Scratch the Surface

thing! I mean, I just made normal conversation, and then they brought out Dorothy-L’s food. So, as I was sort of saying good-bye, I introduced myself, and he more or less had to do the same thing. And he said his name was Quinlan Coates. There’s another piece of luck. I mean, the first was that we were at Angell at the same time and got to talking. And the second was that he had an unusual name.”
    “So it must’ve been easy to find out more about him.” Feeling the need for strength, Felicity tried to fortify herself by eating, but she had to take small bites. Her mouth and throat were dry.
    “I used all those Web sites. Once I knew where he lived and where his office was, I hung around, so I knew what kind of car he drove, his license plate, where he parked his car, all that stuff.”
    “In a way, you stalked him.” In her anxiety, Felicity lost control of her accent and heard herself say “stawked,” but Janice seemed not to notice the lapse.
    “It was very interesting. You know how real private investigators always say how boring it is to keep someone under surveillance? Well, that part of it really was boring. But it was interesting to do it myself, if you know what I mean. I’m already using it in the book I’m writing now. And in terms of planning, that part was pretty easy, too, because I knew when he was going back to Angell for his cat to give blood. Every three months, the first Monday, so that made it November third, which was perfect, of course, because it was after daylight savings ended.”
    “What if he’d picked up his cat early?”
    “I’d have had to wait for February, which I might’ve had to do anyway if he’d parked right near the entrance. But he didn’t. The way it worked was that I took the T to Angell, which was very inconvenient. Public transportation isn’t what it should be. Anyway, I did, and I hung around on South Huntington Avenue, waiting at bus stops and stuff, until I saw his car. I watched where he parked, and then I went in the main entrance and got a case of Dorothy-L’s food and waited in line to pay for it. Coates had to wait in line, too, to let them know he was there for his cat and to do the paperwork. So, it was easy to strike up a conversation, remind him that we’d met there before, ask about his cats, and so on. And I said I’d love to meet the one he was picking up, Edith, because I’d never seen a Chartreux before. Just pictures.”
    “He was probably flattered.”
    “Oh, he was! He told me all about Chartreux cats, Carthusian monks raising them, all this stuff, until they brought out his cat. So, I gushed over her. She really is beautiful, by the way. And we sort of naturally left together. I told him my car was at the far end of the parking lot, and we just kind of walked together, with him carrying the cat in her carrier and me carrying the case of cat food, until we got to his car. I made sure I kept talking. I was telling him all about the radioactive iodide treatment that I was thinking about for Dorothy-L, and I didn’t give him a chance to interrupt me. So, he went ahead and unlocked his car and opened the back door, and he kind of bent over to pick up the carrier.”
    “And?”
    “And I whacked him over the head with the case of cat food. That hasn’t been done before, has it? You haven’t used it, I know, and it isn’t in Isabelle Hotchkiss or Lilian Jackson Braun, as far as I can remember. I don’t think it’s been used before.”
    Felicity refilled both wine glasses. “I don’t think so, either.”
    “Do you mind if I have seconds? This is really good.”
    “Please, help yourself.”
    Janice served herself more chicken, rice, and green beans, and ate hungrily before resuming her narrative. “He was heavier than I expected. Dead weight really means dead weight, not that he was probably dead yet, but he was a skinny little guy, very short and bony, and I’m stronger than I look, so I managed to shove him into the backseat with the cat carrier. He’d dropped his car keys. So I took them and drove the car a few blocks away, not that anyone would’ve noticed anything at Angell. I mean, the advantage of Angell is that all anyone notices is animals. Even if there’d been people walking by, they’d have been paying attention to their dogs or thinking about their sick animals in the hospital. But I didn’t want to stay there too long. So, I drove over near Jamaica Pond, which is no distance, and I pulled over. I used