Scratch the Surface

some woman from Norwood Hill who was walking her dog here. And last night, there was a condo association meeting about the letter. Also about me, in a way. Our condo agreement has a no-pet clause, and Mr. Trotsky complained that I had a cat, but he was outvoted. Anyway, there are probably a lot of people who can’t stand him.”
    A little smile crossed Dave Valentine’s face.
    Felicity gave him a knowing look. “Including whoever interviewed him about the murder. That must’ve been a challenge. He’s a difficult person. Crabby. His wife seems nice enough, but she doesn’t speak English. But there’s one other thing about Mr. Trotsky, and this is pure speculation. About five years ago, a Russian publisher wanted to buy the rights to some of my books. The contracts arrived, they were signed and so on, and then my agent and I were told that the deal had fallen through. The Russians were in bad shape. They didn’t have any money. End of story until just recently, when someone turned up at a signing I did with a book of mine in Russian. It was a hardcover edition of my first two books. So, the deal fell through in the sense that I was never paid an advance and haven’t been paid any royalties, but the Russians went right ahead and translated and published my books. It’s called pirating. Well, someone at the condo association meeting last night told me that the Trotskys are publishers. So, I couldn’t help wondering....”
    “If that’s the case, it sounds like you’d have something against them and not vice versa.”
    “That’s true. I just thought I’d mention it.”
    Valentine looked inexplicably uneasy. “There’s one other thing.” He reached into one of the pockets of his pullover, extracted a folded sheet of paper, unfolded it, and smoothed it out on the table. “I want you to take a good look at this sketch and see if it’s anyone you’ve ever seen.” He slid the paper toward Felicity.
    Even before she had picked it up, she knew that there was only one person she’d ever encountered who resembled the woman shown in the black-and-white drawing. “The obituary didn’t mention a sister,” she said. “Why on earth doesn’t she do something about the eyebrows?”
    Eager to please the detective, she silently studied the sketch, which hit her as a bit too sketchy even for a police sketch, as it obviously was. It showed the head and shoulders of a woman with shoulder-length brown hair, regular features, and thick, bushy eyebrows that were even more bizarre on a woman than they’d been on Quinlan Coates. The effect was ludicrous.
    “Who is this person?” she asked.
    “Have you ever seen her?” he asked flatly.
    “No. Never.”
    “At a bookstore?” he prompted. “A meeting? A conference?”
    “I don’t go to many mystery conferences. They’re expensive. Authors get a little break on registration fees, but we pay for airfare and hotel rooms and so forth. I can’t afford to go to all that many of them. Until I inherited this house from my uncle, I lived in a little apartment in Somerville. Anyway, I’ve been to a few conferences, and there were lots of people at them, but I don’t think I could have forgotten this woman. She’s so weird! Who could forget her?”
    “Just asking. Doing my job.” He rose and again thanked her for the bagel and coffee.
    “You’ll remember about Angell. The blood bank.”
    “It’s next on my agenda,” he said. Looking embarrassed, he said, “One other thing. Men in your life.”
    “Right now, there aren’t any,” she said. “Except Ronald, who doesn’t count. Ronald Gershwin. From the bookstore. But he’s just a friend. He came over the night... You met him then. But as I said, there’s no one else.”
    After Valentine left, Felicity out got her notebook computer and sat at the kitchen table, where she spent many hours in the world of Prissy LaChatte. Morris communicated an important piece of information to Prissy, who handed it along to the grateful chief of police. When he announced his intention of following up on the tip by interviewing a suspect, he invited Prissy to come along. Prissy happily accepted.
     

 
    Whenever Ronald and Felicity wanted to eat out together, they confronted one of the many incompatibilities in their friendship. Ronald favored small ethnic restaurants that Felicity dismissed as “third-world holes in the wall.” She claimed to be more than happy to eat anywhere else, but habitually rejected suggestions of