Black Ribbon (34 page)

“Easy judge?” I asked.

“Easier than Phyllis,” Cam said. “Mr. McWhorter.”

Let me remind you that Phyllis Abbott, clad in pajamas, a kimono, and bedroom slippers, was still standing in the lake. She had stopped calling to Elsa, who still hadn’t come out of the water. At the time, however, I had no sense of the surrealism of the conversation, and I don’t think that Cam did, either. Both of us spoke our lines as if we’d memorized them.

“And Phyllis judged the runoff,” I said. “You won. You won for the third time, so you retired the trophy. And the runoff was very close. Nicky was good. Sandy’s dog must’ve done really well, too.”

Cam corrected me. “That sit was
crooked.
I don’t know what anyone told you, but I was right there, and that sit was crooked. I saw it. If you’d been the judge, you’d’ve taken off a half-point, too.”

“And then you and Phyllis left together. In your van?”

Cam nodded.

“All four of you. You and John R.B., Don and Phyllis. And Eva followed Phyllis. She pursued her. She followed her out to the parking lot. And she’d watched the runoff for High in Trial.”

And that, of course, is what my dream meant.
Tie your dogs so they don’t run off.
When two handlers are
tied
for High in Trial, the winner is determined in a
runoff
that consists of one exercise, off-lead heeling.

“Phyllis tried!” Cam insisted. “I tried! But John kept telling me that he couldn’t just disinvite them! When they made this plan, when the men did, they didn’t even know I was showing under Phyllis. Neither of them really knows anything about obedience. And John had gotten dragged into the politics. And both of them just said it didn’t matter, and nobody’d know, anyway, and as long as there wasn’t an obvious public
breach of decorum … And it’s not strictly illegal! It is for breed judges. But for obedience judges, the guidelines are ambiguous.”

Phyllis swung around to confront Cam. “You’re wrong,” she said, very clearly. “The phrase you want is ‘violative of the spirit of the guidelines.’ It was not in the best interest of the Sport.” You could hear the capital in her voice: the Sport. “Cam,” she added, “I am really very grateful for your support. To compromise my own position was wrong; to compromise yours was inexcusable. I should have done what I threatened to do; I should have walked all the way home before I got in your van.”

The American Kennel Club expects its judges to be treated with respect. Elsa had been slow to recognize authority, but she did not let the AKC down. Or maybe the metal table leg finally became burdensome. Maybe she just felt ignored. In any case, she dropped it in the shallow water at Judge Phyllis Abbott’s feet. The American Kennel Club expects its judges to be ladies and gentlemen at all times. Like Elsa, Phyllis, too, did not let the AKC down. She was a perfect lady. Stooping to pick up the metal bar, frowning at it, turning it over in her hands, and wading out of the water, ridiculously costumed, she apologized to me. “I hope you understand,” she added.

I accepted the apology. No one referred to the murder of Eva Spitteler.

“YOUR MOTHER,” said Rita. She spoke the words as only a therapist can. After a pause that apparently meant more to Rita than it did to me, she added, “and her representatives.” Rita had used the phrase before. I liked it.
Your mother. (Pause) And her representatives
, as if my Marissa had thoughtfully anticipated her death by appointing a vast number of like-minded agents to administer and adjudicate her posthumous maternal affairs, emotional executors whose never-ending task it was to carry out the provisions of her iron will.

“Nonsense,” I said. “My mother had golden retrievers. Phyllis Abbott has Pomeranians. There’s no resemblance whatsoever.” Rita thought I was joking. She is not a member of the fancy. The precepts of her own order are rather different from those of mine.

She raised an eyebrow. “So what’s this Pan shtick, then? You grew up in the country. When did you suddenly develop some fear of the woods? You weren’t afraid of Pan, for God’s sake. What you were afraid of was betrayal—betraying your
mother, betrayal by her.” Rita paused. “And her representatives.”

I ask you: What choice did I have? An objective examination of the facts will reveal that the decision was made not by me, but by a Chesapeake Bay retriever, and a particularly brilliant one at that. Besides, it would’ve been my word against the word of an AKC obedience judge, and Don would’ve alibied his wife, anyway. I did, by the way, learn something about him that shouldn’t have surprised me at all. He’s a Mason! And a Shriner, at that, a benefactor of the hospitals that provide free care to children with severe burns. So the next time you watch a parade, keep your eye on those minicars, because one of the guys in the fezzes just might be Don Abbott. And laugh all you want at fraternal organizations! But if you do, make sure the batteries in your smoke detectors are fresh, and keep your children and grandchildren away from the stove, or you just might have to take all this secret society business more seriously than you’d ever dreamed.

