All of the business people in town were involved in this deal with the drugs, plus they had 6 young guys from the town who delivered the shipments to different areas around them. Usually the sheriff and the banker picked up the payments each month. Unknown to the others, however, is that these two had been dipping into the profits ever since the beginning of this deal.

They knew it was best to start right away, much easier to hide what they were doing. Aari did not know this but suspected that something like that was happening. So, he first turned his attention to the banker. “Now, we know you have been dipping into the profits and keeping it for yourself,” said Aari, “so you may as well admit it, otherwise we will have to do this the hard way.”

One of Mandar’s men, who was quite big, cracked his knuckles at that point and smiled. That made the banker begin to sweat immediately. “Now, my good man,” said Mandar, “I will tell you right now, if we must get tough, none of you will enjoy our visit. Aari here is our best man for finding out details and getting results, every time.”

“Okay, okay,” said the banker, “I have been dipping into our profits, but it was the sheriff’s idea from the beginning. And I never took anything from you! Nothing, and I mean nothing!” “You little rat!” exclaimed the sheriff, “I should have known better than make you a partner!” “So, that is how it has been!” exclaimed Matt, “I thought we should have been making more money! You two should be hung!”

“An interesting idea,” said Aari casually. He actually kept cool and calm throughout the whole time, but he is used to doing things like this from his old life. “And which of you does the deliveries?” asked Mandar. “None of us,” said the teacher, “I recruited young guys from school for that job.” “Well, where are they?” asked Mandar, “they need to be here too.”

Matt was on the phone right away calling the six of them, but only 5 showed up. “Where is Reggie?” asked the teacher. “He said it was too early to get up,” said Brent, “and he told you to bury your head in the swamp.” Back to us for a moment. “The swamp,” I began, “did the police check that swamp?” “They did check part of it where it looked like some activity had taken place, but they found nothing,” said Annelie.

She was listening in to the events too. “Is there more than one swamp?” I asked Dawn. “Yep, there are 3 of them,” she said, “one is quite far though, but it is the one where most of the young people enjoy going to for some reason. I have never seen the police go to that one though. I know they were looking for my parents that disappeared, but never found them anywhere.” She put her head down.

“I am sure they were killed,” she added, “I wonder if they put their bodies in that other swamp? It is called by the locals as Dead Man’s Swamp.” Now back to the others. “Get that boy,” said Mandar to the girls, “what is the address?” Matt gave it to them and off they went. Soon Tracy and Aasta were back with a slightly beat up young man.

“He tried to run away,” said Aasta, “then he tried to fight, so we showed him that was not a smart idea.” Aari grabbed the young man, slapped him and pushed him onto a chair. Then he went to the sheriff, stood looking at him, then suddenly gave him a hard back handed slap. “Now, aside from stealing from your friends,” said Aari, “how much did you steal from us?”

“I told you they would find out!” screamed Matt, “now we are all done! We still have it though, except for a little we sold to our own boys here. I keep it my safe, right over here.” “Get it,” said Aari. He did so right away, sweating the whole time. Actually, all of them were sweating by now, and getting more scared by the minute, not knowing what was going to happen, but thinking they all might be killed. That might happen, but not by us.

While we were sitting in a nice camouflaged spot, 4 cars went driving past toward town, and they were moving fast. Perhaps that was Ohio and his men. I called Samson and told him, but there was no time for them to help Mandar and the others, so we decided to just descend on them all together.

But as we were about to leave, I groaned and bent over. “You are not going anywhere Steve,” said Sky, “Dawn, I want you to stay behind and protect Steve, I will leave Muffin to help you, and anyone else you want.” “Muffin and I will be fine,” replied Dawn. We got out of the car and remained in the trees.

I lay down on the ground under a large oak tree while Dawn and Muffin stood guard. I sent a brief text to Mandar, warning him about Ohio. “Well, well,” said Mandar, “looks like we will be getting a visit from Ohio, I wonder what he is doing here…”

To Be Continued.

©2023 Steve McLeod.