Scratch the Surface (21 page)

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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

BOOK: Scratch the Surface
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“It suggests a murderer who doesn’t know how to kill someone and can’t tell if the victim is dead. A self-confident, capable murderer does what he’s going to do. Let’s say he smothers the victim. And when the victim’s dead, he quits. But three methods? He tries one. He can’t tell whether it worked. He uses another. And he’s still not sure. And then he uses the third. So what we’ve got is a murderer who didn’t know what he was doing.”
Felicity felt chagrined. “I’ll mention that to the police. I hadn’t thought of it, and I don’t think they have.”
Ronald dipped a clam in a red sauce that was nauseatingly reminiscent of blood. “Have you been able to get any writing done with all this going on?”
“Less than usual. But speaking of my writing, Irene called me this afternoon. She had lunch with some other agents, and they discussed the whole business of Russians pirating American books.”
“It happens all the time.”
“Yes, it does. I just didn’t know about it until it happened to me.”
“You and a lot of other people. Isabelle Hotchkiss’s were pirated. Her agent made a big stink. I read about it somewhere.”
Felicity contained her competitive curiosity about whether her own books had been stolen before or after those of her rival. “And?”
“And nothing. Her agent got nowhere.”
“None of them have. That’s what Irene says, and she’s a terrific agent. She’s as furious as I am. We have the signed contracts. But what are we going to do? Get a Russian lawyer and take the whole thing to court in Russia? But there is one . . . let’s call it a remote possibility.”
The waiter appeared, cleared the table, and served the curried shrimp to Felicity and the lobster casserole to Ronald, who immediately spoke up. When the waiter had corrected the error and left, Felicity told Ronald about her suspicions of Mr. Trotsky. “How many Russian publishers can there be? How many who pirate American books?”
“Hundreds?” Ronald replied. “Living next door to you? I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“Maybe it isn’t a coincidence.”
With a sweet smile, Ronald said, “I don’t believe in your paranoia, either. But what just happened with the food made me wonder about a mistake. The houses in your neighborhood are all alike.”
“No, they’re not!”
“They are. Same size, same color, same basic design.”
“Ronald, that is not true.”
It was, in fact, more true than not.
“They all look the same to me. And the house numbers are hard to find.”
“You’re right about that.” She peered at his shrimp, which were completely peeled. He probably hadn’t contracted hepatitis from the clams, either.
“So, maybe the body got left for you by mistake. Switched. Like our dinners. It could’ve been meant for the Trotskys. Or someone else.”
“Well, if Quinlan Coates had been a professor of Russian, that would be a connection. But I don’t think Trotsky has any connection with Romance languages or Boston College. And he hates cats. He tried to get the condo association to enforce our no-pet clause. No one supported him. But it’s easy to see how someone could have something against Trotsky. He really is unpleasant. Needlessly unpleasant. There’s friction between our neighborhood and Norwood Hill, and he makes everything worse, but he’s also nasty to the other people in Newton Park, and for no good reason. He was horrible to some woman from Norwood Hill who was just walking her dog by his house, and when I tried to pour oil on troubled waters, as it were, he went stalking off, and the woman said that he must be a gangster.”
Stalking
. Had she said “stocking”?
“Maybe he is.”
“He’s a publisher. Maybe he pirates books, but there’s no reason to think he’s a gangster, and I don’t like it that the people on Norwood Hill have that image of us.”
“How did he afford that house?”
“By being a publisher, I guess. How else? Just because you don’t know where people got their money, it doesn’t mean that they’re crooks.” As soon as Felicity spoke, she thought of Uncle Bob’s fireproof box of money. That was a special situation, she told herself. It was one thing to have money in the bank and money to buy expensive houses, and quite another thing to keep a large amount of cash hidden behind a bed.
“Is something wrong with your lobster?” Ronald asked.
“It’s dry and tough. Anyway, what offends me is the assumption based strictly on nationality that someone is a crook.”
“Felicity, you’re the one who suspects Mr. Trotsky because he’s Russian.”
“Ronald, whoever stole my books and published them in Russian is likely to
be
Russian. And it’s possible to be a crook without being a gangster.”
“The point is, Felicity, that you don’t know.”
“True enough. For all I know, people suspect me of being a criminal because I live in a big house.”
“No, they don’t. If they don’t know about your uncle, they assume that you bought the house with your royalties.”
Felicity, who was delighted to have people make exactly that assumption, said, “If that’s what they think, they’re fools.”
“They’re naïve, that’s all. The wannabes who come to Witness meetings think they’re going to be able to quit their day jobs when their first royalty statements arrive. Take Janice Mattingly.”
“You take her. Ronald, why did she invite that forensics guy with his mummified foot? That thing is revolting. I wish someone else would take charge of lining up the speakers. I don’t know what makes it her job.”
“No one else wants to do it. Are you volunteering?”
“Of course not. I’m too busy.”
“So is everyone else. That’s why Janice does more than her fair share for Witness. Refreshments—”
“Which she does badly. It’s the worst food I’ve eaten since school lunches.”
“The newsletter.”
“Which she is supposed to edit, not to write.”
“How can she when no one sends her anything?”
“When Sonya did the newsletter, people sent her things. She plagued us. It worked. Besides, Janice likes doing the newsletter. She’s going to interview me as soon as the police let me talk publicly about the murder.”
“As you can hardly wait to do.”
“Admittedly, Ronald. As I can hardly wait to do.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Quinlan Coates’s funeral
