Scratch the Surface

by Susan Conant

  “What a thrill!” Felicity posted. Then, remembering that she might be taken seriously, added a smiley face. “And let’s remember that she made herself so sick that she had to go to the hospital. Sonya, if punishment is in order, Janice has been punished.”

  “We still have to do something,” Sonya wrote.

  “She can’t stay on the board,” Hadley agreed. “And no more handling money.”

  “Do we ask her to return what she took?” Jim asked.

  “We don’t know how much it was,” Hadley answered. “Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. She was temporarily deranged. She deserves sympathy. We’ll discreetly ask her to resign. And that’s that.”

  “Who will?” Sonya asked. “Do we have a board meeting and spring it on her?”

  The other three members vetoed the idea.

  “It’s a sad event,” Jim wrote. “It needs to be handled privately.”

  “Are you volunteering?” Sonya asked.

  “No,” he replied. “Felicity could do it. Sonya, you’re too worked up about it.”

  “I can’t,” Felicity wrote. “She asked me to blurb her book, and I didn’t. She must have hard feelings about that.”

  “You can write a wonderful review of her book,” Sonya wrote. “To compensate. Tell her that you’ve finally gotten around to reading the manuscript, and you love it, and you’re going to publish a rave review.”

  “I don’t write reviews,” Felicity wrote.

  “This will be the first,” Hadley responded. “You love the book so much that you’re breaking your silence. Tell her you owe her an apology for not doing the blurb.”

  Felicity slammed her fist on the desk next to the computer. These chat rooms were worse than she’d realized. “There’s probably still time to do a blurb. But I don’t want to,” she posted. “I don’t want to confront her.”

  “Neither does anyone else,” Sonya replied, “but you are the best qualified. I’m sure you will do an excellent job. All you have to do is explain what we’ve discovered and ask for her resignation. It’s big of us to let it go at that. Janice will understand that we could press charges. She’ll be relieved. She’ll be grateful to you.”

  “Thanks, Felicity,” Jim wrote. “Let us know how it goes.”

  Hadley and Sonya joined him in offering thanks.

  After posting a good-bye, Felicity exited the chat room. As she left the computer, the realization crossed her mind that Prissy LaChatte was immune to other people’s efforts to manipulate or exploit her. Prissy was nobody’s fool! In the present case, Prissy would either refuse responsibility for confronting the malefactor, or she’d find a way to turn the situation to her own advantage. Felicity was not Prissy LaChatte. In effect, she had already agreed to deal with Janice, and she could think of no way to derive any benefit from what was bound to be an unpleasant confrontation. On the contrary, she was stuck with the job of firing the newsletter editor who’d been eager to write up the story of Felicity’s very own cat-related murder. Damn! If only it were possible to shrink herself into near-invisibility, slip into her notebook computer through one of those mysterious ports she never otherwise used, infiltrate the files of her new book, slither out again, and, thanks to the miracles of technology and imagination, emerge as Prissy LaChatte! Prissy would make quick work of Janice Mattingly and her trivial misdeeds. Prissy would then solve the murder of Quinlan Coates, a.k.a. Isabelle Hotchkiss. Well, so would Felicity Pride!

  THIRTY-SIX

  Edith, the most placid of creatures, has about had it with Brigitte. Has no one ever told that little fiend to let sleeping cats lie? At two-thirty in the morning of Tuesday, November 11, Edith is curled up on the pillow that she defines as hers on the sumptuously large bed that she also defines as hers, and she has been asleep and would like to return to sleep, but Brigitte is sorely trying her almost endless patience.

  What is especially infuriating about Brigitte is that she has her uses. In particular, the human inhabitant of this cushy and indulgent new abode is deficient in such inter-species basics as patting and stroking, and Edith must thus rely on Brigitte, who, when she is in an affectionate mood, snuggles sweetly, engages in mutual grooming, and otherwise compensates for the human being’s incompetence. In Edith’s view, Brigitte suffers from a warping of personality seldom observed in her species. Healthy cats are content to eat and sleep; they are almost incapable of boredom. Brigitte, however, is easily bored. What’s more, she is afflicted with an abnormal amount of energy, and the excess is misdirected, usually at Edith. Tonight, for example, whenever Edith drifts into the delightful hypnagogic state that precedes (or should precede) sleep itself, Brigitte sneaks up and pounces. Edith has already given the fluffy little pest a few lessons in the hazards of sinking her teeth into the flesh of a big, strong cat. Brigitte should have learned the first time! Is it going to be necessary to trounce her yet again? Edith hopes not. Almost twice Brigitte’s size, she is no bully. But Brigitte is starting to provoke her beyond endurance. Never try the patience of a patient cat!

