Scratch the Surface

mind, that goal being to trace the development of Olaf and Lambie Pie. In the case of the first book in the Kitty Katlikoff series, Felicity, having actually read it some years ago, needed only to refresh her memory. Armed with a fresh cup of coffee, a yellow legal pad, a pen, and the six Kitty Katlikoff books she’d bought at Newbright, she settled into an armchair in Uncle Bob’s study and opened Purrfectly Poisonous, which had introduced Kitty, Olaf, and Lambie Pie. The copyright page confirmed Felicity’s recollection that the book had been published twelve years earlier. The first chapter was of no interest, concerning as it did the life circumstances of Kitty before her acquisition of Olaf and Lambie Pie, an event that occurred in the second chapter when the protagonist rescued the cats from a ramshackle house where they had been abandoned by a villain who, as Felicity remembered, turned out to have murdered his three wives. In Purrfectly Poisonous, Olaf and Lambie Pie were what Felicity had recently learned to call “domestic shorthairs.” Olaf was black and white, and Lambie Pie was orange. When discovered in the ramshackle house, both were thin. In subsequent chapters, the cats gained weight, but Olaf did not become notably solid or compact. Furthermore, the gratitude of the cats to their savior was such that both animals displayed extreme friendliness to Kitty right from the start. In temperament and behavior, there was almost no difference between the cats. Their only striking behavior was their mastery of spoken English, a gift they used to inform Kitty about their previous owner’s crimes.
    In Purrfectly Murderous and Purrfectly Deadly, the third and fifth books in the series,’ respectively, Olaf and Lambie Pie were much as they had been when first introduced, except, of course, that they were now healthy and well cared for. They chatted as much as ever, usually on the subject of murder. The only major change in the description of the cats was Isabelle Hotchkiss’s increasing reliance on adverbs: The cats didn’t just speak, but exclaimed, interjected, cried,’ voiced, articulated, and uttered things jauntily, saucily, teasingly, and naughtily. In Purrfectly Sleuthful, published three years earlier, both Olaf and Lambie Pie enjoyed dry food and canned food. Olaf hadn’t gained weight. To Felicity’s professional disgust, the murderer did in her victims by injecting air bubbles into their bloodstreams, a method that Felicity scorned as nonfatal as well as passé. Isabelle Hotchkiss should have attended educational presentations for mystery writers and thus should have known that contemporary mysteries favored multiple gunshots to the head and chest, good old reliable strangulation, and other such simple, dependable forms of homicide.
    In Purrfectly Criminal, published in hardcover a year earlier and presumably written in the year preceding its publication, Felicity finally found what she sought. Olaf was suddenly much bigger than Lambie Pie, whose fur was longer, softer, and fluffier than it had been before. Indeed, Lambie Pie went so far as to behave fluffily. Olaf was solid, stolid, and mellow. Lambie Pie was light and quick. The differences between the cats grew pronounced in the final book, Purrfectly Baffling. Olaf continued to be omnivorous, but Lambie Pie now turned up her darling little nose at canned food and chomped away at dry food. When taken to stay at a motel while Kitty followed up a clue, Olaf hid under a bed, whereas Lambie Pie ran wildly around the room.
    Having no plans for the rest of the day, Felicity was tempted to call Dave Valentine, who, despite the unfortunate business of the drunk driver who’d killed Bob and Thelma, could be lured to dinner with the promise of a fascinating discovery about Quinlan Coates’s cats, couldn’t he? Prissy LaChatte’s pet police chief would come running, but would Dave Valentine find the discovery as fascinating as he should? Would he consider it a discovery at all? More to the point, was it one? Calling William Coates was clearly impossible. His father had been buried today. What’s more, the son had made it clear that he resented his father’s affection for cats. Consequently, he couldn’t be expected to respond in a helpful manner to questions about a connection between Isabelle Hotchkiss and Coates, Brigitte, and Edith, a connection that Felicity had to admit to herself was somewhat tenuous. When Quinlan Coates had acquired