Stud Rites

tote bag. The theft of the lamp, I am sure, was a last-minute inspiration. His camper overflowed with the detritus of travel—maps, fast-food wrappers, old coffee cups—but the amount of loose change was extraordinary, and there were all those socks, too. The Comet lamp, I think, was a substitute for the coin-packed sock he’d intended to use as his blunt instrument. In contrast to a cosh, the lamp was a meaningful weapon: a sacred relic of Northpole’s Comet. And Timmy must have known that if he could get the lamp back in Betty Burley’s possession, she’d do her best to see that it got auctioned off to raise money for her rescue dogs. Then, after the auction, the murder weapon would vanish forever into the living room or den of the highest bidder.
    Exactly where Timmy waited to intercept Hunnewell is unclear. Running out of cigarettes, Hunnewell would certainly venture from his room. Timmy must have hung around watching for him, perhaps in a linen closet or in the stairwell. In any case, he must have approached Hunnewell and told him that he had cigarettes in his camper. Hunnewell was so out of touch with the times that he hadn’t even known how to open a pop-top can. I guess that whoever did his shopping for him bought nothing but bottles. Anyway, I don’t think he’d have been surprised to hear that Timmy smoked. If Hunnewell ever entered the camper, he didn’t leave any prints that the police found. Probably Timmy told him to wait outside. Then he returned not with cigarettes, but with imminent death.
    Although I don’t know exactly where Timmy murdered Hunnewell, I know that very early on Friday morning, Freida found the corpse under a camper. Timmy’s must have been in the line of campers when Leah and I played at choosing one for ourselves. Freida continues to insist that the body was either on show grounds or close enough to show grounds to threaten the cancellation of the national, and she is as furious as ever at Timmy Oliver for depositing it there and leaving her stuck with the obligation to move it to the little shed where Finn Adams subsequently came across it. According to someone who told someone who told me, Freida swears that Mikki Muldoon had no idea how sick Hunnewell really was. Consequently, according to rumor, Freida just took it for granted that Mikki Muldoon had murdered him to get the judging assignment. Freida apparently also confides to people that she’d eventually have shared her suspicion with the police. Further, she assures everyone that she’d have waited until Mikki had completed the judging. Freida is running for the board, too. For president.
    But back to that Saturday afternoon. By the time Detective Kariotis showed up, the crime-scene experts were more than ready to get rid of the dogs, who, as it turned out, were destroying evidence. Toss anything into a dog crate occupied by a puppy, and what can you expect? Actually, Timmy Oliver expected the destruction to be greater than it really was. As we found out afterward, in addition to shredded newspaper and miscellaneous filth, the puppies’ crates contained bits of the paper towel that Timmy had used to clean off the base of the bloodied lamp, as well as numerous scraps from the files that Timmy had stolen from Betty’s tote bag. I suspect that Cubby’s pedigree and the page from the stud book were touches that Timmy added well after he’d murdered Hunnewell. Betty’s tote bag is always so crammed with paper that she still isn’t sure what he stole, but the information on several other dogs is also missing, and I think that he looked through all of it, selected those particular pages, and planted them on Hunnewell’s body. He really was furious at Betty for refusing to tell the hotel that his camper belonged to her.
    Betty’s initial hypothesis that Sherri Ann and Victor Printz had murdered Hunnewell was not, I think, part of Timmy’s scheme. Betty now confesses that mistrustful of Sherri Ann’s sudden generosity to Alaskan Malamute Rescue, she decided that Sherri Ann had donated the lamp for her own use as a murder weapon. Betty, of course, knew that Sherri Ann was furious that one of her Pawprintz puppies had ended up in Gladys Thacker’s puppy mill. Sherri Ann now claims that she, Sherri Ann, has only herself to blame for shipping a pup to someone she didn’t know. Betty still says that Sherri Ann has always held James Hunnewell responsible for referring his sister to her to begin with; and that