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

by Leann Sweeney

  As we walked toward Tom’s car, I called the new owner of the Pink House, a sweet woman named Laura. Mercy draws a few tourists thanks to plentiful antiques and quaint shops, but nothing like Asheville to the northeast. Most people choose to stay there when visiting the area. But Laura was eager to succeed in the B and B business where others had failed.

  “Hi, Laura. This is Jillian Hart. Is Dustin Gray in his room?”

  “Um, no. That young man has been pacing the floors, goin’ up and down the stairs, waiting for I don’t know what. Let me get him.”

  Soon Dustin was on the line and I explained we wanted him to meet us at the mill so we could talk Jeannie into leaving. “Meet us in thirty minutes. We’re bringing food since—”

  “Oh, Laura made this awesome beef bourguignon for an early supper,” he said. “I’m stuffed. See you there.”

  Beef bourguignon, huh? I thought, as I climbed in the car beside Tom. I might have to spend the night at the Pink House one of these days just for a decent meal.

  * * *

  Tom dropped me at my place. I turned on Animal Planet for the kitties and gave them a quick pet, found a flashlight and then went by the diner to pick up the food. Soon Dustin, Candace and I sat in her RAV4 outside the mill fence and ate. Well, Candace and I ate. Dustin just stared at Candace, his expression similar to one my cats wore when they were fixing on a bird out the window—as if he’d love to pounce but knew he didn’t dare.

  Candace, now dressed in blue jeans and a short down jacket, held a wad of French fries close to her mouth and said, “You should do the talking at first, Jillian. You can get anyone to sing off your song sheet.”

  Puzzled by her remark, I said, “I can?”

  She shoved the French fries in her mouth and chewed a few seconds before saying, “You’re nice. Me? I tend to get a little pushy when I want something done in a hurry.”

  I looked at Dustin and nodded. “She can be pushy.”

  He smiled.

  “Any which way,” Candace said, “that woman is coming out of that mill tonight. But I am deferring to you to encourage her to leave. At first.”

  “Promise not to rush me, okay?” I said.

  “My mama always told me the most important words she ever spoke were ‘Hang on a minute, Candace.’ She says she did manage to teach me a little bit of patience.” She grinned. “Now let’s get this show on the road.” She grabbed the sack containing a burger and fries for Jeannie and got out of the car.

  With winter darkness well upon us, the mill loomed like an overpowering shadow as we passed through the gate and up the walkway. Our flashlights did little to penetrate the night. My heart sped up the closer we got to the door.

  “Yikes!” I stopped suddenly. It felt as if I’d brushed up against something.

  Candace and Dustin halted and she pointed her light at me. “What’s wrong? Did you trip?”

  Dustin swept the brick path with his Maglite. “I don’t see any debris. You okay?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Let’s hurry and get in there.” But it was something—that feeling again, the brief touch against my leg. I’d heard back problems can cause strange sensations in the legs, but as far as I knew, my back was fine. Maybe this creepy place and Jeannie’s belief she had a companion cat no one else could see had seeped into my mind, because it definitely felt as though a cat had just touched me.

  If the mill had seemed as dark as night in the daytime, it was even worse now. As we walked into the expansive old factory, I heard a scurrying noise and turned quickly enough with my flashlight to catch a glimpse of cats racing along the wall to our right.

  “Shawn spoke at the town council meeting and said those aren’t friendly cats,” Candace said. “But they look just like mine and yours.”

  “They are definitely not friendly. They do not trust people,” I said. “And please keep your voice down or you’ll frighten them even more than they already are.”

  “Sorry,” Candace whispered.

  Meanwhile, Dustin forged ahead toward the hallway that led to the office where we’d found Jeannie this morning.

  But we all froze when we heard a loud moan. All our flashlights veered in unison toward the sound. I could make out the silhouette of what looked like a mound on the floor.

  But then the mound moved and cried, “Help me.”

  We all rushed over and found Jeannie lying on the old plank floor.

