Stud Rites (23 page)

”You saw no one at all, is that right?” Harriet demanded of me in that deep-bass voice, her eyes boring into mine.

No one, I assured her. Not a soul. As I moved away, Harriet muttered to Victor. I thought I heard her whisper Betty’s name.

Soon thereafter, Harriet Lunt probably spoke my own. I know that she pointed me out. Detective Kari-otis told me so. He led me to the same overwhelmingly bright function room we’d been in before. This time, though, our interview was brief. And I didn’t make a fool of myself. I coldly explained why I’d been in the Lagoon in the middle of the night. ”The stuff I bought was scattered all over,” I reported. From the time I left my room until the moment I found Harriet Lunt, I said, I’d seen no one and heard nothing. When I’d come upon her, the door to the corridors had been closing. I hadn’t even seen a shadow. I barely knew Harriet Lunt. I had no idea why anyone would assault her. What did I know of the, uh, Dowager Marchioness of Denver? For a second, I thought Kariotis must be asking about a character in some book. Then it dawned on me—Elsa Van Dine. Like everyone else, I knew she’d been murdered. A fatal mugging and robbery on a street in Providence, I’d heard. I’d never met her and never corresponded with her. If Detective Kariotis wanted to know about the older generation, he should ask an old-timer. I was new to the breed.

Throughout the interview, I desperately tried to conceal my impatience. With every succinct statement I made, I burned at the thought that as I spoke Leah and Kimi were in the ring. I elaborated on nothing and stuck to the facts of what I’d seen last night. Before long, Kariotis let me go.

Bolting back to the hall, I found that I hadn’t, after all, missed Leah and Kimi. They had just entered the ring. Not far from them, a chunky woman fell to her knees in so genuflectory a manner that when she finished posing her bitch, stood up, and raised a finger, I expected her to make the sign of the cross. But the handler didn’t have a prayer. Ignoring a jerk on her collar, the bitch sneezed violently, bounced up and down, skittered around, and capped the performance by attempting to mount her handler. Out of sympathy, I looked away. From one corner of the ring, though, the uncaring eye of the video camera recorded the whole episode, which in a month or so would be available for viewing and reviewing by anyone who ordered the tape from the professional company hired to make our national specialty the unforgettable experience it truly was.

I bought the tape and have repeatedly watched that display of naughtiness while fast-forwarding, stopping, and zipping on in search of the section that shows Leah and Kimi. But I have leaped ahead of myself. The tape has been heavily edited; long minutes have become seconds. And because the camera rested on a very low tripod, the viewpoint is odd and unfamiliar, as if the judging had been filmed by a very small child with a precocious interest in canine gait. Or perhaps an obsession with the lower halves of female human beings. In this foreshadowing of a radical-feminist future, the judge is female, and women handlers outnumber the men... five to one? Ten to one? So maybe what truly enthralls the child is ladies’ legs. They vary so greatly in size and shape, bone and muscle mass, as to constitute a sort of all-breed show within this otherwise uniformly malamute ring.

Judge Mikki Muldoon’s legs are fine-boned, and she toes out; judged by the official standard of the Alaskan malamute, she doesn’t make it in her own ring. Kimi does. She moves with the power of a thundercloud and the grace of a big cat. At the time, I was silent. Each time I watch the tape, however, I coach Leah aloud:
Don’t yank her in! Don’t make her sidewind!
Leah’s lesson-ridden childhood pays off: Eurythmics, Suzuki, and the Orff-Kodaly method have taught her tempo and discipline. And if Kimi’s ear set is not the utter perfection of Rowdy’s? Well, malamutes don’t pull with their ears; and to some extent—fourth place, to be exact—Judge Mikki Muldoon agrees. First goes to a bitch bred, owned, and handled by Sherri Ann Printz. Two others are also ahead of Kimi. But fourth? Out of the highly competitive Open class? At a national specialty? With a young, if gifted, handler? I think that’s damn good.

