to the river.
But I haven’t been down there since July 27, three months ago. Though hopefully, once there is snow on the ground, I will be going down there more often again. By that time the bears will be hibernating. But if I’m still walking next summer, the bears will have to put up with my wandering down to the river. It seems to be getting darker outside, not lighter. It will probably start to rain soon, it is supposed to rain today, and tonight, and tomorrow. It’s probably time to feed the birds again. I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
