Stud Rites (7 page)

”I should hope so,” she snapped. ”It’s certainly expensive enough.”

Before Betty had time to take further offense at the grill’s offerings, a waiter appeared and took orders for drinks, and my cousin Leah, who’d been checking on my dogs, arrived. Leah, a Harvard freshman, had driven to Danville with me the day before. First thing in the morning, she’d handled Kimi in obedience. Immediately afterward, she’d borrowed my car and headed back to Cambridge, where she’d taken two exams, one in chemistry, one in Latin, before turning around and returning to Danville. Despite her accomplishments, Leah’s a good kid. She doesn’t go around swathed in crimson with
Veritas
plastered across her ample bosom. In fact, her wardrobe is so overwhelmingly and exclusively black that if it weren’t for her cheerful countenance and gleeful mass of long red-gold curls, you’d mistake her for a raiment major at a mortuary college. She started talking nonstop before she’d even sat down. ”I have a message for both of you, actually, two messages from two people who
both
said that when I found you I had to tell you right away that there’s a rumor going around about
someone
selling puppies, and you won’t believe it, but
both
of these people wanted to know what Rescue was going to do about it!”

”That’s not our business,” I said. ”It’s the rep’s.”
Rep:
AKC rep, representative of the American Kennel Club.

”That’s what I told them,” Leah informed me.

”There’s no rep here,” Betty said.

I was surprised. ”Really? Why not?”

”I don’t know,” Betty said. ”There doesn’t have to be one.” She shrugged. ”Anyway, if someone’s selling puppies, it’s Freida’s business, not ours. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

”Who’s it supposed to be?” I asked, intrigued. ”Who is it who’s selling puppies?”

”No one knows,” my cousin replied. ”Maybe it’s just a rumor, anyway.”

The waiter returned. I ordered a second Johnnie Walker and a seafood casserole. The fare at the Liliu Grill was bafflingly un-Hawaiian; pineapple appeared on the menu only in conjunction with a slice of baked ham, and coconut was completely absent. Leah chose steak with Bearnaise sauce—pure butter—and a diet soft drink that I wouldn’t give to a dog. Without finding out what ”Delmonico” meant, Betty asked for the salmon. When the waiter left, we debriefed the showcase.

”It
is
too bad that we didn’t have a reporter there,” said Betty, buttering a cinnamon roll. ”Or better yet, TV.” She trained her intense gaze on me. It occurred to me that maybe she knew exactly what had happened out in the parking lot and was wondering whether I did, too.

”Yvonne tried,” I said. ”If we were a little closer to Boston, we might’ve gotten someone, but I guess no one thought it was worthwhile schlepping all the way out here. I hope the video turned out all right.”

The judging of the conformation classes, including the nonregular classes like Brace and Team, was professionally taped and edited by a company that produced videos, which you could mail order. On the grounds that the few people deranged enough to enter a malamute in a so-called obedience event should be allowed to blot the experience from memory as soon as possible, the company did not bother to tape the trial. A fearless obedience fanatic, however, an otherwise nice guy named Jim Kuehl, videoed the obedience at all our national specialties. Jim had even gone so far as to produce an underground classic, a tape of bloopers that showed malamutes zipping madly around obedience rings, leaping over baby gates, and crashing into handlers. We’d also amateur-taped the Showcase of Rescue Dogs.

”I hope so,” Leah said, ”so you can play it tomorrow instead of all that gory—”

I kicked her under the table. One of Betty’s tapes was about family pets stolen and sold to research laboratories. The video of puppy mills was so revolting that some of the people who’d caught sight of it on the monitor at the rescue booth had been unable to take in what they were seeing. Innocent and mystified, they’d peered at the screen and asked, ”What
is
that?” I’d found replies difficult to formulate.
A chicken-wire cage crammed with the corpses of puppies,
I could have said, or
A broker who’s killing a dog while those two people wait to buy the meat.

”People need to see that,” Betty told Leah crisply. Although Betty was right, some of the other rescue people had lured me into a harmless conspiracy aimed at substituting tapes that would attract people to the rescue booth for the ones that they needed to see. Jim Kuehl was letting us borrow his tape of obedience bloopers, and we’d also lined up some films of long-ago shows. According to the plan, I was one of the people designated to eject Betty’s cassettes and slip in the appealing ones.

