Scratch the Surface

odor of food, both wet and dry. Still, Edith remained under the bed. Better safe than satiated. When the feathers and bell appeared, Edith was hip to the ploy, but prey drive triumphed, and Edith was nabbed. Now, under this new bed, she licks her paws as if she were smoothing ruffled feathers, as, in a sense, she is.
     

 
    Felicity allowed nothing to come between her and her commitment to regular grooming. At nine o’clock on Tuesday morning, she kept her appointment with Naomi, to whom she related the entire story of the small gray man and the large gray cat, including her tumble down the front steps; her rage at the perfidy of Mr. Wang; her rescue of the cat; her medicinal consumption of Uncle Bob’s single malt scotch; her embarrassment at the reek of fish; and her memory of the caber tossing at the Highland Games and of the kilted Dave Valentine’s oaklike legs. “Scots are famous for having knobby knees,” she told Naomi, “but his aren’t. They’re all muscle.”
    In telling the story to Naomi, Felicity was aware of whipping off a rough draft that would be revised and edited before the police gave her permission to present it to newspaper, television, and radio reporters, her fellow mystery writers, and others in a position to distribute it to the mass market. Dave Valentine’s knees would suffer deletion, and the nameless little man would move from the background to the foreground. It now seemed to Felicity that in responding to Valentine’s questions, she had senselessly limited herself to a dreary recitation of facts and had underemphasized her observations of the body. In mystery writing, it was an old saw that no one cared about the corpse. The same couldn’t be true of the police, could it? If so, why had there been no urgent message on her answering machine this morning, no plea for details she might have forgotten the previous evening, no request for her thoughts about means, motive, and opportunity? When she’d left for the salon, the police had been searching her yard and the surrounding area, but Valentine hadn’t been there, and those present had merely nodded to her. Novels, she reflected, were far more satisfying than was real life, especially the novels she wrote herself. If she were working from one of her own outlines, for example, she’d know why Mrs. Valentine had abandoned Prissy and the irresistible Morris and Tabitha.
    “Felicity,” Naomi demanded, “are you with us this morning? Your eyes are glassing over.” Painting a foil-encased strand of Felicity’s hair with chemicals, she added, “You haven’t gone and caught something from that stray cat, have you?”
    Although a concern for hygiene was, Felicity thought, an admirable trait in a hairdresser, it seemed to her that Naomi was nearly obsessed with germs. The overwhelmingly white salon could safely have served as an operating room. Naomi’s sanitary bent seemed to account for her hair, which was no more than two inches long and so devoid of color that Felicity suspected her of treating it with chlorine bleach. Fortunately, Naomi was only twenty-five and had excellent skin, so she carried off the startling effect. Felicity had never seen Naomi turn a client into a grotesque version of herself. Felicity considered her a gifted colorist and a clean one, too, of course. Naomi went through pair after pair of disposable latex gloves and always used freshly disinfected combs.
    “This is no stray cat,” Felicity said indignantly. “She is very well cared for. And what could I possibly catch from her?”
    “Something she got from the dead body! You said yourself she was right there with it. It gives me the willies to think about! You ought to be careful. That cat could be carrying some kind of awful disease. Was the body decomposing?” Felicity’s corpses were fresh or embalmed. She’d lately come to favor skeletons. Halloween, skeletons, candy: Bones had a happy association with food. As the author of works of light entertainment, Felicity believed in honoring the needs of her readers, some of whom devoured Prissy LaChatte over dinner or snacks. Decomposition was disgusting and therefore did not occur.
    “No,” Felicity said. “He had died recently. And there is nothing wrong with the cat. On the contrary, she is obviously healthy.”
    “She could be incubating something.”
    “You know,” said a woman seated in the next chair, “it’s not a bad idea to take the cat to a vet.”
    Felicity’s eyes had