
Two Vintage
Holly Winter Stories
by
Susan Conant
Murder in Ring 19 © 1991 by Susan Conant
Murder Well Groomed © 1992 by Susan Conant
All rights reserved. Electronic edition published 2010
Cover design by Brian Yagel
Almost twenty years ago, Dog World magazine invited me to contribute two short mystery stories narrated by Holly Winter. I was asked to use a puzzle format: the first and longer part of each story was to present the mystery; the solution was to be printed elsewhere in the issue. "Murder in Ring 19" appeared in Dog World in November 1991; "Murder Well-groomed" in July 1992.
In looking over these stories many years later, I considered updating both to reflect changes in Holly's life as well as changes in the dog world. On reflection, I realized that the stories offer little glimpses through a window into the past and that to rewrite them would mean shuttering that window.
Susan Conant
2010
Murder in Ring 19
Change in obedience judge," the sign read. "Mrs. Annette Cormier will replace Mr. A. J. Nelson in Open A." A. J. Nelson, a paragon of fairness and friendliness, always drew a big entry. Annette Cormier seldom had the chance to draw any at all. Judge Leo Cormier had a good reputation, but his wife was so unpopular that only the most desperate clubs ever hired her. I swore.
Dog shows are my heaven. If I arrive at the pearly gates to steward for St. Peter and find that he's been replaced by Beelzebub, I'll probably curse there, too. If I'm let in anyway, I'll at least know my way around. Of the twenty celestial rings, only four will be devoted to obedience, and all four will be on the far side of paradise, as were the earthly ones inside the Bayside Expo Center.
Opposite rings 19 and 20 stood a megadisplay of texturizing, concentrated, brightening, whitening, tearless, conditioning, antistatic, medicated, nondrying, tangle-fighting, hypoallergenic, anti-itch, protein-enhanced, organic, deodorizing, everything-scented, and fragrance-free shampoos, all stacked next to row after row of foggers, collars, dips, powders, and aerosol and nonaerosol sprays guaranteed to do in fleas for twenty-eight days (ticks for twenty-one) on your dog or in your yard, kennel, carpets, or your entire house, to prevent hatching and to give a quick kill, too.
In ring 20, Mr. Cormier, who looked like a handsome, ruddy-cheeked mastiff, was conferring with an official. In ring 19, Mrs. Cormier was conferring with herself. She paced sourly back and forth, combing her fingers through her cap of short, dark hair.
The obedience table ran along one side of ring 19. The breed club sponsoring the show and trial always had trouble recruiting members to steward in obedience, so the Cambridge Dog Training Club had loaned me out. I introduced myself to the chief steward, a dapper little guy who was handing out catalogs and royal blue stewards' badges. "Holly Winter," I said. "What happened to Mr. Nelson?"
"Perforated ulcer." The chief steward shook his head sadly. "Last night." As he led two other stewards and me to ring 19, he told us at least three times how fortunate it was that Mrs. Cormier had graciously agreed to step in at the last minute. I can take a hint. No matter what our judge did, he expected his stewards to be good sports.
Before we'd even entered the ring, Mrs. Cormier was swooping toward us and proclaiming loudly, "You're late! How am I supposed to instruct my stewards if they're late?"
It was 8:30, exactly when we were due in her ring---a half-hour before the start of judging and, if I remembered the regulations correctly, the deadline for Open A exhibitors unsatisfied with the substitute judge to withdraw and have their entry fees refunded. "And," she went on, "I'll bet not one of you knows the first thing about obedience."
No one corrected her. The other stewards were Nancy What's-her-name---the one with the long brown hair whose sheltie made it to the Gaines Regional last year---and Happy Green. She's that big, tall white-haired woman with Labs---you see her in Utility all the time. A. J. Nelson or Mr. Cormier would've recognized us and probably asked after our dogs, too. Mrs. Cormier, having NQ'd us in advance, gripped her clipboard in both hands and lectured us about the role of the steward in obedience, which, as we all knew, is to help the judge, not to advise. Then she put Nancy on the gate. As ring stewards, Happy and I would be spared the worst of the grumbling I expected from handlers forced to choose between forfeiting their fees and showing under an unpopular substitute judge.
A few minutes later, a relief steward came to announce that four Open A dogs, including the first two, had been withdrawn. Nancy, who'd been checking in handlers and distributing armbands, drew X's through the first two numbers on the poster by the gate and looked around for the first dog, the original third. "Number eight?" she called. She refused the relief steward's offer of coffee. "It's a golden," she said. "Is nine here? Eight can go second."
