The Wicked Flea (12 page)

“Althea won’t like that one bit, you know, not that my sister wishes ill to anyone, in reality, but when you think about it, it’s a cliche, you know, Holly, and not even a Sherlock Holmes cliche, the dog in the night, although Althea would be happier, of course, if a dog had done nothing in the night, Silver Blaze, even I know that one. But finding a body? Althea will be very disappointed. What am I saying? Poor Sylvia! And here I am—”

The cop turned to her. “You recognize her, ma’am? You know who she is?”

“Sylvia Metzner, of course,” Ceci replied.

After the publicity about Sylvia’s altercation with Officer Pasquarelli, half the population of Greater Boston would’ve known the name. In Newton? Without question, the entire police force had heard Sylvia Metzner’s name hundreds of times. The muscles in the cop’s face twitched. “You got close enough to see her, ma’am?” he asked.

“No.” Ceci was offended. “I recognized Sylvia’s clothes. Those are Sylvia’s shoes and scarf and coat.” She made no mention of Douglas at all.

I spoke up. “Douglas told us who it was.” I turned to look at him.

The cop looked at Douglas, too. “That you, sir?” Douglas nodded.

“So, how’d you know?”

Douglas shrugged. “The, uh, overall appearance. I just recognized her.”

“You move the body?”

Douglas rapidly jerked his head back and forth. As he spoke, his voice climbed at least an octave. “No. I didn’t touch a thing. Nothing. Not one thing.”

“Strange that you knew who it was, sir. When you didn’t see her face.”

“Strange?” Douglas asked. “Well, yes. But I wasn’t sure who it was. I wasn’t sure at all.”

Chapter 14

The police at the murder scene may have shared my concern about Ceci’s health. She again looked chilled. Or maybe she was just grating on their nerves. For whatever reason, I was encouraged to remove her from the park. As soon as I put Rowdy and Quest in the car and settled Ceci in the passenger seat, my worry diminished. She immediately launched into her usual frenzied chattering. Now, as I drove her home, her focus switched from Officer Pasquarelli to the entire Metzner family, especially Eric.

“That Eric!” Ceci spoke of Eric Metzner as if
Eric
were his middle name. “All three of Sylvia’s children were a perfect disgrace. But that Eric!”

“Were?
When was this?”

Ceci said nothing for all of five seconds. “Thursday,” she admitted. “Now, Holly, I
told
you it wasn’t right to abandon Sylvia, didn’t I? And I was certainly not the only concerned citizen there.”

With an inaudible groan, I said, “You obeyed Pythagoras.”

“Holly, are you all right? No, you’re not! It’s shock. On top of your concussion. Holly, dear, Pythagoras has nothing to do with anything. What I was saying was that after Sylvia was so brutally dragged off by the police, you were just as eager as I was to show your support for her, but you had already taken hours out of your workday and were simply too nice to tell me that you didn’t have time. So after you dropped me off, I naturally hurried down there to headquarters, and I assure you that except for the appalling behavior of Sylvia’s children, it was a deeply moving experience. Quite a few people from the park were there, and they were as horrified as we were at what we’d witnessed. And if I haven’t happened to mention that I showed my support for Sylvia, it’s only because I didn’t want you to feel in the least tiny bit guilty for being unable to help. I have never doubted for a moment that you are just as strongly committed as I am to human rights.”

“Of course I’m committed to human rights.”

Ceci seized on a one-second pause. “Also, I have to confess, in all honesty, Holly, truthfully, that when I got back home and told Althea, she came very close to accusing me of being a busybody, which is patent nonsense, but without intending to hurt my feelings, Althea did leave me a teeny bit sensitive on the subject, and so I thought matters over and decided that sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all. Holly, are you all right? Shock has dangerous effects on some people, you know. I think you should pull the car over.”

“I’m fine. So what happened at headquarters?”

