The Wicked Flea

familiar. A suety man and a scrawny woman with messy hair stood on either side of a rabbit-faced fellow in a suit. In front of this trio, two little girls flanked the dog. The children registered on me: the sad, undernourished kids whose food Kimi had stolen at the burger joint. Then the couple to the left and right of the human rabbit: the faded, threadbare mother and the oily father who’d violently overreacted to Kimi’s naughtiness. The caption identified the couple as Timothy and Brianna Trask. The little girls were named, pitifully, Diana and Fergie. The rabbit, who wore a bellicose expression, was the family’s attorney, James J. McSweeney. The paper didn’t give the dog’s name, presumably because the family pet was there only to suggest what nice people the Trasks were. They had their picture in the paper because they were suing S & I’s Burgerhaven on the grounds that one of the children, Fergie, had been served a fried rat tail in what was supposed to have been an order of french-fried potatoes. McSweeney was representing the Trasks.
    When the truth hit me, my coffee mug dropped from my hand. Fortunately, it fell only a few inches to the kitchen table, where it toppled over and spilled the dregs onto the newspaper. Ever alert, the dogs nonetheless came running. I could barely bring myself to look Kimi in the eye. “Those monsters,” I told her. “No wonder they were so upset. You ruined their rotten little scheme. And when I offered to order everything all over again? To replace everything you ate? They didn’t know what to say because they knew damn good and well that I wasn’t about to be able to replace... oh, yuck! Well, let me tell you, never in a million years did I dream that you’d eaten... poor Kimi! This is disgusting.”
    If Kimi had known what she’d consumed, she wouldn’t have been bothered at all. Even so! Yiiiiicck! When I’d put her back in the car before leaving the place, she hadn’t licked my face, had she? I couldn’t remember. She might have. Kimi is very affectionate. She loves me.
    I contemplated revenge. Not on Kimi, of course, but on the Trasks, who, foiled once by Kimi, had armed themselves anew, returned to Burgerhaven at a later date, planted the disgusting object in a fresh order of fries, and thus successfully carried out their foul scheme. Had they committed a crime? Fraud, maybe? Conspiracy? If the innocent Burgerhaven lost all its customers, the failure of the business would be the Trasks’ fault. I felt as if I should report my knowledge to someone. To whom? Kevin Dennehy would know whether vermin-planting for the purpose of launching a phony lawsuit constituted a crime in Massachusetts and, if so, what sort of crime. Extortion? Or maybe the whole thing was a civil matter. But what did I have to offer either the police or poor Burgerhaven? I felt absolutely certain that the Trasks had connived to insinuate the you-know-what into the fries. Burgerhaven presumably felt the same way I did. Feelings weren’t evidence.
    “Kevin,” I said that evening as we sat at my kitchen table, “suppose I go to a restaurant and order french fries and plant a rat tail in them and then pretend to find it. And then I scream bloody murder and sue the restaurant. What’s that called?”
    “A stupid idea.” Kevin sipped his Bud and swallowed. ‘Tired of dog writing? Exploring new career options?”
    I recounted the story of Kimi’s thievery at S & I’s Burgerhaven and told Kevin about the photo and article in today’s paper. “So when I saw it, I realized why the father, this Timothy Trask, came unglued, although the more I think about it, the more I think it was the grandfather, I guess he was, the older man, who planned it all. He was more intelligent-looking than the rest of the family. The others were kind of stupefied. Anyway, when it happened, I apologized over and over, I offered to replace all the food, I did everything humanly possibly, but the father, Timothy, totally overreacted. Now I know why.”
    “Hey, Holly, it’s not like you bumped into this guy and knocked over a tray of food, you know. You gotta remember that these are ordinary citizens we’re talking about.”
    “As opposed to what?”
    “Dog nuts! Here’s this family getting ready to eat, and all of a sudden, a great big dog that looks like a wolf comes flying out of nowhere. She must’ve scared the beejezus out of these people. For you, hey, it’s all in a day’s work, but you