Anyway, even in the old days, Duke Sylvia had been much too polished to practice Texas handling in its crude form. What the old tape captured was a common twist. Here’s how it went. The dogs were lined up, and the judge was temporarily out of the picture as the dog just before Comet gaited to the far end of the ring. Comet, I should note, had an outstanding front, a strong chest and big-boned legs that contrasted with the somewhat weaker front of the dog just beyond him, a dog with a junior handler, a kid. Making sure that the junior handler beyond him was watching—and, I assume, that the judge wasn’t—sideburned Duke made a quicker-than-the-eye move, a quick flick of his hand to Comet’s chest. I followed the rest of the sequence. As the judge went over Comet, Duke’s hands went nowhere near his dog, who acted as the ideal co-conspirator in his handler’s scheme by projecting the image of the canine know-it-all who can display his own virtues just fine, thank you, with no help from the human nuisance tagging along at the wrong end of the show lead. When the judge approached the next dog, the junior handler did what he’d just seen the master before him do: He ran a hand over his dog’s chest, thus simultaneously calling attention to a weak point, insulting the judge, and drawing the judge’s wrath. The film was silent. The judge’s deadly ire, however, was visible on his enraged face.
The manipulated junior handler: Timmy Oliver. The judge: James Hunnewell.
IN SIGNING UP for Friday night’s Alaskan malamute luau, we’d been given the standard dog-club-banquet choice of London broil, chicken cordon bleu, or baked scrod. Upscale is prime rib, chicken Kiev, or broiled swordfish. Downscale is beneath me. I won’t join an organization that offers nothing but creamed table scraps and peas on tough patty shells.
By the time Leah and I arrived, the Lagoon was packed with people milling around, sipping drinks, and chatting. In the background, Hawaiian guitar Muzak twanged what I eventually decoded as ”Time Is on My Side.” I ordered a Scotch for me and a diet cola for Leah. Soon after a saronged waitress brought the drinks, people began to settle at the tables.
After lingering to watch the old film of Comet, I’d joined Gary and a couple of other rescue people in helping Betty to move the most valuable auction items to her room. Then Leah and I had fed and walked the dogs, taken quick showers, and changed into new black dresses that we’d kept in plastic bags, but had to de-fur anyway. We’d shopped for the dresses together. For the first three hours, Leah had rejected every suggestion I’d made. In her view, every bright solid color made her look like a bridesmaid. Flowing garments were maternity dresses. Anything with a waistline reminded her of Scarlett O’Hara. According to Leah, a gray tweed suit turned me into a dowager. In navy blue, we were flight attendants. When I finally persuaded her to try on a pretty flowered print, she gave the mirror one disgusted glance and cried, ”Oh God! Little House on the Prairie.!” The plain black dress that she eventually picked for herself was so short that only my frazzled exhaustion prevented me from telling her that it made her look like an Olympic figure skater who’d just suffered a death in the family. She costumed me as an Italian widow. On our way to the Lagoon, Leah remarked that we looked extremely sophisticated. ”You know, Holly,” Leah advised, ”men really do like black.”
Do they ever! As people began to seat themselves at the big round tables and to dip spoons into the fruit cocktails, Finn Adams approached me in a manner disconcertingly reminiscent of the demeanor of my mother’s most enthusiastic stud dog, Bertie. Bertie had to be restrained from leaping the fences to offer his valuable services to all takers free of charge instead of waiting for his carefully planned trysts with our own bitches and the occasional visits of paying guests. As Finn joined us, I devoutly wished Bertie were with me now. Bertie would have hated the whole idea of artificial insemination. Bertie had the perfect gentle, affectionate golden retriever temperament, but if he’d even begun to guess how Finn Adams earned his living, he’d have taken a chunk out of his ankle. Or perhaps elsewhere.
But Bertie was long dead. Leah was no help. When Finn suggested that we have dinner together, Leah smirked. I scanned desperately. At a nearby table sat Duke Sylvia. Next to him were two empty chairs. I threw Duke an imploring glance and held up two fingers. He nodded.
”Sorry,” I told Finn, gesturing in Duke’s direction, ”but we’ve already promised...”
