Not much happened for the rest of the day. That night I told Sunshine to stay with Angel and Kyan. I figured that would be safer. And Storm would be there too, he can help watch at night. I also asked Snow to stay with them so she can help calm Sunshine with her purring. Snow was excited to have a special job to do. Muffin, of course, stayed with Crystal and I.

Her ears are better than ours, even when she is asleep. About 2am Muffin touched my cheek, then touched Crystal. We had our guns under our pillows. There was a strange noise, like heavy breathing. Then a quiet, but noticeable, laughter. I looked around but could see nothing, and it was a full moon so there was plenty of light in the room.

Then Crystal screamed and Muffin pressed her alarm button! That woke up the whole team and they raced to our bedroom! All but those looking after Sunshine, they stayed in their room, which is usual orders. Rock smashed his way through the door and Mac turned on the light. Only Muffin was lying on the bed and she was unconscious.

Kristina picked her up right away to make sure she was still alive while the others looked around for clues. Rock, Mac and a couple of the girls went down the stairs to the basement, but there was no one down there either. They came back, puzzled as to what had happened. “We will have to wait for Muffin to tell us,” said Kristina, “it does not look like she was hit with anything, so it must have been gas that knocked her out.”

“But how could they take Steve and Sky away so fast?” asked Rock. Then he, Mac and 3 of the girls went to check on that new passageway that led to that building. However, we had laid a trap of sorts there by the large stone, so if anyone opened it we would know about it. But it had not been disturbed and there was no obvious signs of anyone being in there since we had been there. Very strange indeed.

Meanwhile… “Um, where do you think we are?” asked Crystal. Remember that Crystal is pretending to be Sky on this case, so whenever we openly talk and use her name, we use Sky. “I wish I knew,” I said, “it is kind of dark in here, so there is no outside window in this room. But how did we get here is equally strange as where we are.”

“Well, this bed is quite comfortable,” said Sky, “but I probably would not want to know what it looks like.” “It does not smell bad anyway,” I said. I then got up and looked for a door and it did not take long to find it, and beside the door a light switch. I turned it on and we were in a very nice bedroom, but the window had been boarded up so no light could get in, and we could not get out. I pressed my emergency transmitter. “Hey, Steve’s transmitter,” said Rock.

Soon he was smashing the door of our room open. We had been put in one of the locked buildings we had seen. How strange. We went back to our bedroom and Kristina and Sigurbjorn stayed with us the rest of the night. Muffin had woke up but could not tell them what happened to us. Right after that laughter is when we all fell asleep because of some kind of gas. In the morning I called the police to see what the autopsy showed on the butler.

The lady that answered did not know anything about it, so she transferred me to the chief. He did not know anything either, so he called to find out while I waited. He then got back on the phone and said that no one had been brought in yesterday and none of his officers had been out to the castle. Amazing, we were fooled again. I told him there ID was authentic and that concerned him enough that he and another man came out to the castle right away.

I told them what we knew, which is not much. During the conversation I mentioned the butler’s parents had died in a car accident 2 years ago. Sunshine was just bringing in some fresh coffee when I said that and she nearly dropped the coffee pot. She apologized for being clumsy and went back to the kitchen. Something startled her, she was not being clumsy. However, I did not say anything right then.

After the usual questions, the police left with the chief very upset that someone out there had authentic police ID and was using it to fool people. Though I did not say anything, someone obviously used the forging equipment to produce the fake, but very real, ID, for those fake police.

But who did it? Andrew, Jim, Anne? Maybe that maid? But somehow I think the murder of the butler is not connected to our case. We need to talk with Sunshine a bit more…

To Be Continued.

©2023 Steve McLeod.