The Wicked Flea Read online

  Praise for

  SUSAN CONANT’S MYSTERIES:

  “Hilarious.” —Los Angeles Times

  “A real tail-wagger.”—The Washington Post

  “Sheer bliss awaits the dedicated dog lover.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “A fascinating murder mystery and a very funny book... written with a fairness even Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie would admire.” —Mobile Register

  “Conant’s dogs are real, true, and recognizable. Definitely wins best of breed.” —Carolyn G. Hart

  “Head and shoulders above many of the other series in which various domestic pets aid or abet in the solving of crimes.” —The Purloined Letter

  “Poignant.... The relationship the heroine and her canines share is precious to behold... a delightful, whimsical, and humorous mystery that shows off the attributes of humans and canines that are rather similar to nature.” -Midwest Book Review

  “An absolutely first-rate mystery... and a fascinating look at the world of dogs... I loved it!” -Diane Mott Davidson

  “Highly recommended for lovers of dogs, people, and all-around good storytelling” —Mystery News

  Dog Lover's Mysteries by Susan Conant

  A NEW LEASH ON DEATH

  DEAD AND DOGGONE

  A BITE OF DEATH

  PAWS BEFORE DYING

  GONE TO THE DOGS

  BLOODLINES

  RUFFLY SPEAKING

  BLACK RIBBON

  STUD RITES

  ANIMAL APPETITE

  THE BARKER STREET REGULARS

  EVIL BREEDING

  CREATURE DISCOMFORTS

  THE WICKED FLEA

  THE DOGFATHER

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE WICKED FLEA

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime hardcover edition / March 2002

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / February 2003

  Copyright © 2002 by Susan Conant.

  Cover art by Bob Dombrowski.

  Cover design by Jill Boltin.

  Text design by Kristin del Rosario.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Visit our website at

  www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-425-18885-X

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published

  by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For the appearance of Alaskan malamutes CH Jazz-land’s Embraceable You and CH Jazzland’s How High the Moon, I am grateful to Cindy Neely as well as to Emma and Howie. Many thanks to the members of Malamute-L who responded to my eccentric author queries; to Martha Kalina of the Perry Greene Kennel, for letting me use the perfect domain name; to Charlene LaBelle, for allowing me to share her liver recipe; to my feline malamutes, Chartreux cats G. R. P. Janvier Pandora Spocks of Ajolie and Ajolie’s Shadow Dancer; and to my beloved Alaskan malamute, Frost-field Perfect Crime, C.D., C.G.C., W.P.D., Th.D., who is called Rowdy. For help with the manuscript, my profuse thanks to Jean Berman, Wren Dugal, Roseann Mandell, Cindy Neely, Geoff Stem, Anya Wittenborg, Corinne Zipps, and to my astute editor, Natalee Rosenstein.

  In loving memory of my beautiful boy,

  Frostfield Firestar’s Kobuk

  Through many dangers, toils, and snares

  I have already come.

  ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far

  And grace will lead me home.

  -JOHN NEWTON 1779

  The wicked flee when no man pursueth.

  -PROVERBS 28:1

  Chapter 1

  My father’s new wife, Gabrielle, was determined to enlist my help in disposing of her first husband.

  Naturally, I protested. “I’m hardly the most suitable person,” I argued in our final phone conversation on the subject. “Besides, we don’t want to end up in jail,

  do we?”

  Gabrielle was adamant. “It’s important, Holly, to liberate oneself from the remains of the past. Even fond remains,” she added before continuing in that extraordinary voice of hers, which is low, throaty, and infinitely persuasive. How persuasive? Well, my father married her, didn’t he? And Buck is not an easy person to persuade to do anything. Believe me, I’ve tried. Not that I’d wanted to talk him out of marrying Gabrielle. On the contrary, I like Gabrielle tremendously, and I’m convinced that falling in love with her is one of the sanest things my father has ever done. Given Buck’s eccentricities, that’s not saying much, I guess, but I’m always surprised and relieved when he does something even remotely normal, and when it comes to choosing wives, Buck is a model of mental hygiene, perhaps because he’s had only two. But maybe I’m being unfair to Buck. In any case, like Gabrielle, my late mother was a wonderful, warm, and sensible, if somewhat controlling, person.

  “It just doesn’t feel right,” Gabrielle went on, “to have a second husband when the first is still around.”

  “It’s illegal,” I countered.

  “Marginally,” Gabrielle admitted, “but if we were caught, which we aren’t going to be, the fine would be, uh, let’s see, not less than one hundred nor more than five hundred dollars, and I can afford that.” She paused. “Or imprisonment,” she conceded, “but technically, it would only be for six months or so, and no one is actually going to throw us in the hoosegow for scattering Walter in Harvard Yard.”

  “Hoosegow?’

  “Spanish origin,” she said smugly. “Isn’t it charming?”

  “The reality wouldn’t be,” I said, “and in Massachusetts you can’t go around blithely sprinkling people’s ashes wherever you feel like, Gabrielle. Among other things, you’d need a permit from the board of health, and you’d have to get Harvard’s permission. What’s wrong with Mount Auburn Cemetery?”