But Mrs. Cormier, seated at the judge's table by the gate, said, "Catalog order. Judges are not required to wait for dogs. It's that handler's responsibility to be here."
Nancy, Happy, and I stared at one another. Obedience judges are never rigid about the order of judging. Dumbfounded, I looked around, perhaps in the hope that someone like AKC obedience director Roger Ayres would happen to be standing outside the ring and would step in and speak up in favor of flexibility. Ayres was nowhere in sight, but Mr. Cormier was only a yard or two away. His table, by the Utility ring gate, abutted his wife's, and he was leaning over it to fish something out of his briefcase. He must have heard her, but his face registered nothing.
Fortunately, though, or so it seemed, dog number eight appeared, a flashy male golden handled by a slight woman with the trembling hands and the puce-white face you see mostly in Novice A.
"What are you so nervous about?" Mrs. Cormier demanded as she measured the dog. "I'm not going to bite you." She grinned as if she intended to do exactly that.
Lest it seem that I have nothing good to say about Mrs. Cormier, let me state that she used a conventional T-shaped heeling pattern and that her orders were loud and clear. If they'd been soft and mumbled, though, the handler could hardly have missed them; Mrs. Cormier stuck as close to that golden as if she'd been the outside dog in a brace. The golden ignored her. His eyes never left his handler's face, even when Mrs. Cormier ordered a halt and tapped her pencil on her clipboard in sharp staccato. Have I mentioned that this was a terrific obedience dog? Sure---I said he was a golden, didn't I? Well, he heeled precisely and joyfully, and didn't even lag on the outside loop of the figure eight. He hit the mat instantly on the drop on recall, retrieved his dumbbell neatly, didn't mouth it, soared over the high jump, always sat straight, and, in short, wowed everyone.
"Broad jump exercise," Mrs. Cormier said. "Are you ready?"
"Ready," the handler said.
"Leave your dog."
"Stay," the woman said, then left the dog and positioned herself on the right-hand side of the hurdles with her toes exactly two feet from the third hurdle, I swear. Needless to say, the golden once again performed gorgeously, and when the handler released him, the spectators applauded.
Then Mrs. Cormier marched up to the handler and said in loud tones of deep compassion, "I'm so sorry. I can't qualify you." She jabbed her pencil toward the handler, then toward the hurdles. "Two feet," she said. "Your toes were touching that third hurdle."
The handler swallowed hard, nodded compliantly, led her fabulous dog out of the ring and praised him as if he'd received the perfect score he deserved. I wanted to strangle Mrs. Cormier. When I'd set the jumps for the next dog, a pretty Lhasa, I did something that I sure hope the American Kennel Club never hears about. I moved to the gate and whispered to Nancy, "Tell them to stand really far back on the broad jump."
"I already am," she said. "Is there anything else?"
"Probably," I said. "But not that I know about yet."
"I feel sick," Happy said. "I hate to be part of this."
The Lhasa walked back around the high jump. The next dog, a handsome black shepherd, just didn't drop. Maybe happiness stimulated Mrs. Cormier's appetite. As the shepherd left the ring, she caught sight of a food cart in a nearby aisle and told Nancy to get her a tuna on white and some black coffee. Then she started measuring the next dog, a Terv bitch, while I set the jumps at 30 and 60. When I'd finished, though, Mrs. Cormier made me add two inches to the high jump and four inches to the broad jump. "This dog's twenty-five inches," she said.
"Twenty-four," said the handler, a sturdy, confident-looking woman. "But it doesn't matter. Lizzie can jump thirty-two."
Although I didn't see it or hear it, it's possible that the Terv ticked the high jump. When Mrs. Cormier said the Terv used the jump to climb over, though, she was lying. "I'm not even required to explain it to you, you know," she told the handler. "I'm trying to be helpful."
After the handler had left the ring, Mrs. Cormier fixed her eyes on me. "She knew that dog couldn't jump the required height." She sounded outraged. "She thought she'd pull a fast one on me and get away with thirty inches!" She gave an unappetizing snort. "Where's my sandwich?" She spotted it on her table, snatched it up, and tore off the plastic wrapper. She took a big bite and made a face. Dog show food. What did she expect? "Moldy," she said. She took another bite, swigged some coffee, wiped her hand on her mouth, and put the sandwich on the table---yes. right out in plain sight and even plainer smell of every dog that would enter her ring.