  Candace got there first and knelt beside her. Dustin and I followed right behind.

  “Where are you hurt?” Candace’s flashlight spread an eerie glow over Jeannie’s anguished face.

  “I—I busted somethin’,” she said.

  I got on my knees beside Candace. “Jeannie, it’s Jillian. What happened?”

  “I—I fell. They was chasin’ me and I fell.” Her eyes closed and I could tell the poor woman was in serious pain.

  Candace stood and pulled out her phone. She tapped a few buttons and then sighed in frustration. “No signal. I’m headed closer to the door to call B.J.”

  “Okay.” I rubbed Jeannie’s upper arm. The fabric of her shirt was thin. Looking up at Dustin I said, “She’s so cold.” I worried she might be in shock and not just freezing because it was so chilly in this building.

  Dustin took off his jacket and laid it gently over the woman.

  “Where does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Here.” She rested a hand on her left hip. “Can’t get up and they’re gonna get me.” But her frightened expression vanished when her gaze fell away and she focused on the floor next to me. “She came back. I knew she would.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dustin said, training his light on the empty space at my side.

  “Boots is here. My sweet Boots,” Jeannie said.

  Eight

  Boots? I blinked several times. Jeannie said Boots came back. Had I been so touched by this poor woman and her predicament that I’d been subconsciously sensing her long-gone kitty’s presence? Yes. That must be it. Still, the touch of a cat against me had felt so real.

  Candace returned and said, “Help is on the way.” Then she bent and whispered in my ear. “Better warn her about what will happen in a few minutes.”

  I nodded and looked at Jeannie. “You’re hurt and we need to help you. What that means is you will have to go to the hospital.”

  Jeannie, who was lying on her right side, covered her ear with a blue-veined hand. “No, don’t you be tellin’ me that. No. They don’t let cats in the hospital. When my mama died, I found that out right quick. Now that Boots is back, I can’t leave her. And I can’t leave here. Who will do the watchin’ out?”

  I tugged Jeannie’s hand away from her face and held it in both of my own. “I promise you, Candace and I will make sure nothing bad happens while you’re gone. And I’m betting they’ll let Boots go with you.” It wasn’t really a lie; the hospital didn’t allow cats, but they couldn’t stop a cat they couldn’t see from coming in. The poor woman needed to calm down, so why not offer what little reassurance I could?

  She gripped my hand and said, “You think they will?”

  “I’m pretty sure. And just so you know, they’ll take special pictures of your hip where it hurts. You might need it fixed.”

  “How they gonna fix it?” she asked.

  Thank goodness I didn’t have to get into an explanation of surgery if indeed her hip was broken, because just at that moment the two Mercy paramedics, Marcy and Jake, wheeled a stretcher our way. These two had been smart enough to put lights on their caps, freeing up their hands.

  “Are they cops?” a panicked Jeannie said. “They look like cops and I don’t want nothin’ to do with them.”

  “They’re not cops. They work for the hospital and they came to help you.” I held her hand tighter when she tried to pull away. “Let them, okay?”

  She looked up at Marcy and Jake, then back at me. “You swear they’re not cops?”

  Candace took a step back farther into the sha
dows. She was a young woman who had a hard time not coming out with the blunt truth, so she must have figured she’d remain out of this part of the conversation.

  Marcy smiled down at Jeannie. “We are not the police. I’m Marcy and this is Jake. We’ll be talking to the doctors on this radio.” She pointed to her shoulder. “That way we can help them figure out how to help you.”

  Jeannie said, “Somethin’s busted. How’s that gonna get fixed?”

  Marcy knelt beside me, so I stood, allowing her room to work. She snapped on gloves and Jake knelt opposite his partner, Jeannie between them. He opened his medical kit.

  I turned to talk to Dustin and Candace, but Dustin seemed to have disappeared. I couldn’t blame him. The guy came here to do a job and I’d had him cooling his jets all day at the Pink House. And now we had a medical emergency. Bet he wished he’d never been assigned to this job.

