The Cat, the Mill and the Murder: A Cats in Trouble Mystery (2 page)

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.

But Dustin has a job to do, too,
I thought. If he made a lot of noise again, I’d say something. Now was not the time. Instead, I said, “I’ll bet these wood floors will be beautiful once they’re refinished.”

Dustin still wasn’t talking. He’d taken several steps farther into the abyss and now focused his light on one of the many support pillars.

“Wow.” He sounded awed as he rested a hand on the pillar. Then he ran his hand up and down.

I stepped closer so I could see what had grabbed his
attention. The round support had some kind of metal sleeve that went about halfway up. I touched it and realized the metal was thick. I could feel gouges and scratches beneath my fingers. I said, “I’ve never seen anything constructed like this. Why did they put metal around the supports?”

“There are two stories above us, not to mention a basement below.” Dustin put his face close to the metal and held the light so he could see better. “In a building this big, that’s a lot of weight to sustain a structure as large as this building. They had to use strong materials like cement and cast iron.”

As I touched the beam, my fingers found something etched into the metal. “Can you focus the light right here?” I tapped a spot at my eye level.

We both moved our faces close to see what was written and I smiled as I made out the words “Rosie loves Joe.” The building suddenly seemed less empty. Three little words told so much.

Dustin stepped away from the support, apparently uninterested in this newfound touch of humanity. He was all about metal and wood and load-bearing beams. “Where did Shawn go?”

“To find the cats. Probably toward the walls and those bricked-up windows,” I said. “He’ll be looking for spots where the cats are getting in and out of here.”

We walked side by side in the direction Shawn seemed to have gone—
seemed to
being the key words.

Dustin said, “We’ll have to set up some kind of light source, probably halogens. Either that or knock out some of those bricks that obscure the windows.”

“Getting rid of those bricks would be a wonderful idea.” I could see Shawn’s light up ahead and to our right. “There he is.”

We picked up our pace and I whispered, “Best to keep
quiet now. The cats have probably already gone into hiding, but we don’t want to spook them any more than we have just by coming inside the building.”

Dustin whispered back, saying, “Got it.”

Shawn was standing by old machinery that had been pushed against one wall. He was focusing his light inside what looked like an old twisting machine. Since twisting machines were no longer used in the textile process, the foreigners, mostly the Chinese and the Indians, who’d bought up most of the spinners, combers and other mill equipment, had apparently left these behind. I might not know about bricked-up windows, but I knew my textile machinery.

Shawn whispered harshly, “What
is
this piece of crap? How can I get any kind of cat count with this kind of junk all over the place? I see at least a dozen pairs of eyes staring up at me in just this one piece of machinery.”

“All over the place?” Dustin said, sounding confused.

Shawn extended his arm and his Maglite illuminated an entire row of old equipment.

“But this is wonderful,” I said, wishing I’d known we’d need flashlights and brought one for myself. “This is part of our history, Shawn. Maybe some of this machinery can be put in the museum if that’s what the town council decides.”

“Wonderful?” Shawn said. “Are you
kidding
me? There’s a gazillion places for cats to hide in these damn machines. I thought this building was empty.”

“Why don’t we skip the machinery for now and take a look at the offices and the boiler room?” Dustin said. “No doubt there was a break room and bathrooms, too. Might be easier to find cats hiding in there.”

“Yeah, let’s get all the bad news out of the way so I can come up with a plan,” Shawn said. “I can tell you right now, in a building this big, I’m gonna need a whole lot of feral cat portable structures. And they aren’t cheap.”

I swore it took us a good five minutes to walk to the far end of the ground floor. My exhilaration at being in such a historic place was wearing off. The darkness and the chill were sinking in and I felt my heart pounding a little faster. What would light reveal about this old place? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

At one point in our trek, Shawn stumbled over something and swore. He said, “Not a dead cat, I hope,” a hint of anguish in his tone.

I immediately looked down to where Shawn had trained his flashlight, my heart thrumming with dread. I saw a cheese cone. This odd name was slang for the extra-large bobbins used to hold wound cotton yarn. I wanted to pick it up and take it with me, but I figured there was probably plenty of time to collect souvenirs later. We’d be back here often in the next few weeks.

“What other kind of junk will we fall over in this place?” Shawn kicked the cone, sending it out of sight.

I heard no cats meowing or hissing during our walk, not even the mewling of newborn kittens—though I was sure we’d find some of those in the near future. Meanwhile, Shawn was mumbling under his breath about how this would be a lot tougher job than he’d thought.

We came to a wide hallway. To our left, a stone staircase curved up into darkness, so sturdy it probably hadn’t needed to be repaired in the past one hundred thirty years. To our right was a tall, closed door, its paint so deteriorated it was impossible to tell what color the door had been. Shawn put a finger to his lips and quietly twisted the ornate and tarnished brass knob Dustin illuminated for him. Though he was hoping not to disturb any cats that might be hiding beyond this door, I was certain if they were inside this room, they’d already heard us. A cat’s hearing is at least a hundred times more acute than a human being’s.

I saw a hint of light coming from inside the room.
Faint. Dull. Was there an actual unbricked window beyond?

But when a woman’s voice yelled, “What you think you’re doin’ in here?” I jumped back and got a taste of my own heart.

I froze, more than a little startled at the sound of a woman’s voice. Shawn immediately pushed the door completely open.