Black Ribbon (25 page)

The next sounds I couldn’t miss: the yelp of a dog in sudden pain, a female scream of fright, and the unmistakable cursing of Eva Spitteler. The light outside her cabin, hers on one side, Joy and Craig’s on the other, showed something of a classic postdogfight tableau, two groups, each bending over to check the wounds of the canine combatants. At the first sound of the fight, Rowdy had yanked out the entire length of the retractable lead and, convinced that he was missing the greatest camp activity yet, a spectacular dog battle that he’d undoubtedly win, had tried to haul me into the center of the fracas. You know who Carol Lea Benjamin is? That’s not a digression. Really it isn’t. Carol Lea Benjamin is a genius dog writer who captured in a few words the whole point of the Alaskan malamute from the breed’s own point of view, and I quote her: “The Malamute, the one with the big ‘S’ on his chest.” Rowdy doesn’t need a phone booth. He doesn’t believe in kryptonite, either.

By the time I’d hauled him in, Bingo was quiet, and so was Joy’s little sort-of Cairn, Lucky, who, to my amazement, had inflicted the only visible damage. In the light from the cabin
and the beam of Eva Spitteler’s flashlight, I could see blood flowing from one of Bingo’s ears. Little Lucky, though, was unscathed. From the cock of his head, he was pretty proud of himself. The dogfight was over. The human fight was just beginning. It, too, ended quickly.

“Bingo’s bleeding!” Eva yelled. “He’s going to need plastic surgery, and you’re going to pay for it!”

With boldness as surprising as Lucky’s, Joy replied, “It was
your
fault for dropping that food right in between them. If you didn’t have to go around all the time stuffing your fat face—”

Craig tried to intervene: “Joy—”

“You bitch!” Eva shrieked. “Look what that little rat of yours has done to my beautiful show dog!” Lowering her voice only slightly, she added, “Vicious little pet-shop mutt.”

How to hurt a man? How to hurt a woman, too. Joy scooped up Lucky, hugged him, and began to sob. Craig wrapped protective arms around both of them. From the opposite side of the circle of light, Maxine McGuire suddenly spoke. “Eva,” she said, sounding as calm as Cash looked, “that will do. You are out of line. You can stay here tonight, but in the morning, you pack up and get out. This is my camp, and I want you out of here by eight A.M. Read your contract. Out you go.”

“Not on your life,” Eva screeched.

I missed whatever followed. I didn’t want to hear it. With the dogfight over, Rowdy had lost interest. We went quietly to our own cabin. As I stood on the deck trying to regain the peace Eva had spoiled, I heard Phyllis Abbott. She was using that distinctive voice that people reserve for the telephone. “Greatly exaggerated?” she asked with outrage. “Why does everyone keep saying
greatly exaggerated?
It’s a total fabrication!”

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, the unseasonably hot sun beating on the dead-calm lake inspired me to join Eric Grimaldi and Elsa the Chesapeake for what proved to be a frigid swim. Impervious to the cold, Eric stood waist-deep in the water and kept tossing out Elsa’s blue-and-white rubber retrieve toy. To generate internal heat, I engaged in hot competition with Elsa, racing her for the toy, losing, and again pitting my inadequate flailing against her effortless surge.

Heather and Sara may have made their discovery as Elsa and I were sprinting toward the rubber toy. Perhaps it happened while I was clambering over the sharp rocks at the edge of the lake in a dash toward my towel. Maybe I was standing terry-wrapped on the dock, smirking at Eric’s efforts to bribe Elsa out of the lake with a dog biscuit and at her gleeful refusal of what she clearly saw as a bad bargain. At about the same time that I was fooling around with Elsa, Sara and Heather made an early check of their colorful canine playground in the woods, where they discovered a body pinned beneath the collapsed ramps of the massive A-frame. The
fallen ramps covered the head and torso, but the clumsy sandals could have belonged to no one except Eva Spitteler. No one else would have worn the clunky things at all, certainly not over camouflage-patterned socks. The ugly military-green trousers were recognizably Eva’s, too. Touching the flesh between a cuff and a sock, Sara felt no warmth. Even so, she and Heather decided to apply their strength to shifting the heavy ramps. As Sara told me, “We’re athletes, just like our dogs. It didn’t seem right to leave her lying there, especially … Well, just in case. Really, we knew, though. But at the time, it seemed like we had to try. It was our equipment; it felt like our responsibility. And, of course, she’d threatened to go and use it. She kept saying one
A.M.
We could’ve stayed out there all night. I could’ve—I’ve got a tent with me. It would’ve been no big deal.”

