Scratch the Surface

excuse, for having abandoned her reading of Felicity’s books.
    After turning off the computer and shutting off lights, Felicity made her way upstairs. Entering her room, she found Brigitte asleep on her pillow. The little cat was not sprawled awkwardly on her back at she’d been when Felicity had discovered her at Quinlan Coates’s apartment. Rather, she was curled up in what Felicity saw as normal cat fashion, her head tucked in, her tail curved around her body. Inexperienced cat owner that she was, Felicity never considered reclaiming her own pillow and her own side of the bed by picking up Brigitte and moving her; although she now knew that cats slept a lot, she had no understanding of the depth of feline sleep, nor did she appreciate the capacity of awakened cats to return instantly to oblivion. Consequently, motivated mainly by the fear that Brigitte, like Aunt Thelma’s cat, would get her number and run away, she performed her bedtime preparations in near silence. Entering the bathroom that adjoined the bedroom, she left the light off until she’d gently pulled the door shut, and, after finishing her ablutions, turned off the light before opening the door. On tiptoe, she moved her book from the nightstand on Brigitte’s side of the bed, carried it to the other side, and returned for a flashlight that she kept in the nightstand drawer. Easing herself between the sheets, she curled up on her side and read by flashlight until she joined Brigitte in sleep.
    In the morning, Brigitte was no longer on the pillow but had moved to the top of a high dresser, which she had draped herself upon in a manner that looked precarious; she seemed to be a sort of feline scarf carelessly tossed on the dresser and in danger of slipping off. She remained there while Felicity put on her robe and slippers, and when Felicity descended to the kitchen, Brigitte followed her. To Felicity’s surprise, in the middle of the kitchen floor was a little pile of gray fur that was far too long and silky to have come from Edith. When cats groomed themselves, were they in the habit of pulling out dead hair, gathering it together, and leaving it for their owners to clean up? After starting the coffeemaker, Felicity topped off the bowl of dry cat food and opened a can of vile-smelling but supposedly gourmet cat food. As usual, Brigitte danced around, sniffed the stuff with great interest, and then turned to the dry kibble and ate lustily. Not long thereafter, while Felicity was examining her morning paper over her eggs and coffee, Edith appeared at the door to the kitchen and simply stood squarely there on all four paws with a bewildered expression on her face, as if she couldn’t understand why she wasn’t still under the bed. Then she uttered a single brief, soft, high-pitched meow that sounded as if had come from the mouth of a tiny kitten. With some notion that animals disliked being stared at, Felicity kept one eye on the paper and the other on Edith, who suddenly ran across the floor, came to a halt by the dish of canned food, huddled down, and began to eat. Whereas Brigitte moved lightly and gracefully, Edith, with her short legs and big, bulky body, looked to Felicity as if she hadn’t been designed for running and didn’t trust herself to perform the act competently.
    To avoid making Edith self-conscious, Felicity concentrated on the newspaper, in which she found an obituary for Quinlan Coates. The accompanying photo was not the one on the jacket of the book in his apartment, but seemed to have been taken decades earlier. Coates’s hair and his distinctive eyebrows were dark rather than gray, and the face belonged to a man in his late thirties or early forties. The obituary was almost exclusively about his professional achievements: his publications, visiting professorships, and honors. His beloved wife, Dora, had died ten years earlier. He was survived by a son, William G. Coates, of Brookline. A funeral mass would be celebrated at the Church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola at Boston College the next morning. There was no mention of his cats.
    It was the thought of representing Edith and Brigitte that gave Felicity the idea of attending the funeral mass. Once having thought about going, she firmly resolved to do so. In mystery novels, homicide investigators invariably showed up at victims’ funerals, usually in the hope that the murderers would do the same. Would Detective Dave Valentine be there? Detective Dave Valentine, the