Scratch the Surface

by Susan Conant

  “The point is, Felicity, that you don’t know.”

  “True enough. For all I know, people suspect me of being a criminal because I live in a big house.”

  “No, they don’t. If they don’t know about your uncle, they assume that you bought the house with your royalties.”

  Felicity, who was delighted to have people make exactly that assumption, said, “If that’s what they think, they’re fools.”

  “They’re naïve, that’s all. The wannabes who come to Witness meetings think they’re going to be able to quit their day jobs when their first royalty statements arrive. Take Janice Mattingly.”

  “You take her. Ronald, why did she invite that forensics guy with his mummified foot? That thing is revolting. I wish someone else would take charge of lining up the speakers. I don’t know what makes it her job.”

  “No one else wants to do it. Are you volunteering?”

  “Of course not. I’m too busy.”

  “So is everyone else. That’s why Janice does more than her fair share for Witness. Refreshments—”

  “Which she does badly. It’s the worst food I’ve eaten since school lunches.”

  “The newsletter.”

  “Which she is supposed to edit, not to write.”

  “How can she when no one sends her anything?”

  “When Sonya did the newsletter, people sent her things. She plagued us. It worked. Besides, Janice likes doing the newsletter. She’s going to interview me as soon as the police let me talk publicly about the murder.”

  “As you can hardly wait to do.”

  “Admittedly, Ronald. As I can hardly wait to do.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Quinlan Coates’s funeral was a big disappointment. For one thing, instead of attending in solitary dignity, Felicity was dragged down, as she saw it, by Janice Mattingly and Sonya Bogosian, who had insisted on accompanying her. When Sonya called on Friday evening, she said that she and Janice were determined to offer moral support. Felicity was convinced then and remained convinced that Sonya and Janice were merely looking for a pretext to gather material for their books. The nerve! This was Felicity’s very own murder, and Janice and Sonya had no business trying to exact shares to which they weren’t entitled. Had the body been left at their front doors? Certainly not! If they wanted to attend the funerals of murder victims, let them find their own corpses and their own last rites! Quinlan Coates belonged to Felicity, as did his funeral mass, and it was greedy and unprofessional of Janice and Sonya to hone in on, and thereby diminish, another mystery writer’s research opportunity. Moral support, indeed! The hypocrites!

  But there they were, seated on either side of Felicity in the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which was so dishearteningly light, bright, and unmysterious that it could practically have been Presbyterian—and Scots Presbyterian at that. Furthermore, the wholesome young priest now delivering a eulogy about Quinlan Coates’s professional accomplishments, his contributions to the Boston College community, and his extreme devotion to his late wife, bore no resemblance to the elderly, doddering figure Felicity had imagined, a satisfyingly sinister character who kept lapsing into Latin, thus rendering his insinuations about the deceased unintelligible except to Felicity and a handful of Jesuits with whom she would converse over the funeral meats.

  The apparent failure of William Coates to provide funeral meats was another source of disappointment. In neither yesterday’s paper nor today’s had there been any mention of a postfuneral gathering, nor was such an event announced in the little memorial program Felicity had been handed when she had entered the church. As if deliberately to exacerbate her disgruntlement, Sonya and Janice had both inquired about Felicity’s plans to go back to the house after the service. In informing them that she knew of no such gathering, Felicity had felt herself slip in their esteem, as if she had presented herself as more central to Coates’s life and death than was actually the case, and had now been found out and deservingly shamed.

  Leaning toward Felicity, Janice whispered, “There must be something afterwards. If the family isn’t doing anything, the college must be. His department, maybe? Someone?”

  “No,” Felicity murmured. “No one is. You sound as if you expect me to.”

  “Certainly not,” Janice whispered. “You’ve done more than enough already.”

  “What do you mean ‘more than enough’?” Felicity eyed Janice with annoyance. In selecting the medium blue suit she wore, Felicity had taken care to avoid the black-from-head-to-toe apparel suitable for close relatives. Janice, a stranger, was in deep mourning. A wisp of black lace was pinned unflatteringly on top of her head, and she had on a black dress and black high-heeled shoes.

  “Finding him. Taking his cat.”

  “Cats. Plural.”