Too late to save Eva’s life, Sara maintained a civilized vigil over the pieces of the A-frame and the body they had crushed. Heather went to summon help. If I hadn’t bothered to dry my hair and if I’d crated Rowdy without giving him a little quick-leg-lift trip outside, I might have been sitting at breakfast when Heather arrived at the main lodge. I’d have been at a table eating eggs and muffins when she dashed in, found Max, and broke the news about the accident. I might even have been among the campers who followed Heather back to the agility area, maybe one of the people who made an effort to straighten out Eva’s twisted body. People shed their jackets and sweatshirts, I heard, and placed them over Eva’s battered corpse as a sort of makeshift crazy-quilt shroud. The body shouldn’t have been moved, covered, or even touched, but the massive obstacle had landed directly on Eva’s head. I wouldn’t have been able to keep looking, either.

Because I lingered in the shower and dutifully took Rowdy out, I learned of Eva Spitteler’s death when I arrived at the main lodge, where Chuck Siegel, Cam, and a couple of other obedience people were ordering Maxine to call the police.

Instead of responding, Max caught my eye. With uncharacteristic solemnity she said, “Holly, the most awful thing has happened. Eva Spitteler has had a terrible accident.”

With an exasperated sigh, Cam said outright that Eva was dead.

“You’re positive?” I asked. “Because—”

Cam shook her head. Her face was pale. “She never stood a chance. She must’ve been trying to raise the height of the A-frame, and she was underneath, fixing the chains, I guess, when the whole thing collapsed on her. Her head must’ve been right under one of those support beams. It’s like … It’s like somebody picked up the A-frame and hit her over the head with it.”

Let me explain the construction of an A-frame. Each ramp is three feet wide and nine feet long, and when they’re joined together, they’re held in place at the top—at the peak of the
A
—by a couple of hinges. If the A-frame were raised to competition height—a bit over six feet above the ground—with nothing to link the ramps but the hinges at the apex? And then a big dog raced up and over? WHAM! So there have to be additional supports of some kind, for instance, in the case of Heather and Sara’s A-frame, a pair of chains. On that kind of A-frame, the chains are like double crossbars on a capital
A
—what makes the A-frame an
A
, and not just an upside down V that would fall apart if it took any weight. Okay so far? If so, it’s obvious that every time you raise or lower the height of the obstacle, you don’t just move the hinged ramps up or down; you also have to reset the chains. Still lost? Draw a tall, skinny capital
A
and then a short, fat capital
A.
Look at the crossbars, one very short, the other very wide. And to set the chains? You have to get under the obstacle, where the chains hook to the ramps.

“Cam,” Max said sharply, “it was a terrible
accident.
” There were bright spots of color on her cheeks.

“Of course it was,” Cam said, “except that she had no business being out there, and—”

Chuck tried to break in, but before he could succeed, a plump, prosperous-looking man with an air of authority—the manager of the resort, I assumed—approached Maxine and announced that someone named Wayne was on his way.

“That’s Wayne Varney,” Maxine explained to us. “Well, that’s all right. Wayne will know what to do.” After Chuck had asked just who Wayne was, she said, “Oh, he’s Rangeley Police, and I think …” Addressing the plump man, she asked, “Is Wayne still a deputy, too?”

The man nodded.

