Scratch the Surface

by Susan Conant

  Preoccupied though she was with visions of fame, Felicity managed to drive Aunt Thelma’s Honda through the narrow streets of genteel Norwood Hill and into Newton Park, where there was no sign of the police and, as usual, no sign of anyone else, either. Especially notable for their absence were vans emblazoned with the names and logos of local television stations. But maybe the police and the media politely called first instead of just dropping in? Damn the taboo on interviews!

  Felicity entered the house through the back door. When Prissy LaChatte got home, Morris and Tabitha leaped from the windowsill where they had been watching for their beloved owner, to whom they sometimes had important crime-busting messages to communicate. Having yowled in joy and transmitted their messages, they meowed for food and dove into the bowls that Prissy filled. Locked in an unused bedroom, the blue-gray cat could not emulate the delightful behavior of Prissy’s cats. Instead of letting the cat loose or even saying hello to her, Felicity checked her answering machine, found no messages, made herself a tuna sandwich, poured herself a glass of milk, and settled down at the kitchen table with her lunch and her new cat books.

  She began by looking up the Russian Blue. The photo illustrating the breed showed a cat not entirely unlike the big gray cat, but according to the text, Russian Blues had large, pointy ears and bright green eyes. Damn! But there were more alley cats than purebreds, weren’t there? Therefore, the majority of her readers probably owned . . . What was the correct, inoffensive term? Another book supplied three possibilities: domestic, mixed-breed, and nonpedigreed. Considering herself to be a quick study, Felicity switched to a book about cat care that emphasized the need for physical, mental, and social stimulation. Illustrations showed carpeted cat trees, repulsively realistic plush mice, and feather-and-bell teasers like the one Ronald had used. Having mastered the topic of stimulation, Felicity picked up another book and had only begun to read about the sanitary needs of cats when she remembered her complaint to Ronald about the inadequate size of the disposable litter box he’d brought.

  Abandoning her course of study, she ran upstairs and into the cat’s room, where she found that the small box had indeed been used. Yuck! Morris and Tabitha never made such a stench! The cat herself was huddled under the bed, where, far from communicating the solution to the murder of her defunct human companion, she was communicating nothing except her wish to be left alone. Well, physical, mental, and social stimulation would shape her up! Then, too, there was the urgent need for a large litter box and a fresh supply of litter.

  An hour later, Felicity was back home after a trip to a large pet-supply store. In uncharacteristic fashion, she had spent more money than she’d have believed possible on the props required to present herself to her public as the very model of the modern cat owner: a gigantic gold litter box with a hood, a bag of litter, a molded plastic cat carrier with a quilted pad, a velvety cat bed, premium dry and canned food, two brushes, feline cologne, nail scissors, and a dozen toys that ranged from colorful bits of artificial prey to a battery-operated device that whirled feathery lures enticingly through the air. She comforted herself with the reflection that these ghastly expenses were tax deductible.

  Although the representatives of the media were still infuriatingly absent, she was gratified to find three messages on her answering machine, one from Dave Valentine and two from members of the local mystery writers’ community, Sonya Bogosian and Janice Mattingly. Valentine’s message was nothing more than a request to return his call. Sonya Bogosian was the president of the New England branch of Witness for the Publication, an organization of mystery writers and fans that met at Newbright Books. Felicity served on the board. Sonya’s message was not, however, about board business. Ronald, she said, had told her about Felicity’s misadventure, and she wanted to touch base before the Witness meeting tonight. Until recently, Janice Mattingly had been a “wannabe,” an unpublished writer with hopes, but her first mystery had been accepted. She edited the local Witness newsletter, saw to the food and drink offered at meetings, and otherwise made herself useful. She, too, said that Ronald had told her what had happened. She hoped that Felicity’s creativity and concentration weren’t affected by the terrible experience. Would Felicity please call her? Felicity intended to return Sonya’s call but not Janice’s. Eager to hear that the baffled police were finally seeking her advice, she called Dave Valentine back immediately.

  “Miss Pride,” he said, “thank you for getting back to me. I just wanted to let you know that we’re all done. You can use your front door again.”

  Struggling to keep the disappointment out of her voice, Felicity said, “Who was the man? Who killed him? Why was he left here?” And how soon am I going to be able to milk this murder for its full promotional value?

  “We don’t know just yet.”

  Felicity cursed herself for having failed to check the pockets of the gray suit. “You don’t even know his name?” Should Prissy LaChatte ever find a corpse at her door, she’d be braver than her creator had been.

  “Not yet.”

  “He didn’t have a wallet? Did his shirt have a laundry mark?” A tailor-made suit with a name stitched in was too much to hope for, wasn’t it? Did American tailors even do that?

  “So far, we don’t know anything.”

