Well, time keeps going by and we haven’t had any exciting cases come our way since finishing off the last one 3 days ago. With Kat and Jennifer back in place as Leader 1, well, I really have nothing to do. Besides, I’m still technically on recovery right now, for another 2 weeks. Everyone likes having Kat and Jennifer in Leader 1 position and wants them to stay there.

Fine with me, less stress, less mess, less that I will have to guess. Now I’m doing it. Someone is coming up with these short little whatever they are and they stick in one’s head and they are impossible to forget. Like this one, “Some men are bad, some men are worse, but Steve is just a daily curse.” And another one, “Problems come here and problems come there but Steve is like having cooties in your hair.”

I kind of like them. Kat and Jennifer don’t. I mean, they really don’t. Because they can’t get them out of their head. Everyone goes around saying them, but no one claims to be making them. Into the library I go saying the “Some men are bad” one. Jennifer had not heard that one yet. She looked at me.

“How would you like to be on bathroom cleaning duty all by yourself?” she asked me. That’s when I found out she didn’t like them. Just then I spotted Cristy sneaking past the library, then running quickly upstairs. I should mention, Kat and Jennifer apologized to Misty and Cristy and took them off bathroom cleaning duty. So, everything is back to normal.

Except for these short whatever they are. I think they’re funny. Kat and Jennifer don’t. Anyway, I disappeared. “Now where did he go?” Jennifer asked herself sighing. I ended up in Misty and Cristy’s bedroom, just as Cristy was crawling into a little hideaway spot they discovered, and worked on. Misty was about to put the little door back on, but I stopped her.

“Hi,” I said, “may I come in?” They sighed and let me in. They had a rug on the floor, two cushions to sit on, a small table with a battery lamp. “Cool hideaway,” I said, “everyone would love to know about this.” That got me one of the cushions to sit on, while they tried sharing the other one. And we shared the donuts. “Stealing a whole plate of donuts though, that’s bad,” I said, munching away, “sure wouldn’t want Kat and Jennifer to find out about this.” From now on they will tell me and I can join them.

Later that day we got a phone call from a potential client, she wanted to come over and talk with us about something very important. So, at 3pm she showed up, driving an ordinary car. Meow, meow.= She not have money, we say no. “Muffin, that is not nice,” said Jennifer, “we must listen to her story first.” She came in to the library with Kat, Jennifer and I, plus Cristy.

I had told the girls that no one else should be present, to keep their identities hidden. She admitted to not having much money, but her daughter had gone missing. She had gone to the police and they did check around some, but their thought was that she ran off with her boyfriend. But she said her daughter would never do that without telling her.

The boyfriend, who worked in a local bank, also disappeared the same day. It did appear like they probably went off together, but why they did so is unclear. Something didn’t sound quite right. They had just gotten engaged 2 days before they disappeared, they had even purchased a flat in a town about an hour from here. He moved in right away and she helped her daughter move some of her things over there too.

Then 3 days ago her daughter went by herself and never came back. Her boyfriend didn’t go to work that day either. When she tried phoning her daughter, she never answered, so she drove over to the flat and the door was unlocked, so she went in. A rather dangerous thing to do, but no one was there. She did find her daughter’s phone, so she tried calling the boyfriend, but he didn’t answer his phone either.

That’s when she contacted the police. She began to cry at this point and Jennifer looked at me and I nodded yes. Kat saw that too so she told the lady we would take the case, since the police investigation is over, so we are not interfering with them. I asked if we could look in the flat and she gave us a key to it. The mother’s name was Eloise Fleury and her daughter is Clarisse.

The boyfriend is Marcel Garnier. Then she mentioned he had a cat that he and Clarisse had found abandoned one day. They both loved the cat and he kept it with him, but now the cat lives with Eloise. I asked if we could see the cat and she said yes, but wondered why. “Just part of a thorough investigation,” I told her.

She then left, but Kat told her it would be best not to tell anyone we were looking into this for her. She understood that we would want secrecy so she promised to keep things quiet. Cristy had a copy of the police investigation for us right away, but it didn’t help much. I didn’t really think it would. They thought the young couple eloped, nothing suspicious about that.

Except, why would they do it when they had their wedding plans all done already, with everything paid for too. Although the couple’s cat may not be able to communicate with people, it will be able to communicate with our cats. So, we will take Muffin, Jewel and Snow with us to meow with the cat. Hopefully we will get some good information from him. I asked Cristy to get a complete life history of Marcel for us, plus Eloise and her daughter.

Eloise’s husband died from a heart attack 4 years ago, but I wanted his history too, just in case. We discovered that Marcel was actually from Canada, his parents died 4 years ago and he moved to France. He met Clarisse 2 years ago. He did have a good inheritance from his parents and he was an only child, which meant he got everything. So, there was certainly no money problems for the young couple.

Clarisse lived at home and was not working at present, but had been working at a local bakery. Marcel is 25 and Clarisse is 20. The next morning Jennifer and I arrived at Eloise’s flat and we had brought our cats with us. We talked with Eloise some more while our cats talked with hers. Periodically I noticed their ears going straight up…

To Be Continued. ©2025 Steve McLeod.