Read Scratch the Surface Online
Authors: Susan Conant
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Detective and mystery stories, #Detective and mystery stories - Authorship, #Cats, #Mystery fiction, #Apartment houses, #Women novelists
Scratch the Surface (16 page)
As Felicity was returning the file to a drawer, she was distracted by the sound of voices. In her apartment in Somerville, she’d have ignored this evidence of human presence. In Newton Park, the employees of lawn services sometimes talked or even shouted to one another, but the lawns had already received their final mowings of the season, and all the leaves had been removed. One of the voices was deep, male, and angry. Making her way to the dining room, she peered out and saw Mr. Trotsky standing in the road in front of his house. About a yard away from him, also on the pavement, was a woman with a golden retriever, indeed, the same woman Felicity had seen in the waiting room of Furbish Veterinary Associates. To Felicity’s horror, Mr. Trotsky was hollering at her. The subject of his anger was evidently the dog, at which he kept jabbing a finger. If it had been possible for Felicity to open a window and eavesdrop, she might have done so. She was, however, fearful of getting caught. The Norwood Hill view of the residents of Newton Park was bad enough, and now Trotsky was making it worse! What was he doing home, anyway? Felicity grabbed a coat from her front hall closet. In her haste, she considered going out through the vestibule, but retained a superstitious desire to avoid it. If the snob with the dog assumed that anyone emerging from the back door must be a servant, too bad.
Striding down the paved path from the back door to the road, Felicity heard Mr. Trotsky yell, “And they are killing my grass, these dogs! Look at that! Dead! And do you know how much I pay for this lawn?”
“What’s killing your grass,” the woman said calmly, “isn’t dog urine. It’s drought. If you’d water the grass here by the street, it would be fine.” Her pronunciation of the word
water
irked Felicity, who never disgraced herself by saying “wat-uh,” but who could never get that first vowel quite right. This condescending Norwood Hill dog walker pronounced the miserable syllable with the effortless perfection of someone who hadn’t merely overcome her Boston accent, but had never had one to begin with. She probably didn’t have to think twice before uttering
cork
or
caulk
.
water
irked Felicity, who never disgraced herself by saying “wat-uh,” but who could never get that first vowel quite right. This condescending Norwood Hill dog walker pronounced the miserable syllable with the effortless perfection of someone who hadn’t merely overcome her Boston accent, but had never had one to begin with. She probably didn’t have to think twice before uttering
cork
or
caulk
.
“This neighborhood is private property,” Mr. Trotsky informed her. He swept an arm around. “All private property.”
“If I’m trespassing,” countered the woman, “perhaps you should call the police. The Boston police will undoubtedly come running when they hear that my dog put her paw on your lawn.”
“Pardon me,” Felicity said, “but—”
Mr. Trotsky ignored her. “No dogs! No pets! No trespassers!”
“You know something?” asked the woman. “People who don’t know how to live in good neighborhoods shouldn’t move to them. Or anywhere near them. Until these houses went up, Norwood Hill was the quietest, safest place you can imagine, and now we have cars speeding down our narrow streets and ruining everything. As a matter of fact, a complaint has been lodged with your condominium association.”
Before her Russian neighbor could respond, Felicity said, “I’m so sorry there’s trouble here. There’s no reason at all to object to having people walk through here. Most of us—”
“No pets!” shouted Mr. Trotsky. “A cat! I saw a cat in your window!” He turned his back on her and stomped to his house.
“Charming neighbor you have,” said the woman.
“He really is the exception,” said Felicity.
“I’d hope so. At least you’re not all Russian. There’s that to be thankful for. How they get their money out of Russia is a mystery to me. And how they made it to begin with!”
“This neighborhood is actually quite diverse,” Felicity said. “And I suspect that back in Russia, people found him pretty rude, too. If your dog wants to walk on a lawn, let him walk on mine. It won’t bother me.”
“Her.
Her
. She’s female!” With that, the woman clucked to the dog and walked briskly away.
Her
. She’s female!” With that, the woman clucked to the dog and walked briskly away.
Felicity went back inside and resumed her examination of her correspondence. It seemed to her that some of the reviews she’d received would have provided grounds for justifiable homicide, but the blurbs she’d written for the covers of other people’s mysteries, feline and otherwise, had been laudatory. She had, of course, declined to blurb some books, and she’d begged off reading some manuscripts, but it seemed to her that her refusals had been kind and tactful. For instance, to Janice Mattingly, she’d written, “How sorry I am not to have the treat of reading your manuscript right now! As it is, I am up against a looming deadline and barely have time to read my own book. I look forward to enjoying
Tailspin
when it comes out and certainly wish you the very best of luck with it.” She’d previously weaseled out of recommending Janice to her agent, too, but to the best of her recollection, she’d been equally inoffensive on that occasion.
