Free Scratch the Surface by Susan Conant Page B

know just yet.”

    Felicity cursed herself for having failed to check the pockets of the gray suit. “You don’t even know his name?” Should Prissy LaChatte ever find a corpse at her door, she’d be braver than her creator had been.

    “Not yet.”

    “He didn’t have a wallet? Did his shirt have a laundry mark?” A tailor-made suit with a name stitched in was too much to hope for, wasn’t it? Did American tailors even do that?

    “So far, we don’t know anything.”

    “The people who were here this morning, searching the yards. Did they find any . . . evidence?” Clues were strictly for Nancy Drew and Miss Marple, weren’t they? Even Prissy LaChatte avoided them in favor of evidence.

    Without giving a direct answer, Valentine said, “The body was probably transported there in a vehicle.”

    “And the cat?”

    “The cat, too. Probably.”

    “Was he murdered in my vestibule?”

    “Sorry if that’s been worrying you. No. No, he wasn’t.”

    “That’s not what’s worrying me! What’s worrying me is that a murder victim was left at my front door! What’s worrying me is me! So, where do we go from here?”

    Felicity’s literary experience led her to feel certain that Valentine would insist that the murder was a police matter in which amateurs should remain uninvolved. Ignoring the we, he said, “Miss Pride, in real life, most homicides have simple solutions.”

    “Then why aren’t they all solved?”

    “Sorry, Miss Pride, but I’ve got run. Like I said, it’s okay to use your front door now.”

    Infuriated, Felicity managed a loud but anticlimactic response: “I will! I definitely will!”

    The ban on discussing the murder had convinced Felicity that as publicists, the police were useless. It now seemed to her that they were equally useless as homicide investigators.

TWELVE

    Brigitte eyes the food dish, which is empty, as is the water bowl she customarily shares with Edith. Having repeatedly checked the bathroom and kitchen faucets, she knows that they are not dripping.

    How long can a cat safely go without water? The question never occurs to Brigitte, who nonetheless jumps to the kitchen counter, scampers to the sink, and trains her amber eyes on the faucet. Just in case.

THIRTEEN

    “I’m so surprised you’re here,” said Janice Mattingly, who had finished unpacking the plastic glasses, the bottles of wine and soft drinks, and the cheese, crackers, and fruit offered to members of Witness in the social hour before the meeting began. Her eyes were not on Felicity but on a mummified foot that formed part of the display set out by the evening’s speaker, a forensic expert whose presentation Felicity had intended to skip. Her fellow Witnesses evidently failed to share her distaste; perhaps thirty were milling around, each wearing a name tag. Happily, the gruesome objects and photographs were on one table at the back of Newbright Books, the refreshments on another. It occurred to Felicity that the fruit, especially the chunks of melon, might easily have gone on either table without seeming out of place. The watermelon had turned a sick red, as had the strawberries, and the honeydew looked slimy. “Me,” Janice continued, “I’d be so shaken up!”

    Janice was twenty years younger than Felicity and cursed with a day job. As Felicity had once done, she taught school. A hatred of classrooms was something the two had in common. Felicity had taught kindergarten in Wellesley, whereas Janice taught seventh graders in Brighton. Janice had shoulder-length brown hair and bangs, and although chalk was no longer ubiquitous in classrooms, her skin was white and powdery. In Felicity’s judgment, her lipstick was too red and her eyebrows were overplucked. She favored handwoven garments and the color red.

    “I am upset!” Felicity said.

    “You probably won’t be able to write for weeks. Maybe months. Or years!”

    When the City of Somerville had torn up the street in front of