  “The people who were here this morning, searching the yards. Did they find any . . . evidence?” Clues were strictly for Nancy Drew and Miss Marple, weren’t they? Even Prissy LaChatte avoided them in favor of evidence.

  Without giving a direct answer, Valentine said, “The body was probably transported there in a vehicle.”

  “And the cat?”

  “The cat, too. Probably.”

  “Was he murdered in my vestibule?”

  “Sorry if that’s been worrying you. No. No, he wasn’t.”

  “That’s not what’s worrying me! What’s worrying me is that a murder victim was left at my front door! What’s worrying me is me! So, where do we go from here?”

  Felicity’s literary experience led her to feel certain that Valentine would insist that the murder was a police matter in which amateurs should remain uninvolved. Ignoring the we, he said, “Miss Pride, in real life, most homicides have simple solutions.”

  “Then why aren’t they all solved?”

  “Sorry, Miss Pride, but I’ve got run. Like I said, it’s okay to use your front door now.”

  Infuriated, Felicity managed a loud but anticlimactic response: “I will! I definitely will!”

  The ban on discussing the murder had convinced Felicity that as publicists, the police were useless. It now seemed to her that they were equally useless as homicide investigators.

  TWELVE

  Brigitte eyes the food dish, which is empty, as is the water bowl she customarily shares with Edith. Having repeatedly checked the bathroom and kitchen faucets, she knows that they are not dripping.

  How long can a cat safely go without water? The question never occurs to Brigitte, who nonetheless jumps to the kitchen counter, scampers to the sink, and trains her amber eyes on the faucet. Just in case.

  THIRTEEN

  “I’m so surprised you’re here,” said Janice Mattingly, who had finished unpacking the plastic glasses, the bottles of wine and soft drinks, and the cheese, crackers, and fruit offered to members of Witness in the social hour before the meeting began. Her eyes were not on Felicity but on a mummified foot that formed part of the display set out by the evening’s speaker, a forensic expert whose presentation Felicity had intended to skip. Her fellow Witnesses evidently failed to share her distaste; perhaps thirty were milling around, each wearing a name tag. Happily, the gruesome objects and photographs were on one table at the back of Newbright Books, the refreshments on another. It occurred to Felicity that the fruit, especially the chunks of melon, might easily have gone on either table without seeming out of place. The watermelon had turned a sick red, as had the strawberries, and the honeydew looked slimy. “Me,” Janice continued, “I’d be so shaken
up!”

  Janice was twenty years younger than Felicity and cursed with a day job. As Felicity had once done, she taught school. A hatred of classrooms was something the two had in common. Felicity had taught kindergarten in Wellesley, whereas Janice taught seventh graders in Brighton. Janice had shoulder-length brown hair and bangs, and although chalk was no longer ubiquitous in classrooms, her skin was white and powdery. In Felicity’s judgment, her lipstick was too red and her eyebrows were overplucked. She favored handwoven garments and the color red.

  “I am upset!” Felicity said.

  “You probably won’t be able to write for weeks. Maybe months. Or years!”

  When the City of Somerville had torn up the street in front of Felicity’s apartment building, the jackhammer hadn’t stopped her from writing. She had worked despite the ends of love affairs, the pain of a broken wrist, and the discombobulation of the move from Somerville to Newton Park. The alternative was a return to classroom teaching. She had written two pages this same afternoon. “Well, if that happens, I’ll file a civil suit against the murderer and retire on my settlement,” she said.

  “Can you do that?”

  Felicity was about to say that one could indeed file such a suit when she noticed the object Janice had just picked up. “Janice, put that thing down!” The thing was the mummified foot, which Janice was absentmindedly fondling. Sounding like Naomi, she said, “You could catch something from it!”

  “It’s dry. Actually, it looks like it’s been varnished. Bacteria grow in warm, moist environments.”

  “Janice,” said Sonya Bogosian, “you aren’t supposed to touch the exhibits. And that thing is disgusting. I don’t know why you’d want to touch it, anyway. Hi, Felicity. How’s your murder coming along?” Felicity had returned Sonya’s call, but had had to settle for leaving voice mail. Bogosian was Sonya’s married name. Her coloring was Scandinavian. Her long, naturally blonde hair was secured in a bun at the base of her neck, and, as usual, she wore so many layers of loose, flowing garments that her appearance suggested a well-scrubbed bag lady. “You know, if you don’t mind my asking, I have a little professional curiosity about something. The blood. Would you say it looked like ketchup? Or more like red paint?”