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  How hard it was to play the role of Prissy LaChatte when other characters refused to stay in character! As Felicity’s best friend in a mystery series, Ronald should have done his part by staying up late, creating dramatic scenes, and requiring Felicity to go zooming off into the night to save him from himself. Although he was permitted to be a suspect in the murder, he should have aroused the suspicions of the police rather than Felicity’s own suspicions. As it was, Ronald stayed at home on most evenings. He read books and listened to Glenn Gould. So far as Felicity knew, the police had no interest in him; she alone understood the depth of his eccentricity, and she alone had a hunch that he’d known the identity of Isabelle Hotchkiss. Viewed as a continuing character in the series, Ronald was, in brief, a rotten best friend.

  Then there was Dave Valentine, whose detective work should have consisted primarily of calling Felicity, visiting her to discuss theories and suspects, and insisting that she accompany him to assist in interviewing witnesses because they’d be far more forthcoming with her than with him. What had he actually done? Not much. Furthermore, his romance with Felicity should have flourished. By now, he should at least have invited her out to lunch, if not to dinner. In reality, the romance had barely sprouted before her stupid lie about Uncle Bob’s accident had caused it to wilt and perish.

  This wretched subplot about Janice’s little scam was unsatisfactory, too. According to Felicity’s literary intuition, it was developing out of its proper sequence. Instead of asserting itself now, it should wait until after the solution to the murder; it belonged in the denouement. What was it doing here?

  These dissatisfactions troubled Felicity when she awoke on Tuesday morning. Having wrestled with characters, plots, and subplots before, she was not, however, discouraged. Rather, she vowed to make it plain to all characters, events, themes, and developments that whether they liked it or not, this story was going to be author driven; any elements that disagreed would suffer permanent deletion. At ten o’clock, she set to work rewriting reality by calling Detective Dave Valentine. Her true purpose was to rectify his failure to stay in incessant communication with her. At first, she’d thought of using her observations of William Coates as an excuse to call Valentine; in her books, the dullard police might have overlooked the significance of William’s hostility to his father and his rivalry with his father’s cats. On reflection, she had realized that there was no need for a trumped-up excuse; she had an all-too-real reason to call. She made a fresh cup of coffee and settled herself at the kitchen table with the phone.

  Reaching Valentine, she said, “This is Felicity Pride, and I owe you an apology. I should have been perfectly straightforward about how my aunt and uncle died.”

  “Family loyalty,” Valentine said.

  “My uncle wasn’t really an alcoholic, you know. He was in the liquor business.”

  “I know.”

  “Why is it that Scots don’t obje
ct to those signs and ads? If there were Irish liquor stores with signs and ads covered with stereotyped pictures of leprechauns and the Blarney Stone, there’d be protests. Or Italian liquor stores with pictures of Mafia hit men. But all those caricatures of Highlanders? And no one minds?”

  “Maybe some of us do,” Valentine said.

  “Maybe we do. Anyway, Uncle Bob wasn’t an alcoholic. He was just in the liquor business his whole life. Since I’m making a full confession, I should tell you that he got his start during Prohibition. That’s something of a family secret.”

  “Prohibition ended in nineteen thirty-three,” Valentine said.

  “So it did.”

  “He must’ve been an awfully young bootlegger.”

  “I hadn’t put that together. I guess he was. Maybe he was earning his college tuition. As I said, it’s a family secret. My mother just told me about it the other day. By the time I knew him, he was perfectly reputable.” This topic was making Felicity nervous. Except to verify that no one had entered or tried to enter her house on the evening when Coates’s body had been left in her vestibule, the police hadn’t searched her house, and there was no reason why they should search it now. Bob and Thelma certainly weren’t murder suspects; they had died months before Coates’s slaying. Therefore, no matter what the source of the stashed money, the police had no reason to look for the fireproof box. Felicity’s apprehension about discussing Bob and Thelma was pure paranoia. Well, it was impure paranoia. What had possessed her to slip that hundred-dollar bill into the donation box at Angell?

  “As I was saying,” she continued, “he wasn’t an alcoholic.”

  “But he did drink and drive.”

  “Obviously,” said Felicity. “Obviously, he did drink and drive. I should have told you about the accident the first time we discussed it. About his death and Aunt Thelma’s. I feel like a fool. So, please accept my apology.”

  “Accepted,” said Valentine. “Have you remembered anything that might help us out? Come across any letters? E-MAIL? Anything?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. Not a thing. But I did wonder about William Coates. You probably did, too.”

  “In what way?”

  “At the funeral, I told him that I had his father’s cats, and he was very hostile. Not just about Edith and Brigitte, but about his father. He thinks that his father cared more about the cats than he did about his son. Quinlan Coates didn’t leave his money to a cat shelter, did he? Or to—”

  “His entire estate goes to Angell Memorial Hospital.”

  “Animal Medical Center. It’s changed its name. Not that it matters. Well, no wonder his son is so hostile to him!” In her excitement, Felicity gripped the phone with one hand, and with the other, made a fist and shook it wildly in the air. At last, her very own detective was confiding information about the victim! At last, she and her detective were discussing a suspect!

