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 (3 page)

A search of the Web had confirmed the young woman’s statement and provided a term that Felicity found consoling:
piracy
. “My books have been pirated by Russians!” she began to announce. “Pirated!” By comparison, it would have been nothing to report that her books had merely been translated. As it was, she made a great fuss with every writers’ organization to which she belonged.

“The contracts,” she informed Ronald, “are just the way I remembered. They’re signed. And the edition I saw is exactly what the contract says: two books published together in one hardcover. But there’s nothing I can do. My agent is all sympathy, but she doesn’t hold out any hope.”

Before leaving Newbright Books, Felicity bought two mysteries. She had been reading the genre since her Nancy Drew days and felt justified in buying as many mysteries as she pleased from Ronald, not only because she wanted to support his business and enjoyed the books, but because she liked keeping a tax-deductible eye on the competition. Neither of her purchases had anything to do with cats. As a matter of principle, Felicity never contributed to the royalties of other cat-mystery writers. She took it for granted that her rivals weren’t foolish enough to buy her books new, either.

As was her habit, Felicity took the long route home. She had inherited her house from her maternal uncle, Robert Burns Robertson, who, together with his wife, Thelma, had died in an automobile accident the previous summer. Uncle Bob and Aunt Thelma had owned the place for only a year. It was one of twenty gigantic houses in a pricey development called Newton Park Estates. The would-be estates, which were organized as condominiums and governed by a condominium association, abutted the upscale suburb of Newton, but, as the residents preferred not to have mentioned, were actually in the Brighton section of Boston. Neither Felicity nor any of the other residents of Newton Park Estates ever referred to the neighborhood as a development. Similarly, everyone avoided such phrases as
tract mansions
and
McMansions
. Still, the houses were three or four stories high, and all sat on very small lots. The late Bob Robertson’s sensitivity to derogatory remarks about his splendid abode was the reason he had disinherited Felicity’s mother, Mary, who had made the mistake on her first and only visit to Newton Park Estates of remarking, “My father’s house has mini-mansions. Isn’t that what the Bible says?” Felicity’s sister, Angie, had lost her inheritance by snickering at her mother’s joke.

Together with the house, Felicity had inherited Aunt Thelma’s car, a black Honda CR-V. Uncle Bob’s Cadillac Escalade had perished with its owner. The all-wheel-drive Honda was a far more youthful, trendy, and economical choice than Felicity would have expected of the dowdy, elderly Thelma, who had been a pale-green full-size Oldsmobile type. Before the inheritance, Felicity had rented an apartment in a three-decker in Somerville and driven an ancient Chevy Nova, a vehicle that had relentlessly reminded her that
No va
was Spanish for
Doesn’t go
.

On this Monday evening, Felicity’s Honda not only went, but went where she wanted it to go, which was westward on Commonwealth Avenue and past the turnoff that would have taken her swiftly home. Following Commonwealth Avenue, she drove into Newton and followed a circuitous route that eventually wandered uphill to a neighborhood of narrow streets, spacious lots, and large houses of diverse styles and ages. The neighborhood, Norwood Hill, had grown over many years—it was anything but a development—and some of its houses were grand enough to be called mansions without prefatory mention of tract, Mc, or mini. In fact, the working-class streets leading to the Brighton entrance to Newton Park Estates were far better maintained than those in this prosperous suburb. The Brighton pavements were free of potholes, the sidewalks were wide, and the closely spaced streetlights provided bright illumination. In contrast, the little road in Newton that led to the Estates was bumpy. There were sidewalks in front of only a few of its houses. Tall Norway maples loomed overhead; in Felicity’s opinion, the trees were overgrown and in need of pruning. Those in Newton Park were saplings. On Norwood Hill, the streetlights were spaced far apart, and some of the electric bulbs had burned out or were obscured by debris from sparrows’ nests. Furthermore, the Norwood Hill Neighborhood Association had frequently written to the Newton Park Estates Condominium Association to implore the condominium owners to reduce traffic on Norwood Hill by using the Brighton route.

The knowledge that she was making her way home along a bumpy, dark, and hostile route bothered Felicity not at all. Although her talk and signing had drawn a small group, the fans had been enthusiastic, and, at a little local appearance, she was lucky to have had anything that might reasonably be called a “group.” Her own
Felines in Felony
had been in the stores for a month, whereas Isabelle Hotchkiss’s
Purrfectly Baffling
had just been released and was therefore bound to be selling well. As to the slip she’d made in autographing her book, the ridiculous mistake could be viewed as proof of her laudable determination to advance her career. On the passenger seat of the Honda were two promising new mysteries. In her refrigerator was a lovely salmon fillet. After cooking and eating the fish, she’d take a hot bath and curl up in bed with one of her new books. Life was far better than it had been in the apartment in Somerville with the old car that didn’t go.

At the end of the dark stretch of Newton road, Felicity glanced at the prominent green sign that read:

NEWTON PARK ESTATES
A Private Community
Residents Only

Despite considerable conflict between the Newton Park residents and those of Norwood Hill, the precise meaning of the sign had never been clarified. According to most Estates residents, the only people who had any business driving or even walking along its streets were condominium owners and their guests; all others were trespassers. The rule had proven impossible to enforce. Fire departments in both communities insisted on access, and the residents feared that if they pressed for a gated community, they’d find themselves gated out of Newton, with access only through Brighton. As it was, few Newton drivers passed through Newton Park Estates, and few people from either neighborhood walked there. Still, the green sign conveyed the message of exclusivity.