The hoots and wild applause were for Sherri Ann. My own cries of utter surprise were for Kimi and Leah. For obvious reasons, I did my best to hide the full extent of my astonishment from Leah and Faith. If Kimi knew, she didn’t care. Dogs judge souls, not bodies. Kimi knows her own worth.

Leah thanked the judge, congratulated those who’d placed ahead of her, and accepted congratulations in return. Sherri Ann Printz smiled, chatted, and gesticulated with great animation. Sherri Ann could, of course, afford magnanimity. Her object, however, was obvious: to present herself to Leah as grandly rising above the false accusations and infantile food-fighting of madwomen.
Every vote counts,
I thought cynically: Leah belonged to our national breed club.

Even after leaving the ring, Kimi was still flashing her eyes, wagging her tail at everyone, and angling for liver. To spare Leah the need to keep an eye on Kimi, as well as to reclaim my own dog, I took Kimi’s lead and was scratching her head and otherwise fooling around with her when Sherri Ann Printz turned from Leah to me and, just before leading her bitch back into the ring, exclaimed loudly, ”These youngsters are the future, you know! And if this young lady is any example, it’s my opinion that it’s a very rosy one!”

I wasn’t sure whether Sherri Ann meant Leah or Kimi, and not long thereafter, when Judge Mikki Muldoon again gave the nod to Sherri Ann—Winners Bitch —I couldn’t help wondering whether the rosy future paramount in Sherri Ann’s mind was hours rather than decades away: In picking a Pawprintz bitch, Mrs. Muldoon hadn’t exactly dashed Sherri Ann’s hopes for Bear’s victory in Best of Breed, a triumph that would also serve as dandy revenge on the cake-smearing Freida Reilly. On the other hand (the frosting-free hand? sorry, no pun intended), if Mikki Muldoon was playing politics, this win and the championship points that went with it could be a sop, an advance consolation prize to Sherri Ann, who, as a VIP in the breed, would be a bad enemy for a judge interested in obtaining future assignments. How political Mikki Muldoon was, I didn’t know. Her pleasure in judging was obvious: She radiated dignified elation. Her efficiency, too, was apparent: When she left the ring for a hard-earned one-hour lunch break, I checked my watch: ten past twelve. In a world in which schedules are usually optimistic approximations, she had completed her morning’s work almost precisely on time, and she’d done it without creating any sense of rushed or careless judging. Striding confidently out of her ring, Judge Mikki Muldoon seemed an altogether different person from the woman who’d occupied the ladies’ room stall next to mine yesterday morning, the nerve-wracked Mikki Muldoon who’d noisily lost her breakfast.

AS I STOOD at the take-out counter at the Liliu Grill handing over what felt like an awful lot of money for three sandwiches, Duke Sylvia showed up looking as confident as if Ironman had just gone Best of Breed. Duke nodded agreeably to me and asked for a pastrami on a bulky roll with extra mustard and a side of fries, not exactly what I think of as a remedy for a jittery stomach. For a few paranoid moments, I wondered whether Duke assumed that I was handling Rowdy myself. Was he trying to rattle the competition by ordering a lunch that wouldn’t have made it past my uvula? Of course, I could have
ordered
pastrami myself. I just couldn’t have forced it down.

”How’d you make out this morning?” I asked.

Duke momentarily looked as if he’d already forgotten the Kotzebue bitch. ”She took her class,” he said, as if it almost went without saying. ”Sherri Ann took Winners,” he added in the parlance of the fancy, which glosses over distinctions between dogs and their breeder-handlers, beings assumed to share a merged identity.

Almost as soon as Duke had finished paying, a white-coated waiter emerged through a swinging door with Duke’s food and mine. To get to the exhibition hall and the grooming tent, we cut through the lobby together and circled around outdoors. Although the rain had stopped, the sky was still gray, and pools of water remained on the blacktop. How Faith intended to keep Rowdy’s feet clean, I didn’t know, but I hoped she’d take advantage of the lull in the rain to get him from the tent to the exhibition hall. I checked my watch: twelve-fifty.

