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For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
While we were flying across the ocean to America, I told the girls to try and get some extra sleep since we may be up most of the night. After all, it seems that fake ghosts like to come out at night more often than during the day. I guess it’s easier to make their special effects look more realistic in the dark. And, people are generally more fearful at night. However, since we have our own ghosts, perhaps we can make these fake ghosts more fearful.
We have Kat, Sky and Angel with us from the Wildcats and Bad Girls, plus Jennifer wanted us to take Kitty and Kristina too. That would leave her and Carine at home, which is enough ghost protection, and Jennifer can now call Sky at any time, just like I can, so that makes me feel better. I decided to bring Rock, John, Mac, Cal and Yves along with us too. Actually, Yves came to me and asked if he could come, as this would be his first real case. I was happy that he wanted to join us and his wife was in favor of it too.
Nadia made Rock a few extra sandwiches for the trip and she told him to make sure he ate properly on this case, and to be extra careful. Then she added that Ana is worried about him. That’s probably true, but I think Nadia is worried about him too. There’s going to be a wedding soon, no doubt about that. I should mention that Macy and Jackie have come along too, Jennifer insisted. She said those 2 girls are young and fearless, plus, they’re small and fast, which could be helpful. Soon we were landing in a city not far from the town we want.
That town actually has an airport that we could have used, but it doesn’t get much jet traffic so we probably would have made the local news, something I don’t want. Better to land at the city where we won’t be noticed so easily and then drive to the town of Tumble Rock. Kind of an interesting name. Apparently, about 150 years ago, a large rock came tumbling down the hillside and right down the main street ending up in the middle of the town where it still sits.
I think it should have been called a boulder instead, it’s about 10 feet high and wide. Oh well. When we arrived in town it was already evening so we checked into our hotel, one of three in this town which has a population of 20,000. Guess I should say there are 3 larger hotels, and a half dozen smaller hotels. We are in the largest and nicest hotel, Sienna insisted. We are only using vans this time, and considering there are 44 of us altogether on this trip, that means 8 vans. Once settled into our rooms I called George and he came to see us at the hotel while we ate dinner in the restaurant.
He was quite amazed that we had so many private investigators to work on finding the missing women. I told George that we have discovered things can get dangerous very quickly on a case, so we like to be prepared. Just then a rather large man came into the restaurant, yelling, “What are those rats doing in here?” “That’s the hotel owner,” said George and he waved the man over. “Oh, Mr. Stafford,” he said quite apologetically, “I didn’t know these were friends of yours.” George then told him that he had made arrangements with the manager to allow the cats in the restaurant, unless someone complained.
“Oh, yes, good idea,” said Ralph, the owner, “I didn’t realize that cats could be trained like dogs, I mean, dogs are intelligent and cats are not.” Meow, meow.= “He call us stupid, want permission to bite his leg.” I whispered to her, “not now.” Muffin just sighed. “Ralph is actually very nice,” said George after Ralph went to his office, “but business hasn’t been good and he’s a bit stressed.” Right after dinner he took us over to the haunted house and George was right, that Little house is huge.
He told us it had 18 bedrooms, 12 other rooms, plus 14 bathrooms. Charlie Little and his wife had 13 children which everyone said was the reason for all his bad luck. His wife and 6 of his children died in that house. Hmm, a perfect background for a good ghost story. No wonder everyone considers the house to be haunted, and all the odd deaths help substantiate the haunted myth. George suggested we should wait until morning to look around but I told him the best time to look for ghosts, and prove whether they are real or fake, is to check around at night. Anyway, he left us and inside we went.
He had arranged with the police to give us a key to the house. George owns a rather large lumber business here and is quite influential in the town. He cried when talking about his daughter, it was obvious he was very worried about her. His wife died last year and Shawna is his only child in town. He has a son as well but he lives in Alaska and he never hears from him. We have powerful flashlights with us and we also have 10 cats with us.
They wanted to scatter and look around, but I told them they had to stay with their human groups. They all sighed when I said that, but I didn’t want to lose any cats on our first night in this old house. It was completely furnished and was like stepping back in time to the 1800’s. While walking around we started hearing children talking and complaining about going to bed so early, then footsteps going up the stairs. I listened carefully, so did Kat and Kristina, it really did sound like those footsteps were going up the stairs. Quite remarkable really.
Suddenly a huge dog came running into the living room, barking and growling at the cats that were with us. Rock stood between the dog and cats, not the best idea. The dog then ran right through Rock and the cats scattered, with the dog chasing Muffin. I shot some electricity at the dog, but it went right through it and Muffin made it under a chair just in time. However, this dog isn’t real, it just looks incredibly real. Then it turned, looked at me and jumped with it’s mouth wide open. “Sky,” I managed to say and she was there standing in front of me, ready to stop this dog…
To Be Continued. ©2026 Steve McLeod.
We kind of missed Christmas by a bit, but we still had our Christmas anyway, just a few days late. Nothing wrong with that, we still enjoyed ourselves immensely. Cristy and Yana are still in our medical clinic recovering, but we brought them out here, in their beds, so they could join all of our Christmas celebrations. Then came New Year’s, which we just incorporated into our celebration time, since the two overlapped for us. Then 4 of our girls headed off to the United States to visit with some friends, something they had planned since last summer.
