Stud Rites

as well. In the thirties, Admiral Byrd was news. So were sled dog racing, the Chinook Kennels, breeds newly recognized by the AKC, show results, everything.
    So on this November day, the murder of Judge James Hunnewell transported us back to the future, forward to the past: cameras, yes, but video cameras; brilliant halogen lights; and umbrella-shaped devices with undersides of shiny metallic foil, parasols devised to bounce limelight off clouds with silver linings. In the aisles around the rings, in the parking lot, in the grooming tent, the dogs preened for cameras, whroo-whrooed into microphones, and rose up to rest gentle, mammoth snowshoe paws on the shoulders of startled, flattered reporters here to cover a homicide.
    Basking in the reflected light of one of the silver-lined umbrellas, Betty Burley grabbed the opportunity to make an ardent pitch for the wonderful, friendly, healthy, young rescue malamutes who awaited loving adoptive homes. I should have done the same, but my face was still stinging from Betty’s verbal slap. Instead, I wandered around exchanging rumors, eavesdropping on conversations, watching the judging, and otherwise doing pretty much what I’d have done if James Hunnewell had still been breathing.
    The arrival of the police had put an end to the worry that they’d halt the judging and maybe even force the cancellation of the national. Hunnewell’s room was sealed off immediately, and so was the area around the shed. Scrutinizing the entire hotel and its grounds, as well as the myriad of vans, campers, and cars, not to mention the hundreds of dogs and people, was a task no homicide team wanted to tackle. It would have meant summoning zillions of technicians to collect monumental amounts of evidence, all of which would have had to be processed and analyzed, and almost all of which would undoubtedly have been utterly irrelevant to the murder. People would have protested; search warrants might have been a problem. The course the police followed, as I see it now, was a sensible one meant to protect the evidence and maintain the availability of witnesses. If they’d closed down the hotel, for instance, what would they have done with us? The hundreds of hotel guests could hardly have been forced to camp out or to rent rooms elsewhere; with the show canceled, the dog people would’ve all gone home. Could we have been locked inside? Not for long. And no one, I imagine, wanted to smell the consequences of depriving the dogs of access to the outdoors. Furthermore, antagonizing all potential witnesses would have been a poor strategy for getting people to talk.
    The air in the exhibition hall was thicker with theories than it was with dog hair. Nepotism: According to Pam Ritchie, who said she’d heard it from Freida Reilly, the police couldn’t close us down without ruining the wedding, and our national had been unintentionally saved by Crystal’s father, who had a brother high up in the attorney general’s office. Tiny DaSilva disagreed: the groom’s father, not the bride’s, and not a brother in the attorney general’s office, either, but a fraternity brother in the state police. In what I thought was an effort to present herself as the kind of fiscally minded person who’d make a splendid member of our breed club’s board, Sherri Ann Printz argued for strict economic determinism: The hotel brought money to Danville. Shut it down, and who’d ever book here again? Then there was the show-precinct debate: Had Hunnewell’s body been found on or off show grounds? Freida Reilly and a few other exceptionally devout worshipers at the shrine of AKC were apparently unable to conceive of circumstances in which the distinction didn’t matter. Freida may even have believed that if the hallowed ground of a show were desecrated by bloodshed, AKC was obliged to dispatch a high priest rep to reconsecrate the sanctuary; otherwise, like mock marriages, the awards wouldn’t count.
    I watched and listened as a mousy-looking little breeder with a resplendent name—Celeste LaFlamme—casually told a police officer about a quirk of Mikki Muldoon’s that was universally taken for granted. I hate to speak ill of any dog, but if tomorrow’s competition had been for Worst of Breed instead of Best, Celeste’s dogs would have been the only ones to make the final cut. Every malamute of Celeste’s breeding had a pinched expression, a narrow front, feeble little legs, splayed feet, and wary-looking, hooded