The Wicked Flea

nights.”
    “Hah! He doesn’t work at all,” Ceci said.
    “He wanted to know if I’d seen Sylvia. He was complaining that there was no food in the house. I thought that was peculiar. He’d never seen me before. And he asked me to tell Sylvia. If I ran into her. It was quite odd.”
    “Such chutzpah !” Ceci exclaimed. “That’s Yiddish for a lot of nerve. One of the things I like about Newton is learning all these words. And bagels. And, what are we, chopped liver? That would be a good title for your book, wouldn’t it? Of course, now there are all these national chains, but we always had bagels here, and good bagels, too, although I like the plain ones myself, not onion, and...”
    Douglas and Ulysses suddenly crashed through the underbrush onto the trail only a few yards behind us. The big hound was on leash. His mouth was empty; if he’d found a carcass, Douglas must have persuaded him to leave it. Douglas came to an abrupt halt. His face was pale and grim.
    “Ulysses,” Ceci chirped, “did you roll in something nasty again? What was it this time? Another dead thing?”
    In an oddly stilted voice, Douglas repeated her phase. “Another dead thing.” He said it again. “Another dead thing.”
    “Douglas, are you all right?” Ceci demanded. “Sylvia,” he replied. “Ulysses found her.”
    “You’re not making any sense,” Ceci scolded.
    “The dead thing,” Douglas said, “is Sylvia.”
     

Chapter 13
     
    “Nihil nisi bonum,” declared Ceci, “but there was something in the paper a few years ago about salmonella at one of Sylvia’s restaurants, hot dog stands, really, glorified, but that’s what they are, although it’s no excuse for food poisoning, is it?” Apparently interpreting my bewildered expression as evidence that I needed a translation of the Latin, she added, “Nothing but good about the dead! Not that salmonella can exactly be called good.”
    “Sylvia didn’t die of food poisoning,” Douglas said hastily.
    “Are you sure she’s dead?” I asked.
    “She was shot.” Douglas amended the statement. “Someone shot her. There’s no gun there.”
    I said the obvious: “We need to call the police.” Although the need was self-evident, I felt sharply aware of making a charged statement. The Sunday papers had picked up the story of Sylvia’s dispute and arrest. The journalists had dutifully tried to present objective accounts. As far as I knew, the background information about Newton was accurate: Newton was called the Garden City; it had a diverse population of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; it boasted an excellent record of harmony among religious and ethnic groups and among clergy of all faiths; it had been named the Safest City in America; and most of its streets actually were lined with mature trees. The scene of the dispute was indubitably Clear Creek Park.
    If the journalists failed to give a clear picture of what had happened, who could blame them? I’d been there, and I still wasn’t sure. They’d done their best to present diverse points of view. Diverse they were! One story quoted Sylvia at length. “I was heading toward a group of friends when all of a sudden, this woman I’d never seen before came up and started screaming about the leash law. So I took hold of Zsa Zsa’s collar. Zsa Zsa loves people, and she was under voice control. But I did it anyway. It still wasn’t enough to satisfy the woman. She flew at her and grabbed her collar and twisted it. Naturally, I tried to protect my dog, but the woman got a grip on my arm and squeezed it. You can still see the bruises. I had no idea she was a police officer. No one could’ve guessed. I assumed she was mentally ill. She was acting deranged. She was out of control. I still think she must suffer from some sort of rage syndrome. I’ve wondered if she had some kind of seizure that made her lose her balance and fall down. I certainly never pushed her. But nothing excuses what she did. She used fascist tactics. She violated my civil rights.”
    According to the papers, Sylvia’s opponent, Officer Jennifer Pasquarelli, contended that the incident began when Sylvia’s dog snarled at her. The officer said that she then asked to have the dog put on leash. When the owner refused, the officer identified herself as such and asked to see the dog’s rabies tag. She also requested proof that the owner was complying with the pooper-scooper law by carrying a means of picking up the dog’s feces. The