  I heard Marcy asking Jeannie what hurt, but she kept saying, “It’s busted,” over and over.

  “Her left hip,” I said. “She fell.”

  “Said she was running from someone,” Candace added. “Y’all got this under control? Dustin took off and if someone is lurking around like the woman told us, there might be trouble.”

  “We’re on this,” Jake said. “Go.”

  Candace disappeared into the darkness beyond.

  Jake mumbled into his radio and a staticky reply I couldn’t make out had him nodding. He stretched out IV tubing while Marcy began her examination. When she touched Jeannie’s hip, the older woman’s cry echoed through the building.

  “Jeannie,” Jake said, rubbing a thumb on the woman’s hand, “can you tell me the last time you ate or drank?”

  She ignored him and looked at me when she replied. “Had water a couple hours ago. Don’t go out for food until the night—after the Piggly Wiggly closes. I was thinkin’ today is the day they usually toss the cinnamon rolls and donuts. Was lookin’ forward to that.”

  Marcy held up a blood pressure cuff and raised her eyebrows at me.

  I’d become the conveyor of information and said, “Marcy has to take your blood pressure,” I said. “Do you know what that means?”

  “I ain’t stupid,” Jeannie said. “I know there’s talk I’m dumb, but I ain’t.”

  “Then you’ll let Marcy take your blood pressure?” I said.

  “It’s my leg that hurts. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with my blood.”

  We went on like this as Jake and Marcy ran through all the steps of their medical evaluation. Jeannie never looked at them, but she did allow them to check her blood pressure and take her pulse. She didn’t even flinch when Jake started her IV and she actually seemed fascinated at first, but fear again clouded her expression.

  “Am I gonna die? ’Cause they was runnin’ water through tubes like this into my mama when she was in the hospital and then she up and died.”

  Marcy said, “You’ll be fine. We want to put medicine in this tube to help with your pain. Are you allergic to anything?”

  Jeannie looked up at me. “What’s she talkin’ about?”

  I explained what an allergy was and Jeannie denied ever having a reaction to any medicines or foods. Jake injected a syringeful of what I assumed was morphine into Jeannie’s IV tubing. He told her how they planned to move Jeannie onto the stretcher hoping to cause as little pain as possible, but I had to repeat the steps of this process after she looked up at me in fear.

  I held her hand as the paramedics expertly transferred her. Despite the pain medicine, she hollered, all the while gripping my hand so tightly I thought I might lose circulation. But once this ordeal was over, she let out a sigh of relief—and so did I. They raised the stretcher and made another radio call to let the hospital know they were on the way.

  “I can’t see her no more. Where is she?” Jeannie mumbled as the morphine began to take effect. “Where’d she go?”

  “Are you talking about Boots?” I said.

  She nodded, her eyelids heavy.

  “She’s probably waiting at the door and she’ll jump on the stretcher when they take you out,” I said.

  As they moved her along, Jeannie clung to my hand like a child. I felt tears burn behind my eyes when I saw she was crying.

  “Boots ain’t comin’ with me. She’s more scared than me.”

  Marcy said, “Jeannie, Mrs. Hart is gonna walk with us to the door and then—”

  She was interrupted by the loud arrival of two volunteer firemen dragging in portable halogens. “How about some light, Jake?” Billy Cranor called.

  “Who’s that?” Jeannie said, her speech slurred. “Them creepers? I don’t like them.”

  “Not creepers. I know these folks and they’re here to help you, too,” I said.

  “If they ain’t villagers…” Her eyes closed. “I ain’t talking to them.”

  Marcy and Jake directed the stretcher more quickly toward the exit now that the area was brightened by the lights. I hurried to keep up.

  By the time we reached the door, the questions about her cat were moot. Jeannie appeared to be asleep.

  Once they took her out, I turned to Billy and the newest volunteer fireman, the burly, rusty-haired Grant Jamison. I’d met him at the Fourth of July fund-raiser for the fire department. He’d just graduated from high school last June.