“That Eric! Well, you saw for yourself! He has pierced ears, and he wears earrings, two in one ear, and his hair stands on end as if he’d moussed it and then been frightened by a bear.” Eric, Ceci informed me, was the youngest of Sylvia’s three children. Together with the middle child, Oona, as well as Pia and Wilson, Eric lived with Sylvia. Furthermore, since graduating from college a few years earlier, Eric had worked full time at the unpaid job of deciding what he wanted to do with his life. “Sponging off poor Sylvia,” Ceci said. “And that Oona isn’t a lot better, but at least Sylvia had the sense to complain about Oona, who is quite a pretty girl, ruining her skin by exposing it to the sun, such a shame, but as I was saying, all that she, Oona, does morning, noon, and night is cadge rides on boats. What kind of life is that?”

Although Pia and Wilson, in contrast to Eric and Oona, held paying jobs, Ceci disapproved of them, too, primarily because they had participated in what sounded like a nasty family fight at police headquarters. The argument, according to Ceci, had initially centered on the subject of finding a lawyer for Sylvia. Wilson, Pia, or both had apparently contended that despite Sylvia’s parting instruction at the park, there was no need to call a lawyer, since Sylvia would already have summoned one herself. Oona had wanted to call a lawyer she knew, but the others had disagreed with her choice of attorney because his only qualification had been the ownership of a yacht that Oona admired. All the family members had agreed that when Ian Metzner, Sylvia’s husband, died, Sylvia’s lawyer had been a woman. No one, however, could remember her name. The unfriendly exchange of views turned into an outright squabble when Eric asked to use Wilson’s cell phone. Wilson refused. Eric persisted. Wilson remained firm.

“And then,” Ceci said, “that Eric called Wilson some names too horrid for me to repeat, and Wilson up and told that Eric that he was a ne’er-do-well bloodsucker who ought to be ashamed of himself for taking advantage of his mother’s misfortune by using it as a pitiful and transparent excuse for his own insatiable greed. ‘Insatiable greed!’ Those were his very words.” Ceci said gleefully. “Those were Wilson’s exact words, Holly, right there in the middle of the police station, and it was deplorable, although I must admit that there is some substance to Wilson’s accusation, except that it applies equally well to the whole pack of them, parasites all, shamelessly living off Sylvia. And quarrelsome parasites to boot! I can just see that Eric as a little boy, and Wilson, too, the pair of them, silly, selfish children fighting over their toy trucks instead of this foolish cell phone, neither one of them wanting to share his toys. Poor, poor Sylvia!”

Since Sylvia was Eric’s mother, it seemed to me that it was Sylvia’s fault if Eric grabbed other people’s toys. But Ceci’s love of dogs extended to underdogs. Now that Sylvia had been murdered, she’d become, in Ceci’s view, the ultimate underdog.

Chapter 15

Subj: Re: Genetic Clearances

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

-------------------------

Hi Cindy,

A million thanks for the photos! Emma is just beautiful. I have to tell you that I am crazy about her rear angulation.

Best,

Holly

Chapter 16

Kevin Dennehy, my next-door neighbor, showed up at my door at six o’clock on that same Tuesday evening and invited me out to eat. He lives with his mother, a strict vegetarian, so he leaves home in search of flesh. Not mine. Since Kevin had started seeing his girlfriend, Jennie, a few months earlier, he hadn’t even been seeking my company. I hadn’t even met Jennie.

“Hey, Holly, how ya doing?” he greeted me, as usual. He didn’t wait for my answer, which would, of course, have been that I’d had a ghastly day. Immediately, he asked Rowdy and Kimi the same question. They’re crazy about Kevin, mainly because he feeds them whatever he happens to be eating, and since he is a great big man with a gigantic appetite, he eats all the time and doles out a stream of treats.