  Sonya put a finger to her lips. Who was she to enforce the rules of propriety? In Felicity’s view, Sonya’s loose layers of pale blue cotton and, worse, her espadrilles were as inappropriate as Janice’s formal black. In British cozy mysteries, churchwomen were always arranging flowers and polishing brasses, activities for which Sonya was suitably costumed. If Felicity had known no one in the church, she’d still have been embarrassed to be seen with Janice and Sonya, but, just as mystery novels had led her to hope, Detective Dave Valentine was in attendance. At Janice and Sonya’s insistence, the three women were in the last row, so Felicity had a good view of Valentine, who was only three rows ahead, in a pew toward the right. Despite the distraction of her companions, she’d seen him enter, and she’d also studied everyone else in church, which was perhaps a third full. No one bore even the slightest resemblance to the weird woman in the police sketch. Felicity had, however, been able to identify William Coates—poor Billy Goats!—who had entered from the front of the church just before the mass had begun. The late Dora Coates had perhaps had very thin eyebrows or had carried the genes for them: A dilution of his father’s genetic influence had left William with normal eyebrows and, indeed, with an altogether ordinary appearance. The priest had gone on and on about the depth of Quinlan Coates’s grief for Dora. Maybe her husband had missed being married to someone with corrective eyebrow DNA. In any case, William was of medium height and had brown hair. The only distinctive thing about him was that he sat all alone at his father’s funeral. The newspaper hadn’t mentioned a wife, but didn’t he have relatives or friends?

  Felicity’s observations were interrupted by the rising of the congregation. Unfamiliar with Roman Catholic practices, she was contenting herself with standing when others stood and sitting when they sat. Sonya was doing the same. Janice, however, had genuflected when the three women had entered the sanctuary, and, despite her propensity for whispering during the mass, kept kneeling and crossing herself with the other worshipers.

  Leaning across Felicity, Sonya violated her own ban on talking to whisper, “Janice, I didn’t know you were Catholic.”

  “I’m not. I just want to fit in.”

  Unable to contain herself, Felicity muttered, “When in Rome . . .”

  Sonya smiled silently and dug Felicity in the ribs, but Janice made a sour face and focused her attention on the priest. For the remainder of the mass, the women said nothing aloud, but Felicity took the opportunity to address the Almighty.

  “Dear God,” she prayed, “Quinlan Coates’s worth as human being falls in Your purview and not mine, but in case You’ve forgotten, as would be understandable at Your advanced age, he was wonderful to his cats, Edith and Brigitte, who, if they could, would implore You to show the same love and generosity to his immortal soul that he lavished on them. Sincerely yours, Felicity Pride.” As an afterthought, she added, “Amen.”

  By the time she had finished composing and dispatching this piece of correspondence, Quinlan Coates’s casket was being carried down the aisle. People rose and began to file out.

  “Are we going to the cemetery?” Janice asked brightly.

  “The interment is private,” said Felicity, who had no idea whethe
r or not it really was. “Excuse me. There’s someone I need to speak to. I’ll be right back.”

  By then, the women were outside the church, where clusters of people were lingering. The hearse and one black limousine were at the curb. Felicity rapidly made her way toward the limousine and thus toward William Coates, who was gazing at the gray November sky while moving his feet back and forth on the concrete as if trying to scrape something off the soles of his shoes.

  Felicity introduced herself, but sensing that William Coates wouldn’t return a handshake, did not offer one. “I’m very sorry about your father.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  “Well, in case you’re concerned about his cats, I wanted you to know that they’re safe. I have them.”

  “Keep them. He treated every cat he ever owned a lot better than he treated me.”

  It occurred to Felicity that if Quinlan Coates had hated cats, he might have been the perfect match for her mother. Now was not, however, the time to organize a support group for adult children whose parents didn’t like them. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.

  “Were you a friend of his?”

  “I never met him.”

  “You didn’t miss much. Well, thanks for coming.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  As she walked away from William Coates, she experienced a disconcerting sense of gratitude toward her mother, who had had the decency to insist on good manners. Preoccupied, she nearly bumped into Detective Dave Valentine, who wore a dark suit and looked well groomed in some male fashion that Felicity couldn’t identify. Had he had a haircut?

  Fresh from her encounter with William Coates, she exclaimed, “What a rude man!”

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” Valentine said.

  “I felt as though I should come.”

  “It was nice of you. Look, this is an awkward time, but there’s something I need to ask you about your uncle and aunt. The Robertsons.”

  “Yes?”

  “You told me they were killed in a car accident.”

  “They were.”

  “By a drunk driver.”

  “Yes.”

  “There was a little something you didn’t mention.”

  Felicity silently gazed into Valentine’s eyes, which the cloudy sky had turned an especially attractive shade of blue.

  “The little something,” Valentine continued, “concerns the drunk driver.”

  “Yes.”

  “The driver in question was Robert Robertson.”

  “Yes,” Felicity agreed, “the drunk driver was Uncle Bob himself.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The funeral left Felicity in a foul mood. As she changed out of her blue suit and into corduroy pants and an old sweater, she glared at her unmade bed and cursed herself for having skipped the housework to concentrate on her appearance. For all the good it had done to fuss with her hair, her makeup, and her outfit! Rather than inviting her out to dinner, or at least flirting with her, Dave Valentine had caught her in a stupid lie. Furthermore, he’d seen her with Janice and Sonya, and he’d probably overheard the silly whispering of women acting like schoolgirls. William Coates had been horrible, particularly because his antagonism toward his father had reminded her of hers toward her mother. As material for a writer, the church and the priest had been useless.

