Scratch the Surface (25 page)
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
“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.
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.
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.
She eventually realized that the nausea was abating. Her great need now was to avoid dehydration. Ginger ale just might stay down. She dragged herself out of bed and put on a heavy robe, but once in the hallway, couldn’t find the light switch and decided to make do with the light from her open bedroom door. Weak and lightheaded, she clung to the banister. Consequently, when her right foot landed on fur instead of wood, she lost her balance for only a moment and was surprised to discover that the presence of the cats was comforting; she was sick, but at least she wasn’t sick and alone in this big house. By the time she reached the kitchen, Edith was perched on top of the refrigerator. Felicity thought of opening a can of food for her, but the prospect of smelling one of those vile kitty dinners was unbearable. Ignoring Edith, she poured herself a half glass of ginger ale from a large bottle, stirred out the bubbles, and took a trial sip. Yes, she was ready for liquids. Carrying the glass and the bottle back upstairs, she realized that she was too dizzy to walk a straight line; the bottle, the half-filled glass, and her faltering gait probably made her look like a drunk.
Collapsing in bed, she left the reading light on, but felt too ill to read and, in particular, didn’t feel like reading any of the Isabelle Hotchkiss books that she’d stacked on her night table. Chilled and weak, she lay in bed hoping that the cats would show up to keep her company, but Edith would probably be too shy to jump on the bed while Felicity was in it, and Brigitte was obviously playing with something in the bathroom. Through the open door, Felicity heard the soft sound of an object being batted here and there. She idly wondered what Brigitte had stolen. A tube of mascara? A lipstick? As Felicity was about to drift off, Brigitte sailed onto the bed. In her mouth was the disposable blue plastic razor that Felicity had left on the rim of the tub. Felicity’s experience as a cat owner, consisting as it did of copyright ownership, failed to generate alarm about injury to Brigitte and consequent vet bills. Instead of seizing the razor, she lazily watched Brigitte tote it around and noticed that the blue razor and the cat’s blue-gray fur and amber eyes made a pretty combination of colors. It then occurred to her that if she were living in a cat mystery featuring someone other than Prissy LaChatte, Brigitte’s choice of the razor would represent a message about solving the murder. The famous Cat Who, Koko, didn’t knock random books off shelves; rather, he made meaningful choices, albeit choices that Jim Qwilleran was often slow to interpret. Did anyone in the Coates case have a name connected to
razor
? Alas, there were no Shavers, Beards, Beardsleys, or Sharps, nor was there anyone who shared a name with any of the well-known brands of razors. Furthermore, Coates hadn’t had his throat cut. A pun?
Raiser
? Nothing had been lifted, had it?
Razor
. Occam’s razor, the simplest-is-best principle of logic that required shaving away concepts or elements that weren’t needed. Was murder an example?
razor
? Alas, there were no Shavers, Beards, Beardsleys, or Sharps, nor was there anyone who shared a name with any of the well-known brands of razors. Furthermore, Coates hadn’t had his throat cut. A pun?
Raiser
? Nothing had been lifted, had it?
Razor
. Occam’s razor, the simplest-is-best principle of logic that required shaving away concepts or elements that weren’t needed. Was murder an example?
As Felicity’s eyes were about to close, her gaze wandered to the stack of Isabelle Hotchkiss books. Who was she? And what was her link to Quinlan Coates’s cats? Occam’s razor: Start with Quinlan Coates and his cats, Edith and Brigitte. Trim off unnecessary elements: Shave away hypothetical friends of Quinlan Coates, throw out relatives of his who could be mystery writers, discard the weird woman in the police sketch, and what simple explanation remained? Occam’s razor: Quinlan Coates
was
Isabelle Hotchkiss.
was
Isabelle Hotchkiss.
Too exhausted and sick to pursue the revelation, Felicity fell asleep. She needed to recover her strength. She had work to do.
THIRTY-THREE
On Monday morning,
Felicity substituted tea for her usual coffee and ate nothing for breakfast except a slice of toast thinly spread with Dundee marmalade. She felt a little weak, but was no longer acutely ill. As she was drinking her second cup of tea, the phone rang, and Sonya Bogosian informed her that she was fortunate.
Felicity substituted tea for her usual coffee and ate nothing for breakfast except a slice of toast thinly spread with Dundee marmalade. She felt a little weak, but was no longer acutely ill. As she was drinking her second cup of tea, the phone rang, and Sonya Bogosian informed her that she was fortunate.
“Janice,” said Sonya, “has by far the worst case. Hadley went to the Brigham and Women’s Emergency Room and got treated and sent home. Jim’s still sick, but he’s toughing it out, and the best that can be said for me is that I’ve stopped throwing up. But Janice got very dehydrated. She fainted, and her downstairs neighbors heard her hit the floor and came running up, and one of them drove her to the hospital. Janice had them call me. She’s going to be all right, but she’s too sick to talk to anyone yet. She’s on I.V. fluids.”
Felicity silently congratulated herself on having eaten only a few bites of the half sandwich she’d made for herself at the board meeting. She’d also had the sense to keep herself hydrated. “Janice probably ate the leftovers for dinner,” she said. “Sometimes the severity depends on how much you’ve consumed.”
“What business did she have eating the leftovers? That food belonged to Witness!”
Felicity was far more interested in her Hotchkiss-Coates revelation than she was in Janice’s possible consumption of contaminated food that had rightfully belonged to other people. “Sonya,” she said impatiently, “do you honestly wish you’d taken your share home?”
“Well, no, of course not. Anyway, what I want to know is exactly what you ate. Last night when I was so sick, I promised myself that I’d find out what happened. The mayonnaise strikes me as a likely culprit.”
“Actually, commercial mayonnaise is a very unlikely source of food poisoning. I was going to use it in a book one time, but I read up on it and decided not to. I just threw suspicion on the mayonnaise instead of actually implicating it. And I used homemade mayonnaise, made with raw eggs. That’s the only kind of mayonnaise that’s likely to make anyone sick.”
“That was hardly homemade mayonnaise we had yesterday. I can’t imagine that Janice made it herself. Did you have any?”
“A little. I had a ham sandwich. Well, half of one. With mayonnaise, lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes. But it wasn’t very good. I didn’t finish it. Oh, and I had some cake.”
“Can tomatoes cause food poisoning?”
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