Scratch the Surface
Page 17
Forty-five minutes later, soon after Felicity entered Ronald’s store, she felt a wave of guilt. Tucked in the wallet in her shoulder bag was a one-hundred-dollar bill from Uncle Bob’s fireproof box. Back at home, when she’d decided on the efficient course of acquiring Hotchkiss’s books while interrogating Ronald about cats, she’d had to confront her reluctance to contribute to Hotchkiss’s royalties. The public library would have some of the old Hotchkiss mysteries, but the new one, Purrfectly Baffling, would—damn it all!—have a long waiting list, and Felicity wanted to study its depictions of Olaf and Lambie Pie without having to read the whole book at her computer. With luck, Newbright Books would have some used Hotchkiss paperbacks, but to acquire Purrfectly Baffling, she’d have to buy a new hardcover. The bill from Uncle Bob’s stash represented a compromise: Although Isabelle Hotchkiss would get paid for the book, Felicity herself wouldn’t have earned the money that ended up in Hotchkiss’s bank account. Entering the store, Felicity found Ronald conferring with a customer about the perfect present for the woman’s elderly aunt who doted on her cats. He immediately introduced the customer to Felicity and, as if engaging in some secret and probably illegal transaction, advised the woman to have Felicity inscribe a copy of Felines in Felony to the cat-loving aunt. And in Felicity’s wallet was the ill-gotten and possibly even counterfeit hundred-dollar bill that she’d intended to palm off on this dear friend, this sweetest of men, this promoter of her books!
After Felicity had inscribed her book to the aunt, she headed to the section of used books, where she found satisfyingly cheap paperback copies of the first Isabelle Hotchkiss, Purrfectly Poisonous, and three later books in the series, Purrfectly Murderous, Purrfectly Deadly, and Purrfectly Sleuthful. With regret, she moved to the shelves of new paperback mysteries, where she picked up Purrfectly Criminal. Finally with an emotion close of pain, she added Purrfectly Baffling to the stack of books she carried.
“Her new hardcover?” Ronald inquired in an undertone. “And her new paperback? Felicity, how unlike you!”
Felicity was about to say that it was unlike Ronald to discourage a customer from buying books when she realized that it was actually something he habitually did: If he thought that a customer wouldn’t enjoy a book, he said so. She settled for responding with a noncommittal nod before demanding, “Ronald, who is she?”
“What do you care?”
“I’m just curious.”
“I have no idea. No one does. Presumably. Felicity, you know all this. Mystery writers used to write under pseudonyms all the time. Nicholas Blake was Cecil Day-Lewis. The poet laureate. Michael Innis was—”
“J. I. M. Stewart. Amanda Cross. Carolyn Heilbrun. I know! Carolyn Heilbrun wrote about it somewhere. Academic types were stigmatized if their colleagues knew that they wrote mysteries. Michael Innis was a don at Oxford. Except that everyone knew who he really was. And it was no secret that Carolyn Heilbrun was Amanda Cross. So why all the secrecy about Isabelle Hotchkiss?”
Ronald shrugged. “Have you looked up copyright information? It’s on the Library of Congress Web site.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It won’t tell you anything.”
“Then why would I look there?”
“Because you’re stressed. It would give you something to do. I wish I could persuade you to listen to—”
“I don’t want to listen to Glenn Gould!”
“Look, Felicity, why don’t you take the rest of the weekend to relax. Play with your cats. Cats are great stress reducers. They’re so mellow.”
“Brigitte isn’t. She’s wild.” Felicity lowered her voice. “Speaking of which, is it normal for cats to hang around in bathtubs?”
“Cats are individuals. They have eccentricities. Likes and dislikes. Just the way we do.”
Felicity felt dissatisfied. Among other things, she suspected that Ronald knew more about Isabelle Hotchkiss than he was willing to say. Even so, she paid for the books with her debit card and left Uncle Bob’s hundred-dollar bill in her wallet. Ronald didn’t deserve to get stuck with it, but maybe she’d encounter someone who did.
TWENTY-NINE
With some justification, Felicity had a high opinion of her own ability to comprehend the written word and thus had no intention of reading Isabelle Hotchkiss’s books sentence by sentence or paragraph by paragraph. Rather, she intended to go through the books with her goal in mind, that goal being to trace the development of Olaf and Lambie Pie. In the case of the first book in the Kitty Katlikoff series, Felicity, having actually read it some years ago, needed only to refresh her memory. Armed with a fresh cup of coffee, a yellow legal pad, a pen, and the six Kitty Katlikoff books she’d bought at Newbright, she settled into an armchair in Uncle Bob’s study and opened Purrfectly Poisonous, which had introduced Kitty, Olaf, and Lambie Pie. The copyright page confirmed Felicity’s recollection that the book had been published twelve years earlier. The first chapter was of no interest, concerning as it did the life circumstances of Kitty before her acquisition of Olaf and Lambie Pie, an event that occurred in the second chapter when the protagonist rescued the cats from a ramshackle house where they had been abandoned by a villain who, as Felicity remembered, turned out to have murdered his three wives. In Purrfectly Poisonous, Olaf and Lambie Pie were what Felicity had recently learned to call “domestic shorthairs.” Olaf was black and white, and Lambie Pie was orange. When discovered in the ramshackle house, both were thin. In subsequent chapters, the cats gained weight, but Olaf did not become notably solid or compact. Furthermore, the gratitude of the cats to their savior was such that both animals displayed extreme friendliness to Kitty right from the start. In temperament and behavior, there was almost no difference between the cats. Their only striking behavior was their mastery of spoken English, a gift they used to inform Kitty about their previous owner’s crimes.