was a big disappointment. For one thing, instead of attending in solitary dignity, Felicity was dragged down, as she saw it, by Janice Mattingly and Sonya Bogosian, who had insisted on accompanying her. When Sonya called on Friday evening, she said that she and Janice were determined to offer moral support. Felicity was convinced then and remained convinced that Sonya and Janice were merely looking for a pretext to gather material for their books. The nerve! This was Felicity’s very own murder, and Janice and Sonya had no business trying to exact shares to which they weren’t entitled. Had the body been left at
their
front doors? Certainly not! If they wanted to attend the funerals of murder victims, let them find their own corpses and their own last rites! Quinlan Coates belonged to Felicity, as did his funeral mass, and it was greedy and unprofessional of Janice and Sonya to hone in on, and thereby diminish, another mystery writer’s research opportunity. Moral support, indeed! The hypocrites!
But there they were, seated on either side of Felicity in the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which was so dishearteningly light, bright, and unmysterious that it could practically have been Presbyterian—and Scots Presbyterian at that. Furthermore, the wholesome young priest now delivering a eulogy about Quinlan Coates’s professional accomplishments, his contributions to the Boston College community, and his extreme devotion to his late wife, bore no resemblance to the elderly, doddering figure Felicity had imagined, a satisfyingly sinister character who kept lapsing into Latin, thus rendering his insinuations about the deceased unintelligible except to Felicity and a handful of Jesuits with whom she would converse over the funeral meats.
The apparent failure of William Coates to provide funeral meats was another source of disappointment. In neither yesterday’s paper nor today’s had there been any mention of a postfuneral gathering, nor was such an event announced in the little memorial program Felicity had been handed when she had entered the church. As if deliberately to exacerbate her disgruntlement, Sonya and Janice had both inquired about Felicity’s plans to go back to the house after the service. In informing them that she knew of no such gathering, Felicity had felt herself slip in their esteem, as if she had presented herself as more central to Coates’s life and death than was actually the case, and had now been found out and deservingly shamed.
Leaning toward Felicity, Janice whispered, “There must be
something
afterwards. If the family isn’t doing anything, the college must be. His department, maybe?
Someone?
”
“No,” Felicity murmured. “No one is. You sound as if you expect me to.”
“Certainly not,” Janice whispered. “You’ve done more than enough already.”
“What do you mean ‘more than enough’?” Felicity eyed Janice with annoyance. In selecting the medium blue suit she wore, Felicity had taken care to avoid the black-from-head-to-toe apparel suitable for close relatives. Janice, a stranger, was in deep mourning. A wisp of black lace was pinned unflatteringly on top of her head, and she had on a black dress and black high-heeled shoes.
“Finding him. Taking his cat.”
“Cats. Plural.”
Sonya put a finger to her lips. Who was she to enforce the rules of propriety? In Felicity’s view, Sonya’s loose layers of pale blue cotton and, worse, her espadrilles were as inappropriate as Janice’s formal black. In British cozy mysteries, churchwomen were always arranging flowers and polishing brasses, activities for which Sonya was suitably costumed. If Felicity had known no one in the church, she’d still have been embarrassed to be seen with Janice and Sonya, but, just as mystery novels had led her to hope, Detective Dave Valentine was in attendance. At Janice and Sonya’s insistence, the three women were in the last row, so Felicity had a good view of Valentine, who was only three rows ahead, in a pew toward the right. Despite the distraction of her companions, she’d seen him enter, and she’d also studied everyone else in church, which was perhaps a third full. No one bore even the slightest resemblance to the weird woman in the police sketch. Felicity had, however, been able to identify William Coates—poor Billy Goats!—who had entered from the front of the church just before the mass had begun. The late Dora Coates had perhaps had very thin eyebrows or had carried the genes for them: A dilution of his father’s genetic influence had left William with normal eyebrows and, indeed, with an altogether ordinary appearance. The priest had gone on and on about the depth of Quinlan Coates’s grief for Dora. Maybe her husband had missed being married to someone with corrective eyebrow DNA. In any case, William was of medium height and had brown hair. The only distinctive thing about him was that he sat all alone at his father’s funeral. The newspaper hadn’t mentioned a wife, but didn’t he have relatives or friends?
Felicity’s observations were interrupted by the rising of the congregation. Unfamiliar with Roman Catholic practices, she was contenting herself with standing when others stood and sitting when they sat. Sonya was doing the same. Janice, however, had genuflected when the three women had entered the sanctuary, and, despite her propensity for whispering during the mass, kept kneeling and crossing herself with the other worshipers.
Leaning across Felicity, Sonya violated her own ban on talking to whisper, “Janice, I didn’t know you were Catholic.”
“I’m not. I just want to fit in.”
Unable to contain herself, Felicity muttered, “When in Rome . . .”
Sonya smiled silently and dug Felicity in the ribs, but Janice made a sour face and focused her attention on the priest. For the remainder of the mass, the women said nothing aloud, but Felicity took the opportunity to address the Almighty.
“Dear God,” she prayed, “Quinlan Coates’s worth as human being falls in Your purview and not mine, but in case You’ve forgotten, as would be understandable at Your advanced age, he was wonderful to his cats, Edith and Brigitte, who, if they could, would implore You to show the same love and generosity to his immortal soul that he lavished on them. Sincerely yours, Felicity Pride.” As an afterthought, she added, “Amen.”

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