by Susan Conant
FAMOUS MYSTERY NOVELIST’S CAT SOLVES NEWTON MURDER
Felicity Pride, celebrated author of the bestselling Prissy LaChatte series of feline mystery novels, returned home on Monday evening from a well-attended signing of her latest blockbuster, Felines in Felony, to discover a scene straight out of one of her own spine-tingling tales. Or should that be tails?
Once having donned her glasses, Felicity paged through the paper until she finally came upon a short paragraph in a column about local crime:
Police report that an elderly man whose body was found on the front porch of a Brighton home on Monday evening was the victim of foul play. Authorities are pursuing their investigation.
Brighton home indeed! Front porch! No Felicity, no mystery novels, no Prissy, and no cat! Still, the murder had been reported in the paper, no matter how inadequately, and instead of passively accepting her ignominious and anonymous relegation to two sentences deep in the interior of the paper, Felicity decided to act. After all, her first three mysteries hadn’t been hardcovers, had they? No, they had been paperback originals reviewed in the newsletters of three mystery bookstores and nowhere else. But those three paperbacks had been a start. So, too, was this stinking mini-paragraph. Well, if the cat was indeed going to solve the Newton homicide, best to begin with the cat and with her own role as cat-worshiping cat novelist. To begin with, she’d take the cat to a vet.
The late Morris had required nothing in the way of veterinary care and had thus left Felicity entirely ignorant about veterinarians and local veterinary clinics. Clearly, Felicity Pride’s cat must see a posh veterinarian. But how was she to go about identifying one? By address, she presumed. Consulting the yellow pages of the West Suburban directory, Felicity studied the listings and, on the basis of its Newton location and the possibly feline connotation of its name, picked out Furbish Veterinary Associates. Having called the veterinary practice, stated her name, and requested an appointment for a cat, she was only somewhat surprised to be told that Dr. Furbish could see the cat at eleven o’clock this same morning. As Felicity was enjoying what she interpreted as evidence that her name had weight in the world of cats, she was taken aback by the request for the cat’s name.
Stalling, Felicity said, “Her name.”
“Yes. The cat’s name.”
It had never before occurred to Felicity that the cat possessed such a thing as a name. Furthermore, having named hundreds of characters in her many books, she hadn’t even toyed with the possibility of giving the cat a temporary name that would do until the real one was discovered.
“The cat’s name,” she said, “is a mystery! The cat came to me under strange and baffling circumstances, and her true identity is, for the moment, entirely unknown. Let’s think of her as X, shall we? The unknown quantity.”
Felicity’s self-congratulation for this inspired solution was short-lived. Before hanging up, the veterinary assistant informed Felicity that all animals needed to be restrained while in the waiting room. For a few seconds, Felicity could make nothing of the requirement. Restrained from doing what? Scratching people? It emerged that the cat would have to be in a carrier or on a leash.
The plethora of cat supplies Felicity had bought did not include a leash, but did include a large carrier complete with a quilted pad. Missing from the armamentarium, however, was any sort of clever device that would automatically entrap a cat and deposit it in the carrier; it would, alas, be necessary to perform the operation by hand—thus risking a scratched or bitten hand.
It was nine o’clock. To delay the cat-capturing expedition, which would take her into the wilds of one of her own guest rooms, Felicity took a shower, fixed her hair, and, in preparation for her first public appearance with her new PR agent, put on gray woolen pants and a patterned sweater with patches of amber. After locating a pair of leather gloves that would offer some protection against scratches, she postponed the daunting task that lay ahead by placing a phone call to her mother, who would inevitably hear about the gray man and, just as inevitably, find a way to blame or ridicule Felicity for the episode. If Felicity broke the news herself, at least her mother wouldn’t be able to complain that she’d had to wait until someone else told her.
Although Felicity’s mother, Mary Pride, lived a mere twenty-minute drive from Newton Park, Felicity visited her as seldom as possible. Whenever Felicity felt guilty about the infrequency of her visits, she reminded herself of other destinations that were also within twenty minutes of Newton Park: waste recycling depots, funeral homes, and slummy neighborhoods infamous for drive-by shootings perpetrated by drug-crazed maniacs on innocent bystanders such as herself.
Her mother answered the phone with a thick-voiced, “Hello? Hang on while I turn down the television.” Minutes later, she said, “Who is it?”
“Mother, it’s Felicity.”
“Who?”
“Felicity!”
“Who?”
“Your daughter. Your older daughter. Felicity. Remember me?”
“Oh, you. I thought it was Angie. She calls me all the time. Last night she called when I was in the middle of one those nature shows I love. About leopards.” Mary pronounced leopards and, indeed, everything else, with the Boston accent that Felicity still labored to remove from her own speech. Leopards! And not leh-puhds! Truly, the accent was her mother tongue.
Mary’s fondness for programs about wild animals had originally mystified Felicity. Her mother had never owned a pet of any kind and had refused to allow her children, Felicity and Angie, to have even so undemanding a pet as a solitary goldfish. It had finally occurred to Felicity that the attraction of the nature programs was their savagery: Program after program showed wild animals engaged in slaughtering one another.