  “Quinlan Coates had planned it all out years ago. Planned giving. Angell saved the life of some cat of his a long time ago.”

  “William Coates can’t have been happy to be disinherited.” Felicity was on the verge of saying that if Uncle Bob had left his money to a veterinary hospital instead of her, she’d have been furious, but the statement would have raised the best-avoided topics of Uncle Bob’s money and donations to Angell. “Did William Coates know in advance? If so, motive could go either way, you know. If he didn’t know, then his motive could’ve been to inherit, and if he did know, then his motive could’ve been revenge against his father for—”

  Valentine laughed. “Ideas for your next book, huh?”

  “My next book is about mercury poisoning,” she said with dignity. “And it has nothing to do with fathers and sons. Or I don’t think it does. It doesn’t yet.”

  To Felicity’s disappointment, Valentine ended the conversation there. She hung up with a mild sense of insult. He had not taken her seriously! On the other hand, she had made him laugh, and that was something, wasn’t it? It was a start. Maybe the dead romance could be nursed back to life and made to blossom after all.

  On to the exoneration—or exculpation?—of her unsatisfactory best friend, Ronald Gershwin. She called Newbright Books and reached Ronald, who, as if to illustrate his deficiencies as a series character, said that he was busy. Could he call her back? As usual, he made it sound as if his busyness consisted not of restocking his shelves, advising customers about books, and taking their money, but of passing along state secrets. Ronald did, of course, blab confidential information, but he gossiped about authors, agents, editors, and book deals; his knowledge of espionage came exclusively from his reading of spy novels. Still, he indulged in breaches of confidentiality. So, if he’d known the truth about Isabelle Hotchkiss, why hadn’t he tattled to Felicity?

  “Are you free for dinner?” she asked.

  “Thursday,” he said.

  “Thursday it is.”

  The phone went dead. Normal human beings didn’t just hang up on friends! At a minimum, they said good-bye. Preferably, they made excuses for ending conversations and then said good-bye.

  “Therefore,” Felicity said to the cats, who were lingering in the kitchen, “Ronald is not a normal human being. Are you normal feline beings? Should I use the phrase about Morris and Tabitha? Or will the critics scratch out my eyes for being cutesy? And if so, will it be because my mother leads a secret life as an anonymous reviewer of mysteries, especially mine?”

  Emboldened by her success in thus conversing with Edith and Brigitte, Felicity bent over Edith, who was rubbing against a table leg, and touched the top of Edith’s big head. It would be a good idea, wouldn’t it, to have Prissy speak to Morris and Tabitha more often than had been her habit. Also, Morris and Tabitha were perhaps hungry for affection. Prissy must remember to pat them frequently.

  Felicity again sat at the table and placed a phone call, this one to Janice Mattingly, who answered immediately in a surprisingly robust voice. “I was dehydrated,” she explained. “Once they got fluids and electrolytes and whatever back into me, I felt pretty much okay. I got home last night. The stress of worrying about Dorothy-L was starting to make me sick, so the hospital let me leave. I kept thinking about what could happen to her with me gone. The neighbors know better than to let her out, but who knows? Anything could’ve happened, and she is so attached to me. And I wasn’t sure they’d give her the medication when they were supposed to, and maybe she wouldn’t swallow her pills for them, or she’d spit out her pills, and they wouldn’t notice.”

  Felicity waited silently as Janice continued to voice her fears about the cat for another few minutes. When Janice paused for breath, Felicity said, “Well, I’m glad you’re doing so well. The rest of us are, too.”

  “I can’t imagine what happened. Tony’s is very, very clean. Spotless. And I bought that food on Saturday afternoon. I have to wonder whether we didn’t all have a stomach virus, something that was transmitted very quickly. I did notice that Jim looked a little under the weather. Did you notice?”

  Eager to postpone the confrontation, Felicity said, “I didn’t notice that, but maybe he did. Anyway, we’ve all recovered. But the reason I called, besides wanting to know how you were doing, is that I’ve finally had time to read your book.”

  She let the silence hang. Having published numerous books herself, she was familiar with the sensations an author experiences when someone says, “I read your book,” and then fails to add, “And I loved it” or “It was wonderful!” or even “It was interesting.”

  Finally, she said, “I owe you an apology for neglecting you. And your book. I was just overwhelmed with work. Anyway, now that I’ve read it, I wonder whether we could get together to talk about how I can help you to promote it. I thought you might want to come and have dinner with me. But maybe you’re not well enough yet.”

  “I’m well enough.” Janice said. “I can’t eat much, but who cares? I’m practically back to normal. Tonight?”

  “Let’s keep it early. Six-th
irty? Do you need directions?”

  “No, I’ve been there for board meetings, remember? And when Sonya and I dropped you off after the funeral.”