Men really do like black. Duke seemed unusually glad to see me. He rose from his seat and pulled out the chair next to his. Leah took the place next to mine. Beyond her sat Timmy Oliver. Between Timmy and Karl Reilly, Freida’s son, was a seat that I assumed was being saved for Karl’s wife, Lucille, who turned out to be home with the flu. Pam Ritchie and Tiny DaSilva sat between Karl and Duke. How Duke had contrived to get Timmy seated alone with two empty places on one side and one on the other, I didn’t know, but I held Duke responsible. Wherever Duke sat automatically became the head of the table. A waiter showed up with two bottles of wine. After filling our glasses, he left both bottles in front of Duke. Then Finn Adams wandered along and, gesturing to the empty place between Timmy Oliver and Karl Reilly, got Duke’s unspoken permission to join us.
At the risk of sounding like the Camille Paglia of dogs, let me admit that I dearly love a true alpha male.
When Finn sat down, he exchanged introductions with Karl Reilly and with Pam and Tiny. He nodded politely to Leah and me and greeted Timmy Oliver, whom he obviously knew. To Duke, he said, ”Finn Adams. R.T.I.” Duke tipped his big lion’s head. I suppose Duke took it for granted that at a dog show, everyone knew who he was. I had the sense that in Finn’s case Duke was right.
At dog club banquets, the standard appetizer is fresh fruit cup. Upscale is with sherbet. Ours was without, but each of us did get a garnish of mint leaf. Duke picked up his spoon and ate a melon ball. Then the rest of us began. As we passed the baskets of rolls and the plates of butter, everyone agreed that, especially considering the circumstances, Mikki Muldoon was doing a very good job.
”Mikki always runs a tight ship,” Duke commented. ”She’s a real pro.”
As if to suggest that Freida Reilly wasn’t, Tiny turned to Karl and said, ”Your mother looks done in. She must be ready to drop.”
I didn’t really know Karl Reilly. What gave me a false sense of familiarity was Karl’s resemblance to a man who appeared in a lot of obscure-channel TV commercials for a local chain that sold cheap men’s suits. Whenever I saw Karl, I found myself expecting him to display his trouser cuffs and utter negative remarks about high-priced stores. Before Karl could respond to Tiny, however, Pam Ritchie said, ”Well, of course Freida’s showing the strain! Who wouldn’t be? It’s enough of a job to chair a national to begin with, never mind having your judge murdered. Exactly how do you expect her to look?”
In self-defense, or perhaps in defense of Freida’s qualifications for the hotly coveted place on the board, Tiny said, ”All I meant was that I, for one, don’t envy Freida one bit. All of us owe her a debt of gratitude for coping so magnificently with this terrible situation.”
”Of course we do! Karl, I hope your mother knows what a remarkable job everyone thinks she’s doing. Among other things, I expected to walk in here and find us stuck with an, uh, undercover cop at every table.” Pam’s eyes lingered on Finn Adams.
With a trace of his old charm, Finn smiled crookedly and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
”Hey, like he says,” Timmy Oliver said, ”he’s from R.T.I. We’ve been talking a little business. Besides, him and Holly go way back.”
I cringed. ”Pam,” I said, ”I swear he’s from R.T.I. If there are any cops here, Finn isn’t one of them. And if they want to know anything, they don’t have to sneak anyone in. There’s nothing to stop them from just asking.”
As if to prove me right, Karl Reilly shook his head glumly. ”The cop I talked to really put me through it.”
As one waitress removed the remains of his fruit cup and another replaced it with a salad plate, he added, ”I’m the one who picked Mr. Hunnewell up
at the airport. Favor to my mother. Turned out to be more than I bargained for, and the cops had to hear all about it.” The salad in front of me was composed of a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce topped with one leaf of arugula. Karl must’ve decided that the dark green leaf on his had gotten there by mistake. Or maybe a bug or a strand of hair clung to it. He delicately removed the leaf with his fingers and speared a fork into the lettuce. ”Geez, at first I didn’t... The fact is that my mother’d warned me that Mr. Hunnewell was... that he wasn’t necessarily Mr. Nice Guy all the time, but whoo! If I’d’ve known, I’d’ve told her to let him take a cab.”
Lowering her chin to peer censoriously over imaginary eyeglasses, Pam pointed out, ”It was much more courteous to have someone meet him personally, you know, Karl. And it’s an awfully long ride for a taxi.”
