Scratch the Surface

by Susan Conant

  And what if I don’t want to have a seat? thought Felicity. What if I want to take my cat and go home and reexamine Uncle Bob’s money? Reluctantly seating herself on one of the wooden benches that lined two walls of the waiting room, she concentrated on behaving herself. Only a few minutes ago, when Dr. Furbish had been examining the cat, Felicity had enjoyed the rare sense of being able to relax while kind, competent adults managed practical matters better than she could have done herself. Then Dr. Furbish had said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t release the cat to you until the registered owner has been contacted.”

  The cat was now somewhere behind the scenes at the clinic while Felicity was stuck here in the waiting room. Registered owner, hah! Murder victim! And Dr. Furbish rather than Felicity would get all the credit for discovering the identity of the little gray man, who had definitely been left in Felicity’s vestibule for Felicity. Particularly galling was the reflection that the cat, just like Morris and Tabitha, had possessed information about the murder that she had “communicated,” albeit not in the mysterious fashion favored by Prissy LaChatte’s cats but via a microchip and a scanner. So what! The cat was Felicity’s, the information belonged to her, and she deserved the credit; Dr. Furbish and her staff deserved none.

  The young woman behind the counter put down the phone and said, “The number’s busy. I’ll try again in a minute.”

  Eager though Felicity was to return home to the fireproof box and its puzzling contents, she was unwilling to do anything to suggest that she had abandoned the cat. Still, she was tempted to tell the young woman that she’d be back soon and to zip home to pursue her investigation.

  The clinic door opened and in stepped a well-dressed woman with a well-groomed golden retriever. The woman greeted an elderly couple seated far from Felicity on the other wooden bench. She’d barely noticed them. There was a small green cat carrier at their feet, but they’d been speaking neither to each other nor to the cat that was presumably in the carrier. After checking in at the counter, the woman with the golden retriever took a seat near the couple. Her dog sat on the linoleum next to her without so much as sniffing the cat carrier. Neither the people nor their animals were of interest to Felicity, who continued to focus her thoughts on tax-free cash until a phrase drew her attention.

  “. . . tract mansions!” the elderly woman exclaimed. “That’s what they’re called.”

  “McMansions,” the elderly man said. “Like McDonald’s. I think that’s quite clever. And very appropriate. Do you know that those people pretend that their development is in Newton? Someone was telling us about some scheme of theirs to have their mail delivered with Newton addresses.”

  Felicity knew all about the so-called scheme. To her disappointment and that of her neighbors, it had failed, as had the effort to have trash collected by Newton trucks.

  “They’re more than welcome to their pretensions,” said the woman with the golden retriever. “All I object to is the traffic. And the way they drive! Our streets aren’t meant for all those cars, and those people treat them like speedways. One of these days, someone’s going to be run over and killed. I don’t know why they can’t use their own entrance.”

  “Because it’s in Brighton!” the elderly woman crowed.

  All three Norwood Hill residents had a laugh at what Felicity felt to be her expense. To her relief, the young woman behind the counter had the phone at her ear and was reading off a number. Felicity gave her a questioning look, and she nodded. After hanging up, she said, “The chip number’s on file. They’ll call the owner, and then the owner will call us.”

  “Do you have any idea how long this is going to take?” Felicity asked.

  “It depends on whether they can reach the owner.”

  Felicity cursed herself for having failed to bring her notebook computer along. A veterinary clinic would have been the ideal setting in which to work on the latest adventure of Prissy and the cats. Since the little gray man was dead, he wasn’t going to answer the call from the microchip company, so she’d probably have to sit here for hours with nothing to do. In case she ever wanted to have Prissy take Morris and Tabitha to a vet, she studied the waiting room and made mental note of details. A board with removable letters gave the names of the clinic’s veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and veterinary assistants. What was the difference between technicians and assistants? If she got it wrong, an irate reader would let her know. The elderly couple and their cat carrier vanished into an examining room. Two new clients arrived with dogs. The phone rang several times, and a young man who’d replaced the young woman behind the counter dispensed advice about bringing animals to the clinic. When the phone rang again, Felicity assumed that the caller was once again a pet owner. This time, however, Felicity overheard the young man say “microchip.” She rose and stepped to the counter.

  “My cat,” she mouthed to him as he took notes.

  “So you’re the breeder,” he was saying. “California?” After a pause, he said, “If you wouldn’t mind. Yes, she’s right here.” To Felicity he said, “This is the breeder. She’d like to talk to you.” He handed the phone to Felicity.

  “Hi. My name is Felicity Pride. I’m the one who found the cat. Or rather, she was left in my vestibule.”

  “The Felicity Pride? The author?”

  “Yes. I’m a mystery writer.”

  “I know! I just love Morris and Tabitha. And you’re the one who found Edith?”

  “Edith,” Felicity said flatly. Edith? What a bland, disappointing name! How was she supposed to do effective publicity with a cat named—damn it all!—Edith! “Yes. I didn’t exactly find her. I think that she was left for me. On Monday night.”

