Crosswords and Puzzles: An Amateur Sleuth Cozy mystery (A Millie Holland Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 1) Read online

  She pushed back from her desk, apparently a sign it was time for her cats to bask in her attention, and Harlow was the first to throw herself across Millie’s lap, prostrate and shameless, followed by Viggo, who nipped at Harlow’s rear to make room for himself. Millie shook a finger at him. “I’m no heifer, but there’s still plenty of room to share. Don’t be so selfish.” Viggo sneezed, a common remark from the surly cat, and Millie laughed.

  It didn’t matter what else was wrong in her life; Millie could count on her children to keep her cheery. “I believe we should all have some lunch. How would you like some tuna?”

  The word sent them into spasms of joy, and she barely made the treacherous ten-foot walk to the kitchen without breaking several bones as the five of them wound around her feet excitedly. She pulled six cans of tune from the cupboard, including one for herself, and lifted the custom-made tray of five inlaid bowls engraved with the cats’ names onto the counter, filling each with a can of fish.

  Once they were fed, she popped open her can of tuna, doctoring it properly with mayonnaise and pickles as she toasted two slices of bread. With a slathering of butter on each slice, she piled the tuna salad high and grabbed a Snapple from the fridge, settling in to savor her meal while she watched her babies do the same.

  Chapter 2

  At precisely 6:58, Millie sat on the couch and turned on the television, a soda on the end table and a bowl of popcorn with M&Ms mixed in. She didn’t indulge in such frivolous eating very often, but after the day she’d had, she felt justified in a little comfort food. Besides, tonight’s episode of NCIS was one she hadn’t seen before.

  She never missed the reruns of episodes she’d missed along the way, and while she’d hoped to hear from the police sooner than later, she would be put out if they called or arrived during her show.

  Just as the previous show ended, Viggo appeared in front of her, stretching and meowing loudly, and Millie rolled her eyes, noting her other four children appearing in a line behind him. “Can you really not lay up here with me without the pillows?” She put the bowl next to the soda, warning, “Don’t even think about it. I don’t need a room full of chocolaty hair balls filled with kernels.” She walked around the couch, grabbed the pile of old, worn throw pillows, and arranged them on the other side of the couch.

  As she sat back down and the show started, the cats jumped up in a line, and arranged themselves in a very typical configuration. Viggo dug into the elevated center of the pile, with Harlow spreading herself out gracefully behind him. Newman insisted on facing forward, flattening himself so his back legs practically propped up Harlow’s head, and Coraline walked a circle around the pillows, over her brothers and sister, until she managed to work one pillow up allow the arm so she could lean against it and slightly away from the others.

  Grant was the last one up, and he sat tall for a moment beside Millie, not even on the pillows, as if already engrossed in the television show, eyeing the pile of cats and finally sliding himself over to take the nearest empty spot, draping his front paws over Viggo’s back end. Viggo hissed at him once in warning, then settled down. From experience, Millie knew they would remain so, as long as Grant didn’t get restless.

  For the next hour, Millie noticed nothing around her, wholly focused on the show and making mental notes about various clues and processes to take even a partial fingerprint and determine a culprit. Perhaps she should mention those things to the police when they called. After all, Mr. Williams had never had very many visitors, and likely, they could eliminate his daughters and their families from the list of suspects. She wouldn’t be surprised if that meant there were only two or three unknown subjects, or UNSUBs, as the FBI called them. And two of them would be the girls from last night.

  Tired but certainly not ready for bed, Millie considered whether to read or finally finish the crossword from this morning. Unfortunately, she was down to rereading the books in her collection, and that meant she needed to go to the nearest Half Price Books and spend another $40 or so to update her stash with new reads. Eager for a story to which she didn’t know the end so she could exercise her detective skills, she chose the crossword.

