Scratch the Surface

didn’t he call the microchip company? He has Edith’s microchip number. He should have reported her missing. And what about Brigitte?”
    “Who?”
    “Quin’s other Chartreux. She’s a fluffy. Edith has her premiership, but you can’t show fluffies. Well, some people are starting to, but not as Chartreux.”
    Nervous about exposing her ignorance to a member of her adoring public, Felicity limited herself to making a small sound that she hoped would indicate comprehension.
    “Edith Piaf and Brigitte Bardot.” To Felicity’s relief, she anglicized the pronunciations. It was more than enough effort to remember to pronounce r’s in English words without having to twist her tongue around an unpronounceable foreign language just to say the names of cats. And Chartreux ! Or “Char-troo.” In either language, that rotten r was lurking in wait for persons slaving to throw off the chains of a Boston accent. “Those aren’t their registered names, but Quin is a professor of Romance languages, and he wanted French names.”
    “Quin is...?” The young man behind the counter handed Felicity a slip of paper. “Oh, I have it here. Quinlan Coates.” Now that her attention had been drawn to the veterinary assistant or technician, whichever he was, Felicity saw that he was impatient and belatedly realized that she was monopolizing the phone line. “Look, I think we need to talk more. If it’s okay with you, I’ll take, uh, Edith home with me, and I’ll call you from there.”
    “It’s more than okay. Obviously, Edith couldn’t be in better hands. And I’m sure you’re as worried about Brigitte as I am. Really, your love for cats just shines through in your books. Look, take Edith home with you, and I’ll call Quin right now, and we’ll get this whole thing straightened out. You didn’t give Edith any vaccinations, did you? Because she’s up to date...”
    After listening to a brief lecture on the risks of immunization, Felicity obtained the name of the breeder, which was Ursula Novack, and her phone number and e-mail address, and once Ursula had given permission to the clinic to release Edith to Felicity, Felicity was finally allowed to take the cat and go home. Driving Aunt Thelma’s car back to Aunt Thelma and Uncle Bob’s house, she alternately fumed about Edith’s plain, flat, unliterary, and throughly unmysterious name and, as was habitual with her, plotted the next steps in a murder investigation. Usually, it was Prissy LaChatte who took those steps. This time, it would be Felicity Pride, assisted, of course, by her prescient, communicative, and lovable feline companion, Edith. Edith! By her prescient, communicative, and lovable feline companion. Period.
     

 
    In Felicity’s years as a kindergarten teacher, she had been forced to write lesson plans. She’d hated the task, and ever since liberating herself from her day job, had luxuriated in the freedom of having no fixed schedule, not even a self-imposed one. Felicity attended meetings and made and kept appointments, but she shunned daily to-do lists, weekly calendars showing tasks to be accomplished, and other activities that would have felt like personal lesson plans doomed to transform her life into one more classroom. A prolific writer, she had no need to impose deadlines on herself and had never missed a contractual deadline for the delivery of a manuscript. Consequently, her recent experience in planning events consisted mainly of outlining her Prissy LaChatte books and of scrambling to think of ways to promote sales.
    Now, returning home from the veterinary clinic, she prioritized her tasks in the way most familiar to her, namely, by asking herself what Prissy LaChatte would do first. Call Ursula Novack? Return a call to Detective Valentine, who had left a message on her machine? Examine the fireproof box of cash? Certainly not. Prissy would first take care of the cats. Then, based on the clues she’d found, she’d get one step ahead of the police by discovering the identity of the murder victim. In other words, she must feed Edith—and, incidentally, herself—and then rush to the rescue of poor Brigitte.
    In reality, her first step was to release Edith from the cat carrier, which would be needed for Brigitte. Instead of returning Edith to the confines of the upstairs bedroom, Felicity left the carrier on the kitchen floor. Having watched the skilled Dr. Furbish, she was prepared to reach in and gently remove the big cat. As it