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

  Praise for the National Bestselling

  Cats in Trouble Mystery Series

  The Cat, the Wife and the Weapon

  “A light and easy cozy mystery that strikes a nice balance between the murder mystery and the intricacy of human relationships…. The South Carolina setting teems with Southern hospitality, the scenes [are] action-packed, and there is romance and humor, as well. I give this book four paws up!”

  —MyShelf.com

  “[An] amusing and enthralling regional amateur sleuth tale starring an eccentric cast led by the likable, peacemaking heroine.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  The Cat, the Lady and the Liar

  “A lighthearted, fun cozy starring an engaging cast of characters…. Feline frolic fans will enjoy.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Tightly plotted, with likable characters, and filled with cat trivia, this entertaining mystery will become a favorite for cozy and cat lovers alike.”

  —The Conscious Cat

  The Cat, the Professor and the Poison

  “A fun, entertaining story…the mystery will keep the reader guessing, and the conclusion is satisfying and will leave readers looking forward to Jillian’s next adventure. I enjoyed this story so much.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Sure to please the cat and cozy fans of the world…. After reading the first book, I just knew I was going to fall in love with this series and [I] have.”

  —Feathered Quill Book Reviews

  “The characters and friends Jillian makes along the way, and the care she gives to the cats she encounters, will make her a fast favorite.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  The Cat, the Quilt and the Corpse

  “A solid start to a cozy mystery series.”

  —CA Reviews

  “The first installment of what promises to be a delightful cozy series…. Leann Sweeney presents readers with a solid mystery that kept this reader guessing through all of the plot twists and turns. Plenty of cat trivia adds to the richness of the narrative…highly recommended!”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “The cats are entertaining four-legged assistants…[and] kitty lovers will enjoy the feline trivia.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Great fun for cat lovers…a lot of hometown charm.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “Fans will enjoy her amateur sleuth investigation.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “[Leann Sweeney’s] brand-new series about adorable cats that just can’t stay out of trouble is bound to be a hit!”

  —Fantastic Fiction

  “Sweet but not syrupy, sharply written, and brimming with heart.”

  —Cozy Library

  Praise for the Yellow Rose Mysteries

  “As Texas as a Dr Pepper–swigging armadillo at the Alamo. A rip-roaring read!”

  —Carolyn Hart, national bestselling author of Death Comes Silently

  “Pick Your Poison goes down sweet.”

  —Rick Riordan, New York Times bestselling and Edgar® Award–winning author

  “Full of emotions! Anger, sadness, fear, happiness, laughter, joy, and tears…they are all there, and you will feel them along with the characters in this book!”

  —Armchair Interviews

  “A welcome new voice in mystery fiction.”

  —Jeff Abbott, national bestselling author of Collision

  Other Novels by Leann Sweeney

  The Cats in Trouble Mysteries

  The Cat, the Wife and the Weapon

  The Cat, the Lady and the Liar

  The Cat, the Professor and the Poison

  The Cat, the Quilt and the Corpse

  The Yellow Rose Mysteries

  Pushing Up Bluebonnets

  Shoot from the Lip

  Dead Giveaway

  A Wedding to Die For

  Pick Your Poison

  THE CAT, THE MILL

  AND THE MURDER

  A CATS IN TROUBLE MYSTERY

  LEANN SWEENEY

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com.

  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Leann Sweeney, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-60968-2

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  This book is dedicated to my own three amigos,

  who left me for the Rainbow Bridge in the last year and

  a half. Indigo, Archie and Agatha, I miss your

  inspiration and I will hold you in my heart forever.

  Acknowledgments

  This book came to life with the help of many friends, both of the human and feline variety. I would like to thank my writers group—Kay, Bob, Amy, Laura, Dean, Heather, Millie, Charlie, Susie, Isabella and Curry. My online support comes from dear friends Lorraine and Jenn as well as the many followers of the Cozy Chicks blog—www.cozychicksblog.com—and the other Cozy Chicks: Kate, Maggie, Deb, Heather and Julie. The cozyarmchair friends on Yahoo are always there for me, as well as my dear husband and my fur friends, Rosie the Labradoodle and Wexford the Ragdoll cat. Many thanks to my agent, Carol Mann, and my editor, Claire. Each and every one of you makes me a better writer.

