by Susan Conant
“The police have been here. I talked to some guy, but I couldn’t tell him much. I’m the one who took Edith out to the owner, but I just gave Edith to him. That was all.”
“What time was that?”
“I don’t know. Five. Around five.”
“Was anyone with him?”
“Not that I saw. I gave Edith to him right here. There could’ve been someone out in the reception area. Probably not, though. He must’ve waited here for a while before I had a chance to get Edith for him.”
“Is five the normal time to get a cat? After she’s given blood?”
“It’s on the late side. The way it works is that we call when the animal’s ready to go home. With cats, we sedate them, so we have to wait until they’re awake and doing okay. And before you get the animal, you have to see the people out there where you were. So, that can take a while if we’re busy. It’s the same as if you were picking up an animal after a procedure. Except that you don’t pay. In fact, you get free cat food if you want it.”
“Did Quinlan Coates do that? Edith’s owner.”
“I don’t know. The people at the front desk take care of that. Hey, I better go. It was nice meeting you. I hope Edith will be back.”
“She probably will.”
Before departing, Felicity stepped into the big waiting room, where owners sat with dogs on leashes and small animals in carriers. Then she returned to the corridor and examined a decorative metal tree espaliered on the wall opposite the bench. Each shiny leaf bore the name of a pet. Felicity found herself surprisingly moved by the memorial tree. At the same time, she wondered exactly how much it cost to buy a leaf. On her way out, she again noticed the miniature doghouse with its sign asking for donations to the MSPCA animal shelter. On impulse, she reached into her bag, found Uncle Bob’s suspect hundred-dollar bill, and inserted it in the slot on the roof of the donation box. If there was, in fact, something wrong with Uncle Bob’s cash, there’d presumably be a public fuss about someone’s having donated hot or fake money to the MSPCA. And if not? She’d have supported a good cause.
THIRTY
The board of the New England Chapter of Witness consisted of Sonya Bogosian, Janice Mattingly, Hadley O’Connor, Jim Isaac, and Felicity. At the group’s inception, it had been emphasized to the founders that to avoid tie votes, it was crucial to have an uneven number of board members. In fact, as the board was now constituted, votes were nearly always unanimous. Sonya, as president, chaired the board meetings and the general meetings, and Jim Isaac, as vice president, was prepared to fill in for her in her absence. Sonya, however, was always present. Felicity, in the position of clerk, dealt with correspondence by handing it over to Janice, whose official position was that of treasurer. Janice also took notes on meetings and, at each meeting, read the minutes of the last one. Hadley O’Connor attended board meetings. As the two best-known authors on the board, he and Felicity privately believed that their willingness to serve on the board was in itself a valuable contribution to the organization.
On Sunday, November 9, the board meeting was held at Janice’s apartment, which was in a multifamily house on a narrow street in Lower Allston. The neighborhood was known for providing affordable housing to students and musicians. Although Felicity professed to find the area interesting, she actually considered it a slum. Her prejudice against anything even remotely like a tenement had been handed down to her by her maternal grandparents, both of whom had been born in Glasgow, a city with such a notable history of urban poverty and overcrowding that it now welcomed tourists to a museum called Tenement House. Still, in Felicity’s family, as in all other Scottish-American families, the elders had always passed down the information that their own ancestors had been the kings of the Highlands, thus generating the universal question of Scottish-American children, namely, if they were the kings of the Highlands, why did they leave?
In any case, on Sunday afternoon when Felicity squeezed the Honda into a small parking space on the narrow street where Janice lived, she experienced an atavistic dread at finding herself about to enter what she must not refer to as a tenement. After all, Harvard was buying up property here, wasn’t it? Albeit with the intention of tearing down the existing buildings, among them, Janice’s perfectly nice dwelling in this ever-so-interesting and culturally diverse neighborhood. After taking no more than her usual care to make sure that the Honda’s windows were firmly closed and its doors locked, she made her way up a short flight of wooden steps in need of paint and pressed the doorbell next to a tattered card that read “Janice Mattingly and Bruno Balboa.” As Felicity knew, Bruno was a fiction who existed strictly for Janice’s protection against evildoers who might harm her if they realized that she lived alone. It had never occurred to Felicity that Bruno inhabited the same universe as her very own late Morris, for whom she was still grieving. Indeed, Felicity half-believed in the existence of Bruno and would have been unsurprised if she’d been at Janice’s and heard the door open and a deep male voice call out, “Janice, I’m home!”
On this Sunday afternoon, Bruno was, of course, out. When Janice answered the bell and led Felicity upstairs to her one-bedroom apartment, Sonya, Jim, and Hadley had already arrived, and Janice’s cat, Dorothy-L, occupied a place on the couch. Dorothy-L was a thin and elderly calico with greasy-looking fur. Janice attributed the poor condition of the cat’s coat to a thyroid disorder for which the cat took an evidently ineffective medication. Since Janice had a tedious habit of talking at great length about Dorothy-L’s many ailments and of debating aloud about treatment options available at Angell, Felicity took care to say nothing about the cat. Instead, she greeted her fellow members of the board and apologized for being late.