Sherry and three other girls, plus 4 cats, drove them to the airport, as they would be flying on a commercial flight. Sherry asked if they could use the limousine and I gave permission, providing they could get away without Sienna seeing them. They managed to do that, which was quite amazing really. Not long after they left Sienna, Jennifer, Kat and Galyna came along, nicely dressed and I asked what they were doing. “I am taking these 3 women out for dinner,” said Sienna, “do you have any objections?” “Uh, no, none at all,” I said.
“Good,” she said and then she told Galyna to get the limousine for them. Then she saw me whisper to Jennifer after kissing her. “Okay Steve,” she said, “what’s wrong with the limousine?” “Uh, nothing,” I said, “um, it was working just fine when Sherry took the girls to the airport.” Sienna just looked at me. “Did it ever occur to you that I might like to use the limousine once in a while?” she asked. “Well, I didn’t know you wanted it tonight,” I said, “I didn’t even know you were going out.”
“I didn’t want you to know we were going out until the last minute,” she said, “otherwise you would find a way to join us, and this is just for us, no men allowed.” “But if you had told me, then the limo would be here for you to use,” I explained. She sighed, as did the others, and off they went in one of the vans. Oh well. Amazingly, nothing happened with the girls going to the airport or with those going out for dinner. Everything went smoothly for a change. The next morning I met Misty in the hall with a plate full of donuts, 16 of them.
I was about to take one, but Misty slapped my hand and said these were for something special. Then she told me to follow her quickly since the donuts are “sneaked”. I held her hand and made us invisible. “This way we don’t have to run,” I said, “you don’t want to drop those donuts.” “Very true,” she said, “this is a good idea.” Right after we left down the hall to the clinic, Dawn, Charlotte, Emily and Sherry came out of the kitchen. “Where did she go so fast?” asked Dawn. “Bedroom!” exclaimed Emily, and they all ran up to the twin’s bedroom.
However, they were disappointed to not find Misty and the donuts. “Hey, Cristy!” yelled Sherry. “That’s it!” the others chimed in, and off they ran to the clinic, but Kat stopped them by the kitchen and asked what was going on, so they told her that Misty had sneaked away with their donuts and likely took them to Cristy. “If she took them to Cristy,” said Kat, “then leave them alone. Cristy almost died, those two need a treat. You can always make more.” Then she frowned at them.
They looked at each other, then slowly shuffled back into the kitchen, which almost got Kat laughing. Meanwhile, Sky overheard this and disappeared, reappearing in Cristy’s room. “So, this is what you have been doing,” she said, then there was a knock at the door and everyone hid, except Cristy. Misty and I entered and everyone jumped out yelling “surprise!” and I nearly jumped right off the floor. Misty’s team planned this little surprise party for me. There was even a banner which read, “Best Surgeon in the World”.
They even had a beautiful trophy, made from walnut, done by Misty and on top a polished bullet, the one I took out of Cristy, and she did the polishing. I must admit, it made me cry. That plate of donuts was actually the fourth one that Misty “sneaked” away from the other four girls. That part made me laugh, especially when Sky added the part she heard. I remarked that Misty did a wonderful job with her woodworking. Apparently Yves is a fantastic carpenter and he has been teaching Misty some woodworking skills.
“Misty, that’s impossible, there are not enough hours in the day for you to do all the things that you do!” I said emphatically, shaking my head. “I agree,” said Jennifer. Misty and Cristy giggled. A couple of days later Melody said I had a phone call from the father of one friend that our girls had gone to visit. He said it was urgent. I didn’t like the sound of that and I told Melody to put the call through to my laptop so everyone can hear.
“My name is George Stafford,” he said, “my daughter is Shawna, a friend of Cathy from your Investigators team. Two days ago Shawna, her two friends and the women from your team went to explore what everyone here in town refers to as the Little haunted house. It was built by a man named Charlie Little about a hundred years ago and it’s a rather large house. Two 18 year old boys were found dead in the house last year and a 47 year old man the year before, yet none had a mark on them. And they had not been poisoned either.
Autopsies done on them were inconclusive as to the cause of death. There was also a couple in their 30’s about 20 years ago that had bought the house and moved in, but they were also found dead two weeks later, from heart attacks that time. The coroner believed they had been scared to death. I just found out today from another friend who had gone to the house my daughter and her friends were renting. She found the front door open so she went inside and found the house all messed up, so she ran outside and called the police.
My daughter had told her they were going to check out the haunted house, that’s why she went to visit, to see what had happened, if anything. I don’t know what you charge, but if I can, I would like to hire you to look for my daughter and the others. The police said they found nothing in the house so they think perhaps the girls went on a road trip somewhere for a few days. Somehow I doubt that. Do you have time to look into this for me?” “We will definitely look into this Mr. Stafford,” I said, “and since our girls are involved too, there will be no charge. We will be coming just as soon as we can get packed.”
I then got his address so we can get in touch and talk with him about this house and where, exactly, it’s located. Since our 4 girls were from Kat’s team, then the rest of the team will come on this case, plus the Bad Girls and an assortment of cats. Jennifer stayed home this time, so she sent Dawn as my wife, though I’m not sure why I really need one on this case, but she just stared at me so I said it was a good idea. We were soon flying over the ocean once again to explore another so-called haunted house…
To Be Continued. ©2026 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 