Curiously enough, as I found out from Cam, it was through Don’s Masonic contacts that the Abbotts eventually traced
Dog Beat’s
false report of Phyllis’s death to Eva Spitteler and simultaneously cast light upon the mystery of the black ribbon for Bingo. Hanging around at shows, bad-mouthing the judges, the exhibitors, and the dogs, Eva Spitteler had, as I should have guessed, attracted the attention of
Dog Beat’s
editor in chief, an individual about whom I prefer to say nothing except to report that this cancer on the fancy, recognizing Eva’s natural potential, recruited her as a so-called contributor to his vile publication, thus enabling her easily to feed the report of Phyllis’s death to
Dog Beat’s
office, a single room in Manhattan staffed by a struggling young would-be romance novelist named Clarissa B. Good, who happened to
be
a number of things—and whether good numbered among them, I won’t presume to judge. I continue: Clarissa B. Good happened to be the daughter of a member of Don Abbott’s lodge
and a former Rainbow Girl, who, while waiting until her recently submitted manuscript raised itself above the ordinary Brunos and bodices of Harlequin’s slush pile, was forced to work a loathsome day job as
Dog Beat’s
trash compactor, in which capacity she answered the phone and keyboarded the copy. Clarissa did, however, get to take her dog to work, a really quite decent-looking Norwich terrier, Cam says, a dog that certainly didn’t merit the insults that Eva Spitteler had spewed forth the time that she’d burst into
Dog Beat’s
office to demand immediate cash reimbursement for a paycheck that had just bounced. Eva was, of course, so memorable that when she called
Dog Beat
to report the death of Judge Phyllis Abbott, Clarissa not only recognized Eva’s voice, but questioned her veracity and her motives even more than had become routine for her since she’d started the job. Checking up on Eva, Clarissa’s editor in chief called the Abbotts’ number, asked to speak to Phyllis, and, when told that he was already doing so, hung up and published the report anyway. As Clarissa’s story reached me, it was he who decided to teach Eva a lesson about using
Dog Beat
for her own ends. It’s possible, however, that Clarissa herself was responsible for the false black ribbon.

Whether you read
Dog Beat
or any of the reputable dog publications, you know by now that Don Abbott did not become the president of the American Kennel Club. I believe that he overdid the politicking and that his efforts backfired. Or perhaps John R.B. White used his considerable influence. Speaking of John R.B. White,
Front and Finish
included him in the photo of Cam and Nicky that appeared with the article about the Wilhelmina E. Pruett Memorial Challenge Trophy. Also present in the picture were Phyllis Abbott, who’d judged the runoff, and Adelaide J. Barnaby, who offered the trophy, which was the kind of big silver fruit bowl you never see anymore, and sterling, too, not plate. When I read the details, I was sorry I’d missed Passaic. Cam and Nicky, with a 199 out
of Open B, had been tied for HIT with Sandra Battista and her young golden, Shoretowyn’s Candy’s Dandy, out of Novice B. Like most important trophies, this one was for permanent possession by the owner who won it three times, not necessarily with the same dog, and what made the runoff really exciting was that Cam and Sandy had each won it twice before. Whether Sandy and Ogden really deserved to lose the half-point that Judge Abbott deducted for a slightly crooked sit, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I am convinced, however, that in Judge Phyllis Abbott’s eyes, the sit was not perfectly straight. I have never doubted Phyllis’s impartiality and fairness in the ring. One of these days, I may show under her again. After all, my mother is dead. Her representatives are all I have left. Who am I to oppose my mother’s wishes?

In her own way, Eva Spitteler, too, left me a legacy. I used to go around telling myself and everyone else that scores don’t count. I’ve learned better. These days, Rowdy and I are training harder than we used to, and not just because Rowdy is going up against Tundra, either. No, the real reason is that a half-point deduction for a crooked sit was ultimately what cost Eva Spitteler her life. If Rowdy and I ever end up in a runoff, I’ll know that the outcome may be highly consequential. I intend to be ready. I intend to win. Victory is, after all, what my mother would have wanted. My mother. And her representatives.

S
USAN
C
ONANT
, three-time recipient of the Maxwell Award for fiction writing given by the Dog Writer’s Association of America, lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two cats, and two Alaskan malamutes—Frostfield Firestar’s Kobuk,
CGC
, and Frostfield Perfect Crime, called Rowdy. Her work has appeared in
Pure-bred Dog/American Kennel Gazette
and
DOGworld.
She is the author of nine Dog Lover’s mysteries, and is now at work on her tenth.

According to myth, the New England colonists fled the British Isles in search of religious freedom. In truth, they were extradited—summarily booted out of the homeland of dog worship following a little-known incident, an act of heresy, if you will, that took place at the famous Canterbury Cathedral. There a rebellious clique of Brewsters, Bradfords, Aldens, and Standishes refused to join their fellow worshipers in what would otherwise have been the unequivocally fervent rendering of “All Creatures Great and Small.” As everyone knows, the involuntary expatriates first sought refuge in Holland. In the course of a barge tour of Amsterdam,
however, one of their number—a Standish, I believe—uttered a very loud and extremely rude remark about a Keeshond, thus causing the previously hospitable Dutch to toss the future colonists over the dikes and into the cold seas of the Atlantic, where they drifted for many months before finally washing up on shore in the vicinity of a large rock on which many of them deservedly cracked their heads. Fable? Fact: The New England colonists attached dire theological significance to the backward spelling of
d-o-g.
The black mass: the litany backward. The dog: the creature of Satan.

What leads me to the topic of the New England colonies is not the hotel’s decor, which was Hawaiian, but my conviction that somewhere on Maui, the Milestone chain has erected a hotel and conference facility structurally identical to the one in Danville, Massachusetts, but adorned with Ye Olde New England materials and motifs. The building itself is, I believe, the same as this one: the two-story motel-hotel at one end, the exhibition hall at the other, with the space between devoted to a large lobby, a bar, two restaurants, a variety of meeting, assembly, and banquet rooms, and the center consisting of a cavernous mock atrium that does not open to the sky and contains some droopy-looking trees that obviously wish it did and
many others that, being plastic, don’t care. Through the center of the atrium at the Maui Milestone flows a miniature artificial trout stream spanned by a tiny replica of a genuine New England covered bridge. Unwary guests trip on the legs of spinning wheels, regain their balance, set down drinks on cobbler’s bench tables, and order refills from service personnel garbed for a grammar-school reenactment of the First Thanksgiving.