“You’re not late. We’re early,” said Jim Isaac, a Jewish-Chinese-African-American lawyer whose detective was a Jewish-Chinese-African-American lawyer.
“Help yourself to food,” Janice said. “It’s in the kitchen.”
Mainly to give herself something to do during the meeting, Felicity accepted the offer of food. Entering the small kitchen, she found the table spread with cold cuts, ham, American cheese, pickles, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, rolls, bread, and dishes of mayonnaise and mustard. The kitchen had cheap cabinets and appliances installed perhaps ten years earlier. In Felicity’s view, the landlord should have left everything as it was in the hope of passing the place off as retro. Here and elsewhere, the walls and trim were thick with layers of old paint that a fresh coat of white had done nothing to disguise. Why did Janice insist on living in Boston, albeit in Lower Allston? Janice’s rent was probably even higher than Felicity had paid in Somerville.
After making herself a half sandwich, she returned to the living room, which was lined with brick-and-board bookshelves that held hundreds of hardcover mysteries in protective plastic jackets. Janice was known to collect autographed first editions and always bought Felicity’s new hardcovers at Newbright Books and had Felicity sign them, but Felicity had had no idea of the great size of Janice’s collection.
Sonya called the meeting to order. “Janice, could we have the minutes of the last meeting? And keep it brief, please.” Sonya took a bite of a thick sandwich.
“All of us were present,” Janice said. “The minutes were read and accepted. Ditto the treasurer’s report. We agreed to make December’s meeting a holiday party with no speaker. Pending Ronald’s approval.”
“Thank you,” said Sonya, her mouth still somewhat full. “Old business? None? New business?”
“Speakers,” said Hadley O’Connor, who looked handsome enough to remind Felicity of why she had had a fling with him. She also remembered the intolerable violence of his books. She consoled herself with the reflection that he lacked the strength to toss the caber. “We’re getting repetitious,” Hadley said. He had made himself a sandwich even thicker than Sonya’s. When he lifted it to his mouth, slices of meat, cheese, and tomato began to slide out, and he was forced to take a big bite to prevent the food from falling into hi
s lap.
“Enough forensics,” Felicity agreed.
“There’s an anthropologist who’d talk about cannibalism,” Janice said.
“On some South Sea island?” Jim asked. “Or home-grown, so to speak?”
“The Donner Party. That kind of thing.” Janice, too, began to eat.
“That’s not really very relevant, is it?” Sonya said. “Cannibalism would be fine, but it has to be criminal cannibalism. No one’s going to want to hear about some pitiful group of starving people who ate each other just to survive. And if the, uh, victims were already dead, I mean, if they’d starved to death, well, that has nothing to offer us, does it? We are crime writers, after all.”
“Then there’s a forensic psychiatrist,” Janice said.
“All they’re interested in is serial killers,” said Hadley, “and a lot of psychologizing about unhappy childhoods.”
“Would it be possible,” Felicity asked hesitantly, “to have something upbeat for a change?” In the hope that someone else would suggest a cheerful topic, she took a bite of her sandwich and chewed it thoroughly. It tasted terrible. No one else spoke up. “For example,” she went on, “I always enjoy a good toxicology lecture. Common poisons under your kitchen sink. That kind of thing.”
“Been done,” said Jim “We had that guy last spring. You weren’t there.”
“Well, what about finding an agent, getting published, and so on?” Sonya suggested. “Quite a few of the people who come to meetings are interested in that. Hadley and Felicity, what about you two? You could do that one. And maybe you’ll be allowed to talk about your murder by then, Felicity.”
“Yeah, we heard,” said Jim.
“Well, that’s settled,” Sonya said. “January. Hadley and Felicity. Finding an agent and getting published. I think we’ve done excellent work today.”
“There’s dessert,” Janice said. “And coffee. And my treasurer’s report is here if anyone wants to see it.”
All five board members headed to the kitchen, where they left their dirty plates next to the sink. Janice moved the sandwich fixings from the table and put out plates of cake, already sliced, a large bowl of cream-colored pudding, serving dishes, and silverware. Felicity, who hadn’t finished the dreadful half sandwich, took a serving of cake and helped herself to a cup of coffee. Noticing an open case of the canned prescription cat food that Janice was always talking about, Felicity mulled over the possibility that the stuff tasted better than what Janice served at meetings.
Instead of returning to the living room, people hung around in the kitchen. To Felicity’s embarrassment, Sonya mentioned a blurb that Felicity had written for the first book in a new cat mystery series, and, with Janice standing nearby, Felicity was unable to silence Sonya.
“Speaking of which,” Felicity said, “someone was asking me about Isabelle Hotchkiss. She’s notorious for being really nasty to people who want blurbs, you know.”
“All via her agent,” Janice said.
“Janice got a horrible response from her,” Sonya said. “Vicious.”