Breed loyalty being what it is, I won't say what the next dog was, but I'll tell you he was so nervous that he gagged, choked and eventually vomited. Happy, who was a friend of the handler's, murmured to me that the dog was great in class but always went to pieces in the ring. Mrs. Cormier informed the handler that a little bundle of nerves like that didn't belong in obedience at all. She went on to predict that he'd develop seizures and eventually turn into a fear-biter, too.
"Bitch!" Happy said none too softly.
I glanced toward the Utility ring to see whether Mr. Cormier had overheard, but he was at least twenty feet away, smiling down at a Border collie and chatting amiably with the owner.
"If she's this unfair in the ring, imagine what she's like at home!" I said. "How does he stand her?"
"He's stuck with her," Happy said.
A non-dog person would probably have expected her to explain that the Cormiers objected to divorce on religious grounds, and she did, more or less: "They co-own twelve dogs."
"Oh," I said. "What kind?"
"Pulis."
Yeah, pulik. But that's not what she said. Anyway, I was astounded. I always think of puli people as exceptionally ethical. It was hard to believe that Mrs. Cormier owned even one puli, never mind half of twelve.
The next two dogs were Rotties. If I'd been scoring Mrs. Cormier's judging of both of them, I'd have given her substantial penalties for consistent crowding. By the time the second Rottie and his handler were leaving the ring, word about the substitute judge in Open A had evidently spread. Ring 19 had drawn a large crowd, and the spectators were jammed together because the obedience table was on one side of our ring, the Novice A ring on another, and Mr. Cormier's Utility ring on the third side. In the aisle on the gate side, waiting handlers peered in to study the heeling pattern, and everyone watched to see whether the judge was really as mean as everyone was saying.
Well, she was worse. The next dog was another golden, not spectacular like the first golden, but not bad, and definitely qualifying. Not according to Mrs. Cormier, though. When he and his handler left the ring, I did something else that I want you to promise never to mention to anyone from the AKC. I asked Nancy how many no-shows we had.
"A lot," she said.
"Good. Now, look. If anyone else wants to check in, why don't you just sort of emphasize that this is a substitute judge."
"I have been," she said, "but you know what people are like."
"I'll bet she doesn't qualify a single dog," I said.
I was wrong. The next dog, a black standard poodle, got off to a bad start by trying to steal the sandwich that was still sitting on the table, and he came to a bad end by vaulting out of the ring. But after that, another dog entered our ring, and Mrs. Cormier finally liked what she saw.
On the drop on recall, the dog started toward his handier before he was called, and he also dropped before the signal. On the retrieve on flat and the retrieve over high jump, he went after his dumbbell the second it hit the mat. He didn't need to be told when to go over the broad jump, either. In fact, if he'd been sent into the ring all alone, he'd have run through the whole Open routine just fine. Pattern training, right? Too many run-throughs. Everyone liked him, but absolutely nobody could've qualified him. Mrs. Cormier did, though. Did you guess? He was, of course, a puli.
But what did I tell you about puli people? When Mrs. Cormier tried to congratulate the handler, a good-looking, cheerful guy, he gave her the only real argument she heard that day, He insisted that the dog had anticipated almost everything. She didn't listen to a word he said but hurried him out of the ring and announced that we'd do sits and downs next. She was licking and smacking her lips.
When the handlers and dogs had entered the ring and lined up, and, I might add, when the dogs were all sitting, Mrs. Cormier pulled a legal dirty trick. I'm sure you know this one---yes, she delivered the lecture. "These are the group exercises." She paused. "Your dog should sit by your left side." She paused again and made a face. Then she went on to explain a lot of other things that every handler already knew. Before she'd even told the handlers to sit their dogs, she'd legally stretched the three-minute sit to more than five minutes. OK, so maybe the handlers shouldn't have had their dogs sitting before she gave the command, and maybe they should've been training their dogs to hold ten-minute sits, but these weren't OTCh. people, and I'm telling you that it felt deliberately unfair. Anyway, she finally told the handlers to leave, and they filed out through the gate and followed Nancy past the concession stands and down the aisle.
