Stud Rites

wanting him to go home all alone. It’s creepy, if you ask me.”
    What impelled me to speak the woman’s name aloud was, I think, simple astonishment at the discrepancy between my image of Gladys Thacker as a sort of generic puppy-mill operator and the reality of a woman I’d mistaken, even momentarily, for an AKC rep. ”Gladys Thacker!”
    In my surprise, I must have spoken more loudly than I’d intended. Sherri Ann Printz, who stood nearby misting her bitch’s coat, jerked her head toward me just as the L.L. Bean woman veered around and asked, ”You talking to me?”
    Up close, Gladys Thacker’s hair revealed itself as a myriad of flattened curls, each crossed by the mark of a bobby pin. Her foundation makeup was a few shades lighter than her skin. Her eye shadow was green. She smelled musty, like old powder.
    Ignoring Sherri Ann, I cleared my throat and held out my hand. ”My name is Holly Winter. You’re, uh, Mr. Hunnewell’s sister?”
    ”If her name is Gladys Thacker, you bet your life she is!” Her face cold with anger, Sherri Ann turned to the other woman. ”Is that who you are?” When Gladys Thacker gave a baffled nod, Sherri Ann continued venomously, ”Lady, do you have any idea how much grief you have caused me? A million times, I have cursed myself for shipping that lovely puppy to you, all on your brother’s say-so! What a fool I was! I should never, ever have sold a dog to someone I’d only talked to on the phone, never, ever! And you sounded so sweet and all innocent, and all you wanted was a pet! And I call you, I do my follow-up, and, yeah, yeah, he’s just fine, and then, then, a couple of years later, I discover...! I get a call from someone who says there’s a malamute at a pet shop, and she’s managed to get a look at the papers, and guess what? The sire is Pawprintz! He’s my puppy that I sent to you! You scum of the earth! How dare you show your lying face—”
    ”You’re one to talk!” Gladys retorted. ”Yow breed dogs yourself! You sell dogs! You sold one to me! I’m a breeder same as yourself, and I don’t see where you get off treating me like dirt. I got as much right to be here as you! More! I’m here because of my brother! I’m not just here to make a stupid fuss about a bunch of dogs!” I decided to intervene. ”Sherri Ann, uh, wait, okay? This is really not the time to get into it. You’re due in the ring.”
    One of the last people to feel any sympathy for a puppy-mill operator, I nonetheless pitied Gladys Thacker, whose eyes had filled with tears and whose powdered face showed not a trace of comprehension. I searched her features for any sign of resemblance to the late James Hunnewell and found only one: thin, lined lips. Gladys Thacker, however, was much younger than her brother had been. Perhaps his illness rather than genetics had made him look like a bloated horny toad.
    Recalled to the present, Sherri Ann stashed her spray bottle and metal comb in one of the big pockets of her dress, a sort of housecoat of gray satin and turquoise chiffon. Like Gladys Thacker, she looked close to tears. ”You just tell me one thing,” she demanded of Thacker. ”What do you think you’re doing here? Here! This is the last place on earth anyone’d expect to find the likes of you, you—”
    ”Sherri Ann—” I started to say.
    But Sherri Ann called loudly, ”Victor! Victor, do you know who this person is? This is that puppy-mill woman who conned us out of that puppy! Harriet, this person is the one I was telling you about! She breeds malamutes for pet shops!”
    ”Sherri Ann, the ring!” Harriet warned, with more success than I’d had.
    As Victor shepherded his wife down the aisle, Harriet Lunt, ignoring Gladys Thacker’s existence, demanded of me: ”Is that true?”
    ”More or less,” I replied. ”Mrs. Thacker is James Hunnewell’s sister. Years ago, Sherri Ann shipped her a dog that’s shown up in a whole lot of pet-shop pedigrees. But—”
    ”My brother,” Gladys Thacker cut in, ”is right now lying cold in some morgue, and I come all the way here to bring him home with me so’s he can rest with his own, and do you people care? I think it’s disgraceful, is what I think. My brother was murdered right here not two days ago, and here I am, come all this way so he don’t have to go home all alone, with total strangers, and all you people can talk about is just dogs! It’s the most disgusting thing I ever heard! It’s sick! It’s like