  The funeral had been brief and nearby, and it was only quarter of twelve. Still, the bed should have been made by now, and the presence of both cats on the rumpled comforter was uncomfortably reminiscent of the dishevelment of Quinlan Coates’s apartment. Was it slovenly to let cats sleep on the bed? Felicity felt incapable of shooing them off. When she removed the pillows and yanked the top sheet and blanket toward the headboard, Brigitte, as if recognizing the start of a delightful game, began tearing around the room, leaping off and on the bed, and diving under the sheet. The large and stolid Edith, however, remained where she was, in the exact center of the bed, and her weight made it almost impossible to straighten the covers. Felicity, who was too intimidated to remove Edith, settled for pulling hard on the covers with both hands. She then plumped and replaced the pillows, but when she neatly folded over the top of the comforter, Brigitte flung herself onto the bed, dove under the fold, and wiggled. Felicity finally gave up.

  After vacuuming downstairs, Felicity ate a light lunch and, resisting the urge to take a nap, went to her computer and visited the Web site of a large online bookseller to see how Felines in Felony was doing. Mistake! The new Isabelle Hotchkiss, Purrfectly Baffling, was selling better than Felines in Felony. Furthermore, two disgruntled readers had given Felines in Felony low ratings and posted nasty reviews. According to one of the readers, the book was “too feline and insufficiently felonious,” and according to the other, “the premise that Morris and Tabitha communicate with Prissy LaChatte in some unexplained fashion is utterly preposterous.” In search of consolation, Felicity looked at the ratings and reader reviews of Purrfectly Baffling, but found no comfort. “Olaf and Lambie Pie are even more lovable in Purrfectly Baffling than in its charming predecessors,” wrote one reader. “With twitching tail, I eagerly await the brilliant Isabelle Hotchkiss’s next recounting of the spine-tingling adventures of Kitty Katlikoff.” Was it possible that Mary Robertson had a computer hidden somewhere in her apartment and secretly visited this Web site to pan her daughter’s books and praise those of her principal rival?

  To remind herself of just how badly Isabelle Hotchkiss wrote, Felicity decided to read some of the sample pages of Purrfectly Baffling available at the click of a mouse. She soon came to a section in which Isabelle Hotchkiss’s fictional cats were conversing with each other:

  “I am not sure I feel like telling the Furless Person everything I know,” the hefty Olaf opined stodgily. “What has she done for us lately?”

  “Fed us!” exclaimed the soft, fluffy little Lambie Pie.

  “Oh, yum! Dry food! Yum, yum, yum!”

  “‘Hefty Olaf opined stodgily.’” Felicity spoke with the joy of one who has found precisely what she sought. “Pass me the antiemetic, please.” Despite the claim to nausea, she devoured two full pages about Olaf and Lambie Pie. Although she believed in keeping an eye on the competition, she had read only a few of Isabelle Hotchkiss’s books and none of her recent ones. In Purrfectly Baffling, the cats were as saccharine as ever, but something about them was elusively different from what she remembered. When she’d read the old Kitty Katlikoff books, she hadn’t owned cats; the new element might be her own perception and not Hotchkiss’s depiction. Had soft, fluffy little Lambie Pie always draped herself on the edges of furniture? For that matter, had little Lambie Pie been soft and fluffy? Had she been little? As to Olaf, had he been compact and stodgy? Then there were the food preferences. Had Olaf always preferred canned food? And when Kitty Katlikoff opened a can of food, had Lambie Pie always danced eagerly around, sniffed the wet food, and then eaten dry food?

  Clicking her mouse and scrolling down the pages, Felicity happened on a scene in which Kitty Katlikoff was making her bed. Lambie Pie ran madly around, leaping under the covers and hiding in the folds of the bedspread, whereas big, placid Olaf planted himself in the center of the bed and refused to budge. The bed-making scene settled the matter: Isabelle Hotchkiss seemed to be describing the late Quinlan Coates’s cats.

  Had Hotchkiss and Coates known each other? But Edith and Brigitte were young, four and two years old, respectively, and the first Hotchkiss mystery had been published about a dozen years ago. Unless all cats acted alike? Or unless all Chartreux cats acted alike, and Isabelle Hotchkiss owned the breed? But Edith and Brigitte were both Chartreux, yet differed radically from each other in ways that mirrored the differences between Olaf and Lambie Pie. And neither of Ronald’s cats, George and Ira, bore a strong resemblance to Olaf and Edith or to Lambie Pie and Brigitte. Both George and Ira were only moderately active. Felicity had never seen either cat drape himself on furniture. Mystified, Felicity decided on a v
isit to Newbright Books, where she could question Ronald about cat behavior and Isabelle Hotchkiss’s identity while simultaneously preparing to investigate Olaf and Lambie Pie as they had been portrayed in Isabelle Hotchkiss’s early mysteries.