The judge is supposed to stand during the group exercises, of course, but I've seen tired judges bend the rules by sitting down. Never before, though, had I watched a judge not only take a seat but drink coffee and wolf down a sandwich while the handlers were out of the ring. Also, it should go without saying that the judge keeps quiet during the sits and downs. When Mrs. Cormier tasted her coffee, she almost spat it out and then uttered a loud, dramatic "ugh" that really got to the poodle, who turned his head and fastened his lively, intelligent eyes on her. He didn't break, though. I felt proud of him.
When Mrs. Cormier had finished her mid-morning lunch, it occurred to her to call back the handlers and, when they'd returned to their dogs, to give the orders for the long down. The handlers again filed past the judge's table, through the gate, along the aisle, and out of sight. Once again, Mrs. Cormier sat down. This time, though. when she grabbed the paper coffee cup, she let it fall to the floor. Then she bent over as if to retrieve it, but wrapped her arms around her body. groaned, collapsed on the mats and got massively sick.
As it turned out, someone had put her on a permanent long down. She'd been poisoned, of course. Two cholinesterase inhibitors? An organophosphate and a carbamate? If you dip your dogs, be especially careful with something called gamma benzene hexachloride, and before you use those powders, sprays and, foggers, read the fine print on the labels. I've just told you the moral of this story. Now you tell me: who killed Annette Cormier?
Solution: Murder in Ring 19
If handlers resorted to murder when they thought that judges had been unfair, how many names would remain on the AKC eligible list? Besides, this kind of murder is a family affair. The motive? Leo Cormier was not the sort of callous dog owner who'd sign over six of his twelve pulik to Mrs. Cormier just to get rid of her. "Till death us do part" was evidently a vow he had made to his dogs.
Details: Gamma benzene hexachloride is soluble in fats and oils, not in water, and it tastes moldy. It's highly toxic when ingested, but Mr. Cormier also added a bit of chlorpyrifos and a hint of propoxur to the tuna sandwich he bought from the motel vending machine as soon as he heard his wife would be judging. He'd had the means ready and was waiting for the perfect occasion: at a show, all eyes are on the dogs, and he knew he could count on his wife to generate plenty of possible motives. Need I mention that dog-show food makes the perfect cover? There was nothing deadly in Mrs. Cormier's coffee, though. At a show, the poisonous taste is, of course, perfectly normal.
Incidentally, the handler of the Terv bitch swore me to secrecy and confided that she'd watched Mr. Cormier switch the sandwiches. That Terv handler feels that her silence is justified. "Lizzie never even ticked that jump," she told me. "She cleared it with two inches to spare."
Murder Well-groomed
The notice that arrived in my mail the day before the Essex County show was addressed to the Cambridge Dog Training Club, c/o Holly Winter. Like the usual fliers for fun matches, Canine Good Citizen tests, tattoo clinics, and perfect-heeling seminars, the circular had a club logo in the upper left corner, but this one didn't show something normal like a freeze-frame of a sleek Dobe clearing the high jump. Also, I'd never heard of a kennel club called the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, as you've probably guessed, I'd received my first premium list for a human being. I read it anyway.
"Re: JOHN RICHARD FARRELL, also known as Morris W. Rinehart, John Visco, John Morris. TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: The FBI is conducting an investigation to locate John Richard Farrell, who is wanted for Unlawful Interstate Flight to Avoid Prosecution for the crimes of Murder, Conspiracy, and Narcotics Trafficking."
If you're a real dog person, you simply won't believe what came next: "Investigation has determined that Farrell is an avid breeder and owner of Alaskan malamute dogs and may still be involved in that hobby."
Hobby! I ask you, what is a hobby? Stamp collecting, model airplanes, gourmet cooking, macramé, basket weaving, right? Dogs, my friends, are a passion, an obsession, a compulsion, a mania, or the living, breathing, tail-wagging embodiment of purpose and meaning in this otherwise random universe, but they are certainly not some furry alternative to decoupage. Hobby, indeed. For this we pay taxes?
Worse, the G-men had foolishly sent photos of Farrell, not his dogs. Whereas most people lack distinguishing facial markings like a stunning white blaze on the forehead or a lovely black bar down the nose, each Alaskan malamute is a highly distinct individual. My bitch, Kimi, has a full mask. Rowdy, my male, has an open face, but he's utterly unmistakable, too, not just one more guy like Farrell, who looked like a thousand other men. Nonetheless, I studied the mug shots and the FBI's description: a 50-year-old white male, 5 feet 10 inches, 170 pounds, brown hair and eyes, no scars. A murderer, conspirator, drug trafficker, and, as the notice went on to say, a known user of his own merchandise isn't the kind of person I'd trust with companion guppies, never mind with dogs. If Farrell showed his face in dogdom, I was prepared to spot it instantly.
