by Susan Conant
THE CRITICS LOVE
SUSAN CONANT’S
DOG LOVER’S MYSTERIES!
“TOSS MS. CONANT A BISCUIT. IF THERE’S A CLASS CALLED ‘DOG MYSTERIES,’ SHE’S GOT A BEST OF BREED.”
—Rendezvous
“COME. SIT. STAY.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“PUREBRED ENTERTAINMENT. WITH PAPERS.”
—Clarion-Ledger, Jackson
“IF YOU’VE SUSPECTED MYSTERIES ARE GOING TO THE DOGS, SUSAN CONANT’S LATEST COULD WELL CONFIRM THAT THEORY.”
—Greenwich Time/Stamford Advocate
“THE PERFECT GIFT FOR THE DOG-LOVER WITH EVERYTHING.”
—The Globe and Mail, Toronto
“PAWS FOR A MOMENT, IF YOU LIKE DOGS.”
—Cox News Service
BLACK RIBBON
“A FASCINATING MURDER MYSTERY AND A VERY, VERY FUNNY BOOK … WRITTEN WITH A FAIRNESS THAT EVEN DOROTHY SAYERS OR AGATHA CHRISTIE WOULD ADMIRE.”
—Mobile Register
RUFFLY SPEAKING
“A REAL TAIL-WAGGER.”
—The Washington Post
“YOU’D BETTER GO FETCH THIS.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A FINE READ, A STORY THAT IS AS FASCINATING FOR ITS DOG LORE AS FOR ITS MYSTERY PLOT.”
—Romantic Times
“Ms. Conant has the ability to make her characters (both canine and human) come alive.”
—Mystery News
BLOODLINES
“Conant’s dog-centered mystery is LIVELY, FUNNY, AND ABSOLUTE PREMIUM.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“IF YOU’RE A ‘DOG PERSON’ … THIS BOOK IS DEFINITELY FOR YOU.”
—Rendezvous
“Susan Conant gives new meaning to the phrase ‘sniffing out clues.’ ”
—Dog Fancy magazine
“HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR LOVERS OF DOGS, PEOPLE, AND ALL-AROUND GOOD STORYTELLING!”
—Mystery News
“Engrossing … unique!”
—Mystery Forum
GONE TO THE DOGS
“AN ABSOLUTELY FIRST-RATE MYSTERY … and a fascinating look at the world of dogs … I loved it.”
—Diane Mott Davidson
“Conant’s dogs are real, true, and recognizable. BOTH DOG AND MYSTERY LOVERS KNOW A CHAMPION WHEN THEY SEE ONE. GONE TO THE DOGS DEFINITELY WINS BEST OF BREED.”
—Carolyn G. Hart
“Conant infuses her writing with a healthy dose of humor about Holly’s Fido-loving friends and other Cambridge clichés; the target of her considerable wit clearly emerges as human nature.”
—Publishers Weekly
“AN ENJOYABLE READ FOR ANIMAL LOVERS OF ALL KINDS.”
—Mystery Lovers Bookshop News
“Holly Winter is a friendly, funny, salty, boundlessly enthusiastic guide to the noble and nefarious in the world of dogs. And the dogs are real enough to pat!”
—P. M. Carlson
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
*Ruffly Speaking
*Bloodlines
*Gone to the Dogs
Paws Before Dying
A Bite of Death
Dead and Doggone
A New Leash on Death
*Available From Bantam Books
AND COMING SOON IN
PAPERBACK FROM BANTAM BOOKS
Stud Rites
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This edition contains the complete text
of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
Black Ribbon
A Bantam Book/in association with
Doubleday
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published January 1995
Bantam edition/December 1995
Excerpts from American Kennel Club rules, regulations, guidelines, and official breed standards reprinted by permission of the American Kennel Club.