  I said, “Candace is here somewhere—with the engineer the town hired. They could probably use these lights.”

  “Where the heck are they?” Billy peered past me.

  “I can lead you to where I think they are, but let me call Candace to make sure.” But I couldn’t get a signal.

  “Too much cast iron, brick and concrete in here,” Grant said. “Let’s head where you think they went, Mrs. Hart.”

  So we did. The halogens saved me, because despite what I said about knowing where they were, I am directionally challenged. But now I could actually see the hallway leading to the office where we’d found Jeannie this morning.

  “I always wondered what this place looked like inside,” Billy said as we walked side by side. “It’s like a gigantic barn minus the hay and dried corn.”

  Soon, I heard the sound of voices and Candace must have seen the bright lights coming her way because she stepped into the hallway.

  Hands on hips, she said, “Look what the invisible cat dragged in.”

  Candace greeted Billy and Grant with fist bumps while I sneaked around them and into the office Jeannie had been calling home.

  The room smelled just as sour as it had this morning, despite Jeannie’s absence. Dustin, who’d been kneeling in front of the fireplace, stood.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I found out how she gets in and out.” Dustin nodded toward the wall to his right. “Over there. That bricked-up window? There’s no mortar. She removes the bricks when she wants to leave. I’m sure we’ll find a broken fence outside, too.”

  I peered at the window. “Look at that. For an old woman, she must be strong to climb in and out. Who knows how long she’s been surviving here or somewhere else without a home or anyone to help her.”

  Dustin knelt down in front of the fireplace again. “After I figured out about the window, this old chimney caught my eye. It’s packed with hunks of concrete and old bricks, but the way it’s been done doesn’t seem right.”

  “What do you mean?” I got down on my knees beside him.

  “See here on the left?” He played his light over the debris. “This side seems far more organized with more old bricks used. I’m guessing they were piled high, almost to the top of the fireplace arch, but most have fallen away. Plus, I may be wrong, but I believe I see a canvas tarp back in there.” He leaned back on his heels. “Why a tarp?”

  “Maybe they hauled in these bricks on a tarp and saw no reason to remove it,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said. “The canvas seems to be all twisted up.” He pushed aside the fallen bricks and began to tunnel toward the tarp.

  That was when I felt the pr
essure against my leg, as if one of my cats were sitting next to me to watch what Dustin was doing. My heart skipped. This time, the touch wasn’t brief and seemed familiar, almost loving.

  Dustin said, “What the heck?” as he dragged out a foot-long stretch of frayed and nibbled-on jute twine. He dropped it and reached back in. He started to reach in again and Candace must have noticed from where she was standing in the hall.

  She said, “You want to grab hold of a bunch of roaches or dead mice, you might want to put on a glove.” She walked in and handed him a latex glove she’d pulled from her pocket.

  “Thanks,” he said as he snapped it on. He slipped his hand into the narrow space again and pulled it back out quickly. “What is this?”

  He held an object in his open palm and I shined my light above it.

  I gasped.

  Dustin’s face drained of color and he whispered, “Oh no.”

  And I thought I heard a small, plaintive meow coming from right beside me.

  Nine

  Dustin and I both stared in horror at what appeared to be a skeletal hand—pulled off cleanly at the wrist.

  Candace knelt next to Dustin. She seemed fascinated and said, “Try not to disturb it any more than you already have.”

  Meanwhile, I felt panic constricting my throat. These bones belonged to a person. What else was in that fireplace?

  Then the invisible presence beside me pushed against my leg as if to comfort me. I couldn’t ignore this strange feeling any more than I could ignore the bones in Dustin’s hand.

  Grant and Billy sauntered in and the bright light they brought with them made the thin, frail bones almost fluoresce.

  “L-look,” I said, nodding at Dustin’s outstretched palm.

  Candace continued to stare at the hand for a good ten seconds before switching her focus to Dustin’s pale face. “You feel anything else in there?”

  His voice wavering, he said, “Yes. I—I think there’s more.”