”You’re telling me,” Karl said. ”Halfway here, I came close to reaching over and opening the door and giving him a hard shove.” Taking a bite of lettuce, he nearly choked. When he stopped coughing, he said hastily, ”Not really, but—”
Duke and Timmy started ribbing Karl about waiting until later.
Laughing, Karl said, ”With the way that guy smoked, I don’t know why anyone bothered. Geez, between Boston and here, he must’ve gone through two packs of cigarettes. Every time I opened the window, he’d complain he was cold...”
Pam dipped her head. ”Poor circulation.”
”And,” Karl went on, ”I’d have to shut the window again. And the thing was, he couldn’t’ve been on a plane for a long time, because he didn’t know they wouldn’t let him smoke, and from what he said, he took it like it was something personal, and so when I picked him up, he was in a wicked foul mood, and he’d had a few drinks, on top of the nicotine fit.”
”The police asked me about that,” I said. ”About how much he smoked, did he offer me a cigarette, which he did, a lot of stuff like that. I can’t figure out what it had to do with anything.”
”Well, that I can tell you,” Tiny said triumphantly. ”He ran out of cigarettes.”
Karl snorted. ”Geez, no wonder.”
”And,” said Tiny, ”that’s what he was doing out of his room. He called room service, and he called the desk, and he was not very nice about it!”
”And how would you know?” Pam demanded. ”The chambermaid told me,” Tiny replied smugly. ”The woman at the desk told her supervisor who told another chambermaid who told—”
”Gossip!” Pam decreed.
”No, it is not gossip,” Tiny said. ”They noticed because he wanted a whole carton of the things, and all the hotel has is a machine over in the bar somewhere, and when Hunnewell heard that, he expected them to send someone out to a store for him! Can you imagine? Eleven o’clock at night or whenever it was, and he expected—”
”I don’t know who James Hunnewell thought he was,” Pam interrupted, ”but after the encounter that Holly and I had with him, I can believe anything! The arrogance! Karl, I’m surprised he didn’t try to get your mother to play errand girl for him! Poor Freida, getting stuck with him for a judge! Judge! Hah! That man didn’t strike me as being safe out alone. What he’d have done in the ring, I shudder to contemplate. I don’t know what he was like years ago, but if he was in his right mind then, he wasn’t last night. You should have heard the terrible things he said about Mrs. Seeley!” Pam bowed her head. Her lips moved in what I took to be a silent prayer addressed to the matriarch of our breed.
”You have to admit that Short was opinionated” opined Duke.
He might as well have reached over and jabbed his dinner knife into Pam’s ribs. Flying half out of her seat she shrieked, ”OPINIONATED! Opinionated? Short Seeley was not opinionated! Short was right!” Without Eva B. Seeley, Pam declared, there wouldn’t be an Alaskan malamute at all, and if, on occasion, Mrs. Seeley had seen fit to speak authoritatively, well, she was, after all, the authority, wasn’t she? Or did Duke imagine otherwise?
As affable as ever, Duke tried to pacify Pam. What he’d meant, he said cheerfully, was that Mrs. Seeley had been a woman who never shied away from speaking her mind.
”As she had every right to,” Pam declared with satisfaction. ”Every right.” Seizing her fork, she attacked her salad with great ferocity, as if it, too, had somehow desecrated the memory of Eva Seeley.
In a gentlemanly effort to change the subject, Finn Adams remarked that considering what had happened, the hotel was coping pretty well. And we’d certainly lucked out with the weather!
The weather! I ask you!
As Timmy Oliver informed us that it was supposed to pour all day tomorrow, the hotel staff began to remove the salad plates and to dole out our dinners.
”This your first national?” Duke asked Leah.
She said that it was, and that, yes, she was handling my bitch tomorrow, and that, yes, she did intend to relax and have a good time.
”Fun’s what it’s all about,” Duke told her.
With the tape of Comet’s old show appearance in mind, I glanced at Timmy Oliver. He nodded in agreement and repeated Duke’s words: ”Fun’s what it’s all about.”
It occurred to me that if Duke and Timmy happened to be in the ring together tomorrow, Duke could play the same old Texas handling trick, and Timmy Oliver would probably fall for it all over again. Duke wouldn’t try it, though. Over the years, he’d gained in subtlety. Besides, he respected Mikki Muldoon.
