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For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Well, it seemed like our case was over once again. We found out who likely killed Carmen, though we can’t be absolutely sure, and we did find out who killed Vincent. In either case it was Marchetti who ordered the killings. He’s just smart enough not to do anything himself. He stays in the background where he runs things, gives orders, and his men do the work. That’s kind of what I’m supposed to be doing, except in a better way. Anyway, I told everyone to head back home, but to take different routes back, just in case they are followed by Marchetti’s men.
I also told them that if it looks like they are being followed, then to make sure they take care of those people before they return home. If they can’t stop them, then they are to take them on a wild ride somewhere and I will send some help. They will be bringing Harley back with them for now too and we will start the procedure of getting Shirley’s body sent back home to her family in London. I don’t want them to pay for the return of Shirley’s body. Apparently Shirley’s parents are not exactly wealthy, and Shirley had been sending money home to them each month.
Therefore we will be paying for her funeral as well. Courtney actually wants to use some of her money that Rossana let her keep to pay for the funeral, so I didn’t argue, I could understand why she wanted to do that. Everyone was back later that day and thankfully no one had followed them home. I suppose that Marchetti was getting low on men by now anyway. Our teams certainly made sure of that.
Meanwhile, the next day. “What’s the news on those dogs and their girlfriends?” asked Marchetti. “The Black Wolves and the Wildcats checked out of their hotels and have disappeared,” said Anthony, “perhaps they decided to go back home.” “If they were smart, that’s what they would do,” said Marchetti, “what about those other women, whatever they called themselves?” “The Bad Girls,” said Anthony, “not much information about them. Apparently they are a small gang of women from Quebec, in Canada. Maybe they hang out with those Black Wolves. They have disappeared too. But I do have some bad news though.”
“And what might that be?” asked Marchetti, “Those people killed 16 of my men and beat up a bunch more. What other bad news could there be?” “They found the secret vault at Vincent’s house that we have tried to find,” said Anthony, “and they emptied it completely.” Marchetti was quiet for a few minutes. “Was there a lot of money in there?” asked Anthony. “No, not much money,” said Marchetti quietly, “but there was information about my organization in there, all of our contacts for drugs, for women, for everything! Whoever has that information could tear us apart!”
“You should never have trusted Vincent with so much information,” said a woman who had just entered the room. “Oh, Francesca, my dear,” said Marchetti, “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.” “That’s obvious,” she said, “I have been standing in the hall listening to you men talking. It doesn’t sound like things have been going well in my absence. I thought you would be able to handle things on your own for 3 weeks, but I guess not. You are pathetic Rufino, after all these years you have learned nothing.
It’s a good thing I came back early or this organization would have fallen apart completely. Now, tell me just what information was in that vault at Vincent’s house, and I want to know exactly what we lost. We may have to shut down certain operations for a while until we can make some changes. Where’s Nilo anyway?” “He went home one day but never made it,” said Anthony, “he’s probably dead too. I don’t think it was these gangs that were in town, I think someone had a contract out on some of our key people, to try and disrupt things while you were away.”
“I agree,” said Francesca, “Anthony, get in touch with our contacts and tell them to halt operations for a while until we change our drop off and pick up points. And now, my dear Rufino, you have become a liability to this organization.” He looked up at her with a shocked look on his face. “No, no, you can’t do that Francesca!” he pleaded. There were three shots, then she turned to Anthony and told him to clean up the mess while she went home. He called in a couple men to take Marchetti’s body to the other side of town and get rid of it.
Later Rossana called me to say that Marchetti had been killed by his wife who is taking over the organization. Well, justice has been served on Marchetti for the killings he was responsible for, but his wife will likely be just as bad. Well, it has been a few days since our case was officially over. Harley, Courtney and some of our girls, including 2 ghosts for protection, have gone to London for Shirley’s funeral. Harley will be staying there with her parents, but Courtney will be coming back here since she would like to join the Investigators.
I think she will fit in quite nicely. I think Harley would have been a good addition as well and Jennifer agreed. Misty also agreed and had hoped she could join her team, so she was a bit disappointed that Harley didn’t stay. However, we have several new people to add officially to our teams now anyway. The Wolves have gained 5 more from Mandar, so they have the largest team still, but that’s a good thing. Each team will be getting some new members with the home team getting the most since they are the smallest team.
I would like to send 2 ghosts with each team when they are on a case, plus there should be two at home all the time. It should work out okay. I called Misty to my office and said she could have first pick for new members for her team. She stood there blinking at me. “YES!” she exclaimed and she hugged me so tight I could barely breathe. “You might want to let Steve breathe a bit Misty,” said Jennifer without looking up from her book. How did she know? I thought Misty would take a long time, but I was wrong. She chose Venus, Morning and Alyson, then smiled at me.
“Go get them and start practicing together,” I told her and she was gone! Next I called Dawn and she chose Courtney, Sugar and Kelsey, then she kissed me and left. Sky was next and she chose Nalle, Cosette and Roxanne, the 3 girls we got from Koffman a while back. Kat picked Piper and Patti, the twins from Mandar. She only got two girls because her team was already one more than the others. The remaining girls will be on the home team for now, though things may change as we go along.
Rock and John are in the clinic still and John will likely be there for a while, but he will recover fully, as will Rock. I am certainly thankful for that, losing either of them would have been hard for me. The Investigators has certainly grown a lot from our meagre beginnings with just Muffin and I. It was tough, barely enough money to buy food, and sometimes not much of that. Now there are well over a hundred of us. But I miss those times with Muffin and Mr. Cat helping me. Sigh. I wonder what our next case will be like?
The End of this case. But a new case is coming shortly. ©2026 Steve McLeod.
