The Wicked Flea

Corgi legs. I wished that Wilson had her social savvy. For one thing, if I couldn’t really watch the freestyle demo, how was I going to write about it? For another, greatly though I admired Llio, I just didn’t like Wilson. For one thing, his dirtiness repelled me. I shower all the time, and my dogs are so clean that you could eat off them, at least if you didn’t mind picking a few hairs off your tongue. For another, I didn’t like his bootlicking attitude toward Mrs. Waggenhoffer and, to some extent, toward me, too.
    Idly reflecting on my preference for clean, proud men, I felt a wave of longing for Steve Delaney and was busily pining for his subtle odor of veterinary disinfectant and his total incapacity for sucking up to anyone when Wilson interrupted my romantic musing. “The more I think about it,” he said, “the more I think... look, you know what?”
    Slovenly, bootlicking, and vacuous, too. Q.E.D., as certain residents of Cambridge say. Aloud! Which reminds me, Wilson was pretentious, too. The million-dollar crate? To my annoyance, he persisted in building a case against the Trasks, especially the elder Mr. Trask, as the culprits in Sylvia’s murder. Until then, I’d assumed that Wilson’s powers of imagination extended maybe as far as envisioning Llio’s taking a Group I—first place—later this same afternoon. To my surprise, he elaborated on his murder-by-Trask theory with lurid relish. “That George plans it, and they lurk around, the two of them, George and the son, what’s his name—”
    “Tim,” I supplied.
    “Whatever. And they follow Sylvia into the park, and the plan is, see, that they’re going to threaten her with the gun. So there she is, saying a few last words over Ian’s ashes, you see, that’s why she’s off the beaten path, so to speak, so she can have a few, uh, reverent moments alone and not just dump him in the dirt, and these guys sneak up on her. And it’s the young one who’s holding the gun, but the sneaky old man does the talking. ‘Fork over the dough, or you’re dead meat, Sylvia!’ ”
    Dead meat? Everything about the proposed scenario struck me as ludicrous. Among other things, I couldn’t see George Trask turning over control of anything, including a gun, to someone else. Besides, as I knew and Wilson didn’t, the Trasks had already concocted a scheme to get the money for Charlie’s surgery, namely, the plot into which Kimi had unintentionally leaped.
    “Only,” Wilson continued, his little eyes bright with enthusiasm, “the son, Tim, he’s not the cool customer the old man is, and he panics, and his finger jerks, and BANG! The gun goes off! And Sylvia drops the urn and smashes it, and she goes, uh, tumbling after.” He blinked as the Jack-and-Jill phrase registered on him.
    “Wasn’t Sylvia shot twice?” I asked.
    “Well,” said Wilson, “once they shot her by accident, they had to finish the job, didn’t they? When they saw what they’d done...”
    Just like Lizzie Borden, I thought. And when she saw what she had done...
    “She gave her father forty-one,” I blurted out.
    “What?”
    “Nothing,” I muttered.
    “Someone’s got to go to the police about this,” Wilson said.
    I brought a finger to my lips. Only a few yards away, Brianna Trask and the children, Di and Fergie, were easing their way to ringside. Once again, I cursed Wilson for interfering with my freedom to watch the performances. In the ring now were a tiny Asian woman and her P.B.G.V—Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen, low to the ground like the familiar basset hound, but with a wiry coat and other more subtle differences. Same sense of humor, though! The music was country, a song I didn’t recognize with themes I did: loss, cheating, and revenge. The dog was fantastic. He heeled on the handler’s right, switched to the left, spun around, raised his right forepaw, then his left, and took a flashy bow. Fantastic, yes, but probably no better than my dogs could be... with a little work. Rowdy and Kimi were bright and agile, and not to brag or anything, but their heeling was already close to dancing, and as to showmanship, Rowdy, in particular, glittered with charisma. The tiniest bit of work, and my dogs...
    The faces of the little girls interrupted my dreams of glory, probably because their expressions were identical to mine. With enchantment in their eyes, they followed the P.B.G.V.’s exit from the ring. Little Di’s high voice rose above the applause.