Scratch the Surface

Dave Valentine with the coffee she was already brewing. In particular, her cupboards and refrigerator lacked such components of a Scottish breakfast as mush, canned beans, and kippers. She cheered up after remembering that in Scotland itself, she had once been served Nescafe cappuccino; to prepare an authentically Scottish breakfast, she should substitute instant coffee for her good French roast. If Valentine had any sense, he’d be happy with the bagels she removed from the freezer.
    The cats posed a problem. The bold Brigitte would put in an appearance, but it was desirable to have Edith the Heroine in view when her key role was revealed. Desperate to set the scene properly, Felicity went upstairs to the guest room where she’d dumped her purchases from the pet supply store and chose a toy that consisted of a yarn ball and jingle bell on a string fastened to a stick. Neither cat was in sight. She shook the toy vigorously. Brigitte immediately responded to the jingling by rushing into the room and batting at the toy. Shortly thereafter, the stolid Edith warily emerged from under the bed and joined Brigitte in aiming a paw at the yarn ball. Gradually moving to the hall and down the steep stairs, Felicity shook the toy, paused, and resumed her progress until she had finally lured both cats into the kitchen, where she hastened to open a can of food for Edith. It occurred to Felicity that a market existed for odorless canned cat food or possibly for a deodorizing powder to be shaken on the existing products. As it was, she had to settle for hoping that Edith would eat fast. While Edith savored her stinky second breakfast, Felicity shut all the doors to the kitchen to prevent the shy cat from escaping. Then, just in case the fresh coffee had lost its freshness, she acted with un-Scottish wastefulness by dumping it into the sink and making a new pot.
    Valentine had said he’d be right over. Where was he? As the coffee brewed, Felicity went to the powder room, brushed her hair, and reapplied lipstick. When the doorbell rang, she was pleased that Dave Valentine—or, as Felicity thought of him, Dave Valentine the Widower—had had the sensitivity to go to the back door instead of to the scene-of-the-crime door, so to speak. When she opened the door, he wished her good morning and accepted her offer of coffee. He was wearing khaki pants and a navy blue fleece pullover. How much friendlier than a suit! With the big, strapping Scot sitting there at Aunt Thelma’s kitchen table, Felicity felt a wave of guilt for having looked him up on the Web and found his picture.
    “Well,” she said, “maybe it’s not news to you at all, but I know where Quinlan Coates was late on Monday afternoon.” Without asking, she sliced a bagel and popped it into the toaster, which was a four-slice chrome appliance and, like all the other appliances in the house, brand new.
    “His movements on Monday would be news,” Valentine said. “We have his appointment book, from his apartment, but the entries are in some kind of personal shorthand. Not really shorthand, but notations, abbreviations that meant something to him. What’s there for Monday looks like the letters a, b, d.“
    “Angell. Blood. Donor. Edith, the cat who was left here, is a blood donor at Angell Memorial. Angell Animal Medical Center. It’s changed its name.”
    Where was Edith? She was somewhere in this kitchen. How irritating of her to disappear! As Felicity was scanning the room, Brigitte suddenly leaped onto the counter by the toaster and began to lick cream cheese from a tub that Felicity had opened and left there. Felicity threw out the cream cheese and substituted butter and jam from the refrigerator.
    “Edith is around somewhere. She was very traumatized by her horrible experience, but she’s beginning to recover. Anyway, the cats’ breeder, a woman named Ursula Novack, who lives in California, told me that Edith was a blood donor, and when I called Angell, the woman at the blood bank told me that Edith had given blood on Monday. So, Quinlan Coates must’ve driven her there in the morning and picked her up in the afternoon.”
    “I didn’t know cats gave blood.”
    Instead of admitting that she hadn’t known it, either, Felicity said, “They do. There’s a great need for blood. And Edith is the perfect donor. She’s big and young and healthy. Brigitte is too small. Anyway, the woman there said that the cats are usually ready to go home at about four