Tailspin
when it comes out and certainly wish you the very best of luck with it.” She’d previously weaseled out of recommending Janice to her agent, too, but to the best of her recollection, she’d been equally inoffensive on that occasion.
As she was turning to old e-mail in search of slights and grudges, the phone interrupted her.
“So,” said her sister, “you find a corpse at your door, and you don’t even bother to tell me?” Angie’s Boston accent was intact:
corpse
was “cawpse,”
door
was “dough-uh.”
corpse
was “cawpse,”
door
was “dough-uh.”
“I’m sorry. I told Mother.” Felicity had long ago discarded
Ma
. “I assumed she’d tell you. But I should’ve called. It’s been very stressful.”
Ma
. “I assumed she’d tell you. But I should’ve called. It’s been very stressful.”
“Poor you. At least you don’t have to go to work every day.”
“Angie, I work at home, but I
do
work. And I’m the first person to say that I don’t miss teaching. I’m sorry you’re still stuck in the classroom.”
do
work. And I’m the first person to say that I don’t miss teaching. I’m sorry you’re still stuck in the classroom.”
“Well, thank God for cell phones. They’re the only thing that keeps me sane.”
Angie taught in a middle school in an impoverished city that had once been a mill town. Whenever Felicity read or heard about laudable efforts to recruit bright, well-educated college graduates to teach economically disadvantaged students in public schools, she thought of her sister, who was exactly the kind of teacher in immediate need of replacement.
“I was a rotten teacher myself,” Felicity said.
“I am not a rotten teacher! Why would you say such a thing when you know that I’m stuck here with these obnoxious kids who don’t give a damn about anything, least of all school. Wasn’t it enough that you had to go and suck up to Bob and Thelma without rubbing it in?”
“Speaking of Bob and Thelma—” Felicity began.
“Don’t! Just don’t! The less I have to hear about them, the better! I gotta go.” And she hung up.
On the theory that toxins might as well be consumed all at once instead of little by little, Felicity immediately called her mother, who had bored her with family stories for five decades and should therefore be easy to pump for information about Uncle Bob. He wouldn’t have told his sister about financial shenanigans that would account for the cash, but Mary might know something without understanding its significance.
Mary answered the phone with a thick, “Hello?”
“Mother, it’s Felicity.”
“Who?”
“Felicity!”
“Let me turn down the television.” After the inevitable and, in Felicity’s opinion, unnecessarily prolonged delay, Mary returned to the phone. “Who did you say you were?”
“Felicity!”
The impulse to shout was uncontrollable and had become more so after Felicity, in desperation, had dragged her mother to an audiologist. The result of the exam had been unequivocal: Mary Pride had exceptionally acute hearing. After arranging to visit her mother that same afternoon, Felicity slammed down the phone. How could she have imagined that her mother bore her a strong enough grudge to retaliate by leaving a murder victim at her front door? Far from bearing her a grudge, her mother couldn’t even remember who she was.
The impulse to shout was uncontrollable and had become more so after Felicity, in desperation, had dragged her mother to an audiologist. The result of the exam had been unequivocal: Mary Pride had exceptionally acute hearing. After arranging to visit her mother that same afternoon, Felicity slammed down the phone. How could she have imagined that her mother bore her a strong enough grudge to retaliate by leaving a murder victim at her front door? Far from bearing her a grudge, her mother couldn’t even remember who she was.
TWENTY-ONE
Newton Park Estates
could properly be called a housing development: A developer had bought a tract of land and built houses on it. Because the collection of multimillion-dollar houses was organized as a condominium, each dwelling was a unit. If Felicity had felt secure about the position in the world to which her recent inheritance had elevated her, she would have recognized the absurdity of referring to her opulent abode as a unit in a housing development; in reading the morning paper, she would have responded with amusement rather than outrage. Her hypersensitivity to the perceived slight stemmed largely from the irrational feeling that the innocent, if misleading, little newspaper article had mistaken her living situation for her mother’s. Mary Robertson Pride occupied a one-bedroom unit in a new and attractive complex intended to provide senior citizens with affordable apartments. The Robertson clan unanimously agreed that Mary lived in a garden apartment in a small retirement community. No one, not even Felicity, ever said that Mary Robertson lived in public housing.