  To her surprise, her pride of lions didn’t follow, sleeping soundly together. A couple of them were even snoring, though with them laying so close together, she couldn’t tell which ones. She grabbed her camera, turned off the flash, and snapped a picture for her album, instantly uploading it to Facebook. She didn’t have many friends on her account, but all her photos also updated to her Dear Diane page, and her followers seemed to love her cats almost as much as she did.

  With a smile, she sat down to work the puzzle, skipping over the dreaded clue from this morning in favor of something more in her realm of knowledge. She could come back when some of the letters to the ‘across’ clue had been filled in with ‘down’ answers. Deep in thought, she worked her way through the puzzle, and when she came back to the clue, Horror flick ‘The ____ That Dreaded Sundown, she had ‘to_n’. “Apparently, since I doubt a horror flick would be about a cartoon, it was a Town that dreaded sundown. I suppose I’ll have to look it up someday.”

  Coraline jumped from the couch and yowled in response, assuring Millie didn’t just talk to herself. Millie leaned down and picked her up by the scruff of her neck, hugging the strange black feline to her chest. “Are you trying to tell me I shouldn’t watch it? I thought you might be amused if I got scared out of my wits.” Coraline just purred, and Millie chuckled, glancing at the clock. It was late, and she needed to get to bed.

  She shouldn’t have expected to hear anything from the police today; it seemed medical examiners always ran behind, and since there was evidently no sign of foul play from the authorities’ perspective, there was no pressure to rush the autopsy along. Millie made a face, thinking about poor Mr. Williams being killed, especially since she knew for certain he’d been in perfect health. It would save a lot of time, effort, and invasiveness if they just ran a tox screen on his blood. It would surely read positive for some sort of poison.

  Curiosity got the best of her, and once Millie changed into a set of emerald green satin pajamas and fuzzy brown slippers, she sat at her desk and did a quick search online for various poisons that would work quickly, make a victim seem to have died of natural causes, and perhaps be untraceable by the tests performed in an autopsy.

  She read through several pages. Low doses of cyanide would work, if the victim ingested with food, and rat poison with arsenic was similar, but both were easy to pick up on a blood test. Hemlock took a bit too long; Mr. Williams would have been paralyzed long before his lungs shut down, and he may have still been alive with the EMTs arrived this morning. Belladonna seemed a possibility, but Millie didn’t think it would be all that easy to obtain, and it would show up in blood as well, if the examiner knew what to look for.

  The idea it had been a multipurpose substance in the middle ages made her laugh, and she addressed Harlow, still lying lazily on the couch. “Imagine that, Harlow. I could have seduced Doug with Belladonna blusher and used the tasty little berries in his food to send him packing permanently. He would never have known the difference!” Of course, she could never seriously consider such an act, but it was an intriguing thought, and she made some notes to find out where Belladonna could be purchased.

  Dimethylmercury was complicated and needed time, with multiple administrations, and she didn’t think anyone would have taken the time to extract venom from an octopus or puffer fish, so tetrodotoxin wasn’t a possibility. Polonium was a slow poison, and because it was radioactive, Millie would likely have been right beside Mr. Williams on another stretcher if that had been the method.

  Mercury wasn’t exactly something you could buy on the shelf at the pharmacy, unless Mr. Williams had been force-fed about a hundred pounds of tuna and swordfish. However, Millie found Botox a very interesting possibility. Anyone working in a cosmetic surgeon’s office had access to it, and ingestion of contaminated food caused quick a
nd deadly paralysis. While it wasn’t untraceable, the ensuing botulism would be blamed on the food and, therefore, not considered a homicide.

  Perhaps knowing where the toxin came from would aid in narrowing down the search for the suspects, and Millie made several more notes, deciding that, if she hadn’t heard anything from Officer Marx or one of his colleagues by the time she signed off work tomorrow, she’d take her findings to his office for further consideration. For now, she shut down the computer, stood, and stretched. “It’s time for bed, my loves. Go to the bathroom, or you don’t get to sleep in my bed tonight.”