  “It’s terribly expensive,” she whispered, sounding hurt, as if I’d been cruelly referring to her recent financial losses. “And we don’t want a public event, do we? I just want to say a quiet good-bye. That doesn’t seem too much to ask, Holly. And we’d do the same for your father, wouldn’t we?”

  Since Harvard Yard is useless for hunting, fishing, or showing purebred dogs, it’s one of the last places on earth that my own father, Buck, would choose as a final, or even transitory, resting place. Still, I refrained from making the obvious reply, which was, What’s this we? Gabrielle has a likable habit of thinking of everyone as we. If I’d asked her to join me in dispersing the cremated remains of some homicidal fiend who’d been a stranger to both of us, she’d have hurled herself into the project with great enthusiasm. It was easy to imagine her reading a carefully selected verse over the monster’s ashes and shedding genuine tears at the thought of how much we would miss him.

&nb
sp; When Gabrielle arrived at my house a few days later, I presented her with printed copies of a great many web pages on two topics: Massachusetts law concerning dead bodies and what are fancifully known as “creative scattering options.” My house, I might mention, is the barn-red one on the comer of Appleton and Concord in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about a twenty-minute walk from Harvard Yard. I live on the first floor with Rowdy and Kimi, the two most stunning and brilliant Alaskan malamutes in the world—that’s an objective description—and Tracker. Having offered an objective description of the dogs, I should probably do the same for Tracker, but I can’t stand people who disparage their animals, no matter how hideous, pitiful, or mean-tempered—in Tracker’s case, all three—so let’s just call her a cat. My second-floor tenant, Rita, is my best friend, as well as a clinical psychologist and the owner of a Scottie, Willie. My third-floor tenants, a circuit court judge and her husband, have two handsome Persian cats. I may be the only landlord in Cambridge, or possibly the only landlord anywhere, who won’t rent to you unless you have at least one pet. Anyway, my proximity to Harvard and my, shall we say, positive attitude toward dogs were central to Gabrielle’s dispersal plans for the late Professor Beamon. She had decided that we were going to avoid arrest under Chapter 114 of the General Laws of Massachusetts, Cemeteries and Burials, Miscellaneous Provisions, Section 43 M, Permanent Disposition of Dead Bodies or Remains, by disguising ourselves as dog walkers.

  “Disguising ourselves?” Gabrielle was offended. She sat at my kitchen table drinking a cup of strong coffee with tons of cream and sugar. In her lap was her bichon, Molly, who is spoiled rotten. Bichon is short for bichon frise, French for curly-haired lapdog, all-white, jaunty, cute, member of the American Kennel Club’s Non-sporting Group, an unfortunate term for certain nonhunting breeds that misleadingly connotes poor sportsmanship and a sort of joyless attitude never observed in the bichon frise. “We are dog walkers!” Gabrielle exclaimed. “We’ll just happen to walk our dogs into the Yard. What we do with Walter when we’re there is none of Harvard’s business. I won’t be bossed around by a lot of silly paperwork.”

  You can see why Buck fell in love with Gabrielle. For one thing, they met at a show, a dog show—when it comes to my father, ça va sans dire, as he would never say—and for another, she has that low, seductive voice. The American Medical Association would probably describe Gabrielle as too heavy, and her skin makes it obvious that she has never bothered to use sunblock. Her hair is a mixture of blond and white, possibly natural—she’s in her late fifties—and cut in a feathery style that flatters a face that needs no flattery. She has incredible bone structure and blue eyes that most people would compare with such prosaic objects as oceans, skies, and cornflowers. From Buck’s viewpoint, his bride’s eyes are Siberian husky blue.

  In declaring that she wouldn’t be bossed around by paperwork, Gabrielle was not just speaking figuratively. Spread out on my kitchen table were the printed web pages. “These have nothing to do with us,” she said dismissively. “Body after dissection! I ask you! I did not donate Walter’s body to science. And these people can’t even make up their minds what to call these laws. Annotated? General? But the point is, Holly, that they’re meant for grave robbers and shady morticians and sneaky murderers. They aren’t meant to apply to people like us. And these so-called creative scattering options are ridiculous. Turning Walter into a living coral reef? Or throwing him off a boat? Or rocketing him into outer space?”

  “If we avoided archeological sites and Native American burial sites and that kind of thing, we’d be allowed to use a state park in California,” I pointed out, tapping a finger on one of the pages.

  “Three thousand miles from home? Harvard Yard is right down the street.” Gabrielle picked at the sleeves of her long, loose white blouse, a cross between a smock and what I think is called a poet’s shirt. Molly’s eyes followed Gabrielle’s sun-spotted hands. Sighing, Gabrielle rose and put the little dog on the floor. With an involuntary, reflexive jerk, I looked around to make sure that Rowdy and Kimi hadn’t escaped from my bedroom. The AKC may classify the bichon as Nonsporting, but the Alaskan malamute disagrees: small furry things belong to the Fair Game Group. Although neither Rowdy nor Kimi has ever hurt or even threatened Molly, they still need careful watching when she’s around. As I always tell Rowdy and Kimi, the only reason I don’t trust them is that they’re not trustworthy. Molly wasn’t the only reason I’d incarcerated them. The other was a premonition that I’d capitulate to Gabrielle’s demands. On principle, malamutes don’t back down, and they don’t think highly of anyone who does. To the dogs, I’m supposed to be Holly Winter, She Who Must Be Obeyed, not Holly Winter, She Who Caves in to Her Stepmother.

