Scratch the Surface

by Susan Conant

  “Of course,” said Felicity. “After the funeral.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Out of consideration for Janice’s traumatized digestive system as well as her own, Felicity planned a bland meal of roast chicken, steamed rice, and green beans, the ingredients for which she had on hand. She then turned to planning the Prissy LaChatte mystery to be written after the one now in progress. The motive and the opportunity for the murder were marinating to her satisfaction, but the means she’d chosen, mercury poisoning, was proving troublesome, and if she substituted some other toxin, it might prove incompatible with the motive and the opportunity.

  She had originally been drawn to mercury in part because of its ready availability. It was in old-fashioned glass thermometers, fluorescent light bulbs, thermostat probes in gas ranges, and dental amalgam. Felicity preferred not to make the murderer a dentist, but perhaps the villain could remove the fillings from his own teeth. So, mercury was ubiquitous. But what kind of mercury? The elemental mercury in fever thermometers was far less toxic than she had hoped; contrary to a widely quoted claim, the one-half or one gram of mercury found in a glass thermometer was not enough to contaminate a twenty-acre lake. Damn!

  What she needed was the kind of soluble mercury that descended to the earth in rain and was converted to methylmercury, which ended up in fish and, eventually, in the bodies of people who ate fish, especially big ocean species like tuna and swordfish. How many tuna sandwiches would the murderer have to feed to the victim to achieve a fatal result? And what did mercury taste like, anyway? She wasn’t eager to experiment on herself. But the ideal form was dimethlymercury, which didn’t pose the literary risk of leaving the victim stricken but alive; a drop or two on the skin was deadly. Unfortunately, the compound was used only in chemical analyses and wasn’t sitting around where her murderer or any of her red herrings could get hold of it. Furthermore, it was so dangerous that it would be difficult for her to do in the victim while keeping the murderer alive for Prissy to bring to justice. Damn, damn, damn!

  When Janice arrived at six-thirty, Felicity was setting the kitchen table and still fretting about the technical challenges posed by mercury. The rotten stuff! Well, at least she wasn’t making tuna or swordfish for dinner. She had taken a short break from the irksome toxin problem to glance through the manuscript of Janice’s book, Tailspin. The protagonist was a man in his fifties. A journalist, he had ruined a successful career by drinking and was now a teetotaler. His two Abyssinian cats were not named Koko and Yum Yum; they were called Louis and Murphy.

  She knew that Janice had arrived before the doorbell rang. The luxury vehicles driven by the residents of Newton Park were almost silent. Hearing a noisy engine and the shotgun sound of backfiring, she looked out the window and saw that Janice was making the mistake of parking her mud-colored clunker with its wheels on the Trotskys’ lawn. Consequently, she hurried out the back door and down the driveway while waving a hand to get Janice’s attention.

  Opening her car door, Janice stepped out and returned the wave. “I’m so glad to see you, too, Felicity!”

  Felicity made a quick recovery. “I’m glad you’re well enough to be here. Maybe you could move your car to my driveway?” Lowering her voice, she said, “The man who lives in that house has some silly notion that the street is his property.”

  Janice returned to the driver’s seat and, after struggling to start her car, moved it as Felicity had requested. As Felicity headed toward the back door, Janice said, “Is this where you found the body?”

  “No. The body was at the front door.”

  “Could we go that way? It’s terribly important, I think, to view real crime scenes.”

  “There’s nothing to view. Everything has been cleaned up. And I don’t have the key to the front door with me.”

  “Maybe later? Atmosphere is crucial, isn’t it?”

  “You’re welcome to soak it up whenever you want, but let’s go in this way.”

  When the two women had climbed the half flight of stairs to the kitchen, Felicity took a good look at Janice and realized that she was still showing the effects of the food poisoning. Her chalky-white complexion was even paler than usual, and her crimson lipstick looked like blood applied with a brush. Her hair was lank, there were dark circles under her eyes, and her eyelids drooped.

  “Let me take your coat. Have a seat,” said Felicity. “You must be exhausted.”

  Janice hung her purse, a large handwoven sack, on the back of a chair and removed a red woolen cloak embroidered with colorful stick figures. Underneath she wore chino pants and a thick greenish-yellow sweater that smelled vaguely of animals. Goats? Felicity wondered. Or some more exotic species? Yak or llama, perhaps.

  “I’m still a little bit weak.” Janice seated herself at the table.

  “A drink? Scotch? Wine? Or maybe you’re not ready for that yet. Ginger ale? Spring water?”

  “Ginger ale would be good. With the bubbles stirred out, please.”

  As Felicity was pouring ginger ale for herself and her guest, Brigitte flitted into the room, scampered to the table, and jumped onto it.