  She kept three litter boxes throughout the house, and the cats swiftly dispersed, Coraline and Grant picky enough to want their own spaces and heading to the two small boxes in the bathroom, while Newman, Harlow, and Viggo couldn’t have cared less and shared the largest box in the laundry room.

  She waited until they all returned, sitting politely at her feet in front of the bedroom and staring up at her until she opened the door.de of the queen-sized mattress and arranging her own covers and pillows on the right side. She lay down, covered up, and flipped the switch on the lamp beside her, and she started humming a tune to lure both herself and her crazy cats to sleep.

  Chapter 3

  Dear Diane,

  My husband wants to turn the garage into a ‘man cave’. While I understand the need for personal space, he has an office inside he can retreat to, and I need the garage as a covered space to get my small children in and out of the car without exposing them to bad weather. Besides, I’m concerned he’d be out there all the time and grow distant from the family. How can I get him to forget about it without causing an argument?

  Sincerely,

  Grace Under Fire

  Millie shook her head. “Grant, do you believe men need a space of their own after they’re married with children? I thought the whole point of having a family was so you weren’t alone anymore.” She spoke to the proper, rigid cat as he sat on the arm of her office chair, reading along with her as she sorted through her emails.

  He made no comment, only tilted his head at the screen as if considering how to respond. Millie sighed. “I rather think a man who wants to be alone shouldn’t bother dating, much less getting married and having kids. Doug might have saved himself a lot of trouble that way, and I wouldn’t have wasted all those years. I’m a frumpy old woman now. I could have had the likes of Colin Farrell in my younger days.”

  Viggo mewled from the floor beside her. “I know, you believe the rugged look to be more my type. Shows how much you know!”

  From her own experience, Millie was all for giving a man his own space. With him removed to the garage, the wife could rule the roost and wouldn’t have to deal with him hogging the television or getting irritated at chatter and the bantering of siblings. But that wasn’t what her readers wanted, and she had to adjust her opinion to the majority of her audience’s preference.

  Dear Grace,

  Plead your children’s case, and remind your husband that medical bills are expensive. You might also discuss the contagion factor within the house, if you have several small children. But don’t negate his need for solitude. Try suggesting the addition of an armchair and a television in his office, and ask that he designate time for himself as well as time for the family. Creating an oasis for yourself so that you each receive ‘alone time’ might also be of value.

  With high hopes and low expectations,

  Diane

  Millie smirked at her own writing. There were times she had just the right thing to say and just the right quip to end her statement. This was one of those, and since she preferred ending on such a fulfilling note, she decided her work was done for the day. Besides, she had an errand to run, so today was a good day to cut out early and pay a visit to Officer Marx.

  An hour later, she strolled into the police station with notebook and file folder in hand, asking how to find Jonathan Marx. The uniformed officer at the front desk kindly led her back to a bullpen filled with men and women in plain clothes. Millie found it an odd description, since various states of formal dress didn’t strike her as ‘plain’ at all, but she didn’t question fashion sense here. After all, it wasn’t a runway, unless you were a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit.

  Officer Marx was at a desk along the row of horribly dirty windows, bent over what must have been very confounding paperwork, as his scowl was deep and his fingers were threaded into his hair. She approached him with a jovial grin. “Good afternoon, Officer!”

  He blinked up at her and cleared his throat. “Ms. Holland, what are you doing here?”

  She held up her supplies as she took a seat in the hard, empty chair across the desk from him. “Well, I thought I would save you the trip back to my place. I brought you some of the information I have available, as well as some ideas of what to look for to prove this was homicide and not a natural death.”