The developer of Newton Park Estates had taken care to give each of the twenty houses a distinctive appearance. Some had garages for two cars, others for three. The house colors included pale gray, pale green, pale beige, and pale yellow. Some yards had low picket fences; others were unfenced. The entryways differed from house to house. Felicity’s house, located in the middle of the Estates, was pale gray with white trim. It rose to a height of only three stories and had a two-car garage. Its entryway was, however, elaborate, consisting as it did of a large glassed-in vestibule with a glass outer door, a tile floor, and, protected from the elements, a shiny oak front door with a brass knocker and glass panels on either side. One of the small luxuries of Felicity’s postinheritance life was an automatic garage door opener attached to the visor of the Honda above the driver’s seat. With a sense of pleasure in causing one thing in life effortlessly and reliably to do her bidding, Felicity pressed the button on the garage door opener as she turned the Honda into her driveway. In contrast to the old houses on Norwood Hill, which had long, steep driveways and garages inaccessibly placed in back of or under the houses, Newton Park had been designed for New England winters; short, flat drives led to garages attached to the sides of the houses. The concept of a service area screened from public view was prominent on Norwood Hill and non-existent in the Estates, where garage doors were, in effect, continuations of the facades of the houses.

When Felicity’s lefthand garage door had obediently done her bidding, she drove what she still thought of as Aunt Thelma’s Honda into the garage, which was clean, white, and empty except for a large yellow trash barrel, a green recycling bin, an orange plastic snow shovel, and a pail of ice-melting crystals. Felicity didn’t participate in any sports that required the sort of equipment stored in garages; she didn’t ski and hadn’t ridden a bicycle since the age of eleven. After parking and locking the car, she ignored the door that led directly into the house, an entrance that she used mainly when she’d shopped for groceries or bought large items. As she’d done in taking the long route home, she took the long but appealing route along a stone-paved path, and up a slightly sloping bluestone walk and a flight of bluestone steps to the outer door of the vestibule. The house, like Thelma’s car, seemed to belong to wealthy relatives. In using the front door, Felicity felt a bit like a visitor but also like the mistress of the house, a person who didn’t have to use the servants’ entrance but could enjoy surveying her impressive domain.

Although Felicity had brought with her to the suburbs the urban habit of always locking all doors, she made an exception in the case of the outer door to the vestibule. In late September, soon after she had moved in, two boxes containing her author copies of
Felines in Felony
had been delivered during a storm and, because the outer door was locked, had been left out in the rain. Since then, she’d always kept the door unlocked to provide refuge for materials sent by her agent and her editor, and packages containing items she had bought on eBay.

On that damp, chilly November night, the vestibule contained two bodies, one dead, one alive. The dead body was that of a small man in a gray suit. Wide strips of silver-gray duct tape covered his nose and mouth, as if someone had made a grisly effort to match the tape to his clothing. He was curled on his side with his head at an odd and uncomfortable-looking angle. His hair was gray, as was his only prominent feature, long, thick, bushy eyebrows. Snuggled next to the man’s belly was a large shorthaired blue-gray cat, its eyes closed, its belly rising and falling in evidence of breath and thus of life.

Felicity froze in place. In her books, Prissy LaChatte managed to investigate murders without encountering the horror of corpses. In the rare scenes in which Prissy viewed a victim’s remains, the decedent was usually on civilized display in a funeral home. Even then, Prissy avoided the casket. The corpse in Felicity’s vestibule was in no condition for public viewing. To say nothing of the stench. Such was Felicity’s policy in writing about death: Say nothing of the stench! As to the blue-gray cat, it had no place here asleep at her doorstep, dwelling as it did in a sphere of existence where, in Felicity’s opinion, cats did not belong; in nasty contrast to the feline characters in her books, the cat was indisputably real. Indeed, the entire scene was one she would never have written: It was monstrous. And it was right here in her vestibule.

THREE

Edith dislikes anything
new, but is accustomed to this mild grogginess and usually enjoys it. It wears off quickly, leaving her in the mood for a lovely nap. This evening, the slight dopiness that remains is unpleasant, as is this place, to which Edith has four principal objections. They are big ones.

First, she has never been here before. Her characterological mistrust of unfamiliar locations has been reinforced by experiences in them. In particular, despite her drowsiness, she feels a wordless, visionless apprehension that strangers will lift her up in the air and stretch her out, thus putting her at risk of falling. There is a lot of her to fall; she weighs thirteen pounds.

Second, this small space is cold. Her dense blue-gray coat, which was much admired by the lifting-in-the-air strangers, is supposedly an adaptation to a rough life in the outdoors. She is in no danger of hypothermia and is not afraid of catching a chill. Rather, she is used to being indoors and likes the warmth of sunny windowsills and beds equipped with comforters or electric blankets.

Third, this place has the repellent reek of litter in radical need of changing. Edith, who has high standards of personal hygiene, has spent her life in establishments with excellent litter-box service and expects no less even in alarmingly new and hatefully cold hostelries.

Fourth, Edith has had nothing to eat since ten o’clock the previous evening and is ravenous. She is also thirsty. Here, there is nothing to eat or drink.

Edith nestles next to the means to take her home, home being a familiar, warm, and clean abode where no one rouses her terror of falling and where there are always bowls of fresh water and dry food. Canned food appears often. Edith wants to go home, but the means is cold and getting colder. It does not respond to her.

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