The Cat, the Mill and the Murder: A Cats in Trouble Mystery

by Leann Sweeney

  Tom swallowed a gulp of coffee. “A tax foreclosure. Sounds like an event I never want to face in my life. Anything with the word tax in it scares the crap out of me.”

  I laughed. “Me, too. But your business is doing great. In fact, why aren’t you out on a job?”

  “Just wanted to see you. Next appointment isn’t until this evening. Your friend Penelope Webber, by the way.”

  “She’s an acquaintance. But doesn’t she have a state-of-the-art security system already?” I asked.

  “You know how I put those new features on your phone—the four-screen view for your cat cam and the remote app for arming your security system?”

  I nodded. “Love the four screens at once, by the way. I can find the cats immediately now while I’m off running errands.”

  “Knew you’d love it. Anyway, Ms. Webber heard through someone in town that she can check on all the rooms in her fancy house while she’s having lunch at the country club.”

  “First I knew that Mercy had a country club,” I said.

  “There isn’t one,” he said with a laugh. “I guess I mean she can see her house from wherever women like her go in the afternoon to show off their new shoes.”

  I smiled at Tom. “Women like her? Really, Tom?”

  “Sorry. That sounded bad. I get tired of entitled, rich people like her, is all. Believe me, you would, too, if you had to deal with as many of them as I do. If she were a guy, I would have said, ‘Wherever men like him go to show off their Cuban cigars.’” He lifted his eyebrows. “Sound better?”

  “I was just giving you a hard time. Truth is, I don’t care for her, either. Why can’t she be like Ritaestelle Longworth? She’s filthy rich and yet she’s so sweet and kind and giving. Did you know she’s the reason Shawn can relocate all those ferals in the mill?”

  “How’s that?” He drained his mug.

  I said, “Using the money she gave him, Shawn bought up the acreage surrounding the Mercy Animal Sanctuary. He’s been investigating new techniques used to give ferals a safer environment. Maybe you can help him with the future heavy lifting that will be involved in the project. See, he’ll have to move these new portable structures inside the mill. They kind of look like Dumpsters.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Tom said.

  “Maybe I can show you a picture on your phone,” I said.

  He pulled it out of his pocket and I gave him the name of the website dedicated to rescuing ferals.

  Tom nodded as we both looked at the pictures on the site. “They do look like miniature Dumpsters.”

  “Using food,” I said, “Shawn will lure the cats into these things. They’re a nice kind of trap with everything inside that the cats need. Food, a litter area, a sleeping spot with quilts I made. At first, the cats can go in and out. Then Shawn will fix it so they have to stay inside the shelter. After the cats calm down, he can—”

  “Calm down is right,” Tom said. “A nice trap is still a trap.”

  “I know. The idea didn’t sit right with me at first. But Shawn convinced me that this is the best way to handle the problem. Once the cats settle down, he’ll move the traps onto his property. Then, after they’re spayed or neutered, he’ll let them out a few at a time and they’ll be off and smelling the same kind of food set out on his property. Apparently, feral cats captured like this keep coming back to their shelters on and off for the consistent source of food. It’s such a great way to save these guys.”

  “I take it Shawn needs help lifting these shelters,” Tom said. “Glad to help. Finn’s nearly nineteen and since he’s put on some muscle since he’s moved in with me, I’ll get him involved, too.”

  “That would be great. Thank you. But first things first. Before we can move cats, we have to help Jeannie. If I knew more about her, maybe I’d be better equipped to talk her into leaving the mill. I’m betting Ed knows her story in detail.”

  “All we can do is ask him. He’s at the shop. Want to run over there?” he said.

  “Yes.” I hopped up, forgetting I held a nearly full mug. Coffee sloshed over the rim, spilled onto my shirt and splashed onto the coffee table. I set the mug down and started for the kitchen to grab a towel. “Call me your Klutz of the Day.”

  Tom laughed. “Okay, Klutz. I’ll clean this up while you change. And I’ll give Ed a call, too. For all I know, maybe he closed up the shop. Went fishing or went out looking for junk. You know how he is.”