“Does anyone know who Isabelle Hotchkiss really is?” Felicity asked.
“No,” Sonya said, “and if you want my opinion, it’s a good thing that we don’t have to meet her. She’s mean enough to everyone on paper. I hate to think what she’d be like in person.”
“Speaking of in person,” said Janice, “I am just dying to go to Malice Domestic. It’ll be my first conference, and I can hardly wait to meet everyone. I’ve signed up already. With luck, I’ll get on a panel. My book will be out in April, and Malice is in May.”
“Good timing for you,” Jim said.
Janice looked pleased. “Are you going? You’re not going, are you? It’s strictly cozies. Felicity, are you going? Sonya is.”
“I don’t know,” Felicity said. “I might. It doesn’t make economic sense to go to all the mystery conferences every year. They’re very expensive. Plane fare, hotels, registration, meals.”
“Promotion always makes sense,” Janice said. “You have to spend money to make money. I have someone designing my Web site, and I’m doing postcards, and, besides Malice, I’m going to Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime, at a minimum.”
Hadley caught Felicity’s eye and shrugged his shoulders.
“Janice, postcards are a waste of money,” Jim advised. “Ask Ronald. Ask any bookseller. They get those postcards about new books all the time, and they throw them right in the trash. Hell, I get them, and I don’t even look at them.”
“Well, some people do,” Janice said.
“These efforts are probably more important for newbies than they are for established authors,” Sonya said. “Janice, we’ll all be interested to hear about your experience.”
There was a finality about Sonya’s statement that ended not only the discussion of book promotion but the meeting as well. Everyone thanked Janice, who said that Dorothy-L enjoyed visitors and had loved having company. So far as Felicity could see, the cat hadn’t moved from the position on the couch she’d occupied when Felicity had arrived. Still, what harm did it do if Janice attributed human emotions to the cat?
Once outdoors, Felicity said good-bye to Sonya and Jim. As Hadley walked with her to her car, he said, “It’s useless to talk to Janice, but she’s throwing money away.”
“Maybe she got an astronomical advance,” Felicity said.
“For a paperback original? Her advance won’t cover what she’s already planning on spending.”
“I thought it was supposed to be a hardcover. Or a hard-soft deal.”
“Nope.”
“Someone needs to talk to her. Although Sonya probably has. Or has tried, anyway. Promotion doesn’t need to cost what Janice is planning to spend. Or look at Isabelle Hotchkiss. Whoever she is. She’s never done any promotion that I know of, and it doesn’t seem to have done her sales any harm.”
“Yeah, but Janice isn’t Isabelle Hotchkiss.”
“I know,” said Felicity. “I know.”
THIRTY-ONE
Edith is a mentally healthy cat: Her love of order is just that, a love, and does not constitute an obsessive-compulsive neurosis. For example, she happily tolerates a messy physical environment and was thus content to live in Quinlan Coates’s slovenly apartment. Now, late on Sunday evening, she has no objection to the bottles of shampoo and conditioner, the can of shaving gel, and the disposable razor that Felicity has left at the edge of the bathtub. Edith does, however, expect her fellow creatures to be where they belong when they belong there. In particular, a person who goes to bed at night is supposed to remain there, thus leaving cats free to enjoy bathtubs undisturbed. The occasional quiet trip to the bathroom is permitted, but these prolonged visits are unacceptable, especially, as in this case, when marked by fits of groaning and gagging so loud and annoying as to suggest that the person is afflicted with a hairball the size of a litter box that she can’t manage to bring up.
Edith’s discontent begins at the tip of her tail. She flicks the tip with a sharp movement that travels to the base, radiates up her spine, and reaches her head, where it makes her ears flatten and puts a sour expression on her face. Abandoning the bathtub, she runs out to the hallway and is halfway down the steep, uncarpeted stairs when she is assaulted by Brigitte, the spirit of chaos, who has been lurking in the hope of a good ambush. Just as Edith is on the verge of trouncing the fluffy little aggressor, large feet stumble into the fray, thus ending it, and both cats vanish.
THIRTY-TWO
Felicity’s years in the classroom had made her an expert on the minor illnesses transmitted to teachers by young children. On Sunday evening, she responded with a sort of negative nostalgia to the first wave of nausea, but within a half hour, she had decided that the cause of her acute suffering was not, after all, a stomach virus; rather, it was something she had eaten. Staggering back to bed, she felt an enraged sense of the unfairness of her plight: She hadn’t touched the pudding, which had looked revoltingly like glue.
The image triggered yet another bout of misery. After once again stumbling back to bed, she curled up on her side and worried about Uncle Bob’s hidden money and the evil possibility that the hundred-dollar bill she’d put in the MSPCA donation box could be traced back to her. Had anyone noticed her as she’d slid the bill into the slot? Her thoughts then turned to Detective Dave Valentine and the fool she’d made of herself by distorting the facts of Uncle Bob and Aunt Thelma’s fatal accident, which had been no accident at all, but Uncle Bob’s fault.