  “What a beautiful pussycat!” Janice exclaimed. “Here, Miss Pussycat!” She smacked her lips and tapped her fingernails on the tabletop. Brigitte moved toward her. “What gorgeous eyes she has. Golden! Felicity, this cat is to die for. And she’s young. She really is just a little baby kitten, isn’t she? Aren’t you lucky! Dorothy-L is fourteen, which isn’t all that terribly old for a cat these days, but it isn’t young. I’ve practically forgotten what it’s like to have a young, healthy kitty like this one.”

  Brigitte, having moved toward Janice, sauntered to the opposite end of the table, where she sat on her haunches next to a dinner plate and fixed her amber eyes on the new-comer.

  Addressing her, Janice cooed, “Aren’t you a lucky baby girl to be allowed on the table! Not all kitty cats are so spoiled, you know.” As Felicity handed her a glass of ginger ale and seated herself at the table, Janice returned to her normal tone of voice. “Felicity, was Morris allowed on tables? Your own Morris, I mean, not the one you write about, not that there’s all that much difference, is there!”

  “Morris was allowed everywhere.” Felicity did not add that there was even less difference between her own Morris and the fictional one than Janice might suppose. “My other cat, Edith, is quite shy. She may show up, or she may not. She’s young, too. She’s four. Brigitte, this one, is two.” In the hope of gently leading the conversation toward Janice’s pilfering by way of one of her possible motives, she said, “And they are both healthy. Robustly so. Up-to-date on their shots, everything. In fact, Edith is a blood donor at Angell. She gets all her shots free. Free exams, blood work, everything. A bag of cat food when she donates. Dorothy-L must be costing you a fortune. All the medicine. And you’re thinking about some new treatment for her. And she has to eat special cat food, doesn’t she? That can’t be cheap.”

  A startled expression crossed Janice’s face. Felicity attributed it to her own indelicacy in having spoken so directly about money. Still, the topic of money was the only reason she’d invited Janice to dinner.

  “But, of course, you have an advance and a book coming out,” Felicity said. “A wonderful book!”

  “Thank you.”

  “And you have such extensive plans to promote it. I’m very lazy about that myself. And the expense! Maybe it’s my Scottish heritage, but I can’t see spending all that money unless I’m sure it’s worth it.”

  “Oh, it is worth it!”

  “Not always. It’s important to be selective, not just to throw money randomly at any promotion at all. But I do understand the temptations. I really do. Mystery writing is a tough business. All writing is. It’s very competitive.”

  “Fiercely.”

  “On the other hand, there’s a tradition in mystery writing of supporting one another. Look at all our organizations. Take the two of us. We both belong to Sisters in Crime and Witness and some
other organizations, too. But those cost money. The dues for Witness are fairly low, but some of the other groups? And it adds up when you join everything.”

  “It does,” Janice said stiffly. “Then there are clothes. I need new clothes. And my car. I can’t go around driving that junk heap.”

  Distracted from her goal, Felicity said, “Who cares what you drive? How many of your readers are going to see your car?”

  “You never know. Image is terribly important. It’s essential. When your readers meet you, they don’t want to just meet some ordinary old person, do they? They want to meet a star.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Felicity, who cultivated a rich picture of her readership and took care to present herself in stellar fashion. “If anything, your readers want to meet your protagonist. Or they expect to.”

  “My protagonist is a man,” said Janice, “so they can’t honestly expect me to be him.”

  “What matters for you,” said Felicity, “is your sense of having to be a star.”

  “But my hair is awful. I’ve been thinking about going blonde. Could I ask you who does your hair?”

  “Her name is Naomi. But I have to warn you—”

  “Oh, I know! She must be hideously expensive. Cheap hair color looks so . . . cheap, doesn’t it? But money is no object.”

  “Money is always an object,” said Felicity.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Seconds after informing Janice that money was always an object, Felicity reminded herself that time, too, was always an object, especially her own time, and that she shouldn’t waste too much of it on this business of Janice’s scam. Having intended to serve an early dinner, she had cooked the rice, which was keeping warm in Aunt Thelma’s new rice steamer. A small roasted chicken with no seasoning except salt was in the oven, and the green beans, which she’d blanched, needed only to finish cooking in a little butter. She now rose and began to heat the green beans.

  “A drop of wine with dinner?” she offered.

  “Well, a little tiny bit, I guess. You know, if you eat raw oysters, you’re supposed to drink white wine with them. It minimizes your chances of getting hepatitis.”

  “We’re not having oysters on the half shell, I’m afraid. Just roast chicken.” It occurred to Felicity that the meal she’d prepared was so unexciting as to be almost Scottish. Her maternal grandmother had often served chicken. She had prepared it by boiling it in gallons of plain water for many hours. “But we can still have white wine.”

  “Actually, chicken is crawling with bacteria.”