  “Indeed I do.” I thanked Tom, gave him a quick kiss and hurried off to change.

  And no cats followed me. I wondered why.

  Five

  Ed’s Swap Shop sat on a piece of property right off Main Street. The place was once a small house, but now each room was crammed with items Ed had found—everything from old computers to true antiques. He rescued old magazines, newspapers, dishes, clothing—you name it. For Ed, everything was recyclable.

  The cold morning had segued into an even colder afternoon, so after I’d doused myself with coffee, I’d changed clothes and added two new layers. Now I wore a Henley and a cardigan under my wool jacket.

  We heard Yoshi barking the minute Tom turned the doorknob to enter the shop. When we walked in, the little brown and white dog began to jump as if he had springs on his feet. Tom held out his arms and Yoshi leapt into them and began licking his face.

  Tom smiled broadly and set the dog down. I knelt before the jumping could start again and Yoshi slathered me with doggy kisses, too.

  “Hey there,” Ed called. He’d appeared in the small hallway beyond this most cluttered part of his shop and waved Tom and me to the back of the house.

  Yoshi bounded ahead of us and we all joined Ed in what had once been the kitchen. It was now used as a break room. There was no stove, but there was a small round table in the corner opposite the refrigerator. The old pink fridge was a recent find; I guessed it was maybe circa 1960. Though Ed probably could have sold it for a pretty penny in this day of shabby-chic decorating, he’d decided to hang on to it.

  Ed had recently trimmed back his long gray beard to stubble because Yoshi had gotten his feet tangled in the beard a few times too many. Ed was compensating by growing out his wiry silver hair to shoulder length.

  I smelled coffee and hoped I could actually drink the stuff rather than spill it all over again. Ed poured us each a cup in jadeite mugs. We then sat and doctored our coffee with the cream and sugar sitting in the center of the table. Yoshi picked up a rawhide bone almost as big as he was and settled at our feet.

  “Good to see you two,” Ed said, and then fixed on me. “What’s this about Jeannie Sloan? She’s been gone from here a good ten years.”

  “Maybe not.” I went on to explain about my morning at the mill.

  “I’ll be a second cousin to a monkey,” Ed said when I’d finished. “You think she’s been livin’ in that old building all this time?”

  “Hard to tell,” I said. “From what I saw, I’d guess she’s been there awhile.”

  Ed slowly shook his head. “I thought she was long gone. Her daughter went and disappeared and Jeannie was beside herself. The woman wandered the streets, bothered the heck out of Morris Ebeling to keep lookin’ for her daughter. After she got put in the clink a couple times for loitering, she started turnin’ up at the police station. She’d just sit on them old benches in the corridor hoping to hear word about her Kay Ellen.”

  “How sad.” I thought about Candace’s theory that Jeannie might have hurt her daughter, but from what Ed said, that didn’t seem likely. “Does Jeannie have any family in town? Someone who could help her out of this situation?”

  “All she had was Kay Ellen. They’d been foreclosed on—once had a little brick house in the mill village,” Ed said.

  Mill villages consisted of streets and streets of identical houses surrounding the hundreds of mills all over the South. They were originally built by mill owners for the workers. The villages usually included churches, stores and sometimes even post offices. The Lorra
ine Stanley Textile Mill must have had a wealthy owner because the village in Mercy consisted of all-brick construction—a rarity. The houses elsewhere across the South were mostly clapboard.

  “They owned the house at one time?” I said. “From what I understood, the mill owners owned the houses in villages.”

  “Nope,” Ed said. “Ward Stanley sold them houses. Offered the mill workers a pretty good deal, too. Probably the only nice thing that old coot ever done in his life.”

  “Ward Stanley owned the mill?” Tom asked.

  “He did. And his daddy before and his daddy’s daddy before that. All of them are dead now except the last Ward Stanley and who knows what he’s up to. Anyways, once the bank kicked Jeannie and her girl out of their house, Kay Ellen got herself a job at Red Top—you know, that fallin’-down hamburger joint on the other side of town? Don’t know how the place stays in business. Anyways, they was livin’ at the church for a while ’cause minimum wage don’t pay anyone’s rent. Then Kay Ellen up and left. Don’t blame a sixteen-year-old for wantin’ to quit and leave a life such as she had.”