  I said softly, “Okay, Gabrielle, I give up. We’ll scatter the ashes anywhere you want.”

  “Are you sure you’re well enough?” she asked.

  “There is nothing physically wrong with me,” I assured her for at least the hundredth time. “A few little neurological blips. I’m supposed to avoid another head injury.” Honest to doG, that was the medical advice I’d been given, as if I’d have intentionally gone around searching for new and yet more skull-shattering ways to concuss myself.

  The crack on the head was one of the twin traumas I’d suffered about two months earlier. While hiking with the dogs at Acadia National Park, I’d plummeted down a rocky little mountainside only to collide with a boulder. The damage suggests that I landed head first. When I regained consciousness, the fragmentary remains of my memory left me unable to retrieve an alarming number of ordinary words that would’ve come in handy. Amnesia, for instance, and Holly Winter. Forgetting my own name wasn’t necessarily all that big a deal, but as a real dog person, I’m still horrified at my initial failure to recognize Rowdy and Kimi as my own dogs. Their names were lost to me, too. But I did, of course, know that they were show-quality Alaskan malamutes.

  The other trauma was a broken heart. My lover, also my vet, Steve Delaney had married someone else, and not just any old someone else, either, and not just a young, beautiful someone else, but a damned disbarred lawyer. Her name was Anita Fairley. I can’t bring myself to say more about Steve or Anita right now, except that I needed a new vet and that I hated Anita as ferociously as she hated dogs.

  “Even so, I think I can probably manage to make it from here to Harvard Yard,” I told Gabrielle.

  Consequently, on the following evening, a bleak and weirdly mild one for mid-November, Gabrielle and I set out on foot for what’s known as Tercentenary Theater, which, in Harvardian fashion (“When I use a word, ” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”), isn’t a theater by any normal definition of the term, lacking as it does such theater-defining essentials as a stage and seats, for instance. In fact, it’s the flat, grassy area of Harvard Yard between Memorial Church and Widener Library, which are, respectively, a church and a library, perhaps by mistake. It’s called a theater, I suppose, because it’s the venue for Harvard’s graduation ceremonies, which are known as commencements, another term that baffles me. For most alumni, going to Harvard is the apex, like reaching the summit of Everest, and leaving Harvard is the commencement of the descent into the dreary, litter-strewn base camp below.

  Theater or no theater, the area between Memorial Church and Widener is, indeed, a spot fair to the eye, a quadrangle bounded on the other two sides by Sever and University halls and planted with numerous species of deciduous trees, all of which were indistinguishable from one another when Gabrielle and I arrived, because they had lost their leaves, and the lights shone on the paved walks and the entrances to the buildings, not on the treetops.

  “Not that I can tell one tree from another,” I told Gabrielle. “Maybe you can. Did Walter have a favorite species? Kimi, not there!” I used to think that the leg-lifting frequently observed in female malamutes was a sign of dominance, but someone who works with wolves told me it had nothing to do wit
h dominant or submissive rank within a pack and everything to do with self-confidence. Kimi would have made a great suffragist. Any male who’d tried to deny her the vote would’ve found himself pounced on, knocked to the ground, and pinned there until he not only conceded her right to cast a ballot, but promised to help elect her. Anyway, Kimi marks her turf all the time, but the prospect of having her drench a funeral marker struck me as unseemly. I’d left Rowdy at home. If you want to be dismissed as just one more dog walker, an Alaskan malamute is already a poor choice of breed to walk. And in a populous area like Harvard Yard, Rowdy is a shameless, hopeless, uncontrollable attention-grabber. Both dogs are wolf-gray, with plumy white tails, stand-off coats, and lovely little ears. But Rowdy is bigger than Kimi—about eighty-eight pounds to her seventy-five—and he’s a better show dog than she is, not because judges necessarily prefer his white face to her black facial markings, but because Rowdy radiates an animal magnetism that dares people to look elsewhere when he’s around. Also, Kimi can sometimes be persuaded to mind her own business, whereas Rowdy will not be stopped from singing loud peals of woo-woo-woo. We didn’t have the Yard to ourselves. Students passed by, alone, in couples, and in groups.

  “Walter was partial to pines,” Gabrielle said, “but there aren’t any here.” For once, Molly was on the ground instead of in Gabrielle’s arms. Gabrielle held the little white dog’s leash in one hand. Her other hand supported one of those green and white L. L. Bean tote bags touted in the catalog as useful for everything, including, presumably, the transportation of human remains. “Not that it matters,” she added. “What I had in mind was Widener. There’s something religious about it, don’t you think? More than Mem. Church, really.”