  The bottle in the refrigerator was a white burgundy. As Felicity opened and poured it, she found herself thinking that it was a shame to waste it on Janice. She should have saved it for Ronald, who would have appreciated it. Even Ronald would not have referred to its germicidal properties. When she had served the food and taken a seat, she didn’t bother to raise her glass. Janice hadn’t waited for her, but was already sipping the wine while stroking Brigitte. At the sight and smell of the roast chicken, which Felicity had arranged on a small platter, Brigitte abandoned Janice to poke a curious nose into the food. Without consulting Felicity, Janice picked her up and placed her on the floor. “There are limits,” she said.

  Felicity had intended to delay the confrontation until the end of the meal, but she was annoyed to have Janice take it upon herself to remove Brigitte from the table. Had Felicity been a guest at someone else’s house, she’d have been disgusted by the presence of a cat on the dinner table and nauseated by the thought of eating food that a cat had already sampled. This, however, was not someone else’s house, and if anyone were to set limits on Brigitte, she herself, and not Janice, should do it. “There’s something we need to discuss,” she said.

  “My book! I am so happy that you like it.”

  “Actually, it’s something else.” Felicity kept her eyes on the chicken she was cutting. Instead of describing her visit to Tony’s Deli and going on to accuse Janice of fraud, she spoke obliquely. “I went to Jamaica Plain this morning.” She ate a bit of chicken. “And before I say more, I want you to know that I understand your motives and that I sympathize.”

  “Empathize.”

  Empathize? Felicity did not question the correction aloud. In fact, enjoying as she did a high opinion of her own communication skills, she disregarded the possibility that she and Janice were talking about two entirely different matters. In Felicity’s view, her own mastery of verbal expression usually eliminated the risk that she would be misunderstood or would misinterpret the blundering efforts of others. Janice, she decided, failed to comprehend the distinction between sympathy and empathy. “I do understand,” she said magnanimously.

  “Of course you do. You of all people!”

  If Felicity’s conscience had been clear, she would probably have realized that she and Janice were speaking at cross-purposes. As it was, Felicity bristled. She was no thief! Keeping Uncle Bob’s cash didn’t count. She had inherited the house and its contents. Therefore, she had inherited the fireproof box. “It’s ironic that you are the person who ended up suffering most,” she said, with the intention of making a delicate reference to the severity of Janice’s food poisoning. Glancing at the white meat that Janice was devouring, she added, “Look, it’ll be best for everyone if you’ll make a clean breast of things.”

  Janice said, “I don’t know how you figured it out. Like take the cat food. How’d you know about that?”

  Cat food? In softening Janice up for the confrontation about her pilfering, Felicity had mentioned free cat food as one of the perks of Edith’s serving as a blood donor at Angell. Felicity also remembered having gone on to say that Dorothy-L must be costing Janice a fortune. Hinting at the economic motives for Janice’s fraud, Felicity had acknowledged the cost of a possible new treatment as well as the need to pay for the cat’s medicine and special food. By comparison with the veterinary procedure and the prescription drugs, the special cat food must be a minor expense; Janice had certainly picked an odd example.

  Even so, Felicity answered Janice’s question. “When we were at your house on Sunday, Dorothy-L’s food was in your kitchen.”

  “But how did you make the connection?” The wine or perhaps the conversation had brought color to Janice’s face. Her cheeks had round red spots. Something, perhaps the wine, had given her an appetite. She dug her fork into the rice and bent her head to shovel the food into her mouth. Again without swallowing properly, she said, “I found out by a fluke. How did you find out?”

  Baffled, Felicity asked, “How did you?”

  “You remember that horrible letter I got? I sent her my book and asked for a blurb, and I got simply the most awful letter. Sonya read it, and so did some other people, and they said it was the most vicious thing they’d ever seen. I know it by heart. ‘This person cannot write and should not try.’ And then there was, ‘In a market glutted with cat mysteries and, indeed, with mysteries, this book does not stand a chance of success.’”

  “That really is vicious.” Felicity refilled both glasses and sipped from her own. Her heart was pounding, but determined to show nothing, she concentrated on keeping her face expressionless.

  “So, about three months ago, actually, on the first Monday in August, it must’ve been, I was at Angell to pick up a case of Dorothy-L’s prescription food. I always buy it by the case because I’m always scared I’ll run out, and her digestive system just will not tolerate regular cat food, so I can’t just go to the store and grab what’s there. It really isn’t clear what’s causing all her digestive problems. Whatever it is, it’s separate from her thyroid disorder, but it does make me wonder about the radioactive iodide treatment, you know, whether she could tolerate that.” Janice took a break to eat voraciously. “Anyway, you know how they keep a lot of dog and cat food in the lobby?”

  “Yes,” said Felicity, who didn’t trust herself to say more.

  “Well, the kind I needed wasn’t there, and someone went to look for it for me, but
I knew it would take a while. Angell is the best place, but it isn’t necessarily the fastest. And there’s no place to sit in the lobby, so I went into that sort of corridor beyond it and took a seat on one of the benches, and I got to talking with this man who was waiting there, too.”