The Cat, the Mill and the Murder: A Cats in Trouble Mystery (29 page)

The waiter took my order, a sea bass that sounded delicious, and I then turned my attention to the conversation at the next table.

Kara was saying she never usually asked guys out on dates, but Earl had just captured her attention.

He smiled and I had to admit he was a good-looking guy.

“You caught my eye, too,” Earl said.

Kara went on to ask him several questions and we learned he worked part of the time in Greenville and part of the time here in town in some kind of techie job. I didn’t catch the name of the company. He’d lived in Mercy all his life, but he had never seen her in town before. She told him she was new to the area. He called her
Roberta once and I assumed that was the fake name she’d given him. Then she asked about his family.

“My father is Judge Whitehouse. You don’t ever want to go before him. Hard-ass is the only way to describe him.”

Kara laughed. “I hope I’m never in enough trouble to end up in a courtroom. What kind of judging does he do? Is that the right term? Judging?”

I knew she was probably batting her eyelashes at him about now. She was sipping her wine, but Earl was on his second martini. Pretty soon, he’d be ripe for the tougher questions.

My salad had come and gone and my sea bass was in front of me when that time came.

“I grew up in Houston,” she said. “It’s so big you can get lost. But this is such a cute, small town, I’ll bet you still know every single person you graduated from high school with.”

He nodded, a forkful of salad in the air. “I do.”

“Do they stay here to live as you have—or do some of them want to run as far from here as possible?” Kara said.

I saw his expression change. He seemed almost sad. “They almost all stay. Most all of us have deep family roots. As far as leaving, one of my good friends died from leukemia not long after we graduated and then there was this girl who disappeared. She’d had a rough life, so she probably
wanted
to get away.”

“Disappeared? How interesting,” Kara said. “I love the true crime shows and there’s one program I watch dedicated to people who’ve disappeared. The endings are always so unhappy because most of the time, they don’t know what happened to the person they’re doing the show about.”

“Well, they should come here and do a story about
Kay Ellen Sloan,” he said. “The police were asking me about her just yesterday. Said they had some stupid lead that I was her boyfriend. Can you believe that?”

“Wow.” Kara rested her elbows on the table and leaned toward Earl. “How exciting. Could you help the police?”

Her reaction apparently surprised him because he seemed to think about this for a few seconds. Realizing he was suddenly even more interesting to her, he said, “I didn’t know her. I knew
about
her.”

But I noticed him avert his eyes for the first time. He was lying to Kara now, just as he’d lied to Morris. What was he hiding?

“Were you nervous talking to the police?” she said. “I know I’d be, but then, I’ve never even been close to any kind of mystery.”

“Why should I be nervous?” he said. “I couldn’t tell the cop anything he didn’t already know. The girl vanished. Besides, she was from the mill village. We didn’t, um,
mess
with those types of people.”

I wouldn’t have been able to keep my mouth shut if he’d said something like that to my face. But Kara remained on point and on an even keel. “Oh, I see. There’s more to the story. She was from the wrong side of the tracks?”

His cheeks had blotched. His neck, too. He understood he’d exposed his prejudice, perhaps with the help of what was now his third martini. “I guess you could say that. The people who live there are…different. Entrenched in their culture.”

Kara said, “I’ll bet there was plenty of talk in the high school, though. Crazy theories about what happened to her, right?”

Unfortunately before he could answer, their food arrived. Meanwhile, I’d been so wrapped up in listening to
their conversation, my dinner was getting cold. I decided I didn’t want to pay for a ruined meal and began to eat.
Delicious and still warm, thank goodness,
I thought.

Boots had taken a great interest in the sea bass, sniffing at my plate, looking at me, then taking another sniff. It was all I could do to keep from offering a ghost cat a tiny bite.
Right, Jillian
. And then they’d call for the guys with the straitjackets.

After both Kara and Earl commented on how good their dinners were, Kara started in again, saying, “I’m truly intrigued by this mystery.” She really was amazingly good at this play-acting. “Nothing more exciting than the homecoming king barfing on the football field ever happened at my high school,” Kara said. “The guy had sneaked one too many beers before the ceremony. But you had something truly interesting happen—and in this little town.”

