Stud Rites

very valuable collector’s item, donated not to me personally, but to this organization and to the dogs that Mrs. Printz intends it to help, I am simply not entitled to—”
    Sherri Ann broke in. Her voice trembled with sincerity. At first, I mistook it for the heartfelt candor of one who deeply and genuinely longs to win an election. ”I’ll have you know,” she informed Kariotis, ”that every person at this national is grateful to this woman for her efforts on behalf of this breed. Not one person here is going to stand by and watch you manhandle her and undermine her mission of helping these poor dogs. Practically every single one of us, myself included, has to live day in and day out with the terrible knowledge that in spite of our best efforts, our very own lines have ended up in the puppy mills! And I know! Because I myself was tricked into selling a beautiful Pawprintz puppy to one of those filthy, disgusting puppy-mill people! So if you think that we’re going to just let you grab my beautiful lamp that I personally made and donated to help those poor dogs that go back to my —”
    Kariotis valiantly interrupted Sherri Ann by saying something to Betty about probable cause. What he made of Sherri Ann’s speech, I couldn’t tell. The typical member of the general public doesn’t even know what a puppy mill is, never mind what’s wrong with puppy mills. Although the detective probably didn’t understand that Sherri Ann had just made a brave and unusual public confession, be must have sensed the violence of her feelings. By comparison with Sherri Ann and the rumbling group around her, Betty must have seemed an easy target for an appeal to cool reason.
    ”I didn’t hear him!” I complained to Harriet Lunt. ”What did he say?”
    ”Piffle!” she replied. ”He says they found dog hair in the wound or on the body or somewhere! And he thinks that because...” Switching abruptly from me to Kariotis, Harriet called out, ”Young man! You there! You don’t know much about dogs, do you? Well, don’t you try and pull this probable cause nonsense here, because with all these dogs, you’re going to find dog hair anywhere and everywhere! We eat it, we breathe it, it’s all over us, it’s all over everything we own, it’s on our clothes, it’s in our cars; if we don’t find dog hair in our scrambled eggs and in our oatmeal, we know we’ve gotten someone else’s breakfast; when we send letters, we mail dog hair with them, and when we go to the dentist, the hygienist finds it stuck between our teeth; and furthermore, whenever we cut ourselves, we wash and scrub and disinfect, and before we can slap on a bandage, there it is! If I’d actually been killed last night and you’d sliced into me, and guess what? Dog hair! In my guts, in my liver, in my arteries, everywhere! And not just little hairs, either, but whole big clumps! So if you found it in his blood and brains, young man, naturally you did! I happen to be an attorney, and what I’m telling you is, what you’ve got isn’t probable cause. All you’ve got is so what!”
    Mainly because Sherri Ann and Bear were wanted in the ring, the crowd dispersed with the dispute about the lamp still unresolved. What had happened was a phenomenon that Kariotis, I thought, should’ve seen coming: a large-scale version of a domestic disturbance in which the intervening cop becomes the target of the combatants.
    ”Leah,” I asked, ”where’s Kevin?” Not that I expected or wanted Kevin to aid his fellow officer. On the contrary, I was as eager as I’d been all along to shield Betty from inquiries about the lamp, as well as about
    Cubby’s pedigree and the stud book page, items that must have been covered with her fingerprints. Since hearing Sherri Ann’s speech, I was, if anything, more determined than ever to protect Betty. It sounded to me as if Sherri Ann had known all along about the Pawprintz dog that had ended up with Gladys Thacker. Surprised, shocked, and ashamed, Sherri Ann might have blamed Hunnewell, acted on her anger, and guaranteed his silence. But besides having apparently known all along, she’d just made a highly public admission. Sherri Ann could have reclaimed the Comet-reliquary lamp late on Thursday, at the end of the evening’s events, when Betty had left it briefly unattended in her unlocked van. At the same time, she could have raided Betty’s tote bag and grabbed the papers out of Cubby’s file. But if she’d been