“Mother, I called because something terrible happened. Monday night, I did a signing, and—”
“A what?”
“A signing. I was signing my new book at Ronald Gershwin’s store. Newbright Books. You’ve been there.”
“You know what he always puts me in mind of? ‘Wee, sleekit, cowran tim’rous beastie.’”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“That’s Robert Burns.”
“I know it’s Robert Burns. It’s from ‘To a Mouse.’”
“We’re descended from Gilbert Burns, you know. Robert’s brother. Robert Burns had no legitimate descendants.”
It seemed to Felicity that every Scottish family in America claimed descent from Gilbert Burns. If all the claims were true, Gilbert Burns would have needed to father hundreds of children, so it was impossible that they’d all been legitimate. But Felicity limited herself to saying, “That’s debatable.” She took a deep breath. How had she once again let herself get sucked into the Burns Diversion? “Mother, when I got home on Monday night, there was a dead body in my vestibule.” Knowing it was a mistake, she added, “And a cat.”
“Cats! Do you remember that cat Thelma had when you were a little girl? It was an ugly thing, but you were crazy about it. You used to go running after it, but the cat had your number all right! It was always coming up to me and rubbing against me. Cats are attracted to me, you know. Dogs are, too. And I hate the damn things.”
“Did you hear what I said? About the body? It was the body of some elderly man.”
“I have very acute hearing. Well, don’t worry, I won’t say a thing.”
“I have no idea who the man was or why the body was left here. There’s no question of your saying or not saying anything.”
“When they ask me, I’ll say I don’t know a thing about it. And Angie won’t say a word, either. Blood’s thicker than water, I always say, Felicity. Angie and I won’t breathe a word.”
After ending the conversation, Felicity could almost hear the braying her mother had emitted when Aunt Thelma’s cat had run from Felicity almost fifty years earlier: Cat’s got your number! Cat’s got your number! And here was Felicity with yet another cat that evidently had her number as well. In catching the gray cat, she must
remember not to chase it. In reality, Aunt Thelma’s cat had run because it had been chased. It hadn’t had Felicity’s “number,” whatever that was. It had simply run from an eager child who hadn’t known how to behave around cats.
FIFTEEN
Felicity entered the cat’s room on what she might have described in her books as “little cat feet.” There was, however, nothing foggy about her mental state. On the contrary, she felt sharply determined to prove that this cat didn’t hate her. Equally sharp was her awareness that her will left everything to Ronald Gershwin and, consequently, nothing to her mother or sister, both of whom she meant to outlive, anyway.
“If you chase cats,” she said softly, “they run away. Cat, I am not going to chase you. Do you hear me? And do you see what I’m doing? I am ignoring you!”
The cat was hiding under the bed and thus easy to ignore. The level of dry food in one of the new bowls had dropped, and the bowl of canned food was empty except for a disgusting residue of dried brown crud. Peering under the hood of the gigantic gold litter box, Felicity saw that the litter had been used. Feeling confident that the cat was still alive, she sorted through the pile of supplies she’d bought, arranged the quilted pad in the cat carrier, and armed herself with a feather-and-bell toy identical to the one that Ronald had successfully used to lure the cat. After raising the bed skirt, she inserted the toy, but instead of twitching it slowly and enticingly, she shook it vigorously back and forth, and then repeatedly yanked it out from under the bed and shoved it back under again. Dropping the toy, she got down on her knees, peered under the bed, and saw that the cat was huddled directly beneath the center of the headboard and was thus out of reach. Bearing in mind that it was vital not to chase the cat, she resolved, on the Mohammed-and-mountain principle, to move the bed. This bed, unlike the king-size platform bed in the master bedroom, was full-size. The headboard ran down to the floor, but the foot of the bed stood on wooden legs. The bed should be light enough for her to move, especially since she could get a good grip on the oak headboard. Grip she did. And managed to drag the bed a good eighteen inches from the wall. Startled at what must have seemed like an earthquake, the cat ran out, dashed across the room, and jumped onto a dresser. Assuring herself that she wasn’t chasing the cat, Felicity took long, smooth steps, encircled the cat with her arms, and, hugging tightly, transferred the hefty animal to the dark interior of the cat carrier. After a few minutes of puzzled fiddling with the latch, she finally managed to fasten the carrier shut.
It was in returning the bed to its normal position that Felicity discovered the fireproof box, which had lain between the headboard and wall, but, having been dislodged, prevented her from pushing the bed all the way back in place. What immediately struck Felicity about the box was, in addition to its peculiar location, its obvious age. Almost everything else in the house was new. Uncle Bob and Aunt Thelma had kept most of their possessions in the oceanfront estate in Ogunquit that had gone to one of Thelma’s sisters. The box was old. Somewhat larger than a shoe box, it was made of tan-coated metal, like a cheap filing cabinet, and showed several scratches and small dents. Picking up the box, Felicity was reminded of the cat: Both felt much heavier than they looked, as if they were packed with lead. Felicity’s speculation about the contents of the box, however, had nothing to do with lead weights or, indeed, any other metal, including gold bars that Uncle Bob might have cached for use in a national emergency or natural disaster. Rather, she was terrified that the box contained a heretofore undiscovered will leaving everything to Aunt Thelma’s sisters or, worse, to her own mother and sister. The box was locked.
