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For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
We have to back up the story a bit to when Carmen was released from jail. Dimitri met Carmen at the jail and took her out to his car where 3 other men were waiting for them. Carmen knew all about Dimitri and she also knew enough not to say anything inside when he showed up to take her home, or wherever he was taking her. She was scared, actually, terrified would be a better word. She figured this was the end for her. Once they got home Dimitri somehow knew that someone had been in the house. “Maybe the cops were back here Dimitri,” said Giorgio.
“Maybe, but they’re usually messier,” he said, “whoever was here was trying to be neat.” “But the alarm system was still working,” said Nilo, “can’t walk around in here with that working.” “Check around anyway,” he told the men. He then slapped Carmen hard knocking her to the floor. “Who were they?!” he demanded. “I, I, don’t know,” she said, trembling, “no one ever tells me anything.” He then kicked her in the stomach and laughed. “Go sit on that chair and be quiet!” he told her. She got up slowly and went over and sat down. “Someone was here Dimitri,” said Giorgio, “they found the secret place in the floor.”
Dimitri went to Carmen and slapped her twice. “Who were they?!” he demanded again. “I don’t know, honest, I don’t know,” she said, “please don’t hit me anymore.” He just punched her twice and laughed some more. “It obviously wasn’t the cops,” said Dimitri, “or they would be all over this house right now.” Just then there was a knock at the door. Giorgio looked outside and saw a courier van parked out front. Then the doorbell rang. “Answer it, might be an important package,” said Dimitri. The men were ready with their guns out, just in case.
Giorgio opened the door and suddenly the door flew open, knocking him to the floor! That’s when Rock came inside and the men yelled, dropping their guns! Then Aari and some of the Black Wolves came inside. “Well, well, look who we have here,” said Aari, “Dimitri, aka the Lizard. I see you have been having your fun at the expense of this young woman. Typical of animals like you, and I think it would be smart for you to hide under a rock somewhere and stay there.” Aari then punched Dimitri twice in the stomach, then once to the side of his head which knocked him to the floor.
Carmen was watching this so Carine used the opportunity to become visible so she wouldn’t scare Carmen. She then went over to her. “Come with me Carmen,” she said, “I will take you away from here to a place where you will be safe.” Then she bent over and whispered that she was a friend of Kat and Jennifer. Carmen then got up slowly and went outside with Carine and into a waiting car. Kat and Jennifer were in the car, with Sky doing the driving. Carine then went back inside after telling them that Dimitri had been bouncing Carmen around. “Are you okay?” asked Jennifer as they drove away.
“Yes, it’s been worse,” she said with her head down. “I don’t think you have been completely honest with us,” said Kat, “perhaps it’s time to change that, so we can protect you properly.” They drove directly to their hotel where they could talk. She told them that things began to happen about 18 months ago. Vincent changed at that time and just kept telling her not to ask questions. That’s when people started coming around, important people, like CEOs of companies, people in government, top people in the police, fire department, wealthy people.
And always there would be beautiful young women that would come over at the same time. They would go with the men into the round room, which used to be their bedroom. Carmen wanted a round bedroom, she thought it would be fun, and it was for about a year, then they moved out of that room and it was used for “other purposes”, as Vincent would say. Then Dimitri began coming around too and Vincent was always scared of him and was angry after Dimitri left. So, he then took out his anger on her. It wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on, but she was too scared to tell anyone.
Kat then asked her about the grave under the basement floor. The shocked look on Carmen’s face told Kat and Jennifer that she genuinely knew nothing about the grave. “Honest, I knew nothing about that!” she exclaimed, “I knew there was work going on, but Vincent told me he was putting in a secret vault under the floor for our valuables. Though I didn’t know what valuables he was talking about, we didn’t have anything much. The only item of value we have is the house, that took all of our money and we had to borrow the rest from some man that Vincent met accidentally one day. His name is Rufino Marchetti. I want to tell you something else too, but I’m afraid of Mr. Marchetti, if people don’t do what he says they end up dead.”
“Did you get all this Steve?” asked Jennifer. “Yep, and Melody is already working on the Marchetti character.” I said “Carmen, my name is Steve and I’m Jennifer’s husband, we can protect you from Marchetti, please trust us and help us so we can help you. Tell us everything you know so we can stop that man from hurting you and other people too.” “Steve, why is Melody working on this?” asked Jennifer, “It should be Cristy during the day.” “She came down sick this morning,” I replied, “plus 2 other girls as well. Samantha said it was just a flu.”
“Well, make sure you isolate yourself from the others for a while,” said Jennifer. I’m in my office where Samantha wants me to stay for a while and only the ghosts are allowed to visit me. Actually, Friskie is staying with me all the time, she is worried that being alone too much might affect me adversely and Samantha agreed, so she gave the order for Friskie to stay with me. Sigh. I’m the leader yet everyone gives me orders. I need a vacation. I mentioned this to Friskie and smiled. She didn’t seem to agree with me.
Anyway, my office is better than my room at the clinic though. Here I have lots of window space and a good view of the surrounding countryside. Unfortunately, with the ban on regular visitors right now, it also means a ban on donuts. I asked Friskie to get some donuts for us but she just frowned at me saying something about Samantha said no donuts. Sigh. Later, when Friskie returned from her break, she had two gifts for me. One was from Steffie and one from Misty.
I told Friskie she could leave again for an hour or so, that way I could nap. She seemed to not trust me for some reason, but she left. I opened Steffie’s gift, 2 donuts! I finished them quickly, then I opened Misty’s gift, 5 donuts! Good thing Friskie had brought some fresh coffee with her before. After that I needed a nap! Suddenly there was loud noise of rattling paper next to my ear which certainly woke me up quickly. “You interrupted my nap!” I exclaimed. “You got your daughter in trouble,” she said calmly, “that’s not nice.”