“Not
that
interesting.” Perhaps Earl had sobered up a little, because he now seemed to want to move on from this topic.

“Oh, but it is,” she said. “Do you think she was harmed or just walked away?”

“This happened ten years ago. I don’t remember much about it, to be honest.” He studied his food.

Yup, he was shutting down.
Change the subject for a while, Kara.

She must have read my mind because that was exactly what she did. But the fact that alcohol had loosened his tongue wasn’t lost on her.

She said, “While I was waiting for you, I saw a wine on the list that I’ve been dying to try. Want to give it a go?”

“Sure,” he said, raising a hand to summon the waiter.

As they ate and kept drinking wine, Kara asked him about his job again, where he went to college and pretty much kept him talking nonstop. She’d obviously picked up on the fact that he loved to talk about himself.

I ate slowly, with the waiter hovering and glancing my way every now and then to see when I finished. I asked for the dessert menu when he finally came over to take my empty plate, telling him I’d heard they had wonderful pies and cheesecakes. While I read over the options, I kept my ear tuned to the conversation at the next table.

I heard Kara say, “Since I’m new in town, I don’t know what’s happening with that old mill. But something sure is going on. When I stopped at that darling little coffee place a few days ago, I overheard someone talking about how they had to stop working on the restoration because something strange happened.”

“There’s no renovation yet,” Earl said with derision. “Just politics so far. I was in Greenville the first part of the week, so I’m not sure what’s going on. If you’re such a crime buff, what’s more fascinating is that we’ve had a
murder
. My father was telling me about it. One of the council members was stabbed to death.”

“I
did
hear about that,” she said. “I’ve been making sure my deadbolt and my regular lock are fastened at night. Could it be a serial killer?”

He laughed. “In Mercy? No way. My father thinks her death has something to do with the mill. The woman who died was pretty involved in all that business.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Kara said. “Judges would know about such things. You never did say what your father does exactly—or maybe I just know nothing about how judges do their jobs.”

“The judges rotate the dockets. Dad does everything from probate to traffic court to criminal trials,” he said.

“So he’s probably heard things about the murder,” Kara said. “Inside things. And maybe even knows about the police investigation concerning that girl from your high school who disappeared. I’ll bet you hear everything from him.”

“I don’t live with my father anymore, so I hear his war stories only when we get together,” he said with a laugh.

“But I’m sure you did hear things when that girl disappeared. What’d he tell you about
her
case?” Kara said.

“He and everyone else knew she was a runaway,” Earl said. “Nothing to hang around for if you lived in that mill village.”

My dessert arrived—a chocolate mocha cake with caramel drizzled all over it.
Concentrating on anything but this piece of heaven will be difficult,
I thought after the first bite. Boots had taken to people-watching again, but I felt she’d come here as a little guardian angel.

Kara was saying, “Is it that bad living in…What did you call it?”

“The mill village—where all the mill workers used to live when the place was operational. Kay Ellen couldn’t possibly have been happy living there. I mean, her mother was—let me be nice—a little
slow
. Kay Ellen had to do everything for her and—” Earl, who had been pushing food around his plate, looked up at Kara. He lowered his voice and I had to strain to hear him. “Okay, maybe I did know her.”

“It’s okay,” Kara said gently. “I kind of had that feeling. You really think she ran away?”

Earl drained his wineglass and Kara obligingly refilled it. He said, “She never told me she was leaving—but that had to be what happened.”

“You two never talked about her running away—or even running away together?” Kara asked.

“I could never run away with
her
,” he said. He was beginning to slur his words now. “But you know, she was a nice girl. A pretty girl. I liked her even if my dad thought she was white trash.”

“Were you upset when she just left like that?” Kara said.

“You bet I was. I even cried when her mother came to
ask me about her. But the two of us had no future, so it was best she left town.” He picked up his fork again and began eating.

