Stud Rites

distant planet to another dog’s sun. Casey had tremendous carriage and a stand-off coat of dark, rich, gilded mahogany trimmed with pure Arctic white. To call that dog flashy isn’t quite right. A flash is a swift burst. Casey was the sun at midday. In the aisle outside the ring, he worked a crowd that had stepped back in unconscious deference. Casey was a big dog, but not oversize, not like Ironman, and Casey’s laughing, show-off eyes were dark and warm, not light and cold. I know a winner when I see one. I hoped that Mikki Muldoon did, too. Was I unfaithful to Rowdy? Rowdy was out of the competition today. In his absence, I longed to see the best dog win.
    The crowd in the hall now included spectators like Steve and Kevin who’d come only for Best of Breed. In addition to the people sitting and standing around the ring, throngs were shopping at the vendors’ booths; placing final bids at Rescue’s silent auction; taking chances on raffles for stuffed animals, kitchen implements, malamute coffee mugs, dog-portrait photography sessions; and accumulating brochures, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and tote bags promoting next year’s national. Everyone who’d heard about Rowdy (and almost everyone had) asked how he was doing, offered sympathy, and condemned Timmy Oliver. ”Leaving a glass bottle on a grooming table!” someone said. ”Stupid, stupid! Just like him!” A few times I found myself in the peculiar position of defending Timmy: ”He was careless, but he didn’t do it on purpose,” I heard myself say.
    Kevin Dennehy interrupted my study of the catalog by issuing a series of those hey-hey grunts that he uses to greet male police officers, and women he either considers to be good cops, or has a yen for, or both. As I’ve never remarked to Kevin, Rowdy, too, displays a single stereotyped greeting pattern for equal-status male dogs, respected females, and interesting bitches. Rowdy doesn’t grunt and say How ya doing? of course. He lifts his leg on the nearest tree. Same difference.
    With my view blocked by Kevin’s bulk, I at first mistook the object of his hey-heying. I expected him to introduce me to a short, gray-haired woman who was shifting impatiently from foot to foot near the festooned gate to the ring and looking around with the vigilant expression I associate with presidential bodyguards. Nothing else about her suggested a career in law enforcement. She wore a black jersey dress that looked familiar and a print scarf that I definitely recognized from a recent visit to L.L. Bean, and over her shoulder was slung a black version of the handbag I’d ordered in tan from the same reliable source. The affinity I always feel for my sisters and brothers in Bean was quickly displaced by a sense of alarm. A cop at the gate had to mean danger. On a street in Providence at night, I’d have expected to be vigilant, especially if, like Elsa Van Dine, I’d been wearing a diamond ring. If, like James Hunnewell, I’d been elderly, ill, and unaccompanied by a big, strong dog, I’d have been wary about strolling across a dark parking lot. Last night, as I’d made my lone way through the deserted hotel, I’d been on my guard. I’d stepped briskly along, eager to return to the sleeping company of Leah and my big dogs. Morever, I never wanted to look like an easy target, frail prey. Like Harriet Lunt. But here? In the exhibition hall? With hundreds of people? Hundreds of powerful dogs?
    Within seconds, I felt foolish. I should have known better, I told myself. Unless the job stress of being a cop had prematurely aged the Bean woman by twenty or thirty years, she was far too old for active police work. But black jersey? At a hairy-beast specialty? That she was a dog person never crossed my mind.
    As it turned out, the one to complete Kevin’s ritual by grunting a return hey-hey was Detective Peter Kariotis, who appeared out of the crowd and ragged Kevin by asking whether he was one of the dog nuts. In reply, my friend Kevin gave a disloyal smirk.
    After Kariotis moved away, I immediately took Kevin to task. I was citing Steve, Leah, and myself as typically sane and normal representatives of the dog fancy when some anti-dog agent of Fate sent our way who but Lisa Tainter, bedecked, as usual, in pelts, bones, teeth, and claws. Kevin was bug-eyed. And Lisa had no sooner departed than, practically right in front of him, Sherri Ann Printz directed the mist from her little blue spray bottle at Bear and then into