For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Well, time moves on and here we are at the cemetery once again, this time for little Agata. I felt just rotten. It was my fault that her little body now lies here. I should have protected her better. I have been crying so much. My legs are weak, I can barely stand. Sky is holding me on one side, Kat on the other. The whole team is here, except Annelie.
Rock hurt her seriously when he slammed her against the wall. More on that later. Mandar is here too and is also providing security for us right now. This would be quite the opportunity for one of our enemies to attack us right now. Baldwin is still in the clinic recovering from his heart attack. I was unable to talk the whole time. Finally we all went back to the chateau for some much needed relaxing.
Sky is feeling better. It was Mr. B’s doctor who came up with the antidote for Sky. The one we had been given would have given Sky extreme pain and finally kill her. Part of Carmen’s trap to destroy The Investigators, and destroy my family and I. She came very close to doing that too. But, like the antidote for my nowhere drug, Sky will have to take this regularly for a while.
But at least now she can look at me without hating me and wanting to kill me. We are both thankful for that. Honey is doing well, though not completely back to health yet. We waited for the funeral so that Sky and Honey could be present. Annelie had to have back surgery due to that hard slam against the wall. Annelie will be on recovery for some time.
Fortunately she has trained Tracy and Sky to take her place though right now Tracy is looking after things. I want two more people trained for that. Kristina took over The Investigators automatically since she is the third leader. There are other leaders, but they would need to be voted in to take over. The extra 3 leaders are Sky, Aari and Matt. Sky wants to be removed as a leader, which I think might be wise.
We need to make some major changes to our rule book. For one thing, no leader will be dismissed without a vote of the whole membership. We can now get ready for a couple of weddings. Harvey and Hope, Miles and Brook will be getting married in a double wedding ceremony next week. Hope and Brook will go through training to become members but they will remain at their present jobs for now.
Kitty (remember her?), Harvey and his team helped her escape the park where Carmen had her headquarters. Her parents did not want her to come home due to her involvement in Carmen’s photo studio. Even her two best friends did not want to associate with her anymore. So, she had nowhere to go and called us to see if she could join us somehow.
She will go through our team training with Hope and Brook, but for now she will be our team secretary. The next day we got a phone call from a woman wanting to hire us to prove her husband had been murdered. The police said it was accidental and he had been drunk. Though not impossible it did seem a bit odd, especially since the accident occurred at 7:30am.
The police said it was best to just leave it alone, it would just cost her a lot of money to try and prove murder and in the end she would lose anyway. That also seemed odd. Then yesterday a very nice, well dressed man showed up at her door and gave her a letter. He told her to read the letter immediately, and to think of her children. The letter told her to leave things alone, it would be better for her and her children that way.
She showed the letter to the police who asked to keep it overnight. When she called them the next day they claimed she had never given them a letter and again told her to leave things alone and not get involved. She had called 2 detective agencies close to her but both said they were too busy and told her to do what the police said, nothing. Now she really believes her husband was murdered and is determined to prove it.
I told her to let me talk with my team and I would get back to her in about an hour. Kristina had me reinstated as First Team Leader with a one hundred percent vote and I brought this matter to the team. Everyone said we should take the case. I called Mallory Hardin and told her we would take the case and asked if she would let us do things our way. She said yes.
I gave her some details and said my wife and I would be there tomorrow afternoon. “What do you think Aari?” I asked. “Definitely a criminal organization,” he said, “and they are warning her to not get involved or something could happen to her kids. He must have been fairly high in the organization.” “Hmm, we need to get her and the kids to safety,” I said.
To Be Continued.
©2024 Steve McLeod.
PLEASE NOTE: This story is from years ago and is meant for enjoyment and humor. Thank you.
Good morning everyone and welcome back to another Story from the past. Or really, part 2 of that story. If you missed part 1 and would like to read it, you can do so by clicking Part 1. I hope. That should bring up a link that you can click which will take you to part 1. I hope. If that does not work, then you are on your own. Sorry about that. Sigh.

Male Purple Finch enjoying lunch.
Anyway, where we left the story last week, Krissy and I were in the basement of this old abandoned house and a bear had just started to come down the stairs after we had finished looking around. “Um, what now Steve?” asked Krissy. “Well, I will try to keep it’s attention focused on me while you get up the stairs and run back to the car,” I said.
“And you get killed and I get stuck out here all alone because I do not know how to drive,” she added, “not a good plan.” “Well, a good, loud, ear piercing scream might do it,” I said. That was all Krissy needed to hear and she let loose with an amazingly loud scream! That poor bear, which had come down just three steps so far, moved backward up those stairs so fast and then ran off back into the forest.

Female Purple Finch looking at me in kind of an odd way.
We came back up out of that basement quickly too, in case that bear decided to come back. “My backpack!” yelled Krissy. “Our lunch!” I added. “Who cares about the food,” she said, “that bear destroyed my new backpack. It was expensive too.” “I’m hungry and we have no food now,” I said again. She looked at me.
“Oh, look at your backpack,” I said, “not much left of it.” “About time,” she said. My ears were still ringing from that scream. “Where is your backpack?” she asked. “I left it in the car for safety,” I said. She looked at me. It’s kind of an odd look. And she does it quite often. “I put some muffins in your backpack, just in case,” she said. I ran out and got them.

Another male Purple Finch.
“At least we have food,” I said. “It would be fun to smush one of these muffins on top of your head,” she said looking at it. “It does not sound like fun,” I said, “more fun to eat it.” She obviously did not agree with that. She broke one muffin in half and smushed half on my head. She laughed. So I did the same to her. “Food fight!” she yelled. Wow, what a time we had! We did save two muffins to eat.
We then looked around some more and Krissy jumped on an old spring bed that still had a mattress on it. She laid down. “Wow, nice and springy,” she said. “How can you lie there with all those bugs?” I asked. Did she ever jump up fast! “I do not see any bugs,” she said. “Neither do I, but there could be,” I said laughing. She went back to like down.

Male American Goldfinch looking at me.
“Tickle fight!” I yelled and began tickling her. Krissy was very ticklish. Unfortunately, so was I. And she knew it. I lost that fight, I am just too ticklish. Sigh. It had gotten cloudy and now began to rain. A lot. So we decided to leave. I did want to check the attic, but when Krissy saw the old ladder I was going to use she said no to that idea.
Actually she pushed the ladder down and stood on it so I could not use it. Sigh. Anyway, off we went and made it back home early for a change, usually we were late. That is all for todays story, I hope you enjoyed something a little light and humorous. Have a great weekend everyone and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2024 Steve McLeod.