To Be Continued. ©2026 Steve McLeod.
Since Jennifer was with them, they were able to get inside the house easily enough, but, there was an alarm system and it was working. “Can you figure out how to turn it off Mac?” asked Kat. He never said a word, but he did touch the key pad and walked away. “Done,” was all he said. “Done?” asked Sky, “But you didn’t even try to punch in the code.” “Don’t need to,” he said and he continued walking. Sky zipped around in front of him. “Hold on Mr. Talkative,” said Sky, “how do you know the alarm is off?”
“There’s an on/off switch on the bottom,” he said, “I turned it off. But it won’t stay off for long, it’s for people who might forget their code temporarily, gives them time to think. Now I’m going to the basement since the alarm system likely doesn’t cover the basement, just the main floor.” “Okay, that’s better, thank you,” she said and she let him go past her. “Are you trying to annoy Mac?” asked Kat. “I just wanted an answer,” she said, “and I got it.” “I don’t think I’ve heard Mac talk so much,” said Jennifer. “True enough,” said Kat giggling. Off they went searching different parts of the house.
Jennifer and Sky remained on the main floor and Kat went upstairs to look through the bedrooms. They certainly had a big house for a young couple with no children, there were 6 bedrooms upstairs and 4 bathrooms. Downstairs there was a very large living room, kitchen, dining room and 2 more bathrooms. Carmen enjoyed doing various crafts, so she had a room on the main floor dedicated to that. Vincent had a large office, as did Carmen, since both of them worked from home. There were also two other rooms, both of them were locked with electronic locks.
Sky played around with them and the one door opened into a small room that appeared to be a video recording room. She then opened the other lock and the door opened to a completely round room. It had natural wood paneled walls with a red carpet and red painted ceiling. There was a large round bed in the middle of the room and on the ceiling above the bed was a large fan with 3 lights, but the lighting was very soft. It didn’t take her long to realize what was going on in that room. Kat had found a similar room on the yacht, though it wasn’t round.
It would appear that both Vincent and Carmen must be involved in this, or at least Carmen knew what was going on. Yet she never mentioned this when Kat and Jennifer were talking with her. Meanwhile Mac was investigating the basement which was divided into 6 rooms. One was a laundry room, one a storage room, one a game room, and the largest room was just a typical looking basement room. Then there were 2 rooms that were locked. Mac had the first one open quickly. It was a very nicely decorated room with two couches and 6 large, comfortable chairs.
Mac recognized this room as a meeting room for top people of an organization of some kind, likely criminal in this case. Carmen should have known about this room, even if she had never been inside the room. Meetings were held here and she must have known about them, so why didn’t she mention that to Jennifer? This isn’t looking good for Carmen. When Mac opened the second locked room he was quite surprised to find it was empty. Why lock an empty room? Unless he was planning to put things in there but never got it finished. Or perhaps the police found something interesting and took it away as evidence.
Tiger, Mac’s cat, was certainly interested in that room though. He was going all around the room sniffing and that told Mac that the room had been used before, but for what purpose? Finally Tiger stopped right in the center of the room and began jumping up and down. Meowy meow!= “Something here!” Mac looked, then went and got a steel bar he had seen and came back. He began to drop it slightly from the edge of the room to the center. He then smiled. Mac didn’t do anything right then but he did tell Kat about what he, or rather, what Tiger, had found. Kat then came down to check on it.
“Chipped cement?” she asked, “You’re excited about chipped cement?” She looked at Mac rather bewildered. “It’s hollow under that spot,” he said smiling, “which means something is under there.” “Hmm, Vincent kept telling Carmen that their future was in the house,” she said, “so maybe he has buried something valuable under the floor there.” “Possibly,” said Mac, “or perhaps a body.” Kat just stared at him. She had a terrible thought right then, but never said anything. “Why not open it up Mac?” she asked and then went back upstairs.
“Open it?” he said to himself, “Just like that, open it. With what?” Pounding that spot with the steel bar was getting him nowhere, so he started to look around. Tiger sat there swishing his tail, waiting impatiently for Mac to return. Then he remembered something. There was this odd looking chair thing with a board attached to it. So, he pushed and pushed and got it into place. Then he went into the game room and came out pushing a bowling ball with his head and he began to run fast pushing that bowling ball right up the board and over the top and it landed with a thud on the cement floor, cracking it.
Then he tried it again and this time the bowling ball got stuck in the floor. Tiger sighed. Just then Mac came back with an axe and saw what Tiger had done. He removed the bowling ball and shone his flashlight into the hole. “Good job Tiger!” he said. He then picked him up and gave him a big hug. Then he called Kat again and all three girls came down to take a look. “I guess this is why Carmen didn’t tell us about the treasure,” said Jennifer, “I think we need to talk with her again.”
“I agree with you sis,” said Kat, “and we will do so in the morning.” “We can only visit in the afternoon, remember?” said Jennifer. “Yes, you’re right,” she sighed, “but what should we do with this?” “Just leave it and hope no one finds out,” said Sky, “we certainly can’t move it.” “And Tiger gets a special treat for this one,” said Kat smiling. Jewel, Azura and Rusty all agreed with that! They all went upstairs with Mac following slowly behind them, saying to himself, “They’re going to spoil my cat doing that.”
The next day Kat called the jail to make arrangements for visiting Carmen, but she was told that Carmen had been freed. Apparently there was not enough evidence to convict Carmen and they were now looking for a different suspect, one of the bodyguards. Carmen had gone home with her brother. Kat and Jennifer knew that Carmen didn’t have a brother, therefore her life was in danger and they quickly drove back to the house…
To Be Continued. ©2026 Steve McLeod.