could properly be called a housing development: A developer had bought a tract of land and built houses on it. Because the collection of multimillion-dollar houses was organized as a condominium, each dwelling was a unit. If Felicity had felt secure about the position in the world to which her recent inheritance had elevated her, she would have recognized the absurdity of referring to her opulent abode as a unit in a housing development; in reading the morning paper, she would have responded with amusement rather than outrage. Her hypersensitivity to the perceived slight stemmed largely from the irrational feeling that the innocent, if misleading, little newspaper article had mistaken her living situation for her mother’s. Mary Robertson Pride occupied a one-bedroom unit in a new and attractive complex intended to provide senior citizens with affordable apartments. The Robertson clan unanimously agreed that Mary lived in a garden apartment in a small retirement community. No one, not even Felicity, ever said that Mary Robertson lived in public housing.
The complex certainly bore no resemblance to the notoriously rundown and crime-ridden projects of the inner city. On the contrary, its two-story buildings were covered in cedar shingles, their trim was freshly painted in cranberry, the foundation shrubs were neatly pruned, and mulched paths ran from building to building and down to a small pond. Inside, the hallways and apartments were bright, and a social center offered many activities in which Mary refused to participate on the grounds that she was a better Scrabble player and bridge player than anyone else there, and she had no interest in yoga, nature walks, or, indeed, any other form of physical exercise. Still, it was because of the retirement community’s overall excellence that Bob Robertson had used his considerable clout to move his sister to the top of the long waiting list for available units. He had also been responsible for the negligence with which Mary’s application had been examined. In particular, no one had raised the question of whether she was, in fact, a widow, and no one had asked whether her financial circumstances were, in fact, severely reduced.
When Felicity parked Aunt Thelma’s unpretentious Honda CR-V in front of her mother’s building that afternoon, she uttered a short prayer: “Dear God, thank you for allowing the illegitimate nature of my mother’s occupancy to remain undetected. Gratefully yours, Felicity Pride.”
If a thorough and conscientious administrator ever examined the details of residents’ applications, would Mary be booted out? Sent a hefty rent bill for past years? Perhaps even charged with fraud? Probably not. Although Uncle Bob had been a man of influence, there was no reason to suppose that his sister was the only resident who’d slipped in under false pretenses. For all Felicity knew, not a single occupant of the attractive units was actually entitled to subsidized housing; the entire place was probably populated by the relatives of persons of financial or political power. And the units
were
attractive. The entrance hall of her mother’s building was spotless. A low table held a mixed bouquet of flowers in a glass vase. Tacked to a cork bulletin board above the table were notices of events: Children from a local school would give a concert on Thursday afternoon, a shuttle bus would transport people to a Boston theater on Saturday for the matinee performance of a musical comedy, and lessons in watercolor painting would begin on Monday at ten A.M.
were
attractive. The entrance hall of her mother’s building was spotless. A low table held a mixed bouquet of flowers in a glass vase. Tacked to a cork bulletin board above the table were notices of events: Children from a local school would give a concert on Thursday afternoon, a shuttle bus would transport people to a Boston theater on Saturday for the matinee performance of a musical comedy, and lessons in watercolor painting would begin on Monday at ten A.M.
Felicity rapped her knuckles on the first door on the left. “Mother?” She could hear the television. After a long wait, she rapped again and called loudly, “Mother! It’s Felicity!”
Eventually, there was a sound of shuffling, and Mary said, “Who is it?”
“Felicity!”
“Who?”
“Felicity!”
The door opened. Mary wore a cotton duster, a flower-patterned garment halfway between a bathrobe and a dress. She made as if to hug and kiss Felicity, but succeeded only in scratching Felicity’s face with the brush rollers that covered her head. “Come in! Don’t stand out there. You’re letting in a draft. Those shoes are new. I always think that a woman with big feet should look for something with a short vamp.”
“They’re boots,” Felicity said. “It’s cold out.”
Mary settled herself in a padded lounger that faced the television. “I wouldn’t know,” Mary said. “I can’t get out very much.”
Won’t,
thought Felicity as she turned off the TV.
thought Felicity as she turned off the TV.
“Sit down and tell me all about your murder,” her mother said. “It puts me in mind of my grandmother. She loved a murder. She spoke broad Scots, you know, and when the paper came, she always opened it and said, ‘Any guid meerders today?’”
“This wasn’t a particularly good murder. It wasn’t exactly pleasant to find—”
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