  “Well, where on earth is Quin? He must be frantic. He’s devoted to his Chartreux.” It took Felicity a second to connect the spoken word with the name she’d seen in one of her new books. The woman said “Char-troo,” whereas Felicity had assumed that Chartreux should be pronounced with an effort at a French accent. The accompanying picture had shown a big gray cat with greenish-hazel eyes. Why had she of all people trusted a book to be accurate! Especially a book about cats! “He must be worried sick,” the woman continued. “Why didn’t he call me? Why didn’t he call the microchip company? He has Edith’s microchip number. He should have reported her missing. And what about Brigitte?”

  “Who?”

  “Quin’s other Chartreux. She’s a fluffy. Edith has her premiership, but you can’t show fluffies. Well, some people are starting to, but not as Chartreux.”

  Nervous about exposing her ignorance to a member of her adoring public, Felicity limited herself to making a small sound that she hoped would indicate comprehension.

  “Edith Piaf and Brigitte Bardot.” To Felicity’s relief, she anglicized the pronunciations. It was more than enough effort to remember to pronounce r’s in English words without having to twist her tongue around an unpronounceable foreign language just to say the names of cats. And Chartreux! Or “Char-troo.” In either language, that rotten r was lurking in wait for persons slaving to throw off the chains of a Boston accent. “Those aren’t their registered names, but Quin is a professor of Romance languages, and he wanted French names.”

  “Quin is . . .?” The young man behind the counter handed Felicity a slip of paper. “Oh, I have it here. Quinlan Coates.” Now that her attention had been drawn to the veterinary assistant or technician, whichever he was, Felicity saw that he was impatient and belatedly realized that she was monopolizing the phone line. “Look, I think we need to talk more. If it’s okay with you, I’ll take, uh, Edith home with me, and I’ll call you from there.”

  “It’s more than okay. Obviously, Edith couldn’t be in better hands. And I’m sure you’re as worried about Brigitte as I am. Really, your love for cats just shines through in your books. Look, take Edith home with you, and I’ll call Quin right now, and we’ll get this whole thing straightened out. You didn’t give Edith any vaccinations, did you? Because she’s up to date . .
.”

  After listening to a brief lecture on the risks of immunization, Felicity obtained the name of the breeder, which was Ursula Novack, and her phone number and e-mail address, and once Ursula had given permission to the clinic to release Edith to Felicity, Felicity was finally allowed to take the cat and go home. Driving Aunt Thelma’s car back to Aunt Thelma and Uncle Bob’s house, she alternately fumed about Edith’s plain, flat, unliterary, and throughly unmysterious name and, as was habitual with her, plotted the next steps in a murder investigation. Usually, it was Prissy LaChatte who took those steps. This time, it would be Felicity Pride, assisted, of course, by her prescient, communicative, and lovable feline companion, Edith. Edith! By her prescient, communicative, and lovable feline companion. Period.

  SEVENTEEN

  In Felicity’s years as a kindergarten teacher, she had been forced to write lesson plans. She’d hated the task, and ever since liberating herself from her day job, had luxuriated in the freedom of having no fixed schedule, not even a self-imposed one. Felicity attended meetings and made and kept appointments, but she shunned daily to-do lists, weekly calendars showing tasks to be accomplished, and other activities that would have felt like personal lesson plans doomed to transform her life into one more classroom. A prolific writer, she had no need to impose deadlines on herself and had never missed a contractual deadline for the delivery of a manuscript. Consequently, her recent experience in planning events consisted mainly of outlining her Prissy LaChatte books and of scrambling to think of ways to promote sales.

  Now, returning home from the veterinary clinic, she prioritized her tasks in the way most familiar to her, namely, by asking herself what Prissy LaChatte would do first. Call Ursula Novack? Return a call to Detective Valentine, who had left a message on her machine? Examine the fireproof box of cash? Certainly not. Prissy would first take care of the cats. Then, based on the clues she’d found, she’d get one step ahead of the police by discovering the identity of the murder victim. In other words, she must feed Edith—and, incidentally, herself—and then rush to the rescue of poor Brigitte.

  In reality, her first step was to release Edith from the cat carrier, which would be needed for Brigitte. Instead of returning Edith to the confines of the upstairs bedroom, Felicity left the carrier on the kitchen floor. Having watched the skilled Dr. Furbish, she was prepared to reach in and gently remove the big cat. As it turned out, once Felicity had managed to undo the latch and open the little metal door, Edith emerged on her own and, to Felicity’s surprise, didn’t bolt out of the room, but hopped onto the kitchen table and sat there looking like a sphinx come to life. Prissy’s cats stayed off dining surfaces. Edith’s large, placid presence on the table didn’t bother Felicity, who had, in any case, no inclination to respond to the cat’s apparent effort at friendliness by scolding or punishing her. With the inscrutable Edith still planted on the table, Felicity quickly made a salmon salad from the previous night’s dinner and carried her own plate and a saucer of salmon salad to the table. Perhaps Felicity moved faster than Edith liked. Or maybe Edith had had all the human contact she could tolerate for the moment. For whatever reason, she took a muscular leap off the table and vanished in the direction of the front hall. With hurt feelings, Felicity ate her lunch, cleared the table, rinsed her own plate and put it in the dishwasher, and put Edith’s saucer on the floor.

