Stud Rites

”No.”
    ”When you encountered Mr. Hunnewell last night, did he ask you whether you smoked? Or whether you had any cigarettes?”
    ”No. He didn’t have reason to. He was smoking constantly. He was chain-smoking. He had a pack of cigarettes with him. And a lighter. An old-fashioned gold lighter, the kind you put lighter fluid in, with a sort of flip top.” I snapped my fingers. ”I just realized something. I didn’t know who he was then, but now that I think of it, he probably won the lighter at a show, a dog show. Years ago, ashtrays, lighters, cigarette boxes, all that stuff used to be given as trophies. It seems ridiculous now, but people’s dogs used to win them all the time.”
    ”This, uh, pack of cigarettes he had. Did you notice how full it was? Or if it was, uh, almost empty?”
    ”Uh, I don’t know. I don’t... I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”
    ”Did Mr. Hunnewell say anything at all about buying cigarettes? Or, like, uh, when you were helping him with the soft-drink machine and the ice machine, did it seem like he might’ve been looking around for a cigarette machine?”
    ”I don’t think so. Not that I noticed. And he didn’t say anything about cigarettes or smoking or anything, except that he did offer me a cigarette. Mainly, he just... I mean, he was smoking, and then he kind of stubbed out the cigarette and threw it in the trash barrel, and he lit another one. I remember because I was worried that the cigarette wasn’t out, that it would start a fire. And... this probably sounds kind of silly, but... he didn’t just smoke: He really smoked. There was so much smoke that I half expected the smoke alarm to go off. It sort of worried me that it didn’t. And just in case his cigarette was still smoldering and the alarm was broken or something—really, so I wouldn’t stay awake worrying about it—I went back, after he was gone, and poured water in the trash barrel.”
    ”The last time you saw Mr. Hunnewell was when he was leaving with Mrs. Reilly?”
    I tried to read Kariotis’s expression. He didn’t have one. ”Yes,” I said.
    ”And then you entered your room.”
    ”Yes. And later, I went back out and poured a lot of water in the trash barrel. And I got ice, and I got something to drink. That’s what I was doing there to begin with, only I ended up helping him instead. So I went back.”
    ”And what time was that?”
    ”I have no idea.”
    ”Yes, you do,” my interrogator said impassively. ”Midnight?”
    ”No. Nine-thirty, I think. Before ten. Well, it must’ve been well before ten, because that’s... I think that’s about when I went to sleep.”
    ”And this last time, when you were in the corridor, did you see anyone?”
    ”Not that I remember. No, I don’t think so.”
    ”Did you see or hear anyone or anything during the night? Or in the morning?”
    ”At, uh, somewhere around six, six-thirty, someone in one of the campers started a generator. That’s what woke me up. It woke everyone up, I think. But that’s normal. It happens all the time at shows. Other than that, nothing.” I did not say that I, like a lot of other people, had assumed that the offending generator was Tim Oliver’s.
    ”You had a dog in your room?”
    ”Two. And my cousin.” I suppressed an irrational impulse to explain that Leah was human.
    ”At any point, did your dogs bark?”
    ”Someone must’ve told you this by now,” I said, ”but they’re malamutes, and most malamutes don’t exactly bark. And they’re not watch dogs. A few malamutes will rumble or growl if a stranger comes to the door, but a lot of them won’t do a thing, except maybe stand there wagging their tails. That’s what mine do. They like strangers—strange people, anyway. If they’d heard other dogs, they might’ve made some noise. But malamutes don’t go around warning you about anything, because the typical malamute attitude is that no matter what it is, he can handle it. So why get worked up?”
    ”While we’re on the subject of dogs...,”Kariotis attempted. He pulled out two pieces of paper and asked me to explain what they were. One bore my name: Cubby’s pedigree, the one I’d run myself. The other was a page of the stud book register, the page I’d included with the pedigree when I’d sent it to Betty Burley. He asked me to explain exactly what they were.
    In my effort to divert him from anything related to the lamp—anything being, of course, Betty Burley—I made a total fool of