Consequently, instead of minimizing my chances of success by focusing Betty on the subject of videos, I said brightly, ”Betty! Who’s that woman over there? The one at the corner table. She looks familiar.”

So familiar that I even remembered her name—Michele Muldoon, Mikki as she was called—and had a good idea of why she’d chosen to eat alone. Her appearance, however, was so striking that I might well have chosen her in an uncalculated pick. She was a beautiful woman whose swept-back white hair was shot with fading red and whose face retained what I always assure Leah will be wrinkle-disguising freckles. I’d never met Mikki Muldoon, who came from the West. But I had frequently seen her picture in ads in the
Malamute Quarterly,
and had read and heard stories about her. She was a popular judge with what I’d been told was a flamboyant manner. As the judge, she appeared on the left in the show photos, usually with her feet hidden behind a large basket or pot of flowers, and maybe a pile of trophies—tote bags, tea sets, glass punch bowls, commemorative clocks—and always an announcement board with letters reading something like BEST OF WINNERS, PRAIRIE SCHOONER KENNEL CLUB. Truly, you’d assume from show photos that AKC judges share some grotesque podiatric disorder or a predilection for the kinds of ludicrous shoes that exhibitors wouldn’t want wrecking otherwise impressive pictures of big wins. Anyway, on the right, the smiling handler invariably stood behind the dog, who, being a show dog, usually looked suitably showy. ”Highly respected breeder/judge Mrs. Michele Muldoon,” as the ad copy often read, looked like every other judge in every other ad, except in one way: Instead of proffering the ribbon to the dog or the handler, she always looked ready to pin it on her own breast.

”That’s Mikki Muldoon,” said Betty as our food arrived. ”You know, she really should’ve had this assignment. She finished second in the poll. She deserves it. That’s what she’s doing eating all by herself. Just in case.”

Judges, I might mention, do not fraternize with exhibitors before completing their assignments. They don’t have to imprison themselves in their hotel rooms, but they do maintain their distance.

Leah, who must have been studying an out-of-date book, looked up from her steak. ”But that doesn’t mean she automatically gets—”

Betty’s malamute eyes darted from Leah’s food to her face. ”Now it does. They changed the rule. Mikki finished second, so if she’s here, she gets the assignment.”

”Has anyone
seen
Hunnewell?” I asked. ”Do we even know he’s here? Maybe he isn’t, and that’s why—”

”Oh, he’s here,” Betty said grimly. ”Duke saw him checking in.”

I said the same thing that everyone always said about Duke: ”What an incredible handler he is!”

Equally unimpressed with Duke Sylvia and the salmon she’d ordered—creamed and, from the looks of it, canned, too—Betty edged toward my seafood casserole. ”Hah! Hunnewell’s not going to look twice at that dog of his. Duke told me so himself.”

”But I thought—” Leah began.

Like Kimi anticipating the command to jump, Betty leaped to explain that Duke had not only been around long enough to remember James Hunnewell’s likes and dislikes, but was a genius at assessing judges’ preferences.

As coolly as I could, I asked what Hunnewell liked. Duke Sylvia’s dog was a big gray male, Mal-O-Mine Ironman, that he co-owned with a breeder named Lillian Ingersoll, who was missing the national because she’d broken her shoulder so badly that she’d had to have surgery and was still wearing a clumsy, awkward cast, which, I might comment, couldn’t possibly have been any more clumsy and awkward than Lillian herself. Hence her injuries. And her reliance on Duke Sylvia. But back to Ironman, who, to judge from the photos I’d seen, needed Duke as much as Lillian did. Or let’s say that Ironman was totally different from Rowdy and that he was just not my type. And if Ironman wasn’t Hunnewell’s type? Maybe Rowdy was.