In Purrfectly Murderous and Purrfectly Deadly, the third and fifth books in the series, respectively, Olaf and Lambie Pie were much as they had been when first introduced, except, of course, that they were now healthy and well cared for. They chatted as much as ever, usually on the subject of murder. The only major change in the description of the cats was Isabelle Hotchkiss’s increasing reliance on adverbs: The cats didn’t just speak, but exclaimed, interjected, cried, voiced, articulated, and uttered things jauntily, saucily, teasingly, and naughtily. In Purrfectly Sleuthful, published three years earlier, both Olaf and Lambie Pie enjoyed dry food and canned food. Olaf hadn’t gained weight. To Felicity’s professional disgust, the murderer did in her victims by injecting air bubbles into their bloodstreams, a method that Felicity scorned as nonfatal as well as passé. Isabelle Hotchkiss should have attended educational presentations for mystery writers and thus should have known that contemporary mysteries favored multiple gunshots to the head and chest, good old reliable strangulation, and other such simple, dependable forms of homicide.
In Purrfectly Criminal, published in hardcover a year earlier and presumably written in the year preceding its publication, Felicity finally found what she sought. Olaf was suddenly much bigger than Lambie Pie, whose fur was longer, softer, and fluffier than it had been before. Indeed, Lambie Pie went so far as to behave fluffily. Olaf was solid, stolid, and mellow. Lambie Pie was light and quick. The differences between the cats grew pronounced in the final book, Purrfectly Baffling. Olaf continued to be omnivorous, but Lambie Pie now turned up her darling little nose at canned food and chomped away at dry food. When taken to stay at a motel while Kitty followed up a clue, Olaf hid under a bed, whereas Lambie Pie ran wildly around the room.
Having no plans for the rest of the day, Felicity was tempted to call Dave Valentine, who, despite the unfortunate business of the drunk driver who’d killed Bob and Thelma, could be lured to dinner with the promise of a fascinating discovery about Quinlan Coates’s cats, couldn’t he? Prissy LaChatte’s pet police chief would come running, but would Dave Valentine find the discovery as fascinating as he
should? Would he consider it a discovery at all? More to the point, was it one? Calling William Coates was clearly impossible. His father had been buried today. What’s more, the son had made it clear that he resented his father’s affection for cats. Consequently, he couldn’t be expected to respond in a helpful manner to questions about a connection between Isabelle Hotchkiss and Coates, Brigitte, and Edith, a connection that Felicity had to admit to herself was somewhat tenuous. When Quinlan Coates had acquired Brigitte and Edith, Isabelle Hotchkiss had transformed Kitty Katlikoff ’s cats, Olaf and Lambie Pie, in ways that made them resemble Coates’s cats. How had Isabelle Hotchkiss known Edith and Brigitte? Who was Isabelle Hotchkiss? Felicity cursed herself for having neglected to open the copies of the Hotchkiss books that she’d seen in Coates’s apartment. For all she knew, Hotchkiss had signed them using her real name. Could Hotchkiss be a friend of Coates’s? A relative? The weird woman in the police sketch, perhaps?
Faced with such frustration, what would Prissy do? Well, she’d do something. As would Felicity. But only when she was dressed to meet her adoring public, a few members of which simply had to work at the newly renamed Angell Animal Medical Center, where Edith was a blood donor, and where both Edith and Brigitte were patients. According to Coates’s neighbor, Coates had never used a cat-sitter, but had boarded his cats at Angell when he traveled. Therefore, the people at Angell knew Coates and knew his cats. If he’d ever been there with the real Isabelle Hotchkiss, someone might remember her. With luck, she’d been with him on Monday only a few hours before his murder.
