Stud Rites

Victor, if this wasn’t a malamute national, wouldn’t you swear to God that that was a Siberian ?” Aiming her saccharine gaze straight at Pam, Sherri Ann drove the insult home: ”And a fine-boned Siberian, at that!”
    How Pam countered I cannot report. I was lost in thoughts of collaboration, collusion, and loyalty. Pam and Tiny: When James Hunnewell desecrated Short Seeley’s sacred memory by spitting a stream of obscenities, Pam had zealously defended the matriarch of the breed: ”If Short were alive today, you wouldn’t dare say any of that!” Mrs. Seeley was dead, of course, but keeping her revered memory alive was a mission that Pam certainly pursued with religious fervor. Could Mrs. Lunt, too, have disparaged the matriarch of the breed in Pam’s presence? And if zealotry had driven Pam to exact revenge on the defilers of her idol, Tiny would, as always, have been right at Pam’s side. Sherri Ann and Victor Printz: Victor named her dogs. He mumbled to them. At ringside, he was Sherri Ann’s ardent booster. When two Pawprintz dogs were due in the ring at the same time, he handled for her. He was her husband, her kennel help, her aide-de-camp. As I’d told Leah, I strongly suspected that Freida’s accusations concerning Sherri Ann were correct and that Victor had served as his wife’s co-conspirator. If Sherri Ann had committed murder, Victor, I knew, would have made himself as ruthlessly useful as ever.
    Leah touched my arm. ”Hey, that reminds me,” my cousin said, pointing to the R.T.I. booth, where Steve Delaney was engaged in conversation with Finn Adams. ”I forgot to tell you. Did you know that Steve and, uh, Finn already knew each other?”
    ”They don’t. I mean, I’ve told Steve—”
    ”They met,” Leah gleefully reported, ”at a conference in Minneapolis. It was about—”
    ”A.I.” Artificial insemination. ”No, Leah, you’re wrong. Because if they had, Steve would—”
    ”If they’d made the connection, which they didn’t but—”
    ”But you...!”
    ”I did not! The un-romance of your romantic past is strictly your own—”
    ”Affair,” I snapped. ”And is not something I’m thrilled to have dragged into the present. Shit! It’s not that Finn is... He’s a decent person, and what happened was actually my mother’s fault, not his, but I just—
    ”He’s a jerk,” Leah said.
    ”Distance did lend enchantment,” I conceded. ”Well, if they haven’t made the connection, they probably won’t. Steve has a lousy memory for human names, and Finn doesn’t know who Steve is, in relation to me, and even if he did...”
    ”Even if he did,” Leah finished ruthlessly, ”they’re both more interested in dog sperm than they are in you.”
    I was pondering the ultimate consolation when, in the aisle behind us, new and acrimonious voices rose above Pam’s and Sherri Ann’s in what sounded like the escalation of their skirmish into a major battle in the sometimes uncivil civil war about malamute bloodlines that has raged for at least four decades. I want to report that in rising from my seat, I firmly intended to ally myself with neither militant faction, but to remain in the neutral role of a sort of United Malamutes observer.
    As it turned out, however, Detective Kariotis had unintentionally changed the course of the battle by rallying the warriors on both sides in defense of one of their own, Betty Burley, against a common foe, namely, himself. The floor space near the gate, the trophy table, the breed club booth, and the rescue booth was so thick with handlers, dogs, and spectators that I had to keep tiptoeing around paws and begging everyone’s pardon to get near the center of the escalating fray. Sherri Ann Printz, backed by Victor Printz, Harriet Lunt, and an assemblage of other previously anti-Rescue and anti-Betty forces, was valiantly contesting Detective Kariotis’s attempt to seize the Comet lamp as a piece of evidence in the murder of James Hunnewell—indeed, as the murder weapon itself. Victor Printz, in a voice rusty with disuse, was demanding to see a search warrant. He was also threatening to file charges against Kariotis for harassing Betty Burley, who was calmly explaining what Alaskan Malamute Rescue was and how she would spend the money that the high bidder would pay for the lamp. With her neck stretched high and her small arms folded stalwartly across her chest, she insisted, ”So, you see, since this beautiful and unique lamp is a