Scratch the Surface

blue-gray, her eyes a richer amber. Despite her powerful build, she looked heartbreakingly vulnerable.
    But Janice loved cats.
    Didn’t she?
    “Sonya knows you’re here,” Felicity said. “So do Jim and Hadley. They discovered the little game you’ve been playing with the receipts from Tony’s Deli and all the rest. They asked me to speak to you about it. They knew you were coming to dinner. Janice, please! I am totally sympathetic to everything you’ve done. All of us have to promote our books, and I know what that costs. And Isabelle Hotchkiss was competition for me, too.”
    Janice’s face had regained its pallor. She was, if anything, paler than usual, and the hand holding the gun trembled. Her other hand rested lightly on the back of a chair. It occurred to Felicity that for a person recovering from serious food poisoning, Janice had eaten more than was wise. Also, she had drunk quite a lot of wine.
    “Please let me help you,” Felicity said. “I happen to have a great deal of cash on hand. A great deal. More than a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Enough for you to go anywhere you want. You can disappear.”
    “You’re lying,” Janice said.
    “I’m not lying. The uncle who left me this house was a very wealthy man. He left a great deal of cash.”
    “You like bloodless endings. I’ve noticed that.”
    “My readers don’t like gore. Neither do I. Janice, neither do you! And there doesn’t have to be any. I’ll show you the money.” With pain in her Scottish heart, she said, “I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you all of it.”
    “Where is it?”
    “Upstairs. It’s in a fireproof box behind a headboard in one of the guest rooms. The key is right here in a drawer. Look, you don’t have much choice. If you shoot me, the police will find out you were here. Sonya and Jim and Hadley will all say so. Your car is in my driveway. Your fingerprints are all over the door, the table, the silverware, the chair. You’d never be sure of wiping off all of them. There’d be trace evidence. Janice, all you have to do is go away! I’ll tell the board that you never turned up for dinner. You can mysteriously disappear.”
    “What about Tailspin ? What about my whole career? What about Dorothy-L?”
    “Tell your agent where you are. No one else needs to know. Isabelle Hotchkiss was a woman of mystery, and it didn’t do her sales any harm. Quinlan Coates’s lawyer probably knew his secret. His accountant must have. His agent. You can do it! Think of all this cash as a grant to launch your career. Dorothy-L can go with you. There are good veterinarians everywhere. And don’t worry about this little local fuss with Witness. I’ll settle that. If I make a generous donation, no one will care about the details.” Inspiration struck. “Janice, just think! If you want to, you can stay in Boston! No one will ever guess. The money will tide you over until your royalties start pouring in. You can stay in Boston, but you can quit your day job! You’ll never have to enter a classroom again!”
    Janice’s face brightened. Her shoulders relaxed, and the hand holding the gun stopped shaking. “Let me see the money,” she said. “You go first.”
    “I’m going to open the drawer and get the key.” With Janice almost pressing against her, Felicity did just that.
    As she headed toward the front hall, Edith turned tail and fled across the slate floor toward the stairs. By the time Felicity reached the staircase, Edith was nowhere in sight. Where was Brigitte? She’d left the kitchen a while ago. Where had she gone?
    Felicity began to ascend the stairs. “As I said, the money’s in a box behind the bed.”
    Janice said, “You’re still going to help with my book, right?”
    “Of course! I’ll be delighted. I’ll send the blurb to your editor. I’ll review it, too. Here we are.”
    Felicity dropped to her knees, lifted the bed skirt, and was happy to find that Edith was not under the bed. She rose, reached behind the headboard, removed the fireproof box, and set it on the comforter. She unlocked and opened the box, gave Janice a chance to watch as she thumbed through the stacks of bills, and asked, as if offering to send leftovers home with her guest, “Do you want to take the box? Or I can give you a bag.”
    “Just give me the box. Are you sure it’s a hundred and twenty thousand?”
    “It’s a hundred and twenty thousand five hundred fifty-five dollars. Most of it’s in hundred-dollar