Kevin lowered the upper half of his mammoth body to dog level and made stupid growling noises that the dogs love. In response, they scoured his face with their big red tongues. Although Kevin is part Italian, he is the most Irish-looking person I’ve ever seen. In Greater Boston, that’s saying something. He has red hair, fair skin, freckles, and blue eyes, and in a gruff way, he has that famous Irish charm, too. As I watched him fool around with the dogs, it occurred to me that Kevin was one cop who, unlike the voluptuous terrier who’d arrested Sylvia, would never need to announce himself as such. Studying him, I tried and failed to identify any specific attribute that proclaimed his profession. He’s a lieutenant in homicide, so he doesn’t wear a uniform; at the moment, he wasn’t even dressed in blue, but in khaki pants and a tan crewneck sweater. Funny-looking shoes and big flat feet were supposed to be hallmarks. Like the rest of Kevin, his feet were big, but they didn’t look flat, and his white athletic shoes were obviously designed for fitness running rather than for chasing down criminals. Still, if a menacing stranger had suddenly broken into my kitchen and Kevin had pulled out a badge and said, “Police,” the intruder would’ve been entirely justified in replying, “Yes, I know.”

I tried, of course, to tell Kevin about Sylvia’s murder. One price I pay for having beautiful, friendly dogs is, however, that people ignore me in favor of Rowdy and Kimi. Kevin was now on the tile floor of the kitchen flirting with the forbidden game of wrestling with malamutes. He is also prohibited from giving them beer. I know that he violates that ban when I’m not looking because I smell brew on the dogs’ breath. Instead of breaking the wrestling taboo behind my back, he waits for the dogs to roll onto their backs for tummy rubs, and then under the guise of vigorously scratching their chests and bellies, he tussles in a fashion just short of wrestling. “Hey there, tough guy,” he rumbled at Rowdy, “who you been beating up lately?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “he
was
in a dog fight not all that long ago, and would you please stop giving them both the wrong message? Kevin, I have told you a million times that the message to give to them is that you do not like—”

Kevin mimicked me. “Anything that even begins to remind them of aggression toward blah, blah, blah. Who won?”

“Rowdy did. Well, I broke up the fight, but he did.” I again tried to divert Kevin’s attention from the dogs. “Kevin, I need to—”

“Then that’s all right. You won, did you big fellow? They scrape the other guy off the sidewalk?”

“The other guy was a girl. Rowdy didn’t hurt her. But—”

Gently grabbing both sides of Rowdy’s substantial head, Kevin delivered a little congratulatory shake and said, “Sexist! Should’ve beat the pants off her like Kimi would’ve done.”

Before I could break in, Kevin announced that he was starving, explained that we’d better take separate cars because he was going somewhere after dinner, and gave me directions to the restaurant he’d selected. Kevin’s restaurant preferences are based largely, no pun intended, on quantity. He doesn’t care whether the food is overcooked or the meat is tough if the portions are mountainous. He still hadn’t stopped talking about a Spanish restaurant he’d mistakenly patronized because he hadn’t understood that
tapas
didn’t just mean appetizers; it meant small servings. Tonight, instead of going to the kind of Italian restaurant where everything swims in the same red sauce, we went to the kind of Chinese restaurant where everything swims in soy sauce made thick, slimy, and shiny with cornstarch. Cambridge has scores of excellent Chinese restaurants. This storefront place near Inman Square in Cambridge wasn’t one of them. The outsides of the windows were so heavily coated with dirt and the insides with grease that the artificial plants shoving their plastic leaves to the plate glass windows managed to look sickly and light deprived. I shouldn’t complain. We did get a booth. The noise level was low. The service was prompt. As you’ve probably guessed, there were only a few other customers, mostly because of rumors about poor sanitation and food poisoning. Kevin wasn’t put off by the restaurant’s bad reputation. On the contrary, with perverse pride he referred to it as the Taiwan Ptomaine.

Squeezed into his side of the booth, Kevin expanded left and right to fill the space meant for two people. He looked healthy and hungry. I felt filled with affection for him and guilty about the needlessly long and preachy lecture I’d given him about not wrestling with my dogs. “I got carried away,” I said. “I’m sorry. It started with this article I’m doing about fatal dog attacks. The studies all focus on what’s happening when the dog actually bites someone or kills someone, and no one pays enough attention to what’s gone on with the dog before that. Dogs shouldn’t be given the message that aggression is all right. But just because you growl at Rowdy and Kimi, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to go out and inflict fatal bites.” Having apologized, I again started to raise the topic of Sylvia’s murder, but a waiter appeared at the table to take our orders.