But when you consider where I encountered Farrell, it's still a miracle that I recognized him. The Essex County show was perfectly probable, but just outside the Novice A ring? Obedience is the last place you'd expect to find a malamute person, and if you count both Farrell and the handler who'd just left the ring, there were five of us.
Pam Ritchie, Tiny DaSilva, and I were sweltering in the mid-July sun that always turns Essex County into a steam bath endurance competition. Tiny, who'd bred the bitch that had just made her obedience debut, was telling lies, and Pam, whose young male had gone Best of Breed early that morning, was agreeing with her.
Tiny had short, blunt-cut white hair obviously lathered in Sho Sno and touched up with a cake of grooming chalk. Although she was small boned and wiry, she had those big malamutes you see in the Midwest---handsome, bearlike dogs with a lot of Storm Kloud in them. "Malamutes are just not that hard to train," Tiny was saying with the authority of someone who'd never so much as entered the Pre-Novice ring at a club-members-only show-and-go.
Pam's obedience qualifications were identical to Tiny's, but she shook her mane of chestnut curls up and down. "People just aren't willing to put in the time," she agreed. Pam's hefty build suggested an origin in the same Storm Kloud lines as Tiny's dogs, but she bred our agile New England Kotzebues. She eyed the bitch who'd just left the ring and commented, "Big, isn't she?"
"Seventy-five pounds is not big," Tiny snapped. "Read the standard."
When one breeder starts ordering another to read the standard, any sensible dog person vanishes. In lieu of actually disappearing, I feigned ardent interest in the performance of a Rottie in the Open B ring. That's when I noticed an ordinary-looking brown-haired man standing about 20 feet to our left. Because I've stewarded in Open and Utility, I'm pretty good at estimating height, but only up to about 32 inches at the withers, of course. Was he 5 foot 10? Well, he was taller than 5 foot 6, shorter than 6 foot 2, looked about 50, and had no visible scars. The details didn't matter, though. He looked exactly like the mug shots. I must have caught my breath aloud. Pam turned to me.
"Did you see that flier?" I whispered.
Breed people like to imagine that they understand obedience, but here's evidence that Pam didn't: So far as I know, flier is not dog-training slang for some elevating crime like hightailing it out of the ring or lifting a leg on the judge's shoe. To straighten out the confusion, I said, "You see that man in the blue shirt? Brown hair? Standing sort of in front of those two young guys with the shepherd?"
They were in their midtwenties, blond, short-haired, clean-cut young men dressed more for conformation than for obedience in stiffly pressed and sharply creased khaki pants and heavily starched, wrinkle-free white summer shirts. Their dog, though, was definitely not dressed for breed. He was a decently proportioned tan GSD, but he was no show dog, wasn't on a show lead, and hadn't been groomed for the ring. An obedience dog? Maybe. But neither of the men wore an armband.
Anyway, Pam followed my gaze across the intense, heat-blurred green of the field and said casually, "Yeah." Then she really focused on him, perked up, and said, "Hey, I know him. I sold him a puppy, maybe four years ago." After that, of course, she started to tell me everything about the sire, the dam, the breeding, the puppy's Iittermates, their wins, the repeat breeding, and so on.
Before she had a chance to zip over to Farrell, recite the same litany, and ask about the pup, I interrupted. The melodrama was unavoidable. "Pam, he's wanted by the FBI!"
As Pam was asking whether I'd been out in the sun too long, Tiny came to the defense of my sanity. Someone had shown her the FBI notice, she said. "He does kind of look like him," she added.
"Of course he does," I said. "He looks exactly like the pictures. And, besides, we know this guy has malamutes, because Pam sold him a puppy."
Tiny's little eyes blazed at Pam. "You sold him a puppy?"
Pam nodded. "Yeah." Her big features remained immobile. "He seemed all right."
"I hate to say this," Tiny told her, "but do you really think that 'all right' is good enough? I mean, obviously, it isn't. You know, you trust people too much. You really have to screen better than that." She raised a bony hand as if she intended to shake a scolding finger at Pam but caught herself and ended up holding out a clenched fist.
