Scratch the Surface

hold paint, and many of the kitchens must date to the twenties and thirties. Imagine the bathrooms! Furthermore, every house was defaced by ugly power lines and cables that stretched from utility poles inadequately camouflaged by overgrown trees. Newton Park, in contrast, had underground utilities. New roofs. New kitchens. New bathrooms. New everything! No wonder the snobs were jealous!
    Arriving home, Felicity lugged the big, awkward carrier inside via the back door. She wasn’t exactly avoiding the vestibule, she told herself; she was simply taking the expedient route. After a moment of debate, she decided not to haul the carrier up to the bedroom, but to look through the grill of its door and examine its occupant, Brigitte, here in the bright light of the kitchen. After all, once Brigitte was loose, she’d disappear under a bed, where she might remain indefinitely. If the preliminary examination warranted an immediate trip to the vet, there’d be no need to hunt her down and repeat the ordeal of getting her into the carrier; the carrier, with the cat inside, could go promptly back out to the Honda. With these thoughts in mind, Felicity put the carrier on the kitchen table and looked in. Far from languishing, Brigitte was pressing her slate-gray nose against the mesh door, thus displaying eyes of an amber even richer and deeper than Edith’s. Expecting Brigitte to bolt, Felicity unlatched the door. Before she had time to open it, Brigitte pushed against it, boldly sauntered onto the table, and dropped lightly to the floor. Felicity could now see that the blue-gray of her long, fluffy coat was identical to the blue-gray of Edith’s. Brigitte, however, was a dainty little creature who moved lightly and gracefully. As if blessed with the dowser’s gift for sensing sources of water, she leaped to the counter next to the sink, planted herself there, and trained those extraordinary eyes on Felicity.
    “Wait!” Felicity whispered. “Don’t run away!”
    The plea was entirely unnecessary. Moving swiftly, Felicity filled one of Aunt Thelma’s new cereal bowls with water and placed it on the floor. Brigitte flew off the counter and, as she drank, Felicity opened a can of cat food, spooned it into a bowl, and deposited it next to the water. Abandoning all appearance of delicacy, Brigitte attacked the food as if hammering it with her little head. Convinced that her touch would frighten off the cat, Felicity controlled the impulse to run her fingertips along the silky fur on Brigitte’s back. Instead, she made do with watching quietly as Brigitte emptied the bowl. Having done so, Brigitte still failed to run away. Unintimidated by her new surroundings, she dashed across the kitchen and, as if on invisible wings, rose to a counter and then to the top of the refrigerator, where she perched and peered around, like a bird that had alighted on a treetop.
    The phone rang. Expecting a call from Detective Valentine, Felicity was startled to hear the voice of Ursula Novack, who moved rapidly through preliminaries to ask about Brigitte.
    “She’s right here,” Felicity said. “She was hungry and thirsty, but she’s fine now.”
    “There’s nothing shy about her!” Ursula said. “She couldn’t be any more different from Edith. That’s why Edith was Quin’s to begin with. She hated cat shows.”
    Shy? The concept of a shy cat was new to Felicity. “Edith is traumatized,” she said. She went on to relate the story of finding Edith with the body of her owner, Quinlan Coates. “The police haven’t identified him,” she finished. “I’ve left them a message with his name and address.”
    “Just like in one of your books!” exclaimed Ursula, whom Felicity was starting to like a great deal.
    “It is like that, isn’t it?” Felicity asked, as if the similarity had previously eluded her. “And I must say that I did feel a little like a detective when I went to rescue Brigitte. A neighbor let me in. In one of my books, he might turn out to be the murderer. ”
    “Maybe he is!”
    “He didn’t do anything suspicious. But maybe. Ursula, was Quinlan Coates a friend of yours?”
    “No, not really. We stayed in touch about Brigitte and Edith. He was very good about that, letting me know that they were doing well. But I never met him. When he decided he wanted a Chartreux, he got in touch with a friend of mine in Connecticut who has one of my cats, and she sent him to me. That’s when he got Edith. I was showing