  If you stared deep into a cat’s eyes, you would be able to see into the world of spirits.

  ENGLISH PROVERB

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Excerpt from The Cat, the Quilt and the Corpse

  One

  Dustin Gray, the young man charged with taking Shawn Cuddahee and me into the abandoned Lorraine
Stanley Textile Mill, put a key into the padlock on the metal gate. Dark clouds hung low, hovering above the three-story building on this cold January morning.

  Chain-link fencing surrounded the entire ten-acre property, in many places topped with anti-climbing spikes. In other spots on the fence, time and neglect had taken their toll. It would have been easy to scale had I been a teenager looking to get into trouble. But I’m Jillian Hart, in my mid-forties and not inclined to climb anything other than the occasional ladder when one of my three cats accidentally sneaks outside and ends up on the roof.

  While Dustin struggled with the rusty lock, Shawn and I stared at the caution sign posted on the hurricane fencing. He started reading the words aloud and I followed along: “‘Cleanup project in cooperation with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control,’” he whispered. The admonition talked about a contract number and finished with the promise that “soil and groundwater will be tested for hazardous substances.”

  I’d once stopped here to take pictures of the burnt-orange brick mill, maybe a few months back, and this sign had been added since that time. Hazardous substances, huh? I wondered about the feral cats inside the mill—the cats who were the reason Shawn and I accompanied structural engineer Dustin Gray this morning. Were the cats sick? Would we find the bodies of those who hadn’t survived living around toxins from fabric dyes that had leaked into the groundwater? I couldn’t stand to even think about such a thing, so I turned my gaze back to the building.

  This old mill had once hummed with activity and was a place where fabric had been made for nearly a century. Cotton fabric I dearly loved—beautiful woven fabric put together through American ingenuity and by American hands. I am a quilter. I have stacks of fabric at my home on Mercy Lake, here in South Carolina. But none of it is made in the United States anymore.

  Behind us, a train chugged along. Trains once carried in new cotton and carried away fabric. Now all the railcars still passing through were probably filled with chemicals or oil. We stood before the graveyard of an industry—a broken building begging for our help. I felt a sense of urgency to begin the job of preparing this place for its future. And I felt a great responsibility, too. The same responsibility Shawn, animal rescuer extraordinaire, felt.

  This gigantic place, with its old buildings and vast, grassy surrounding land, was now home to a colony of feral cats. I considered it ironic that these cats—so misunderstood and maligned by most of society—were the gatekeepers here. They had invaded the buildings probably years ago and taken on the task of ridding the structures of rats, mice and snakes.

  We were planning to displace them from their home in the coming weeks. The sadness I felt was tempered by knowing the relocation of the feral cats would be done the right way. They would not be exterminated, as one town council member had suggested. I felt anger heat my cheeks as I remembered hearing the man’s words at the council meeting ten days ago. He’d said, “Why can’t we just shoot them all?”

  “Tough old lock, but I got it,” Dustin said as he pushed open the tall gate so we could access the property. Winter winds pushed us along as we made our way across the desolate acreage leading to the main building. I admired the handsome arched windows with their lovely brickwork, but I was puzzled, too. All the windows were bricked over—with much shoddier-looking work than had been used on the original building. Why would they close off all the windows and leave no open eyes to the outside world for this mill? I wondered.

  A strong gust hit us and I had to hang on to my yellow hard hat. It was the first time ever for me to wear a hard hat, but Dustin had insisted we all wear them. He was a civil engineer who couldn’t be more than twenty-five, if that. He wore a flannel shirt, faded jeans and a tool belt that seemed to carry enough equipment to weigh down even a person as strong as Shawn. Despite Dustin’s slim build and pale face, his gait was sure and confident. Still, I couldn’t help thinking someone like this young man, with his wire rim glasses and serious expression, seemed like an anomaly in rural Mercy, South Carolina. He looked as if he should be sitting in a lecture hall at Harvard.