  “Did she stay at the church in the mill village—or somewhere else?” I asked.

  “Mill Village Baptist,” he answered. “I know ’cause the preacher came in here once askin’ to swap me firewood for a phone. Said with a teenager stayin’ in the pastorium, they needed another telephone.”

  “That means Kay Ellen had friends—or at least one friend,” Tom said.

  “Good thinkin’.” Ed nodded and smiled. “You can string things together like nobody I ever known—you and Tom, that is. A phone means the child was talkin’ to someone. Got to say, I never knew much about Kay Ellen. But Jeannie? Knew her better than most people did. She’d bring in junk she’d collected every other day and I’d give her a dollar or two.”

  “Tell me more about her,” I said.

  Ed rubbed a stubbled cheek. “She’d be about my age—maybe mid-sixties. Had her baby late in life. See, Jeannie was slow-witted. More like a kid than a grown woman. There was whispers someone took advantage of her after she showed up pregnant. I don’t think she even knew what happened to her. The daughter was a pretty thing and by the time she was ten, she was takin’ care of Jeannie. I once heard her explainin’ to her mama something about how to buy the best fruit in the Piggly Wiggly. Made me think she was a nice girl. Respectful. Maybe a little protective of Jeannie, too.”

  “Jeannie never had a job?” Tom said.

  Ed smiled. “Oh, she did. Worked in that mill since she was young. Us kids in town called her and the others like her lintheads. They’d be covered with cotton pieces when they came off a shift. Looked like they’d been snowed on.” His smile faded. “I’m not proud of how we treated the village kids. Not proud of how we treated the blacks, neither. It was a different time. Not an excuse, mind you. Wrong thinkin’ is all.”

  “Ed, you are a wealth of information concerning this town,” Tom said, sounding amazed. “But the truth is, not everyone else has realized how wrong-thinking those times were. The people who live near the mill still don’t mingle much in town. I’ve heard plenty of unkind remarks about the residents.”

  Ed said, “Prejudice is for dumbasses and we got a lot of dumbasses left in Mercy.”

  I’d learned about how towns treated the village residents from my college course work about the textile industry—not Mercy, per se, but the textile towns in general. It was a sad part of our history that few people today seemed to know about. But though I felt exactly the same as Ed, I wanted to get back to why we’d come today. I said, “What did Jeannie do after the mill closed?”

  “Her parents was older than dirt by then and she’d been carin’ for them. I’m thinkin’ there was some kind of severance they lived on—plus their social security. Jeannie buried her parents and not long after she and Kay Ellen got kicked to the curb by the bank. Pretty cold how we treat some folks in this country, them who’s worked hard all their lives.”

  “Do you know anything about the police investigation?” Tom said. “Did they believe from the get-go Kay Ellen ran off? Or were there indications she met foul play?”

  Ed grinned. “Listen to you soundin’ like a cop again. You’d have to get with Morris on the particulars, but Kay Ellen didn’t take a damn thing with her when she ran off. Not even her purse, or so I heard. What young thing leaves without her purse?”

  “You’re right,” I said, half to myself. I looked at Ed. “Does the same preacher still work at Mill Village Baptist?”

  “He does. Name’s Mitchell Truman. You probably seen him around town. Tall black man with the shiniest skull I ever did see.”

  Tom stood. “Guess I know where we’re headed.”

  Six

  During the ride to the outskirts of town and the Mill Village Baptist Church in Tom’s brand-new Prius—loved the new car smell—I took a moment to check on my cats. They had to be exhausted after all their running around this morning. But though Chablis lay sound asleep on the sofa, Syrah and Merlot were not on any of my four screens. I guessed they’d taken their chase to the basement and perhaps decided to nap down there.

  The church sat one block from the mill, and the pastorium next door was set farther back on the property. Both structures were the same red brick as the rows of identical mill village houses lining the streets.