Happily for Felicity, there was no mystery about the location of the key, which she correctly guessed to be the small one she’d noticed in the same large kitchen drawer that contained a three-ring notebook of manuals and warranties for the refrigerator, range, washer, dryer, and other new appliances. After dashing down to retrieve the key and sprinting back up to the cat’s room, she placed the box on the bed and opened it. The heavy contents were neither legal documents nor gold bars. The box contained a large amount of cash and a small, shabby notebook in which were recorded what were evidently deposits made at intervals of a week or two weeks: columns of dates and amounts (“May 15, 1968 40”) with, here and there, a cumulative total preceded by a dollar sign. The dates began thirty years earlier. The amounts varied, but had increased in size over the years from twenty or thirty dollars to eighty, a hundred, or two hundred dollars. The grand total in the notebook was $120,555. With only a half hour to get the cat to the vet, she nonetheless took the time to count the cash, most of which was in one-hundred-dollar bills. Her total agreed with the one in the notebook.
She hurriedly replaced the contents in the box, locked it, and put it where she’d found it, between the headboard and the wall. Ill-gotten gains? In what nefarious enterprise had Uncle Bob been engaged? There was no such thing as a Scottish Mafia. Or was there? Although the bills looked used, they might, for all Felicity knew, be counterfeit. When she got back from seeing Dr. Furbish, she’d take a closer look.
Transporting the cat proved to be a weightier task than Felicity had somehow imagined. The carrier had a handle on top, but was as heavy as a big suitcase. Felicity lugged it downstairs and out to the garage, and, after some hesitation, put it on the front passenger seat of the Honda and fastened it with a seat belt. Preoccupied with the matter of Uncle Bob’s hidden money, as well as ignorant about cats, she failed to appreciate the silence of the drive to the veterinary clinic; it hadn’t occurred to her that the cat might howl.
Furbish Veterinary Associates occupied a small brick building with parking spaces in front, one of which was empty. Detained by her unexpected discovery, Felicity arrived in the waiting room at the precise time of her appointment and was directed to a small examining room before she had a chance to do more than glance at the room and its human, feline, and canine occupants. To Felicity’s surprise, Dr. Hilary Furbish was female, a woman of about Felicity’s age who wore green scrubs and had short, straight hair going gray, no makeup, and unvarnished nails. Felicity decided that if Dr. Furbish became the cat’s regular vet, a quiet word or two about Naomi might be appropriate. Naomi and Dr. Furbish would like each other’s cleanliness.
Evidently more concerned with the cat than with her own appearance, Dr. Furbish, after introducing herself, lifted the heavy carrier with no sign of effort, settled it on a metal examining table, and looked in. “What a beautiful cat!” she exclaimed.
“Thank you.” Fearful of making a fool of herself, Felicity was determined to say as little as possible about the cat. Did Dr. Furbish or her staff recognize Felicity’s name? Did they know who she was?
“I take it that she’s new.”
“She was left at my doorstep,” Felicity said. “On Monday evening. I thought she ought to have a checkup.”
Dr. Furbish opened the carrier door, reached in with both hands, removed the cat, and placed her on the table. “You’re a big girl, aren’t you?” She stroked the head of the unprotesting cat. “Amazing eyes. Magnificent.” Casually touching the cat and speaking gently, she conducted a thorough examination. The cat cooperated when Dr. Furbish applied a stethoscope, looked in her ears, checked her teeth, and used a thermometer to take the cat’s temperature. “Spayed female,” she told Felicity. “Healthy. Young. Three or four.” She then moved a small scale to the table, lifted the cat onto it, and said, “Thirteen pounds. Let’s consider this her maximum acceptable weight. She’s not obese, but I don’t want to see her any heavier.” She then raised the cat’s head and pointed to a small area on the throat. “That’s been shaved recently. Within a day or two.”
“What on earth for?” Felicity asked. She immediately regretted the question. For all she knew, shaving a spot on the throat was an essential part of routine cat care.
“It’s a venipuncture mark. A blood test maybe.” Without asking Felicity’s permission, she retrieved a small electronic gadget from a shelf an
d slowly passed it over the base of the cat’s neck. Studying it she said, “Okay.” Then she reached for a pad of paper and a pen, and wrote down a string of numerals. “Microchip number. With luck, in no time we’ll know whose cat she is. She’s a beauty. And so mellow. Someone will be relieved to have her back home.”
SIXTEEN
“She isn’t one of ours,” said the young woman behind the high counter. “We keep the numbers for all the animals we microchip on our computer, and her number isn’t here. Dr. Furbish would’ve recognized her, anyway. If you want to have a seat, we’ll call the company, and they’ll look up the number.”