Read Scratch the Surface Online
Authors: Susan Conant
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Detective and mystery stories, #Detective and mystery stories - Authorship, #Cats, #Mystery fiction, #Apartment houses, #Women novelists
Scratch the Surface (13 page)
Now, returning home from the veterinary clinic, she prioritized her tasks in the way most familiar to her, namely, by asking herself what Prissy LaChatte would do first. Call Ursula Novack? Return a call to Detective Valentine, who had left a message on her machine? Examine the fireproof box of cash? Certainly not. Prissy would first take care of the cats. Then, based on the clues she’d found, she’d get one step ahead of the police by discovering the identity of the murder victim. In other words, she must feed Edith—and, incidentally, herself—and then rush to the rescue of poor Brigitte.
In reality, her first step was to release Edith from the cat carrier, which would be needed for Brigitte. Instead of returning Edith to the confines of the upstairs bedroom, Felicity left the carrier on the kitchen floor. Having watched the skilled Dr. Furbish, she was prepared to reach in and gently remove the big cat. As it turned out, once Felicity had managed to undo the latch and open the little metal door, Edith emerged on her own and, to Felicity’s surprise, didn’t bolt out of the room, but hopped onto the kitchen table and sat there looking like a sphinx come to life. Prissy’s cats stayed off dining surfaces. Edith’s large, placid presence on the table didn’t bother Felicity, who had, in any case, no inclination to respond to the cat’s apparent effort at friendliness by scolding or punishing her. With the inscrutable Edith still planted on the table, Felicity quickly made a salmon salad from the previous night’s dinner and carried her own plate and a saucer of salmon salad to the table. Perhaps Felicity moved faster than Edith liked. Or maybe Edith had had all the human contact she could tolerate for the moment. For whatever reason, she took a muscular leap off the table and vanished in the direction of the front hall. With hurt feelings, Felicity ate her lunch, cleared the table, rinsed her own plate and put it in the dishwasher, and put Edith’s saucer on the floor.
She began her detective work by dialing the phone number for Quinlan Coates that she’d copied from the veterinary assistant’s slip of paper, which also showed an address on Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton. No one answered. Her next step was to use the Web. In modern mystery novels, the amateur sleuth was often a computer illiterate who needed the help of a young relative, a teenage employee, or some other techno wizard to retrieve even the simplest information from cyberspace. Felicity had nothing but scorn for the device of the youthful assistant. The female amateur detective should be self-reliant! Had Nancy Drew gone around whining for help with machinery? On the contrary, in the Nancy Drew books of Felicity’s childhood, Nancy had capably driven her roadster without complaining that she had trouble shifting gears and without turning over the wheel to Beth or George. Capably steering with mouse and keyboard, Felicity soon had directions to Quin Coates’s address and a map of its location, which was only about a mile from Newton Park and almost no distance from Boston College. Within seconds, her favorite search engine, Google, confirmed her hunch that Quinlan Coates was indeed a professor of Romance languages at that same institution.
She also found his office phone number, dialed it, and reached a woman who informed her in a heavy Boston accent that Professor Coates was on sabbatical. “He comes in every couplah days. You wanna leave a message? Or you want his voice mail?”
Mail
was “may-ull.”
was “may-ull.”
Felicity declined the offers. Arming herself with her cell phone, Detective Valentine’s number, and the cat carrier, she set off to rescue Brigitte, whose name was damned well going to be pronounced “Bree-zheet” and not “Brih-jut.” The cats’ names could’ve been much worse than they were, she reflected. Neither
Edith
nor
Brigitte
constituted a pronunciation pitfall for persons laboring to rid themselves of Boston accents. The worst words weren’t actually the obvious ones like
car
and
Harvard
that simply required speakers aspiring to standard English to remember to pronounce the letter
r
. No, the tricky words were those that demanded a decision about whether an
r
was or was not present. Sneaky words like
elegy
and
sherbet
put Felicity at such extreme risk of pronouncing the hateful letter
r
when it was supposed to be absent that she avoided the words altogether. Iris Murdoch’s husband’s memoir was just that and never
Elegy—Elergy?—for Iris
. She ordered ice cream and never that other stuff that was always
sherbet
and never
sherbert
. Wasn’t it?
Edith
nor
Brigitte
constituted a pronunciation pitfall for persons laboring to rid themselves of Boston accents. The worst words weren’t actually the obvious ones like
car
and
Harvard
that simply required speakers aspiring to standard English to remember to pronounce the letter
r
. No, the tricky words were those that demanded a decision about whether an
r
was or was not present. Sneaky words like
elegy
and
sherbet
put Felicity at such extreme risk of pronouncing the hateful letter
r
when it was supposed to be absent that she avoided the words altogether. Iris Murdoch’s husband’s memoir was just that and never
Elegy—Elergy?—for Iris
. She ordered ice cream and never that other stuff that was always
sherbet
and never
sherbert
. Wasn’t it?