“You ever get any ideas about what might have happened to her if in fact she
didn’
t run away?” Kara pressed.

Cocking his head, he seemed to be thinking. “Maybe she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The day before she left, she was talking about how they’d fenced up the mill, but people were still getting in there. She said it was wrong. Said if she caught them again, she’d make sure they knew she saw what they were doing. Kay Ellen was like that.” He smiled sadly. “A really good person. So mature. I was an ass to pretend I didn’t know her. But I had to. My dad would have been so pissed at me.”

“Would he still be pissed at you today?” Kara asked.

Earl hesitated before he spoke. “Maybe not.” He straightened in his chair. “He doesn’t tell me what to do anymore.” He pointed at Kara. “You know what? I’m calling up that cop tomorrow. Tell him I knew Kay Ellen. Let him ask me anything he wants. It’s the least I can do.”

“That sounds like the right thing to do,” Kara said softly. “Because it seems you might have been one of the last people to talk to her.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” he said.

The guy was definitely drunk. I doubted if he’d even remember this conversation tomorrow or recover his conscience without help from a bottle. But Kara had done a great job and I couldn’t help but smile as I enjoyed my mocha, chocolate, caramel bliss.

As I was paying my bill for the absolutely wonderful dinner I’d enjoyed—and the absolutely wonderful performance by my brilliant stepdaughter—my phone rang. I was surprised when Dustin said hello.

I started walking the few blocks to my van, Boots leading the way. Dustin was almost stammering with excitement. “We need to get back in that mill tomorrow.”

I said, “The police believe it will be clear to go in then. You can finish your job and—”

“It’s not just my job,” he said. “Okay, maybe it is. But I’ve been going over the original blueprints and comparing them to the photos I’ve taken. I have this app where I can overlay my pictures onto the drawings.”

“Sounds complicated,” I said, “but very cool.”

“It’s easy,” he said. “Anyway, the office where we found the homeless woman? The photos indicate a new wall went up at some point. The room lost three feet in that section.”

“But how old are the blueprints?” I asked, clicking my remote to unlock the van.

“Original, so I get what you’re trying to say,” he replied. “This room alteration could have been done years and years ago. It’s not a load-bearing section of the office and it would have been easy to slap up drywall and paint
it. My question is, why do it? I mean, I didn’t see any closet there.”

I slid behind the wheel and saw Boots suddenly appear on the seat next to me. How did she do that?
Oh. That’s right. She’s a ghost. She can do whatever she wants.

“Jillian…you still there?” Dustin said.

“I am. And I believe you’ve raised an interesting point.” Then it dawned on me. Someone had been going in and out of that mill—and not just recently, but as far back as when Kay Ellen Sloan died. Was Beatrice right? Did Ward Stanley hide his fortune in that mill to keep his wife from getting her hands on his money? Hide it away between the walls?

Dustin said, “I know it’s getting late and I wasn’t sure if I should call Deputy Carson. But I’d like to get inside that mill tomorrow. It’s not just this wall; I have more work to do. I can tell that you and Candace are good friends. You could get her to help me out.”

“And I’m happy to do just that. I’ll phone her and get back to you, okay?” I said.

“Would you? I am going nuts over here. I want to finish this project—and don’t repeat this, but I don’t think condos will work with the amount of money that particular investment group has put together. But I’ll know better once I complete my assessment. I sure hope I won’t upset too many people, but I have to do the job I was hired for—and do it right.”

“I agree,” I said.

He said good-bye and I drove home. Syrah and Merlot seemed thrilled Boots had come with me and they sped off for a game of chase. The groggy feeling from having wine, a big dinner and lots of sugar had worn off the moment I’d realized what Dustin might have discovered. I was as excited as he had sounded.

With Chablis purring on my lap and with the kitty
chaos I could hear happening in the hallway, I called Candace.

Before I even said hello, she started talking. “Did Kara get the judge’s jerk of a son to tell the truth?”

“She did. But I don’t think he’s our killer,” I said. “He’s just a small person too embarrassed to admit he was hanging around with a mill village girl.”