  He smiled in a way that told Millie he was simply humoring an old woman. “Ms. Holland, I appreciate your eagerness to help, but I assure you, we have the manpower, the expertise, and all the tools to resolve this ourselves. And as I said, I don’t think we’re going to find anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Perhaps not,” she agreed, “but only if you don’t know what to look for.” She opened the notebook, where she’d made the notes about various poisons. “If Mr. Williams ingested a small amount of Belladonna with his dinner night before last, it would have caused his death and should be traceable in the contents of his stomach. And even more likely, someone with access to Botox could have easily poisoned his food, which would have paralyzed his heart and lungs. A simple blood test would show botulism.”

  Marx gave her a weary look. “I know you liked the guy, Ms. Holland, and I’m sorry he wasn’t as robust as he told you. But until we get the autopsy report, we’re assuming it was a heart attack. There are no signs of anything else going on.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Even if the ME finds any of that crap, it doesn’t mean someone killed him. It means he ate some bad food or he mistook some berries for having some sort of antioxidant properties. Really, Ms. Holland, if I need something from you, I’ll be more than happy to come ask you for it.”

  Millie didn’t move. Instead, she offered him a patient smile. “How old are you, Officer? I ask because, when you get to be my age, you’ll understand why I know for a fact Mr. Williams didn’t die of natural causes. You just sort of know these things, like a sixth sense.

  I’m sixty years old, and if I spend any amount of time around an old, sick person, it makes me worry about aging. Therefore, I would have steered clear of Mr. Williams if there was any sign he might have had a heart attack or stroke, or if he had cancer, or if his mind was failing him. I’m of an age that I don’t consider old but still don’t like to be reminded of it. And in another thirty years or so, neither will you.”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer. She slid the notebook toward him. “I think Mr. Williams might have recognized the berries. He wasn’t a dimwitted man. I rather believe it was more likely Botox.” She passed him the file folder as well. “I made notes about the appearance of the two unusual girls so you can get one of your sketch artists to draw up a likeness and have it sent to the media. The descriptions here are quite detailed. I worked hard to remember everything.”

  Heaving a deep sigh, Marx opened the folder and scowled at the three pages of information on the two girls’ appearances. “Well, you’re nothing if not thorough.” He closed the folder and leaned on his elbows to look at her. “I can’t do anything with this right now.”

  She laughed. “Well, of course not, officially. I’m not telling you how to investigate your case, Officer, but if it were mine…” She trailed off, thinking about that lovely woman on Law & Order, the Special Victims Unit. Olivia! “I would look up every plastic surgeon within, say, a thirty mile radius, get a list of employees, run those names through the DMV database, and see if any of the girls match those
descriptions. And don’t tell me you can’t get that information without a warrant. All you have to do is tell the person in charge that you think there’s a possibility someone in their office might have information on a case you’re looking into. They’ll cooperate.”

  This time, Marx laughed. “How many forensics and cops and investigative homicide TV shows do you watch, Ms. Holland?”

  She beamed. “Does it matter? I’ve given you a lot of information and ideas you didn’t have to ponder yourself, haven’t I?” She stood, motioning to the pages she’d given him. “Keep those, and let me know when you have those sketches so I can tell you how accurate they are. I’ll be home all day tomorrow, and you don’t even have to worry about interrupting my workday.” As she walked away, she called over her shoulder, “I also read, Officer. Not bad for a senile old woman, right?”

  Chapter 4

  Someone would eventually come to Mr. Williams’ apartment to sort out his affairs, and maybe, if Millie could catch something said or done during that time, Officer Marx wouldn’t be able to discount her as an old kook. On the way home from the police station, she stopped at the electronics supply store and spoke to one of the nice young men about security cameras. He helped her choose a reasonably priced setup she could wire for live view of a space, as well as recording options.

  Since Mr. Williams’ apartment was not yet officially a crime scene, and she had a key he’d given her for emergencies, Millie didn’t think going in to set up the security cameras was considered breaking and entering. This was an emergency situation. The girls who killed him deserved to go to prison for what they did, and no one else was doing anything about it. The first 48 hours were key to solving a homicide, or so all the shows and novels said. If it was that consistent, it must be true. The time was running out.