”SO WHAT is Hunnewell’s type?” I asked. Looking like a skeptical Buddha, Betty said, ”Well, ask Sherri Ann, and she’ll tell you it’s her Bear. The truth is, the dogs that were Hunnewell’s type all died a long time ago. Comet was probably the last dog that Hunnewell thought was decent, and Comet died... I don’t know. Fifteen years ago.” Perking up, she merrily remarked, ”Of course, that’s what’s got Freida worried sick.”

Having picked out and eaten all the lobster, I was working on the shrimp, which were tough enough to justify the full name of the dish: Old Tyme Seafood Casserole. I swallowed. ”What is?”

Shoving ahead of Betty in the conversational queue, Leah said, ”That Hunnewell’s going to withhold all the ribbons!” Unnecessarily, she added, ”For want of merit! Wouldn’t that be exciting!”

Atlantic City: When the beauty queens have finished strutting and parading, the great moment arrives. The judges’ decision? That each contestant is more hideous and less talented than the last. No Miss America this year! Not even a runner-up.

I glared at Leah. ”That would be humiliating to everyone here! It would be a nightmare for Freida and everyone else who’s worked so hard on this show.” Leah was, as usual, unchastened. ”Seriously, can a judge do that?”

Betty said grimly, ”AKC wouldn’t like it, but when it comes to the merits of dogs, the judge’s decisions are final. Period.”

Her hopes restored, Leah was bright-eyed. ”Does that ever really happen? That the judge withholds
everything
?”

Neither Betty nor I could remember a single instance. If Leah had had a tail, she’d have wagged it. She could hardly wait to witness history.

”Leah,” I said severely, ”
your
attitude—”

”Is human,” Betty finished. ”Lay off her.”

”Fine,” I agreed. ”Let her find out for herself. But, Leah, I’m warning you: You walk into that ring with Kimi on Saturday morning, and you’re not going to think it’s so hilarious if—”

”I,”
Betty interjected, ”hope that she does! Because nothing would please
me
more than to see someone having fun! Leah, thank you. And whatever happens on Saturday, you just remember that all it is, is one person’s opinion on one day, and not a darned thing more.”

Timmy Oliver had snuck up on us while Betty was preaching. ”Well spoken, Betty!” he now applauded. Uninvited, he pulled out the fourth chair at our table and, evidently mistaking it for a horse, perhaps of the rocking variety, turned it around and straddled it-When he reached across the table to grab the basket of rolls, I half expected him to feed his pretend pony. Instead, after grubbing around with his dirty hands, he selected a cinnamon bun and, using a knife lifted from Betty’s plate, slathered it with butter, bit, and chewed. With his mouth open, too. I might mention that the restaurant was comfortably cool; it was a grill in name only and didn’t have a hot open kitchen or any other heat source to account for the flush and sweat on Tim Oliver’s face.

”It’s a lesson
you
might do well to remember,” Betty told him. ”One person’s opinion on one day.”

Tim Oliver smiled. His upper and lower incisors met in a viselike bite that had forced him to grind his front teeth until he’d worn the edges even. ”Exactly,” he told Betty. ”Good sport or none at all.”

Tim’s subtle overemphasis of the phrase ”good sport,” in combination with his ingratiating manner and general air of sleaze, convinced me that he was going to hit Betty up for what I’d ordinarily call a favor. The word that actually came to mind was ”succor.” For the next five minutes, I listened to him go on with obnoxious enthusiasm about Z-Rock’s chances under Hunnewell and his own prospects in distributing a dietary supplement for dogs called Pro-Vita No-Blo Sho-Kote. I came close to asking Timmy whether the secret ingredient he kept mentioning actually was snake oil. Leah had inched her chair back from the table and was gazing silently at Mikki Muldoon. I kept waiting for Timmy to try to enlist Betty, and possibly me, in a Pro-Vita No-Blo Sho-Kote pyramid scheme, but what he finally got around to oozing was the request that Betty tell the hotel that his camper was hers so he could leave it in the parking lot all night. As we’d been repeatedly informed, motor homes were allowed in the parking lot only if they belonged to people registered at the hotel. They were absolutely not to be used for sleeping. A few People, I thought, broke the rule. That morning, I’d noticed four or five of the big, long campers parked unobtrusively at the far end of the lot, but so far as I knew, the management hadn’t staged any midnight raids.