Scratch the Surface

been very stressful.”
    “Poor you. At least you don’t have to go to work every day.”
    “Angie, I work at home, but I do work. And I’m the first person to say that I don’t miss teaching. I’m sorry you’re still stuck in the classroom.”
    “Well, thank God for cell phones. They’re the only thing that keeps me sane.”
    Angie taught in a middle school in an impoverished city that had once been a mill town. Whenever Felicity read or heard about laudable efforts to recruit bright, well-educated college graduates to teach economically disadvantaged students in public schools, she thought of her sister, who was exactly the kind of teacher in immediate need of replacement.
    “I was a rotten teacher myself,” Felicity said.
    “I am not a rotten teacher! Why would you say such a thing when you know that I’m stuck here with these obnoxious kids who don’t give a damn about anything, least of all school. Wasn’t it enough that you had to go and suck up to Bob and Thelma without rubbing it in?”
    “Speaking of Bob and Thelma—” Felicity began.
    “Don’t! Just don’t! The less I have to hear about them, the better! I gotta go.” And she hung up.
    On the theory that toxins might as well be consumed all at once instead of little by little, Felicity immediately called her mother, who had bored her with family stories for five decades and should therefore be easy to pump for information about Uncle Bob. He wouldn’t have told his sister about financial shenanigans that would account for the cash, but Mary might know something without understanding its significance.
    Mary answered the phone with a thick, “Hello?”
    “Mother, it’s Felicity.”
    “Who?”
    “Felicity!”
    “Let me turn down the television.” After the inevitable and, in Felicity’s opinion, unnecessarily prolonged delay, Mary returned to the phone. “Who did you say you were?”
    “ Felicity!” The impulse to shout was uncontrollable and had become more so after Felicity, in desperation, had dragged her mother to an audiologist. The result of the exam had been unequivocal: Mary Pride had exceptionally acute hearing. After arranging to visit her mother that same afternoon, Felicity slammed down the phone. How could she have imagined that her mother bore her a strong enough grudge to retaliate by leaving a murder victim at her front door? Far from bearing her a grudge, her mother couldn’t even remember who she was.
     

 
    Newton Park Estates could properly be called a housing development: A developer had bought a tract of land and built houses on it. Because the collection of multimillion-dollar houses was organized as a condominium, each dwelling was a unit. If Felicity had felt secure about the position in the world to which her recent inheritance had elevated her, she would have recognized the absurdity of referring to her opulent abode as a unit in a housing development; in reading the morning paper, she would have responded with amusement rather than outrage. Her hypersensitivity to the perceived slight stemmed largely from the irrational feeling that the innocent, if misleading, little newspaper article had mistaken her living situation for her mother’s. Mary Robertson Pride occupied a one-bedroom unit in a new and attractive complex intended to provide senior citizens with affordable apartments. The Robertson clan unanimously agreed that Mary lived in a garden apartment in a small retirement community. No one, not even Felicity, ever said that Mary Robertson lived in public housing.
    The complex certainly bore no resemblance to the notoriously rundown and crime-ridden projects of the inner city. On the contrary, its two-story buildings were covered in cedar shingles, their trim was freshly painted in cranberry, the foundation shrubs were neatly pruned, and mulched paths ran from building to building and down to a small pond. Inside, the hallways and apartments were bright, and a social center offered many activities in which Mary refused to participate on the grounds that she was a better Scrabble player and bridge player than anyone else there, and she had no interest in yoga, nature walks, or, indeed, any other form of physical exercise. Still, it was because of the retirement community’s overall excellence that Bob Robertson had used his considerable clout to move his sister to the top of the long waiting list for available units. He had also been responsible for the negligence with which Mary’s