Stud Rites

deep-voiced Harriet Lunt, who favored that horrid phrase: ”trash dogs.” If, as Jeanine feared, Betty had also heard the cruel words, and if the other speaker had been James Hunnewell, both he and Harriet Lunt would even now be pinned in a corner somewhere while Betty told the pair of them everything that was on her mind. Besides, I had a hunch that the people whose words had wounded Jeanine hadn’t been Harriet Lunt and James Hunnewell, but Mrs. Lunt and Victor Printz. With some reluctance, I also discarded the obviously guileless Gladys Thacker. She’d sat with that Comet-hair lamp right there on the floor at her feet and had shown no reaction to it at all.
    Who made my final cut potential murderers? Duke Sylvia. Timmy Oliver. On Thursday, when I’d first encountered the wedding party in the hotel lobby, both Timmy and Duke had just arrived. The night before, either might well have been in Providence murdering Elsa Van Dine. Any of the others could, of course, have made the three-hour round-trip between Danville and Providence on Wednesday night. But Timmy or Duke Wight naturally have been passing through. Both men had known Elsa Van Dine. Duke had handled Comet for Elsa. She had sold Comet to Timmy. Either man could have stayed in touch with her and could have known exactly where she was staying in Providence. She had taken Timmy under her wing; she had a soft spot for him. Duke knew that the marquis had died and Elsa was now a dowager. When Elsa Van Dine had sold Comet, she’d offered the dog to Timmy Oliver. Why not to Duke? Had there been something about Duke she didn’t like? James Hunnewell had liked him, I thought, or at least liked his handling. And Hunnewell had trusted Duke to co-own Comet. On the other hand, Harriet Lunt had drawn up a special co-ownership contract for Hunnewell because he hadn’t trusted Timmy. Was it the only one she’d drawn up? Had Hunnewell really trusted Duke Sylvia?
    Having lost my ringside seat to Pam Ritchie, I pressed up against the back of her chair, with Steve to my left, and beyond him, Finn Adams. The latter had abandoned his booth to pursue the kind of promising client he must have been trained to plague, a veterinarian interested in reproductive high tech who, as Finn was not saying outright, could fill his own coffers by funneling dog sperm into the freezers of R.T.I. Mashed against a chair back between Steve and Finn, Leah, in what I took to be a merciful effort to interrupt Finn’s copious flow, kept bursting in with queries about the legal ownership of frozen sperm. Personal property, Finn kept telling her, an asset like any other, an asset separate from what Finn kept calling the ”donor dog.”
    In the ring, Al Holabach took Casey out and back.
    ”That’s my pick,” I told Steve. ”Beautifully presented, too. Damn! Kevin is missing everything!”
    The last time I’d seen Kevin, he’d been lugging a malamute-size cedar-filled dog bed that he’d confessed was one of quite a few items he’d won by buying an evidently extraordinary number of raffle tickets. Now, finding him near one of the raffle tables, I said, ”You know, you don’t really have to buy all that many tickets. It’s nice of you, but...”
    Awkwardly fingering a set of kitchen utensils bearing hand-painted images of—what else?—Alaskan malamutes, Kevin said, ”Hey, heart of gold.” With a shucks-ma’am smile, he beat his chest with a wooden spatula.
    I insisted that it would be a shame for him to miss the final moments of Best of Breed, but as he followed me, I made the mistake of using the word ”climax.” Kevin’s face promptly turned an orangutan orange-red that clashed with his hair. For a second, I entertained the thought that in his profound ignorance of dog shows, Kevin might imagine that I was exhorting him to witness some sort of ritual mating of the Best of Breed and Best of Opposite Sex in an orgasmic grand finale that I could hardly wait to applaud myself. Although I dismissed the possibility—Kevin really did know better—it occurred to me that from Rowdy’s point of view, such conventional trophies as punch bowls, trays, commemorative plates, tea sets, and engraved platters were of no interest whatsoever, whereas a bitch in season would be a prize really worth taking home.
    The action in the ring did not, of course, consist of ritual mating. Rather, the dogs—an elite group of polished show dogs, not a slinker among them—were arrayed, one in front, one