At the chateau everything was going nicely, no problems, all was quiet, except for the fact we were all waiting for news about John. We were all worried about him right now, not knowing what was going to happen. Would he live or die? Kat was keeping John alive and Sky brought Dr. Jorgenson back home quickly since Samantha didn’t think she was qualified enough to remove the second bullet from near John’s heart. Dr. Jorgenson is now one of the Black Wolves and everyone calls him Doc. So, right now he is operating on John, and we’re all waiting for news.
“Misty,” said Nadia, “go see what Steve would like with afternoon tea.” Misty was about to call me. “No, no,” said Nadia, “why you girls always use talking devices? Why you not go talk with Steve yourself? You not like him or something? Talk in person, that make him feel better and make him feel like people want to talk with him, he needs that now when he have to stay at home all the time.” Misty thought for a moment, then she hugged Nadia and off she came, running up that long curved stairway. She was puffing a bit when she arrived, but not too badly, which was kind of impressive.
She then asked me what I would like with my tea, Nadia had a selection of different muffins ready. I asked why she didn’t call me instead of making the long trip up the stairs. She hugged me and said she loved me and calling on our device was too impersonal. She then left with my order for muffins. Shortly after she went down, Courtney came up and sat down on the loveseat beside me but didn’t say a word. Obviously there was a problem of some kind and she didn’t know how to start talking about it. I put my arm around her and she put her head on my shoulder and started to cry.
I figured she was crying because of her sister, so I tried to comfort her about that. “That’s not it right now,” she said, “it’s…” “Don’t you like it here?” I asked. “Oh, yes, I do like it here, very much!” she said, “it’s just…” “It sometimes helps to just come out with it and talk,” I said, “if it’s something you want to ask me, then ask.” “It’s just…when I came to look for Carmen, I didn’t have much money,” she began, “before I came I had asked around online to see if anyone knew Carmen and maybe knew where she was, so I could find her. This one woman contacted me and said she had worked with Carmen for a while and got to know her and Vincent.
I asked her if she knew of a cheap hotel where I could stay, one where I could maybe cook some light meals to save some money. She and her friend said I could stay with them. They had only lived in that city for 2 years and were originally from the UK. Anyway, now I’m worried that maybe that Marchetti character will try to find out where I was living and he might hurt those two women that helped me.” “I will get our girls over there right away to check on them,” I said, “just give me their names and address.”
Unfortunately Courtney was correct and Marchetti had told his men to find out where Courtney could have been living, or as he said, Carmen. “Someone had to have been hiding her while she was here,” said Marchetti, “find out who it was and bring that person, or persons, to me, alive. I want them alive!” I communicated with Sky to get her Bad Girls over to check on Shirley and Harley right away. I also contacted Mac and Bear who had stayed behind in case I needed them again.
I told them to watch for Rocco and stop him if possible. I also said to be careful if he had two young women with him since they could be Shirley and Harley. I sent photos of them as well. Since Rocco had been sent to kill Giorgio, which he did already, Marchetti sent other men out looking for whoever had hidden Courtney. Marchetti finally found out that Carmen had a twin sister named Courtney who had come to look for her sister. So, he figured she must have been staying with someone since there was no record of her staying in any hotel in the city.
One of his men, who was good at finding information, discovered that Courtney had been having conversations with a woman named Harley, so he tracked her down and Marchetti sent men over to pick up Shirley and Harley. They arrived before the Bad Girls, but only found Harley at home, so some of them went to pick up Shirley at work. However, Shirley had a gun in her desk drawer where she worked as a secretary and she pulled it out and shot one of the men. But one of them shot Shirley and the men ran off.
The men at Harley’s flat came out with her just as the Bad Girls arrived and a fight began! Sky guarded Harley while her girls did the fighting. There were only 6 men, so the fight was quickly over. Harley then told Sky that other men had gone to get Shirley at work, so they went over there next and arrived just as the other men came running out of the building, without Shirley. The Bad Girls jumped out of their vans and another fight began. There were 5 men this time since one had been shot by Shirley. The Bad Girls were not gentle with either group of men, most were killed and the others were seriously injured.
Meanwhile, Mac and Bear were looking for Rocco. “That’s him,” said Mac. He was sitting at a sidewalk cafe when he suddenly felt a sharp knife against his back. “You shouldn’t have killed Giorgio,” said a deep voice. Rocco slowly turned around a bit. “Carver!” he exclaimed, “But how?” “I came back from the dead to clean up some garbage, like you.” There was a slight groan and Rocco slouched over onto the table. A car stopped and Mac got in, then they sped away. Mac then called me and said Rocco was now dead, so I told them both to head over to Carmen’s house and help out.
While this was going on Jennifer and the Wildcats were at Carmen’s house looking for any valuables that might be hidden in the house. They checked the basement floor, just in case there was another cavity under the cement were things might be hidden. But it was Tiger and Rusty that found something interesting, the round bed in the round bedroom sat on a “tree”, they said. Amber looked underneath and sure enough, it sat on some kind of post.
Mac smiled when they told him and he said to take the blankets off the bed. He then found an oddly placed light switch and said to turn off the lights. Red dots showed up on the ceiling in a circle over the bed. Mac then pushed a button beside his odd light switch, then went to the bed and began to turn it slowly until a red dot turned green. He chuckled and told them it’s a huge combination lock. At the last green dot the bed locked in place again and a wall panel in the room slid open, revealing the contents of a safe.
There was about 50,000 euros and a few diamonds, but the real treasure was the paperwork and some external HDD’s containing a lot of information about Marchetti and his organization. Rossana came to pick up this information herself and she told Jennifer to keep the money and diamonds and give it to Courtney. I then told everyone to head back home, but…
To Be Continued. ©2026 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 