Forty-five minutes later, Felicity drove Aunt Thelma’s Honda CR-V past a long brick wall on South Huntington Avenue in Jamaica Plain and made a left turn into the grounds of Angell, which occupied a building far larger than she had expected. And what were all these cars doing here late on a Saturday afternoon? Felicity found a parking space in a lot to the side of the building and, avoiding the MSPCA adoption center—the last thing she wanted was another pet—made her way to the main entrance, where she had to wait while a man gently encouraged a limping dog to pass through the doors. Once inside, Felicity was struck by the resemblance of the animal hospital to what she thought of as a “real hospital.” No one was selling flowers or Mylar balloons, of course; one wall was packed with bags and cases of pet food; and on the long reception counter sat a miniature doghouse with a slot on top and a sign asking for donations to the shelter. Still, prominently posted in this reception area was a list of medical and surgical departments together with the names of veterinarians who specialized in cardiology, oncology, and other familiar fields; and the human clients with their animals were reminiscent of able-bodied spouses and caregivers with ailing human charges at their sides. Some small animals were in carriers like the one Felicity had bought, but most of these carriers were far less spacious and splendid than hers. How many people who escorted cranky or demented relatives to hospitals would be delighted to have the option of locking the difficult human beings in secure cages for transport? As in the hospitals Felicity had visited before, staff hurried around. Here, some wore green scrubs or white lab coats, and others had on blue shirts with the word Angell stitched on the left breast in place of an alligator or a pony. The entire scene was far more professional and complex than Felicity had imagined. Angell was not some slightly larger version of Dr. Furbish’s clinic; it was a big institution where she shouldn’t have expected to be able to drop in for a chat about Quinlan Coates and his cats.
As Felicity was trying to decide whether to leave, a man with a black dog addressed her. “You look lost.”
“I am,” she said. “Well, not really. I need to check on my cats’ records. Their owner died, and I need to make sure that the records are in my name now.”
The man pointed to the long reception counter. “Ask the people over there,” the man said. “They’ll check their computers. What kind of cats do you have?”
Was it Chartreux or Chatreux? “Gray,” said Felicity. “Gray cats. One of them is a blood donor here.”
“What a good thing to do! I’d sign Charlie up”—he nodded at the black dog—“but he has cancer. They’re doing what they can for him. This is the best place there is.”
“He looks happy.”
“That’s all you can ask for. Well, good luck.”
When the man moved away, Felicity took his advice by joining one of the lines at the reception counter and was soon talking with the white-haired woman in front of her whose carrier turned out to contain a gigantic white rabbit that had just been treated for a foot injury. Then, as the woman was paying the bill for the rabbit, a little fawn-colored dog whose owner was filling out a form suddenly approached from Felicity’s right and jumped up on her leg. The dog’s owner, a pale, elderly woman, apologized. “Christine, that was very naughty!” she told the dog. “Tell the lady you’re sorry!”
Before Christine the dog even had time to obey, the woman with the rabbit left, and Felicity found herself facing a hefty young woman in one of the blue Angell shirts, who asked, “How may I help you?”
“I need to check on my cats’ records,” Felicity said. “My cats used to belong to someone else, a man named Quinlan Coates. I want to make sure that the cats’ records are in my name now.”
“You could have called us,” the woman said.
“I did. But what if I were an imposter? Just claiming to own the cats now? I assumed that you’d need to see some identification.” Felicity fished in her shoulder bag, pulled out her driver’s license, and put it on the counter, mainly in the hope that the woman would read and recognize her name.
“Are your cats currently hospitalized?” The woman ignored the license.
“No. They’re at home. They’re fine. They’re healthy. One of them is a blood donor. That’s the other thing I want to check on.” In a place this big and complicated, no one would realize that she’d already spoken to someone about Edith’s participation in the program, or so Felicity told herself.
“What did you want to know?”
“What’s involved,” Felicity said impatiently. “What do I need to do to have her give blood.”
“If you’ll give me your name and address, we’ll mail you the information. Let me see if you’re already in the computer. What’s your name?”
Enunciating with great clarity and at unnecessarily high volume, Felicity said, “Felicity Pride.” She added, “The cats are Edith and Brigitte. They were owned by Quinlan Coates.”
The woman was tapping at her keyboard and looking at her monitor. “They’re here,” she said. “Under your name. Is that all?”
“When is Edith due to give blood again?”
“Six to eight weeks after the last time. Let’s see. She was here on the third. So about five to seven weeks from now. No sooner than that. We’ll mail you all the information.”
“Did you know Quinlan Coates? Is there anyone here who knows Edith?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t remember everyone.”
A young man in green scrubs with slicked-back hair and a pierced ear was standing nearby behind the counter and suddenly spoke up. “Is that Edith who gives blood? The Chartreux?”
“Yes! I’m her new owner.”
“Do you think you two could take this somewhere else,” the woman said. “There’s a line.”
The man with the pierced ear gave a wry smile and gestured to Felicity to wait. In seconds, he appeared in the reception area and then led her through a half-door to a long corridor with a bench along one wall. He did not, however, take a seat. “I’m Eric,” he said. “Edith is a great cat. She has real character.”
“Thank you. I’m just getting to know her.”
“She’s beautiful. So is the other one. What’s her name?”
“Brigitte. How do you know Brigitte?”
“She boards here. I work there sometimes. And at the blood bank. I move around.” He waved his hand toward a large waiting room visible through an opening in the wall above the bench.