Scratch the Surface

phone.
    Reaching Valentine, she said, “This is Felicity Pride, and I owe you an apology. I should have been perfectly straightforward about how my aunt and uncle died.”
    “Family loyalty,” Valentine said.
    “My uncle wasn’t really an alcoholic, you know. He was in the liquor business.”
    “I know.”
    “Why is it that Scots don’t object to those signs and ads? If there were Irish liquor stores with signs and ads covered with stereotyped pictures of leprechauns and the Blarney Stone, there’d be protests. Or Italian liquor stores with pictures of Mafia hit men. But all those caricatures of Highlanders? And no one minds?”
    “Maybe some of us do,” Valentine said.
    “Maybe we do. Anyway, Uncle Bob wasn’t an alcoholic. He was just in the liquor business his whole life. Since I’m making a full confession, I should tell you that he got his start during Prohibition. That’s something of a family secret.”
    “Prohibition ended in nineteen thirty-three,” Valentine said.
    “So it did.”
    “He must’ve been an awfully young bootlegger.”
    “I hadn’t put that together. I guess he was. Maybe he was earning his college tuition. As I said, it’s a family secret. My mother just told me about it the other day. By the time I knew him, he was perfectly reputable.” This topic was making Felicity nervous. Except to verify that no one had entered or tried to enter her house on the evening when Coates’s body had been left in her vestibule, the police hadn’t searched her house, and there was no reason why they should search it now. Bob and Thelma certainly weren’t murder suspects; they had died months before Coates’s slaying. Therefore, no matter what the source of the stashed money, the police had no reason to look for the fireproof box. Felicity’s apprehension about discussing Bob and Thelma was pure paranoia. Well, it was impure paranoia. What had possessed her to slip that hundred-dollar bill into the donation box at Angell?
    “As I was saying,” she continued, “he wasn’t an alcoholic.”
    “But he did drink and drive.”
    “Obviously,” said Felicity. “Obviously, he did drink and drive. I should have told you about the accident the first time we discussed it. About his death and Aunt Thelma’s. I feel like a fool. So, please accept my apology.”
    “Accepted,” said Valentine. “Have you remembered anything that might help us out? Come across any letters? E-mail? Anything?”
    “Nothing. I’m sorry. Not a thing. But I did wonder about William Coates. You probably did, too.”
    “In what way?”
    “At the funeral, I told him that I had his father’s cats, and he was very hostile. Not just about Edith and Brigitte, but about his father. He thinks that his father cared more about the cats than he did about his son. Quinlan Coates didn’t leave his money to a cat shelter, did he? Or to—”
    “His entire estate goes to Angell Memorial Hospital.”
    “Animal Medical Center. It’s changed its name. Not that it matters. Well, no wonder his son is so hostile to him!” In her excitement, Felicity gripped the phone with one hand, and with the other, made a fist and shook it wildly in the air. At last, her very own detective was confiding information about the victim! At last, she and her detective were discussing a suspect!
    “Quinlan Coates had planned it all out years ago. Planned giving. Angell saved the life of some cat of his a long time ago.”
    “William Coates can’t have been happy to be disinherited.” Felicity was on the verge of saying that if Uncle Bob had left his money to a veterinary hospital instead of her, she’d have been furious, but the statement would have raised the best-avoided topics of Uncle Bob’s money and donations to Angell. “Did William Coates know in advance? If so, motive could go either way, you know. If he didn’t know, then his motive could’ve been to inherit, and if he did know, then his motive could’ve been revenge against his father for—”
    Valentine laughed. “Ideas for your next book, huh?”
    “My next book is about mercury poisoning,” she said with dignity. “And it has nothing to do with fathers and sons. Or I don’t think it does. It doesn’t yet.”
    To Felicity’s disappointment, Valentine ended the conversation there. She hung up with a mild sense of insult. He had not taken her seriously! On the other hand, she had made him laugh, and that was something, wasn’t it? It was a start. Maybe the dead