"Well, what did you want me to do?" Pam said. "I met him and talked to him, and he seemed all right. And he already had a malamute, so he knew about the breed. As a matter of fact, his dog was out of that bitch you sold to the Levinsons, and the dog was dysplastic, which, in case you want to know, happens to be why he came to me when he wanted a puppy."
"Well," Tiny said emphatically, "the dysplasia must've come from whoever the Levinsons bred her to, because it did not come from my lines." She paused and added pointedly, "All my dogs are OFA," by which she meant, of course, that her dogs were rated clear of hip dysplasia by the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals.
Before Pam could ask OFA what---Excellent? Good? Fair? Dysplatic?---I cleared my throat and, trying to keep my eyes off Farrell, said, "He's a drug dealer and a murderer! Pam, would you turn so he can't see you? You know, he might recognize you, and, for all we know, he knows about the FBI flier. Don't let him see you staring at him."
"Well, what's he done with my bitch?" Pam said. "That was a beautiful puppy. When he got in trouble, he should've brought her back." She paused, folded her arms, and eyed Tiny. "I won't sell any puppy without a return agreement."
"Well, neither will I!" Tiny said. "And if you'd followed up, you'd know where your bitch is."
May I interject something? I don't want to give a false impression of malamute breeders, who are not, in general, scrappy, aggressive types. They aren't even terribly competitive, at least by comparison with, say, terrier people. But they're strong-minded and independent. Also, they never back down. Sound familiar?
"Look," I said, "I'm worried about his dogs, too, but among other things, we don't even know that he still has them."
"Of course he does," Tiny said. "Just look at him. He's been to Cherrybrook, and he's been picking up samples."
She was right. A guy at a dog show who's holding a big white Cherrybrook bag and two smaller ones from lams and Science Diet probably owns at least one dog.
"We have to do something," I said. "The FBI notice said not to do anything to endanger anyone, so he's probably armed, but we have to let someone know he's here."
You do show your dogs, don't you? Good. Well, then, I don't need to explain why I was glad that Pam and Tiny were not obedience people, who are the champion nit-picking legal hair-splitters of the dog fancy. Three obedience types in our situation would have argued about whether Farrell was standing within the jurisdiction of the Novice A judge. Since Farrell was outside the ring, was he thereby outside the judge's province? But judges are empowered to remove spectators who are causing a disturbance, aren't they? So doesn't a fugitive from the FBI constitute a potential impediment to the performance of dogs and handlers? I mean, the Best in Show judge would've been making her cuts before we'd settled the question.
As it was, mainly because we were afraid that Farrell had noticed Pam, we immediately dispatched her to look for the AKC rep. Then Tiny volunteered to find the show chairman. I consulted my catalog and swore. The chairman, James J. Pastern, a pint-size Koehler-fanatic martinet and unpopular Working Group judge, owned three breed champion giant schnauzers that reliably NQ'd in obedience because Mr. Pastern drilled them to believe that every move they made was a hanging crime. Koehler, right? The dog training expert who always puts the word kindly in quotation marks in case anyone suspects him of meaning it seriously. No one ever does, of course.
"Mr. Pastern," I informed Tiny. "You know him, right?"
"Him! Have you ever seen what he puts up? How he managed to get himself qualified---"
"I know! But just find him, would you? And don't let him do anything, OK? Because if this guy Farrell has a gun and Pastern starts---"
"Mass slaughter," Tiny said. "Hey, relax. If I can handle---"
"Just do it!"
My task was to keep Farrell in sight. Almost as soon as Tiny trotted off, Farrell took long strides away from the obedience rings and headed across the wide, hot field to the breed rings, where he momentarily vanished in the illegal white cloud surrounding a conscience-stricken Old English sheepdog determined to shake off what his handler should have brushed out. I trailed behind, detoured around the OES, made my way through the hairspray miasma surrounding a brace of black standard poodles, and followed Farrell toward the double row of concession booths and tents that I'd intended to visit before going home. At first I thought that his destination was the row of portable toilets located just beyond the concessions, but he entered a tent, one I'd seen at other shows, but not one I'd had on my agenda.
You go to a lot of shows? If so, you've seen at least a few stands like the one called Bud's. I'd never been able to figure out how the place survived. First of all, while most small concessions specialized in something---T-shirts, books, stationery, posters, nutritional supplements, jewelry---Bud's didn't. Also, the other concessionaires offered show-special discount prices on rawhide chews, brand-name shampoos, training collars, leather leads, and the other necessities of existence, but Bud charged at least twice what you'd pay at any other tent for exactly the same items.