Even via the circuitous route down Norwood Hill, the drive to Quinlan Coates’s address on Commonwealth Avenue was so short that Felicity’s musings on the serendipity of the cats’ names occupied her until she pulled into a parking (not “pahking”) place. The Web had prepared her for the building’s proximity to Boston College but not for what she perceived as its intimidating grandeur. It was an old-fashioned, monumental apartment building constructed of gray stone, with a wide flight of stone steps leading up to an imposing wooden door. The oversized cat carrier that she’d brought with her banged against her legs and made her feel ridiculous. The outer door was unlocked. She had trouble simultaneously holding it open and maneuvering the carrier inside. Once inside the foyer, she regained her self-confidence. Despite high ceilings and wood paneling, the interior of the building was shabby. Discarded junk mail and freebie local newspapers lay on the stone floor beneath the mailboxes, and the glass door that led to the main hallway was dirty. More to the point, it was locked. The numerous doorbells were marked with apartment numbers. Next to the numbers, residents’ names appeared on business cards, scraps of paper, and, in few cases, tattered strips of masking tape. Quinlan Coates’s name was on one of the business cards, albeit a yellowed one. Felicity rang Coates’s bell, but the ancient-looking speaker near the bells remained silent, and no one buzzed her in.
What would Prissy do? Rather, what would Prissy’s creator cause Prissy to do? Felicity searched the cards, scraps of paper, and bits of masking tape in search of a building manager or caretaker. In her mysteries and in other people’s, the apartment building the amateur detective wanted to enter invariably had some sort of concierge, doorman, or manager who could be conned into believing a trumped-up story about a distant cousin making an unexpected visit or a para-legal desperately eager to deliver crucial documents that couldn’t safely be left in a mailbox. As Felicity was grumbling to herself about the absence of anyone to whom she could tell her perfectly genuine story about the need to rescue an abandoned cat, the outer door opened and in walked a man of about her own age. He had curly black hair and dark eyes, and wore a dark suit. In his hand was a ring of keys.
“Pardon me,” she said. “Do you happen to know Quinlan Coates?”
“He’s on sabbatical. He might be away.”
“Yes, I know he’s on sabbatical. You haven’t seen him lately?”
“His car’s out back. But he could be traveling. I haven’t seen him for a couple of days.”
“Actually,” Felicity said, “I have reason to believe that something may have happened to him. He seems to have abandoned his cats!”
“I doubt that,” the man said. “He boards them when he goes away. That’s probably where they are. At Angell Memorial.”
“Well, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, I have to tell you that I came into possession of one of his cats under extremely sinister circumstances. And the other cat may very well be in his apartment. You don’t happen to know anyone who has a key, do you?” To emphasize the nature and urgency of her mission, she lifted the carrier by its handle.
“I have one. Quin’s apartment is right above mine, and the plumbing’s old. I have a key to let the plumber in if something leaks when Quin’s away. He wasn’t too crazy about the idea, but then he had to pay for my ceiling, and he wasn’t too crazy about that, either. He’s an old tightwad, but I hope he’s all right.” The dark man inserted his key in the door, held it for Felicity, and took the cat carrier. “Let me take that thing for you. If anything’s happened, he’ll want the cats to be all right. It’s on the second floor.”
Felicity followed him up a flight of carpeted stairs. The carpeting was dark brown, the walls a muddy beige, and the atmosphere oppressive. At a door with “24” printed on adhesive tape, he stopped, searched through his key ring, and finally found the right key and let Felicity in. “I have to warn you, you’re going to want to open a window. Quin won’t hire anyone to clean, and he doesn’t get around to taking out his trash all that often. I’ve got to go. You can let yourself out.”
After thanking the neighbor, Felicity moved the carrier into the apartment, closed the door, and, in spite of the thick, rancid odor, smiled broadly. She stood in a large living room with a high ceiling, dark wood doors and trim, and walls that had once been white. The furniture had probably been sold as Scandinavian and had certainly been bought a long time ago. A sectional sofa and two soft chairs had also been white or possibly the color called “oatmeal.” The arms of one chair had turned brown, and the patterned rug in front of it bore black stains. The tops of the side tables were invisible under piles of scholarly books and journals, but the legs were teak or maybe teak-stained pine. Dust and cat hair were especially prominent on the standing lamps and table lamps, which, like the other furnishings, were domestic Scandinavian in style. Their condition was battered. Strands of gray fluff clung to stained lampshades.