  She began her detective work by dialing the phone number for Quinlan Coates that she’d copied from the veterinary assistant’s slip of paper, which also showed an address on Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton. No one answered. Her next step was to use the Web. In modern mystery novels, the amateur sleuth was often a computer illiterate who needed the help of a young relative, a teenage employee, or some other techno wizard to retrieve even the simplest information from cyberspace. Felicity had nothing but scorn for the device of the youthful assistant. The female amateur detective should be self-reliant! Had Nancy Drew gone around whining for help with machinery? On the contrary, in the Nancy Drew books of Felicity’s childhood, Nancy had capably driven her roadster without complaining that she had trouble shifting gears and without turning over the wheel to Beth or George. Capably steering with mouse and keyboard, Felicity soon had directions to Quin Coates’s address and a map of its location, which was only about a mile from Newton Park and almost no distance from Boston College. Within seconds, her favorite search engine, Google, confirmed her hunch that Quinlan Coates was indeed a professor of Romance languages at that same institution.

  She also found his office phone number, dialed it, and reached a woman who informed her in a heavy Boston accent that Professor Coates was on sabbatical. “He comes in every couplah days. You wanna leave a message? Or you want his voice mail?” Mail was “may-ull.”

  Felicity declined the offers. Arming herself with her cell phone, Detective Valentine’s number, and the cat carrier, she set off to rescue Brigitte, whose name was damned well going to be pronounced “Bree-zheet” and not “Brih-jut.” The cats’ names could’ve been much worse than they were, she reflected. Neither Edith nor Brigitte constituted a pronunciation pitfall for persons laboring to rid themselves of Boston accents. The worst words weren’t actually the obvious ones like car and Harvard that simply required speakers aspiring to standard English to remember to pronounce the letter r. No, the tricky words were those that demanded a decision about whether an r was or was not present. Sneaky words like elegy and sherbet put Felicity at such extreme risk of pronouncing the hateful letter r when it was supposed to be absent that she avoided the words altogether. Iris Murdoch’s husband’s memoir was just that and never Elegy—Elergy?—for Iris. She ordered ice cream and never that other stuff that was always sherbet and never sherbert. Wasn’t it?

  Even via the circuitous route down Norwood Hill, the drive to Quinlan Coates’s address on Commonwealth Avenue was so short that Felicity’s musings on the serendipity of the cats’ names occupied her until she pulled into a parking (not “pahking”) place. The Web had prepared her for the building’s proximity to Boston College but not for what she perceived as its intimidating grandeur. It was an old-fashioned, monumental apartment building constructed of gray stone, with a wide flight of stone steps leading up to an imposing wooden door. The oversized cat carrier that she’d brought with her banged against her legs and made her feel ridiculous. The outer door was unlocked. She had trouble simultaneously holding it open and maneuvering the carrier inside. Once inside the foyer, she regained her self-confidence. Despite high ceilings and wood paneling, the interior of the building was shabby. Discarded junk mail and freebie local newspapers lay on the stone floor beneath the mailboxes, and the glass door that led to the main hallway was dirty. More to the point, it was locked. The numerous doorbells were marked with apartment numbers. Next to the numbers, residents’ names appeared on business cards, scraps of paper, and, in few cases, tattered strips of masking tape. Quinlan Coates’s name was on one of the business cards, albeit a yellowed one. Felicity rang Coates’s bell, but the ancient-looking speaker near the bells remained silent, and no one buzzed her in.

  What would Prissy do? Rather, what would Prissy’s creator cause Prissy to do? Felicity searched the cards, scraps of paper, and bits of masking tape in search of a building manager or caretaker. In her mysteries and in other people’s, the apartment building the amateur detective wanted to enter invariably had some sort of concierge, doorman, or manager who could be conned into believing a trumped-up story about a distant cousin making an unexpected visit or a para-legal desperately eager to deliver crucial documents that couldn’t safely be left in a mailbox. As Felicity was grumbling to herself about the absence of anyone to whom she could tell her perfectly genuine story about the need to rescue an abandoned cat, the outer door opened and in walked a man of about her own age. He had curly black hair and dark eyes, and wore a dark suit. In his hand was a ring of keys.

  “Pardon me,” she said. “Do you happen to know Quinlan Coates?”

  “He�
�s on sabbatical. He might be away.”

  “Yes, I know he’s on sabbatical. You haven’t seen him lately?”

  “His car’s out back. But he could be traveling. I haven’t seen him for a couple of days.”

  “Actually,” Felicity said, “I have reason to believe that something may have happened to him. He seems to have abandoned his cats!”

  “I doubt that,” the man said. “He boards them when he goes away. That’s probably where they are. At Angell Memorial.”