Scratch the Surface

Brigitte flung herself onto the bed, dove under the fold, and wiggled. Felicity finally gave up.
    After vacuuming downstairs, Felicity ate a light lunch and, resisting the urge to take a nap, went to her computer and visited the Web site of a large online bookseller to see how Felines in Felony was doing. Mistake! The new Isabelle Hotchkiss, Purrfectly Baffling, was selling better than Felines in Felony. Furthermore, two disgruntled readers had given Felines in Felony low ratings and posted nasty reviews. According to one of the readers, the book was “too feline and insufficiently felonious,” and according to the other, “the premise that Morris and Tabitha communicate with Prissy LaChatte in some unexplained fashion is utterly preposterous.” In search of consolation, Felicity looked at the ratings and reader reviews of Purrfectly Baffling, but found no comfort. “Olaf and Lambie Pie are even more lovable in Purrfectly Baffling than in its charming predecessors,” wrote one reader. “With twitching tail, I eagerly await the brilliant Isabelle Hotchkiss’s next recounting of the spine-tingling adventures of Kitty Katlikoff.” Was it possible that Mary Robertson had a computer hidden somewhere in her apartment and secretly visited this Web site to pan her daughter’s books and praise those of her principal rival?
    To remind herself of just how badly Isabelle Hotchkiss wrote, Felicity decided to read some of the sample pages of Purrfectly Baffling available at the click of a mouse. She soon came to a section in which Isabelle Hotchkiss’s fictional cats were conversing with each other:
     
“I am not sure I feel like telling the Furless Person everything I know,” the hefty Olaf opined stodgily. “What has she done for us lately?”
“Fed us!” exclaimed the soft, fluffy little Lambie Pie. “Oh, yum! Dry food! Yum, yum, yum!”
     
    “ ‘Hefty Olaf opined stodgily.’ ” Felicity spoke with the joy of one who has found precisely what she sought. “Pass me the antiemetic, please.” Despite the claim to nausea, she devoured two full pages about Olaf and Lambie Pie. Although she believed in keeping an eye on the competition, she had read only a few of Isabelle Hotchkiss’s books and none of her recent ones. In Purrfectly Baffling, the cats were as saccharine as ever, but something about them was elusively different from what she remembered. When she’d read the old Kitty Katlikoff books, she hadn’t owned cats; the new element might be her own perception and not Hotchkiss’s depiction. Had soft, fluffy little Lambie Pie always draped herself on the edges of furniture? For that matter, had little Lambie Pie been soft and fluffy? Had she been little? As to Olaf, had he been compact and stodgy? Then there were the food preferences. Had Olaf always preferred canned food? And when Kitty Katlikoff opened a can of food, had Lambie Pie always danced eagerly around, sniffed the wet food, and then eaten dry food?
    Clicking her mouse and scrolling down the pages, Felic- | ity happened on a scene in which Kitty Katlikoff was making her bed. Lambie Pie ran madly around, leaping under the covers and hiding in the folds of the bedspread, whereas big, placid Olaf planted himself in the center of the bed and refused to budge. The bed-making scene settled the matter: Isabelle Hotchkiss seemed to be describing the late Quinlan Coates’s cats.
    Had Hotchkiss and Coates known each other? But Edith and Brigitte were young, four and two years old, respectively, and the first Hotchkiss mystery had been published about a dozen years ago. Unless all cats acted alike? Or un- I less all Chartreux cats acted alike, and Isabelle Hotchkiss owned the breed? But Edith and Brigitte were both Chartreux, yet differed radically from each other in ways that mirrored the differences between Olaf and Lambie Pie. And neither of Ronald’s cats, George and Ira, bore a strong resemblance to Olaf and Edith or to Lambie Pie and Brigitte. Both George and Ira were only moderately active. Felicity had never seen either cat drape himself on furniture. Mystified, Felicity decided on a visit to Newbright Books, where she could question Ronald about cat behavior and Isabelle Hotchkiss’s identity while simultaneously preparing to investigate Olaf and Lambie Pie as they had been portrayed in Isabelle Hotchkiss’s early mysteries.
    Forty-five minutes later, soon after Felicity entered Ronald’s store, she felt a wave of guilt. Tucked in the