Well, we have had a nice break for a while, everyone has gotten well rested, no one is in the clinic now, so things are going quite nicely. We had a wonderful birthday party for Mandy too, girls only for hers since she wanted a pool party. She did insist that I be present at her party though, she did not want her new dad to miss her birthday.

I am not quite her new dad yet, but Sky and myself are in the process of adopting Mandy and Madison. I am not sure we can give them quite a normal home life, but it will be better than what they had the last 3 years anyway. And I am going to have better security measures in place for them and Honey, I do not want to lose any of them.

And since Sky went through the same things that Mandy did, she will be a big help to Mandy, as will many of the other girls. Then one day we got a phone call from a young couple who had just inherited a nice chateau in the French countryside, though not exactly close to where we live. They had been given a number of old papers along with the chateau and one detailed a family treasure that had been hidden in the chateau some 400 years ago and they wanted us to help them find it.

I decided we would take the case since it was at least fairly close, being in the same country, and it was a nice simpler kind of case. We need to have something more ordinary for a change. My back was bothering me a lot right now so I asked Aari if he would mind taking on this case of lost treasure. “Sounds like it would be fun Steve,” he said, “we should not need many with us on this case, but a couple of the cats would be a good idea.”

“Yes, I agree,” I said, “I will give you Storm and Tiger to take along. Also, Harvey and Hope would be good for this. Now, you need to have a wife to go along, looks good that way, people are more willing to trust you then.” I think he was a bit embarrassed by the idea, and Aasta giggled at the thought. “Hmm, Roxette, how would you like to go along as Aari’s wife?” I asked, “You are great with solving problems and that might come in handy with this case.

Plus, you are from Sweden and Aari is from Finland which would seem logical to people.” “I am fine with that Steve,” she said smiling, “any objections dear?” She aimed that last part at Aari. “Uh, no, not at all,” he said. Aasta giggled again. Anyway, the next day they were off, driving to their destination north of us. They are to keep in touch 3 times a day, the cats will alert us immediately if there is any kind of trouble.

They will be taking our newest scramblers which are much smaller and will cover a greater area. Plus new electronic cameras to find, what else, cameras and listening devices. The cats will also check around for such things, just to be sure. I hope this will just be an ordinary case, it should be anyway. I checked the young couple’s story thoroughly before accepting the case and everything was just as they had said.

I think that after 400 years, that treasure was likely found a long time ago. Hopefully that young couple, David and Charlotte Williams, will not be too disappointed if we do not find anything. Aari and his team arrived safely and were given rooms next to each other. They set up their scramblers right away and checked their rooms completely and found nothing. That made me feel a lot better.

They checked in once more before going to bed, they came up empty handed that first day, but Aari said that document telling of the treasure certainly looked authentic. Still, someone likely found it long ago, that is what usually happens to these things. Or the treasure turns out to be a set of dishes. Treasure can mean different things to different people, and it may not be something that is worth a lot of money.

Perhaps I should have sent more team members along, that is a rather large chateau. I contacted the owners and asked if they would be okay with more of the team coming out to help, so things would move along a little faster.

David said that would be fine, they certainly have enough bedrooms, 28 in total and they have no children. I asked Kristina to pick out 3 other girls and go along to help, plus she would take Tracker along too, he is great at finding things. So she took Crystal, Candace and Amandine and they left the next morning…

To Be Continued.

©2024 Steve McLeod.