  “Sonya, it’s going to depend on whether it’s congealed,” said Hadley O’Connor, who’d joined the little group. Hadley was Felicity’s junior by ten years and almost ridiculously handsome, with wavy brown hair, bright blue eyes, and hard muscle. Five years ago, when he’d moved to Boston and begun attending Witness meetings, Felicity had had a brief fling with him that she’d ended as soon as she’d belatedly sampled one of his books. She occasionally read private investigator novels, especially hard-boiled mysteries so undercooked as to be barely coddled, and had wishfully supposed that Hadley’s novels would suit her palate. Ten pages of gore and sadism had disillusioned her. She had, however, remained on cordial terms with Hadley. In fact, she went out of her way to be pleasant to him, mainly because the contents of his mind frightened her senseless.

  “There wasn’t any blood.” Felicity made the admission with a sense of shame and inferiority, as if she’d had the bad luck to get a third-rate corpse. A first-rate one would have been mutilated, maybe even decapitated. Decapitation was hot these days, wasn’t it? Second-rate would’ve been gory: brain matter and blood. The little gray man had been third-rate: He’d been just plain dead. Still, the duct tape counted for something, didn’t it? “His mouth was sealed with duct tape,” she hastened to add, lest anyone think that her very own corpse had simply had a heart attack after being frightened to death, a method favored by Isabelle Hotchkiss. “But the police have asked me not to share the details with anyone.” Except hair stylists, who were clergy of sorts. Thank heaven for freedom of religion!

  Her eyes eager, Janice asked, “What did he die of then? Asphyxiation?”

  “No one knows yet,” Felicity said smugly. “When the results are available, I’ll be among the first to know. Obviously. I mean, this was not some random crime, although how it connects to me is, if you’ll pardon the expression, a complete mystery.” To Hadley, she said, “There was a cat left with the body. In my vestibule. I think I’m allowed to tell you that.”

  “Dead?” he inquired hopefully.

  “Alive! She’s with me now. Well, not here and now, but at my house. She was horribly traumatized, but she’s beginning to recover. And she’s just as sweet as she is beautiful. Ask Ronald! He met her last night. He came rushing over as soon as I called him.”

  “The poor cat!” Janice exclaimed. “I don’t know what Dorothy-L would do if something like that happened to her.” At Janice’s first mention of her cat, Sonya and Hadley turned to the refreshment table. Janice was well known to be tediously devoted to the cat, who was named after Dorothy-L, an Internet list for mystery fans, which was, in turn, named in honor of Dorothy L. Sayers. “Her health is fragile enough as it is. I thought her thyroid was okay with the medication, but now I’m starting to think that maybe she needs the radioactive iodide treatment after all, even though it would be awful for her in the short term. They have to be isolated, and then even when they come home, you can’t touch them because, of course, they’re radioactive. I really don’t—”

  In desperation, Felicity said, “Any news about your book?” Tailspin was a cat mystery that Felicity had weaseled out of blurbing by pleading a deadline. (“I don’t have time to read my own manuscript, never mind someone else’s!”)

  “Sonya did a wonderful blurb for me,” Janice said. “Really cute.”

  “I’m sure,” said Felicity.

  “Look,” said Janice, “maybe this isn’t the right time to raise it, but would you mind if I wrote about your murder in the newsletter? I’m always short of material. I’m supposed to be the editor, but people are lazy about sending me material, and I end up writing most of it myself, and it’s hard to know what to say.”

  With great self-control, Felicity replied casually, “Well, if it would help you out, I guess I wouldn’t mind, but I have to wait until the murder is solved. I am forbidden to give interviews.”

  The membership was now settling in chairs and on the floor in preparation for the business meeting, which would be followed by the forensic expert’s presentation.

  “I’ll call you,” Janice said. “For an interview.”

  The first of many! Felicity thought gleefully. “Fine,” she said. “With luck, I’ll be allowed to share the details in a day or two.”

  In spite of the welcome omen that her publicity plans were shaping up, Felicity felt suddenly tired and, in any case, had no desire to hear about mummified feet. Excusing herself, she headed for the front of the shop, where she passed the display of Isabelle Hotchkiss’s new book. Instead of feeling the combination of jealousy, envy, and resentment that ordinarily assailed her when she came upon evidence of her rival’s success, she felt an almost grandiose optimism to which she gave voice once she reached the privacy of Aunt Thelma’s Honda. “Kitty Katlikoff, you better watch out! Better say bye-bye to your saccharine, sickening Lambie Pie and Olaf! Because here comes Prissy LaChatte.” She paused and added vehemently, “And Morris and Tabitha, who are going to scratch your rotten eyes out!”

  FOURTEEN.

  After taking her first mouthful of coffee—but before putting on her reading glasses—Felicity perused the morning paper. From her optometrically challenged viewpoint, the lead article on the front page began thus:

  MYSTERY WRITER’S CAT SOLVES HOMICIDE

  Felicity Pride, author of the Prissy LaChatte series of feline mysteries, returned home on Monday evening to a scene out of one of her own books.

  Feeling somewhat dissatisfied, Felicity fortified herself with a slug of coffee and tried again: