Black Ribbon (28 page)

Heather’s voice had lost its occasional edge to become steadily acerbic. “Look, Sara, face reality!” she demanded. “It was a booby trap, okay? Nobody goes out in the middle of the night to work a dog; you don’t, I don’t, and Eva Spitteler didn’t, either. What she was out there doing was trying to rig the A-frame so it’d collapse under the first dog—or the first big dog, anyway. She hated me, she was jealous of both of us, and she wanted to make us look bad.”

“But
nothing
would have happened,” Sara insisted. “The fact is that the first thing we would’ve done would’ve been to check the obstacles. One of us would’ve found out! Okay, so maybe there’s a remote possibility that it might have collapsed on, or more likely under, one of us, if we hadn’t actually looked at the hinges. But there wasn’t a chance that a dog would’ve been hurt. Not a chance!” she finished breathlessly.

“You’re missing the point. We know a dog wouldn’t’ve gotten hurt. But Eva didn’t know that! And what if we’d—”

“We wouldn’t have. We always check.”

“Sara, yesterday, after the Canine Good Citizen test, we started moving things, and it’s just remotely possible, you know, that this morning we would’ve said, ‘Well, the A-frame’s okay, because we just checked it yesterday afternoon.’ ”

“You know what, Heather? I don’t know! All I really know is that those pins didn’t just jump out of the hinges! They didn’t slip out, fall out, drop out; they were in tight. How they ended up on the ground is one thing. But how one of them ended up
under
her … But if she was stupid enough to go under the A-frame and undo the chains, maybe she was stupid enough to—”

Heather snapped, “Remove the pins from the hinges and
then
go under it? And then stand with all that weight over your head and undo the chains and try and move it? Nobody’s that stupid. But maybe …” Her voice trailed off.

The two women fell silent. One of them sighed. In muted tones, they began to discuss their plans for next summer. Sara pointed out, correctly, I thought, that in agility, a reputation for unsafe equipment was a disaster. No matter how much people respected or liked the instructors, no one would take a chance with obstacles that might injure a dog.

After that, I caught only the occasional stressed word:
safety, reputation, liability.
And again and again,
competition.

In the hope of finding the calm and solace that nature is reputed to offer, I studied the lake, but found nothing soothing. Two approaching Jet Skis buzzed like chain saws. From a tree at the edge of the lake, a belted kingfisher swooped out and dove at the water, its flight jerky, its rattling call dry and cruel. Making my way past Sara and Heather, I left the dock and went to my cabin, wherein lay nature’s true source of peace and comfort. What’s wrong with mountains, lakes, trees, kingfishers, and all those other supposedly restorative elements of the wilderness—or for that matter, of the cosmos—is that no matter how intensely you stare at them, admire them, venerate them—no matter how much you love them, they’ll never love you back. But a dog? A really
good
dog? It’s like the Miracle of the Draught of Fishes. You’re Simon, the fisherman, and you spend all day casting your net into the water without catching so much as a minnow. And then along comes Jesus and tells you that you’ve got to try again, and you do: You catch such a multitude that your net breaks. In other words, hanging around in nature’s vicinity is a waste of time until love and faith come along. And when they do, you get back more than you can handle: draughts of fishes, Alaskan malamutes.

And that’s how I spent the next hour: handling Rowdy. Or trying. In obedience, almost all of us handle our dogs ourselves;
it’s an amateur-dominated sport and none the worse for it, because, except among the top handlers, it’s as competitive or noncompetitive as you choose to make it. Conformation, however, is the hardball of the dog show game. That’s why I hire a professional handler to show Rowdy in breed. If the dog-eat-dog breed competition depended strictly on the merits of the animals, I’d be spared the expense; but as it is, Rowdy deserves a better breed handler than I’ll ever be.

That Rowdy and I ended up in Eric Grimaldi’s breed handling class is thus testimony to my respect for the authority of AKC judges: Eric gave me an order, and I obeyed. Eric didn’t phrase it as an order. What he said was that Maxine McGuire was the best of the best, and that if Maxine wanted him to do a breed handling class, he was happy to oblige. Like all other activities scheduled for the morning, breed handling had, of course, been canceled. For reasons unconnected to Eva’s death, however, the afternoon schedule contained numerous gaps. The carting workshop was off; according to rumor, Maxine had had some sort of financial dispute with the instructor. The people running the Temperament Testing had phoned to report that their van had broken down on the Maine Turnpike. The last-minute cancellations seemed to me to confirm Eva Spitteler’s analysis of Maxine’s deficiencies as camp director.

“We can’t let Maxine down,” Eric told me. “What we all need to do is pitch in and try to salvage what we can. You’re not doing anyone any good hanging around here with a long face, are you?” I admitted that I wasn’t. “Come on!” he said. “I was counting on you to be a good sport, Holly. And you’ll like it. It’ll be fun.”

The class took place in the same big field we’d used for lure coursing and obedience, but at the end near the main lodge, as distant as possible from the police van and the cruisers clustered near the little road that led to the agility area. Because of Eric’s determination to recruit participants and thus to create
a semblance of normal camp activity, he ended up with about twenty people, five or ten more than he probably wanted. Although conformation is, by definition, open only to purebreds, a few campers showed up with what I think I’m now supposed to call random-bred dogs, mixes, crosses, and anybody’s guesses owned by people who wanted to find out what breed handling was, I suppose, or by people who just wanted something to do. Jacob, the long-coated Akita, couldn’t be shown in breed, but Michael brought him, anyway, for the socialization, I suppose. Maybe Joy and Craig brought Lucky for the same reason. I certainly hoped that they didn’t ask Eric’s opinion of the little dog’s merits. To support Eric, I think, Phyllis Abbott showed up with Nigel, who really was a show dog, as were quite a few of the others gathered near the two baby-gated rings that Everett Dow was setting up. Today, the dogs ignored the handyman. At the last minute, Cam and Ginny turned up, Cam with Nicky, and Ginny, to my amazement, with a highly subdued Bingo.

Let me remind you that Eric Grimaldi was a handsome man with an appropriately judicial air of authority. He started the class by assembling us in one of the rings and explaining what we’d try to accomplish. We’d begin, he said, with a review of a few basics: the correct collar position, the appropriate position of the dog, the stand. Then we’d break into groups. Eric would work first with the real beginners; meanwhile, the rest of us could observe or, if we liked, practice in the other ring.

Rowdy sat at my left side with his eyes fixed on my face. When he’s with his breed handler, Faith, he knows not to sit, and he gaits for her without twisting his head to watch her face. I had to remind myself that in taking Rowdy to a single breed handling class, I wasn’t going to confuse him; plenty of dual-ring dogs had the same handler in breed and in obedience. In fact, I paid more attention to Rowdy than I did to Eric, who was delivering a little introductory lecture about the
artificiality of the show pose. “The natural look isn’t what we’re after here,” he told us. When Eric switched to the topic of collar position, I followed his instructions, moving the collar to Rowdy’s jawline, tightening it there, and making sure that the dead ring was just below Rowdy’s right ear. Glancing around, I noticed that, for once, Craig was working with Lucky, stooping down and running unfamiliar fingers around the little dog’s neck. When it came time to pose the dogs, I mechanically followed along with everyone else. Rowdy, however, who’d evidently grasped the purpose of the class, got a glint in his eyes and not only stacked himself to advantage, but went to great lengths to wag his tail with eye-catching enthusiasm.

“That’s a real showman you’ve got there,” Eric commented.

I nodded. To Rowdy, I said, “Happy now?”

Soon thereafter, Eric asked the experienced people to leave the ring. To what was probably Rowdy’s disappointment, I led him out. In other circumstances, I’d probably have gone to the second ring to practice almost anything. Instead, I stood outside Eric’s ring and listened to him address the beginners. “The first thing you have to ask yourselves is: What is your intention here? If you’re here to have fun, that’s fine. If you’re here to socialize your dog, that’s fine, too. If you’re here because you’re thinking about trying to finish your dog, I’ll give you my opinion. But if you ask for it, there are a couple of things you have to bear in mind. First of all, it’s just my opinion, you asked for it, and you do what you want with it—keep what you want, throw out the rest. And second of all, don’t ask if you don’t want to hear.”