Excerpt from Surviving Your Dog’s Adolescence (New York: Howell Book House), Copyright © 1993 by Carol Lea Benjamin, reprinted by permission of the author.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1995 by Susan Conant.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-19547.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Doubleday, 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78552-7
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
v3.1
BLACK RIBBON
Frostfield Arctic Natasha, CD, TT, CGC, VCC
February 9, 1986-March 31, 1993
Radiant spirit, joyful noise
Stay with me, my good girl. I loved you every minute
of your life.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
About the Author
MANY THANKS to Sally Jean Alexander; Susan Bulanda, Coventry Canine Search and Rescue; Debra Goodie; Officer Warren F. Harnden, Rangeley Police Department, Rangeley, Maine; Ted Sprague; and Jan Thomas, Chesrite Kennel, all of whom expertly answered my questions. Thanks also to Roseann Mandell, Geoff Stern, and Margherita Walker, who read my manuscript when they could have been training Duchess, Kody, Audrey Rose, Basil, and Blossom, to whom I apologize for time stolen and points lost. I am also grateful to Jean Berman, Judy Bocock, Dorothy Donohue, and Tracy Katz. Wayne Morie’s wonderful Chesapeake Bay retrievers, CH Brackenwood Spartan, UD and Chesrite’s Tyme To Heel, CGC (Sparty and Elsa) taught me to love the breed. Special thanks to Elsa for the use of her name; my fictional Chessie would answer to no other. Vanderval’s Tundra Eagle, CDX, one of the great obedience malamutes of all times, appears with the blessing of her breeder, owner, and handler, Anna Morelli. For the title of Holly’s canine romance, I am indebted to P.J. (Pam) Richardson. Best of Breed among editors once again goes to perfection itself, my beloved Kate Miciak.
Many thanks also to William Walker, D.V.M.; to his skilled and compassionate staff at the Rotherwood Animal Clinic, Newton, Massachusetts; to a great and caring veterinary surgeon, Joel Woolfson, D.V.M.; to Theresa Hawley and Corinne Zipps; and to everyone else who helped to save the resc
ue malamute now called Kashina. For kindness to Kashina, special thanks to my husband, Carter Umbarger, who finds himself at ever-increasing risk of becoming a dog person.
Without an Alaskan malamute to guide me through the bleak landscapes of the soul, I would wander forever without finding Holly’s voice. I am deeply grateful to my new lead dog, Frostfield Firestar’s Kobuk, CGC, in whose unerring path I humbly follow, and to his baby half-sister, Frostfield Perfect Crime, called Rowdy.
CONSIDER THE ETERNAL QUEST for Order.
Loyal Order of Moose, Fraternal Order of Eagles, Patriotic and Protective Order of Stags, Order of the Blue Goose, Ancient Order of Foresters, Modern Woodmen of America, Knights of Pythias, Tall Cedars of Lebanon, Order of DeMolay, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Knights of Malta, Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Constellation of Junior Stars, Red Cross of Constantine, Supreme Conclave True Kindred, Grand Order of Galilian Fishermen, Mystic Order of Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm …
Or so it once was. No longer the Loyal and multitudinous Order of yesteryear, Moose International, Inc., recently substituted bright-colored blazers for the traditional black satin cape. No more tah, either; no more backward spelling at all. Modernization is paying off: 168,000 new Moose last year. Progress. Or so the poor Moose suppose. Total membership; 1.27 million. Pitiful. Masons: 4.1 million in 1959. Today? 2.5 million. Elks, too. Eagles. Decline, decline. Thus falters the quest for Order: The Lodge dislodges; the fez falls apart; the conclave cannot hold. Snippets of rite drift from the aeries where Eagles soared. Bits of regalia lie scattered where once roamed droves of Patriotic and Protective Stags. Tall Cedars of Lebanon petrify to dead wood.
But hark! Is that a yelp I hear? A yip, a ruff, a bold, resounding woo-woo-woo? It is all these things and more. Read the numbers: in the United States of America, 54 million dogs, 2.5 million Masons, thus 21.6 dogs for every Mason; and 4.1 million Masons in 1959, peak membership, but only 2.5 million Masons today, 1.6 million fewer members. And remember that number, because American Kennel Club individual dog registrations last year alone equaled exactly 1,528,392, a figure that rounds off to … Well, work it out for yourselves! Indeed! For every member lost to Freemasonry since 1959, the American Kennel Club has registered a new canine in the past year alone. Out of order, chaos; and out of chaos, the Ancient, Benevolent, and Protective Order of Mystic Stalwarts of the Highborn Pooch.
