Stud Rites

out. Mikki Muldoon swore that she’d grabbed the first weapon that came to hand. According to Pam, Mikki deliberately destroyed a significant piece of the breed’s history while delivering a posthumous insult to Eva B. Seeley. Then Freida charged Pam with trying to spoil the occasion by picking a public quarrel with the judge. Betty and Sherri Ann, in contrast, moved to a distant, deserted table at the back of the banquet room and commiserated about what both considered the theft of the Comet lamp. As to the mix-ups of the entrees, the cake, and the flowers, Sherri Ann managed to convince Betty of her innocence. I, however, continue to believe that Sherri Ann was guilty. She will not, of course, get my vote.
    After the auction, Duke Sylvia and I left the banquet hall together to get a drink. We sat on tall stools at the outrigger bar. I told him that Leah was convinced that he, Duke, would have been Timmy’s next victim. Duke just laughed. Although he must have realized that Timmy was trying to cast a halo of guilt around him, he didn’t say so. It’s possible, I suppose, that Timmy really would have tried to murder Duke. If so, Timmy’d have failed. He’d never have gotten the best of Duke. I did not confront Duke with my firm belief that he’d known all along who murdered James Hunnewell. I know what it is to have a great dog die. What it must be like to have one murdered, I can’t imagine. Duke said, and still maintains, that Hunnewell refused to sell Comet’s sperm because he didn’t like the direction the breed was going in and wanted to guarantee that if the breed improved, there’d be a worthy stud available. As I didn’t tell Duke, I don’t think that Hunnewell’s objection to a particular bitch had anything to do with his refusal. It is my conviction that Hunnewell wanted that remaining viable trace of Comet, those precious straws of frozen semen, to remain intact in the freezers of R.T.I.
    As to Timmy’s motive, Duke took the practical view that Timmy had just wanted a litter out of Comet, puppies sired by the long-dead legend. About winning and losing, Duke was a realist. He said that there were fashions and fads in the ring just as there were everywhere else and that, these days, there was no telling how Comet himself would do out there. I think that in killing for control of those last drops of Comet, Timmy ached to own the living remains of a great dog who’d never really belonged to anyone but Duke Sylvia. Where Timmy was raw, Duke was polished. Timmy was a badly aged child. Duke was a man. I believe that in longing to control Comet’s sperm, Timmy wanted not only the dog’s power, but Duke’s, as if anyone who owned even a few drops of Comet would thereby become Duke.
    Now, months later, Comet’s future is as frozen as ever. In one respect, James Hunnewell proved himself a wise judge of men and dogs. He willed the bulk of his estate to the Dog Museum, which happens to be in his home state, Missouri. He left Comet’s sperm to Duke. If the immortal Comet ever sires a litter, I will look for his sons and daughters in the ring. As I’ve mentioned, it’s always a pleasure to watch Duke handle. And, after all, James Hunnewell would have been the first to agree that Comet was a dog to die for.
    My own are dogs to live for. On the day after the official end of the national, Kimi went Winners Bitch at our independent area specialty, thus picking up her first championship points. Rowdy, of course, was temporarily out of competition. In my judge’s book, however, tbey eternally tie for Best of Breed. Oh, and speaking of braces of beauties, I must not forget to mention Greg and Crystal’s twins, Gregory, Jr., and Lindsay, whose names and little wrinkled faces appeared on the front page of the Boston papers almost exactly two months after the national, on January the first, when the twins took the breed, so to speak, by arriving in the early hours of New Year’s Day. Crystal and Greg are in the picture, too. Both are smiling.
    Oh. After Duke and I left the bar, did we...? Certainly not! But I sure was tempted. And while I’m on that subject, I am thrilled to report that the recent restoration of the Sistine Chapel has revealed that Michelangelo did not, after all, shortchange Adam in the matter of... one-fourth? Really, we should have guessed. As it was, where did Cain and Abel come from? Never mind the rest of us. And the gap? Authorities maintain that what fills the previous emptiness