On the only clear surface in sight, the top of the coffee table, sat a single hardcover book, which proved to be an anthology of short stories presented in English and in French, English on the left-hand pages, French on the right. The editor of the collection was Quinlan Coates. Although the term “crime writing” always struck Felicity as an absurdity when applied to cozy mysteries, especially her own, she had attended enough presentations by forensic experts and law-enforcement personnel to know that the first rule for behavior at crime scenes was: Don’t touch anything! It was also the second rule, the third rule . . .
But was the apartment really a crime scene? And she’d already touched the door and a light switch. What’s more, having picked up the book and leafed through it, she’d already contaminated it and was therefore free to examine it yet more, as she promptly did by flipping to the back flap of the dust jacket, which showed a photograph of Quinlan Coates, Ph.D., Professor of Romance languages at Boston College, who was unmistakably the small gray man. The weirdly long and thick eyebrows were the clincher; they were as prominent in the photograph as they’d been on the deceased Coates’s face. Why on earth hadn’t he had them trimmed? One of Naomi’s assistants did a splendid job on Felicity’s eyebrows, and there was no reason Quinlan Coates couldn’t have had comparable care taken of his, not that he should have had his brows waxed and plucked until they arched, but why had he chosen to go through life looking bizarre?
But Quinlan Coates’s eyebrows were a trivial concern except to the extent that they established the identity of the murder victim. Felicity retrieved her phone from her purse, found Detective Valentine’s number, and dialed. She’d been tempted to conduct a thorough search of the apartment before calling the police but had felt that it would be just her luck if Detective Valentine and his associates, all on their own, were to put a name to the body as she was looking over Coates’s possessions. Besides, the police wouldn’t arrive instantly. She’d have time to find Brigitte and investigate the place, too.
Luck was on her side. Unable to speak directly to Valentine, she left a message that consisted only of Quinlan Coates’s name and address. Then, remembering not to touch anything, she began to search for Brigitte—and, incidentally, for anything else of interest she might spot. Through a large archway was a dining room with a mahogany table and chairs, and a matching sideboard, all at least eighty years old. Displayed in a built-in cupboard with glass doors were sets of venerable china and glassware. The contents of the room proclaimed inheritance from a grandmother. Few men would have wanted these possessions, which Felicity guessed to be a woman’s family treasures, probably those of an unknown Mrs. Quinlan Coates, of whom she’d seen no other sign. The dusty table bore the marks of plates and glasses. Through another and smaller archway was the kitchen, which was obviously a major source of the foul odor that permeated the apartment. The sink was full of dirty dishes, but the stench probably emanated from every surface. The walls and counters were coated in grease, and the old linoleum floor was so filthy that Felicity’s shoes almost stuck to it. Two stainless steel bowls on the floor were empty.
Returning to the living room, Felicity tried to open a closed door, but found it locked. She decided to pursue her investigation and her search for Brigitte in the three rooms with doors that stood ajar. One proved to be a bathroom so disgusting that she did no more than peep in; the caulking around the tub was black with mold, and the white fixtures and tiles were stained yellow. The second room was the only clean area she’d found so far. Its furniture and most of the items in it were for cats. It contained two plush cat beds, a carpeted cat tree that rose to the ceiling, two large litter boxes in need of scooping, and dozens of small cat toys. Also in the cat room was a canister vacuum cleaner that had obviously been used here and nowhere else. A bookcase held a large collection of cat mysteries, including what seemed to be the complete collection of Isabelle Hotchkiss’s Kitty Katlikoff series, many of Lilian Jackson Braun’s
The Cat Who . . .
books, and works by Rita Mae Brown, Shirley Rousseau Murphy, Carole Nelson Douglas, Marian Babson, and, of course, Felicity Pride herself. It did not escape Felicity’s notice that Quinlan Coates had owned all of Isabelle Hotchkiss’s mysteries and only a few of her own. Furthermore, although she was anything but embarrassed about writing light entertainment, she was struck by the contrast between the feline subgenre fiction in the cat room and the academic tomes and journals in the living room. It crossed her mind, too, that most of her readers were women. The explanation for all the cat mysteries was, she thought, identical to the explanation for the cleanliness of the room and the cat beds, cat tree, and toys: Quinlan Coates had been a man who really loved cats.
The Cat Who . . .
books, and works by Rita Mae Brown, Shirley Rousseau Murphy, Carole Nelson Douglas, Marian Babson, and, of course, Felicity Pride herself. It did not escape Felicity’s notice that Quinlan Coates had owned all of Isabelle Hotchkiss’s mysteries and only a few of her own. Furthermore, although she was anything but embarrassed about writing light entertainment, she was struck by the contrast between the feline subgenre fiction in the cat room and the academic tomes and journals in the living room. It crossed her mind, too, that most of her readers were women. The explanation for all the cat mysteries was, she thought, identical to the explanation for the cleanliness of the room and the cat beds, cat tree, and toys: Quinlan Coates had been a man who really loved cats.
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