Digging a fork into my scrod, I saw that I’d gotten swordfish instead. As I was about to say so, Pam Ritchie wondered aloud why she had prime rib. All of us, we found, had been mysteriously upgraded.
”Freida must’ve taken in more money than she expected,” Tiny suggested. ”She’d hardly have bothered to ask if we wanted better than we paid for.”
Pam, of course, disagreed. ”If there’d been a surplus, she’d hardly have—”
”There wasn’t,” Karl announced. ”The hotel’s made a mistake. I’d better let my mother know.”
When he’d excused himself and left in search of Freida, Leah said boldly that if we’d been served good stuff by accident, we’d better start eating before someone came and took it away. Duke, I noticed, was already digging into his prime rib. I took a quick survey of the plates. Tiny, Pam, Karl, Timmy, and Leah also had beef. As I’d suspected, Duke’s was by far the biggest, thickest piece. Leah didn’t notice or didn’t care. After chewing and swallowing, she said, ”This is the first real meat I’ve had in over a month!”
”Leah’s in college,” I explained. ”She eats cafeteria food.”
Finn asked her where she went.
”Harvard,” she said.
Silence fell.
Finn said that two of his uncles had gone there. No one else said anything.
Then Duke had the sense to ask Leah what she was going to do after college. When she announced her intention of becoming a veterinarian, everyone started talking again. Timmy Oliver and Finn Adams got involved in an intimate one-to-one discussion of recent advances in sperm preservation—canine, I presume; and Tim made a general pitch for the wonders of Pro-Vita No-Blo Sho-Kote. Having sipped her way through several glasses of wine, Pam confided to everyone within hearing distance of a shotgun blast that, well, strictly between ourselves, we had to admit in all honesty that whoever had murdered our judge had at least had the courtesy not to do it on show grounds.
”What a perfectly awful thing to say!” Tiny looked horrified. ”And I’m not even sure it’s true. That field is part of the hotel. As far as I know, that means it’s show grounds.”
”No,” Pam insisted, ”show grounds means to the end of the parking lot, and obviously, since it would’ve been just as easy to clunk him over the head on show grounds as it was off—”
”Who says it’s the end of the parking lot?” Tiny challenged. ”It must be you, Pam, because it’s not AKC.”
”It certainly is! That field is definitely not on show grounds. Among other things, the obedience people were training there on Wednesday,
and they can’t train on show grounds.”
”Yes,” I confirmed, ”but I think it was okay to work a dog there unobtrusively on Wednesday, the day before the trial. As far as I know, there’s no strict written definition of show precincts. How could there be? Show sites are all so different. But you’d really have to ask an AKC rep.”
Speaking, for once, with one voice, Pam and Tiny said in unison: ”There’s no rep here!”
In response to the outburst, a waiter who’d been helping to arrange an elaborate dessert buffet on a long rectangular table behind ours scurried over to ask whether something was wrong.
Dismissing him rather abruptly, Pam complained that she didn’t understand the absence of an AKC rep. ”It seems to me that it would’ve been to Freida’s advantage to see that there was one.”
As I’ve mentioned, the principal responsibility of a show chair is to take the blame for everything. In accepting the job, Freida had made sure that everyone would know who she was. She’d also gambled on satisfaction with how she’d performed. ”There doesn’t have to be a rep,” I told Pam, ”and it certainly wasn’t Freida’s decision. As far as I know, reps determine their own schedules.”
”Well,” insisted Tiny, ”at a minimum, Freida might’ve arranged for better security.”
Leah joined in. ”Isn’t security the hotel’s responsibility? Especially out in the parking lot?”
None of us really knew. ”When clubs give shows,” I said, ”they have to take out big umbrella policies that cover anything that happens, so it can’t be just the responsibility of the site. Clubs can get sued; it does hap-pen.
Leah, the A student, rose in her chair. ”Oh my God! I’ve got it! Holly, that’s why his sister is coming here! She’s coming to sue—”
”Whose sister?” Tiny’s face was avid with curiosity.
”James Hunnewell’s,” Leah said impatiently. ”The police told Holly. Supposedly, his sister was coming to make sure he got a Christian burial, but that doesn’t make sense, because she could have his body shipped back to Missouri and give him any kind of burial she wants, so—”
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