Stepping rapidly up to me, Joy asked, “What’s he talking about?”

“Finish
means finish a championship,” I said. “Some of the people might want to know whether their dogs might be
worth showing, and he’s offering to give his opinion, but just if it’s helpful, just if people want to hear.”

Joy burst in: “Well, I hope he doesn’t say anything awful about Lucky! Because that’s the last thing Craig … I understand, and I really love Lucky, and I don’t care, but … I don’t know why Craig insisted on coming to this. We really don’t belong here. We don’t belong at this camp at all. I wanted to go home this morning, but Craig said we’d paid our money, and we were going to stick it out.”

“If Craig asks, Eric will be tactful,” I said.

“Not like Eva.… Was that the most awful thing? Everything has been awful since practically the first second we got here, but last night was
the
worst.” Joy paused. “But do you
believe
what Lucky did?” When Ginny came striding up with Bingo, Joy’s pride evaporated. “Oh,” Joy said softly, “here comes that horrible dog. But at least today he’s wearing a muzzle.”

“Rowdy, down!” I ordered. “Stay!” I bent over to give him the signal, my flat palm in front of his face. When I stood up, Ginny and Bingo had reached us.

“That’s not a muzzle,” I informed Joy. “It’s a training halter.”

And in combination with Ginny’s in-charge manner, it worked very well indeed. When Ginny told Bingo to sit, sit he did, and promptly.

“Eva,” Ginny announced with glee, “was planning to open a dog camp! Next summer! That’s what she was doing here all along, the little sneak—trying to find out about what they were like. She’d been to
two
others this year.”

“Yeah,” Joy said vaguely. “That’s why she was getting people’s addresses. She asked us not to mention it, because Maxine might not understand. And Eva said she wasn’t inviting everybody—just a few people she liked.”

I ignored Joy. “Ginny, where did you hear that?”

“Oh, it’s definite. I talked to her brother-in-law, just now.

Max gave me the sister’s phone number. Eva’d listed her sister as her emergency contact, and I had to arrange things about Bingo, not that they had much choice, but I wanted it settled.”

“And?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s going to cost me,” Ginny said, “but I was prepared for that all along. They’re not dog people—the sister and the brother-in-law—and no one else in the family is, either. They don’t want him. We settled for the purchase price. With me, you know, he’s been perfectly okay. The Halti’s just in case he forgets who’s who. And I’ve been thinking: I’ll get this blubber off him, give him some exercise, get him in shape, and … Well, we’ll see, but I think maybe I can finish him.”

At my side, Rowdy stirred. “Stay!” I reminded him. To Ginny, I said, “So this business about Eva’s camp … That explains a lot. The sympathy cards, the gruesome stuff, the troublemaking.”

“The police found a dozen more cards in Eva’s room,” Ginny informed me. “Clippings. Lots of stuff.”

“So we were right all along. She must’ve arrived here ready to—”

“To ruin Maxine’s camp,” Ginny said. “To kill the competition.”

“I’VE JUST STARTED going through the magazines,” Leah reported. “I haven’t had time.”

“Leah, you know, I don’t ask you for all that many favors, and—”

“But I have the Passaic catalog,” she replied smugly. “That’s what I’ve been doing all this time. Or doesn’t that interest you?”

“Of course it does! But where …?”

“Faith Barlow.”

As I’ve mentioned, when I show Rowdy in conformation, I use a professional handler: Faith Barlow. Faith shows a lot. She shows her own dogs and other people’s. She hits so many shows up and down the East Coast and is such an avid collector of show catalogs that as soon as Leah spoke her name, I felt stupid. Leah never tries to make me feel that way. Far from it. She achieves the effect by assuming that I’m as quick as she is. In her place, I’d have started by poking through dozens of recent issues of dog publications. Leah, however, had gone straight to the point, or to one of the points, anyway.
She’d still have to look through the magazines, but in getting hold of the show catalog, she’d obtained a complete list of everyone officially connected with the show: the officers of the Passaic Kennel Club, the judges, the stewards, even the vendors and the official show veterinarian, as well as the name of every dog entered, and the names of the dog’s breeder, owner, and handler, too. Leah was about to start her freshman year at Harvard. I wished Harvard luck.