“Boy, oh, boy,” said my editor, “do you ever need a vacation.”
Any editor who phones at seven A.M. deserves a brush-off. But a dog writer’s editor? Sorry, but if you can’t endure the ordeal-by-pun, you don’t belong in dogs, the land of Lixit waterers, Rebark booties, Pupsicle frozen beef treats, and antiparasitics with brand names so gut-wrenching that you don’t even need to shove the products down Fido’s throat, but can just catch his eye and holler: Erliworm! Panacur! Evict! or Good Riddance!
“And the other organizations are even worse off!” I exclaimed into the phone. “Thirty-six dogs per Elk, and the Moose are really trying hard, but you’ve got to feel sorry for them, because for them, it’s—”
Bonnie groaned. “The camp is called Waggin’ Tail,” she said. “It’s in Maine.” She paused. “Vacationland,” she added significantly.
“I grew up there,” I reminded her.
“On the coast. This is in Rangeley. Doesn’t your grandmother …?”
“She’s in Bethel. It’s nearby.”
“There. You see? The cool north woods of home. And, Holly? Maxine McGuire has mortgaged her soul to get this thing going. You will love it.” Bonnie was instructing, not predicting. “And your dogs will love it even more than you will. That’s very, very important. They’ll adore every second. Focus on the dogs. Their reactions, their quirks, their experience. You’re in the picture, but you’re in the background.”
Teaching your grandam to suck rawhide.
Bonnie persisted. “Max is sending you the preregistration packet. Camp’s the last week in August. I want the article as soon as possible after camp ends. Compris?”
“ ‘How We Spent Our Summer Vacation in Dog Heaven.’ ”
“Wonderful! There you go. And I also need something very, very positive about …” Bonnie’s voice faded.
“I can’t hear you.”
“AKC!” she shouted. For those of you new to the fancy, I should explain. AKC: Antiquated Kennel Club. “Write me something about AKC. About shows?”
Bonnie is a good editor. If there’s one thing that AKC does splendidly, it’s a dog show. The American Kennel Club itself does not hold shows; it approves them. Clubs run shows—kennel clubs, national breed clubs, obedience clubs—1,169 all-breed shows, 1,729 specialty shows, and 405 obedience trials last year alone, and if I were a few hundred people instead of just one, I’d have attended every all-breed show, every specialty, and every trial in the country, and I’d have had fun at every one. Have I lost you? Specialty: a single-breed dog show, limited to Siberian huskies, Pulik, German shepherd dogs, whatever. Preferably, from my point of view, Alaskan malamutes.
“Sure,” I told Bonnie. “Anything you want except one more article on the search for a new president. That one’s been done to death.”
“Do me a nice hands-on, how-to piece,” Bonnie said.
“How to Amateur-Handle Your Dog to Best of Breed at Westminster.” Short article. Entire text: Don’t. Hire a professional.
Bonnie added a thought. “Something about judges. Etiquette for exhibitors. Making the judge’s job easy. Do’s and Don’t’s. You have the guidelines?”
In what may at first seem like a digression, let me point out that in conventional Masonry, G stands for God and Geometry. In the fancy, it means Guidelines: “Guidelines for Dog Show Judges” and “Guidelines for Obedience Judges.” R is also sacred to us: “Rules Applying to Dog Shows,” “Rules Applying to Registration and Discipline,” “Obedience Regulations,” single copies of which used to be free, sort of like Gideon Bibles, but now cost a dollar apiece. Before long, the Gideons’ll start tacking a nominal rental fee onto motel rates. Anyway, in Masonry, G refers to God’s compass, and in our order, it refers to Guidelines, which is to say that in both orders, G, the last letter in you-know-what, defines the limits of good and evil. Have I lost you? Well, the Moose may have discarded the tah, but in the fancy, we’re as backward as ever.
