Black Ribbon

interesting new agility obstacle, and her only worry would have been whether the bark gave proper traction. The others at the table were strangers to me: three women—Myrna, Marie, and Kathy— and a young man named Michael whose left upper arm displayed a still-healing tattooed portrait of his dog, which he said was a cream-colored long-haired Akita named Jacob.
    “What a big dope I was.” Ginny stabbed her fork into a slice of roast beef. “I’m just glad I didn’t go to Max and tell her how touched I was that she’d remembered.” Phyllis’s dire announcement had somehow cheered Ginny up. The endless braid around her head was still damp from her swim, she’d touched up her tracking tan with a little makeup, and she looked altogether happy to be who she was and where she was. With a smile she added, “Old gullible me.”
    “I wasn’t sure,” I said. “Before, it was sort of remotely possible that my card was a mistake, and yours wasn’t.”
    “Come off it,” Cam said. “With both of the cards unsigned?”
    “Clarity of hindsight,” Sara commented.
    “Sara,” I pointed out, “the other odd thing is all those brochures out there in the lobby, on the coffee table and in the magazine rack. By the fireplace.”
    “Maxine has a lot of friends here,” Sara replied. “She’s been coming to Rangeley since she was a kid. That’s just her Way of showing she’s supporting the other local businesses.” With her usual concern for distinctions, Cam, the obedience legal-eagle columnist, said, “Not those brochures. The other ones. The ones about gravestones and urns and whatever.”
    Sara tightened her neck muscles, and her head moved back and upward like a cobra’s. “What!”
    Cam said, “They were all around, by the fireplace. Holly took them. So nobody’d get upset.”
    One of the other women at the table spoke up, Myrna or Marie. Neither wore her name tag, and I couldn’t keep them straight. They both had short, fluffy hair and heavy New York accents. “Hey,” said whichever one it was, “maybe it’s a whole new dog activity, right? ‘Come on, big boy, for the casket, you like the white, or you want blue? And while we’re at it, how about your headstone. Plain old Rest in Peace do for you? Fun, huh?’ New dog sport. I mean, why leave him out? It’s his funeral.”
    “Myrna, please,” said her look-alike friend, who must have been Marie. “You can laugh, but it’s not all that—”
    Myrna interrupted. “So what are you going to do? You got some way to keep them alive forever? You lose a dog, and you’re a wreck, and you’re never going to laugh again, and you’re never going to get another dog?” Myrna’s raucous style and brassy voice had initially put me off, but when I listened to what she said and ignored how she said it, I admired her attitude. If fate snatched one of her dogs, she’d immediately get a new puppy and thumb her nose in death’s face. “So,” Myrna went on, “who left that shit out there? Sorry. Marie? Marie, I’m cleaning up my act. No more dirty words until we cross the Long Island border. So who put that stuff out?”
    “And who’s sending these cards?” Cam added. “And who got them? Ginny. Phyllis. Holly, you did. Did anyone else?” No one answered.
    “I wonder if Eric Grimaldi did,” I said. “I was just thinking. When Mrs. Abbott was talking about AKC and being a judge, I assumed she was taking it a little too personally, in the sense that she’s a judge.” I lowered my voice. “It did seem to me that she was overreacting. I didn’t exactly enjoy getting that sympathy card, but I mostly assumed that I got it by mistake. And Ginny thought hers was real. But even when she found out, she didn’t decide that she got it because she’s a tracking judge. Did you?”
    Ginny shook her head. “I never thought of it. Why would anyone...?”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “Holly, what about you?”Cam asked.
    “Me! Why would I...?”
    “In your column.In an article. Somewhere else? Have you written anything that could’ve made someone want to get back at you? I don’t remember anything, but...”
    “The anti-puppy mill stuff,” I said. “The usual stuff about not buying anything from pet shops that sell dogs. But I’ve been writing that for a long time, and so have plenty of other people. And I’m not AKC’s favorite person, but it’s no big thing.”
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