  “I never noticed that the preacher’s house is almost as big as the church itself,” Tom said. “Not to say either building is all that large—unless you compare them to the village houses.”

  “Quiet neighborhood,” I said, glancing up and down the street.

  “Too bad we hardly ever see people from this part of town on Main Street,” Tom said.

  “It does seem a little like a ghost town,” I said. “Maybe most of these houses are empty.”

  “Yards look too tidy. People are living here,” he answered.

  As we walked hand in hand up the brick sidewalk, the church’s steeple looked regal against the dreary sky. Great care had been taken in this building’s construction. Arched stained-glass windows and ornate double doors beckoned. We climbed the few steps to the entrance and I reflected on how much I adored old churches—and the South had plenty of them to admire.

  The sanctuary, with its wooden pews and simple altar, was deserted. We found Mitchell Truman in the church office, sitting at a desk dwarfed by the large man.

  When I gently tapped on the frame of his open door, he looked up and smiled.

  “Good afternoon.” He stood and I guessed he had to be six feet four. “I’m Pastor Mitch. So glad you stopped by our church.” His voice was deep and the rich baritone made him seem even bigger. I was willing to bet he gave powerful sermons.

  Tom strode into the office, hand outstretched in greeting. “Tom Stewart. Nice to meet you, Pastor.”

  They shook hands.

  Then the pastor smiled at me, eyebrows raised.

  “Nice to meet you, Pastor. I’m Jillian Hart and I’m so glad we found you—but if you’re busy—”

  “Jillian Hart? The lady with the smart cats?” he said.

  I smiled. “Why yes, but how—”

  “Can I see them? The cats, I mean?” He sounded genuinely excited. “Several of my parishioners tell me you watch your cats on your phone.”

  People do talk in Mercy, but I was surprised to learn they were apparently discussing my small life. I took my phone out of my jeans pocket and we spent a few minutes observing Chablis sleep on the sofa. When Syrah and Merlot finally sauntered into the kitchen, Pastor Mitchell laughed and sat down.

  “What mellow cats,” he said.

  “You can say that now,” I said. “You should have seen them earlier.” Just then, I felt pressure against my calf, same as when Syrah rubs against me. I looked down. Nothing. I glanced behind me, wondering if the pastor had a sneaky cat of his own. “You seem to love cats. Do you have one or two lurking around here?”

  “No. I’d love a cat to keep me company, but my wife is
worried about allergic parishioners who might have problems if we had animals in the church,” he said.

  “I understand, but cats and dogs can be therapeutic and I am sure you counsel troubled souls in this very office. If you ever get her to change her mind, please go to the animal shelter run by Shawn and Allison Cuddahee and adopt,” I said.

  “I will do just that.” The pastor looked back and forth between Tom and me. “Are you two looking for a new church home?”

  “Not right now. We’ve come to ask about someone you know,” I said.

  His face grew serious. “You understand if this person shared a confidence, I cannot speak with you about such matters.” Though his tone was formal, I sensed he was a warm and caring man.

  “Clara Jeanne Sloan? Remember her?” Tom said, sounding a little too coplike. It made me uncomfortable and I wondered if the pastor felt the same way.

  “Oh my, indeed I do,” he said, seemingly nonplussed by Tom’s official tone. “She left Mercy a long time ago.”

  “We found her living in the mill this morning,” I said.

  “What?” If a person could be plussed, the pastor was now. “Oh no. Are you saying she’s…homeless? That she came back to Mercy and couldn’t call on us to—”

  “We’re not sure how long she’s been there,” I said. “We could use your help before we…Well, we need to understand her better. Can you help us?”

  “Most certainly I’ll help. We could go over to the mill right this minute. We should. We need to help the poor lady.” He started to rise.

  Tom held up a hand. “Hang on, Pastor. From what Jillian tells me, we can’t barge in like the savior patrol.”

  “He’s right,” I added, hoping the crack about the savior patrol would be forgotten. Still, I couldn’t help but like how passionate Tom was about helping Jeannie.

  “Do you have a plan, then?” Pastor Mitch eased back into his chair.