The city kids probably expected to see the lodge doors swing open to admit a six-gun-toting clone of Charles Bronson. Law enforcement people in the State of Maine are, of course, armed—so, for that matter, is the bulk of the citizenry—but sheriffs and their deputies carry up-to-date weapons in ordinary holsters, as do the state and local police. County sheriffs and deputies are important in Maine because—believe it or not, New Workers—up in the wild woods, there’s mile after beautiful square mile of sparsely-populated land divided into what the tax bills call “unorganized territories,” areas with names but no governments, and entities marked on the maps only by abbreviations that must mystify the tourists, T3 R 13 WELS—Township 3 Range 13 West of the Easterly Line of the State—Big Ten Township, Rainbow, Redington, and plantations, too, in all of which, there being no local police to call, you holler for the deputy, who may, as in the case of Wayne Varney, also be a police officer in a nearby town. All that’s assuming that you haven’t had a boating accident, which would be Fish and Game’s business, or … Well, you get the idea. And Eva Spitteler clearly hadn’t had a boating accident. In fact, soon after the pale blue Chevy Caprice cruiser pulled into the parking lot of the Mooselookmeguntic Four
Seasons Resort Lodge and Cabins, Wayne Varney refused to assume that Eva’s death had been any kind of accident at all.

I heard the siren in the distance and saw Varney’s cruiser pull in because I was on my way to the agility area, not to gawk at the death scene, and certainly not to get a close look at Eva Spitteler’s body, but to rid myself of the insidious suspicion that Eva Spitteler’s supposed death was nothing but one more hoax. It took me a second to identify the big man who emerged from the cruiser as the same guy I’d seen in Doc Grant’s, the cop who’d been drinking coffee while Everett Dow ate. Today, he had on big, ultradark sunglasses, and when he stepped out of the Chevy, he put on the hat I’d noticed the day before, a dusky blue woven-straw Stetson with silver braid trim. On the left breast of his uniform was a silver badge; on the right shoulder, a little American flag. Fastened to his belt were a set of handcuffs, a miniradio, a sidearm in a holster, extra clips, and so many other tools of his trade that at the guess-your-occupation booth at a country fair, he’d have been a sure loser. Maxine, who must have heard the siren, came dashing from the main lodge, approached Varney, and like a dog offering its paw, raised a hand and rested it on his sleeve. In return, he gave her shoulder a few gentle thumps.

I can only reconstruct what happened after that. Maxine, I’m sure, tried to get Varney to treat Eva Spitteler’s death as a simple accident. One look at Varney, though, should’ve told anyone, even an amateur guesser of occupations, that this guy was a law enforcement professional who took that profession in earnest. Within minutes of his arrival, he’d radioed for backup, ordered a surprisingly large crowd (of people and dogs) out of the agility area, obtained what was probably a cogent account from Sara and Heather, and let it be known that the State Police were on their way.

When I entered the dining room, I was a little surprised to discover how many other people had also shown up for breakfast. Although I hadn’t eaten anything, I wasn’t hungry.
Rather, I suffered from a distinct sense of unreality for which food, I thought, might be a cure. After I’d eaten, I was going to make a quick call home. Then I intended to groom Rowdy, not to work on his appearance, I should point out, but to clean up my own emotions and, I think, to try to clear my conscience.

As I sat alone eating my eggs and toast, I had the eerie feeling that the dining room was haunted by the ghosts of mean things I’d said and done to Eva Spitteler, the shades of cruel thoughts I’d had about her, the spirits of my own unkindness. Was Eva Spitteler the only person who’d ever wanted a plug in
Dog’s Life?
The only person whose chair had ever collided with mine? And if she’d perpetrated the dirty tricks? So what! I’d heard her accused and convicted on the basis of no evidence, and I hadn’t felt even a twinge of objection. Eva’s wants now seemed pitifully simple: She’d wanted to be liked. She’d wanted to feel important. In the matter of her death, I had perfect confidence in my own innocence; I suspected almost everyone else; yet I was the one who felt guilty.