”Ten to one,” I told Duke. Rowdy’s chances? Were they that good? I mentally reviewed the competition, top-winning dogs so famous that I knew their call names: Ironman, Bear, Casey, and lots of others, especially Casey, who was supposed to be utterly gorgeous.

Clustered near the entrance to the hall were at least a dozen people, a few standing alone, the others in twos and threes. A man I didn’t know detached himself from one of the little clusters to approach Duke and mutter something I didn’t catch.

”Thanks. I’ll take care of it,” Duke replied. Giving me his usual low-key smile, he said, ”Sometimes it doesn’t pay to do favors.”

”Is this about Ironman?” I asked.

Duke shook his head. ”That bitch of Timmy Oliver’s. Z-Rocks. The thing is, Mikki’s not going to look at her twice.”

”Timmy’s telling everyone that under Hunnewell—”

Uncharacteristically, Duke cut me off. As close to exasperated as I’d ever seen him, he said, ”In Timmy’s dreams. Besides, James’d never’ve lasted to now. He was sicker than anyone knew. He was supposed to be on oxygen. He told Karl so on the way from the airport. No way James’d’ve held out. Even if he had—like I said, in Timmy’s dreams.”

”Z-Rocks goes back to Comet,” I said. ”Besides, she’s pretty.”

With scorn, Duke said, ”Comet was bone and muscle. He was all grit. Comet was not
pretty
.”

Short on time, driven by nerves, I asked an abrupt question that Leah had asked me last night when she’d read the centerfold piece in the old
Malamute Quarterly.
”Duke, what did Comet die of?”

Duke spoke quickly and quietly. ”Hit by a car.” Duke’s face and his whole body were stolid. ”Most of the time, Comet was with me, but he was out of coat, and I was on the circuit, so James had him for a month.” His voice was bitter. ”James lived right by a major highway. And James
loved
to watch the dog run.”

Someone told me later that Duke never discussed Comet’s death and that I shouldn’t have asked. I disagree. Duke, I think, told me about it because he knew I’d understand that Comet had been Duke’s and that James Hunnewell had murdered Duke’s great dog.

Before I could say anything, however, Duke excused himself and headed toward the grooming tent, where I intended to go myself to check on Rowdy and to give Kimi her unofficial prize as soon as I’d delivered lunch to Leah and Betty. Clutching the sandwiches, I dashed into the exhibition hall, where Leah was supposed to be helping Betty at the rescue booth, but was mainly devoting herself to fooling around with what I would immediately have recognized as a Poker Flat dog even if Robin Haggard hadn’t been right nearby. This one turned out to be Joe—properly, Ch. Poker Flat’s Rainman, C.D.X., T.D., W.W.P.D., W.T.D., C.G.C.— who, to judge from the way he was jabbing at Leah’s pocket, was actually more Battering Ram than Poker.

”Leah,” Betty said sternly, ”get that dog out from behind this table before one of you smashes something! All we need is for one of those wolf prints to get knocked over, and there’ll be broken glass all over the place. And if he swipes that lamp with his tail and does it some damage, I’ll never hear the end of it!”

Almost before Betty had finished issuing the warning, the big, gentle dog rose up to give Leah a giant teddy-bear hug and, paws resting on her shoulders, fulfilled Betty’s prediction by wagging his tail, tipping over what I was convinced was the murder weapon, and sending it crashing to the floor.

Leah was suitably ashamed of herself. ”I’m sorry! I really am sorry. The bulb didn’t break. Is the lamp...?”

Retrieving the fallen relic, Betty rose like a diminutive Statue of Liberty struggling to hold forth a disproportionately large and radically redesigned torch. Our kind of help, she announced in a crabby voice, was exactly what she didn’t need. ”Out of here!” ordered Betty. ”Every one of you!”

Catching the scent of food, Joe transferred his attention to me and had to be lured away midpoke. I thrust the steak sandwiches at Leah and said, ”Here. One for you, one for Kimi, Go!” Then I bent over the lamp, which Betty had finally lowered to the table, and asked whether there’d been any damage.