The Wicked Flea

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