Scratch the Surface

not murderers.”
    “They resent your inheritance.”
    “They were horrible to Bob and Thelma. I was nice. There’s no more to it.” Raising her glass, she paused for a moment. Ronald avoided the usual toasts to health and friends in favor of book titles. Felicity had picked up the custom. “Living Well Is the Best Revenge,” she said.
    Ronald took a sip of wine. “Mommy Dearest. Do you have any idea where he is?”
    “My mother is admittedly toxic, but she is female.”
    “The cat. Have you looked for him?”
    “First of all, I have to remind you that I am the one who rescued the cat, so please stop making that face, as if I disliked cats. He was in the vestibule with the man. I told you this on the phone. Whoever left the body in my vestibule deliberately left the cat there, too. And when I made the mistake of getting my neighbors, the Wangs, Mr. Wang was horrible to the cat, so I picked him up, the cat, obviously, and carried him around to the back door and brought him inside. But then he took off. I put out tuna, and I called him, but I haven’t seen him since I found him under a bed upstairs. Isn’t that where cats always go?”
    Ronald drank some wine and then evidently reached a decision about the cat toys he’d been examining. After picking up a long rod with feathers and jingle bells fastened to one end, he rose and said, “Let’s go see.”
    The grand scale of Uncle Bob and Aunt Thelma’s house made the search for the cat a challenging task. Felicity was sure that the animal hadn’t gone down the stairs that led to the back door and to what Felicity persisted in thinking of as the basement even though the space contained a family room, a big exercise room, the little wine cellar, and other finished rooms. The upper floors, however, offered countless hiding places. Although Felicity used only the master bedroom suite, which had a dressing room and a luxurious bathroom, she kept the doors to the other five bedrooms open, mainly to remind herself that she wasn’t living in a hotel. And, as Ronald pointed out, the cat wasn’t necessarily still in the same place.
    “Cats hide under beds!” Felicity insisted when Ronald got down on his belly to peer under the living room furniture.
    “Cats hide,” Ronald said. “That much is true. He isn’t 1 here.”
    “Well, I’m going upstairs where he was before. You can waste your time here if you want, but I’m telling you, Ronald, that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
    Felicity headed upstairs, and Ronald indulged her by following. In each of the five unoccupied bedrooms, he silently « lowered himself to the floor and, raising the bed skirts in which Thelma had dressed the beds, searched in vain for the cat. It was only when Ronald had stuck his head under Felicity’s king-size bed that he tapped a finger against his lips and mimed the instruction to her to close all the doors in the room. He raised the blue-and-white bed skirt, eased the feather-and-bell toy under the bed, and moved it slowly back and forth, in and out. Just as Felicity was on the verge of ordering him to crawl under the damn bed and grab the cat, a large paw shot out. And shot in again. It took Ronald a full five minutes of coaxing and luring to persuade the cat to emerge. Once Ronald was sitting on the floor holding it firmly his arms, Felicity’s impatience and irritation turned to satisfaction: Exactly as she had told Ronald, the cat had been under a bed, and not just any bed, either, but her bed. She felt proud and flattered that it had moved to her room. She also felt resentful that it was Ronald who was holding the cat.
    “This is a magnificent cat,” Ronald said. “I wonder what she is. We’ll have to look her up. Russian Blue?”
    “Oh, I think she’s a beautiful gray alley cat,” said Felicity with an effort to place no emphasis on the she.
    “She is a she.” Ronald now had the cat on her back and was stroking her chest. “Mature but still young. Clean teeth. No fleas. On the heavy side but not obese. She’s in good condition. Did you notice her eyes?”
    “Of course! They look like pieces of amber. How could I not notice them? They’re incredible.”
    “The pupils are dilated.”
    “Oh, I think that’s how they’re supposed to be.”
    “Dilated? I wonder if she’s been drugged. She’s awfully calm. Mellow.”
    “Drugged by the murderer! He drugged the cat and slaughtered the man. Maybe he drugged the man, too. Before he killed him. And left