  He’d done his homework, that’s for sure. When we’d met up with him at Belle’s Beans, the local coffee shop, before driving across town to this spot, he’d shared his knowledge of the mill. Though not a local—he’d recently moved to nearby Greenville from the Northeast—he knew that the building had been abandoned for more than a decade. Though the structure stood mostly intact, it had been built in the late 1800s. He warned us that safety was definitely a concern, and Shawn shared cryptically that Dustin might be surprised at just how big a concern. Shawn was talking about the cats, of course. Dustin had no clue, but he might in a few minutes.

  Dustin’s job here was different from our mission. He was an impartial employee, hired by the Mercy town council to decide how best to rehabilitate this mill into a sound and usable space. Two sets of investors with very different ideas had offered up plans. Would the Lorraine Stanley Textile Mill become an “urban village” clustered around a mill museum? Or would it become a collection of open-space condos with a large central common area? Initial proposals had been readied and Dustin would offer his input after his evaluation. At this point, no one knew which concept would work better. First, the condition of the mill would have to be assessed.

  But even before any cleanup and rehabilitation could happen, Shawn was to check out the feral cat population—to see how many cats lived here and if there were any feline health issues—and then come up with a solution to deal with them.

  “Like I said back at Belle’s Beans,” Shawn said to Dustin as we stopped in front of the main mill entrance, “these cats we’re about to encounter are not your friends.”

  Shawn had begun his lecture on the topic of feral cats versus stray cats back at Belle’s Beans and he couldn’t leave it alone. Sure enough, he continued on, adding, “All feral cats are strays, but not all strays are feral. The cat who ends up at your back door meowing for food and longing for human touch? He’s a stray. Strays make amazing and wonderful pets. But a feral cat will hide under your deck and never come close to you. He will eventually breed and you will consider him a nuisance. Ferals don’t trust humans. Since people domesticated cats centuries ago, then some folks decided they could be discarded like garbage, ferals have been a group lost in limbo. They aren’t wild and yet they cannot live with humans. They aren’t pack animals, so they don’t comfort one another much. It’s our responsibility to find solutions, to care—”

  I placed a hand on Shawn’s upper arm and softly said, “And that’s why we’re here. We’ll save these guys.”

  Shawn’s face had gone beet red with agitation. “Yeah. Sorry. I’ve got strong feelings about this topic, if you hadn’t figured that out.”

  Dustin, looking a little shell-shocked, mumbled, “I get it, man.” He fingered through the keys on the ring he still held and now unlocked the double doors to the mill building so we could enter. The old wood, mildewed and faded by time, had cracked in places near its iron hinges. Dustin pushed one door with his shoulder and it creaked open in protest. He said, “These cats won’t attack us, will they?”

  Shawn walked through the door first, saying, “Not unless you try to initiate contact—as in corner them. You might not get so lucky with the rats.”

  I stifled a smile when Dustin’s brown eyes widened. He said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope.” Shawn walked into the darkness ahead, his Maglite leading the way.

  As Dustin and I followed, I said, “Why did they brick up all these windows? This place is as dark as a dungeon.”

  Dustin pulled a flashlight from his utility belt and switched it on. The farther we moved from the open door, the darker and mustier it became. He said, “Mills like these went through many transformations for their power supply. Coal, steam and finally electric heat. When the air-conditioning was added, the windows were bricked up to save money on the electricity bills.”

  �
��How awful to work in a place without windows,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you before, but my degree is in textile arts. That’s why I volunteered to help you and Shawn with this project. I love fabric and learned the history of these mills in college. One of my courses had a boring title—History of Textile Production on the Eastern Seaboard. We never got to the part about the business of heating and cooling such gigantic places. But thanks to the course, I am familiar with spindles and weaving—that and the culture surrounding every big mill like this one.”

  Dustin didn’t respond and I felt a little silly then. I guess I wanted to justify my presence. In truth, I was here for the cats more than for a forsaken culture. They still lived and breathed, after all. Textile production in America was dead.

  Dustin stopped and swept his beam upward, downward and beyond us. Since Shawn had disappeared into the pitch-black space ahead, I thought Dustin was trying to find him. Then he stomped his booted foot and the sound echoed around us.

  He probably didn’t realize he’d scared a few cats by making such a loud noise. Shawn would not be happy if the kitties fled to hide inside the walls or were able to get up into the ceilings. If that was the case, we’d have a hard time figuring out how many cats lived here.