The promised preregistration packet arrived a week after Bonnie’s call, on a July day when the sun burning over Cambridge, Massachusetts, was as red as the letters that spelled out the camp name and motto on the big white envelope:
WAGGIN’ TAIL
Where All the Dogs Are Happy Campers
And All the Owners “Ruff It In Luxury”!
Torn open and upended on my kitchen table, the thick envelope yielded one color-glossy promotional brochure for Waggin’ Tail Camp and dozens of photocopied pages that I spread out and sorted through. The brochure, a slick professional product, displayed several appealing photographs: one of a sunset reflected in a sapphire blue lake; one of a gigantic log cabin with miniature clone-cabins arrayed on either side; one of a mastiff bitch, Maxine McGuire’s, no doubt, with a large litter of pups similarly clustered about her. Maxine and my editor, I might mention, belonged to the same lodge—Bonnie’s mastiffs went back to Maxine’s lines—thus Bonnie’s loyalty to Maxine and the eagerness of Dog’s Life magazine to support Maxine’s new enterprise.
The text of the camp’s brochure contained a great many exclamation points. It was principally devoted to persuading the reader that, in contrast to competing institutions, Waggin’ Tail offered a high degree of—and here I don’t just talk the talk, but quote the quotes—“civilization.” For the last week of August, Waggin’ Tail, it proclaimed, had exclusive possession of the newly refurbished Mooselookmeguntic Four Seasons Resort Lodge and Cabins, located in Maine’s beautiful and unspoiled Rangeley Lakes region, where campers would enjoy home-cooked gourmet meals featuring sumptuous regional delicacies (“incl
uding lobster!!!”), a daily cocktail hour, wine with dinner, and various other alcoholic and nonalcoholic extravagances unavailable at competing camps!!! “Ruff It in Luxury!”
Despite the promises of lavish accommodations, epicurean delights, and copious tippling, what obviously set Waggin’ Tail apart from numerous similar camps was that it cost a ridiculous amount of money. The fees appeared not in the brochure, but on one of the photocopied enclosures. Of necessity, the figures were in fine print; otherwise, they wouldn’t have fit on the page. I had no idea why I’d even been sent the fee schedule. In return for the laudatory piece I’d been assigned to produce, my dogs and I were on full scholarship.
The remaining material consisted of a five-page welcome-to-camp form letter from Maxine McGuire; a tentative schedule of camp activities that included every dog sport and activity I’d ever heard of and a bewildering number of workshops, seminars, and courses on topics such as leash-braiding and canine first aid; detailed directions to the resort; a long list of items to pack; two copies of a lengthy contract entitled “Waiver of All Liability and Release and Indemnification Agreement,” one of which had to be signed and returned; and two health certificates to be filled in by my veterinarian. The absence of a corresponding form to be completed by my M.D. was, I thought, a sure sign that Maxine McGuire was a real dog person, which is to say, someone who demands written proof that a dog is fecal negative and up-to-date on his shots, but assumes that a mere human being doesn’t have anything worth catching, anyway.
Ah, but speaking of real dog people, let me explain why my bitch, Kimi, didn’t go to camp by remarking on how ill-deserved is the Old Testament’s reputation for antidog bias! It’s there, of course, and it’s perfectly understandable. Even by my standards, the ancient Egyptians really were dog nuts, and I can imagine that if I were held in bondage by a bunch of reptile-worshippers, I probably wouldn’t run out and get a pet chameleon the second I finally got free, so if establishing the Mount Sinai Kennel Club and chairing its first all-breed show wasn’t exactly Moses’s top priority, you can’t blame him, or God, either. I mean, by comparison with Job, Biblical dog lovers got off easy, and in return for their trials, received more than fair compensation in the consoling verse that I recited to myself on the morning of Sunday, August 22, when I left Kimi, as well as my Cambridge three-decker, in the care of my cousin Leah, and headed for Rangeley, Maine, accompanied only by my male malamute, Rowdy, a creature of many purposes and times, but one blessedly free of the cycles to which Kimi is subject. Indeed, in the words of Ecclesiastes, to every thing there is a season.