Well, maybe Bud's did specialize after all. In fact, he practically had a monopoly. Never in my life have I seen so many inaccurate representations of purebred dogs as I saw on Bud's merchandise. His T-shirts had breed names lettered across the top and blurry depictions underneath, but there was no correspondence between the words and pictures. The Alaskan malamute could have been a Siberian, I guess, but what was supposed to be a golden retriever looked a lot like a corgi, and the purported shih tzu didn't even look like a dog. The needlepoint kits were, if anything, even worse than the T-shirts. Bud's had a second specialty, too: unsafe dog toys. There were toys of soft latex for dogs to gnaw to pieces and swallow, squishy toys with metal squeakers just waiting to pop out and slip down the throat, and plush fabric animals with small, dangerous hard-plastic eyes and noses.
A table ran across the back of the tent, and across the table in untidy rows straggled numerous bottles and canisters of shampoo, conditioner, grooming powder and detangling spray in three or four popular brands. Behind the display loomed Bud, who wore a filthy once-off-white carpenter's apron and a dirty duck-billed cap with his name emblazoned in red letters on the brim. He was tall, emaciated, and so chinless that he made you want to look down to see where the bottom part of his face had fallen.
I stepped just inside Bud's tent and pretended to examine a really hideous collection of little dime-store pseudo-porcelain dogs shoddily glued to slabs of quartz. For a mere $65 I could've had my very own representation of a mixed-breed sled dog permanently stacked in a puddle of rubber cement. Wow. Farrell, though, was at the counter facing Bud, and he was actually buying something, namely, a small canister of grooming powder. I backed out of Bud's and into the burning sun, and then hurried to the next booth, which turned out to display dog beds in every possible size, shape, style, and material---real and fake lambskin pallets, cedar-filled nests with washable covers in plaids and solids, egg-carton orthopedic foam mattresses, and all the rest. The two clean-cut young men with the tan shepherd were intently fingering a dainty flannel-lined wicker basket that would've been a tight squeeze for one of the big dog's forepaws.
Then Farrell emerged from Bud's tent and, without looking around at all, made straight for the row of portable toilets. I stayed with him long enough to see the line of people waiting for the toilets. I lost sight of him only because Janet Switzer waylaid me. Janet is Rowdy's breeder. To understand a breeder, it's vital to know her original purpose. Janet was developed to serve as the alpha individual to a fluctuating but always rather large number of Alaskan malamutes. She has such a dominant personality that whenever she addresses me, I have to resist the urge to drop to the ground, roll onto my back, and grovel in submission.
"Well, where is he?" Janet meant Rowdy, who'd been entered in Open obedience. "Chicken out, did you?"
I explained that Rowdy had a deep pad cut. It was healing fine, I assured her, but he wasn't ready to jump. When Janet had finally finished cross-questioning me, I excused myself.
I'd spent only a few minutes with Janet, not nearly long enough for Farrell to have reached the front of the line, but he was nowhere to be seen. Had he headed for the privacy of the woods around the site? Or had he left the show altogether? In either case, he would have taken the blacktop road that snaked around the open field, past the parking lot reserved for exhibitors and show officials, and toward the distant area relegated to mere spectators. I hate the heat almost as much as my dogs do, but I jogged along that road, past the field, the rings, the tents, then between row after row of vans, RVs, trucks, and station wagons, beyond the tired handlers resting in their Winnebago shade and beyond the hot, victorious dogs cooling off for the Best of Breed competition.
Under a tall Norway maple at the far end of the distant parking area, a group of people stood around a copper-colored Isuzu Trooper. I slowed to a brisk walk. Tiny and Pam were both there, and with them were the AKC rep and the show chairman, Mr. Pastern, the judge who daily hanged his own dogs. The clean-cut young men were there, too, and so was the tan shepherd. All of them were alive, as were two Alaskan malamutes I'd never seen before. Inside the Trooper, his nostrils heavily dusted with white powder, lay John Richard Farrell, also known as Morris W. Rinehart, John Visco, and John Morris.
There was no mystery about who killed him, really, at least not for long. Have you guessed? Who killed John Richard Farrell? Who immediately identified the murderer? And how?
Solution: Murder Well-groomed
Show people are fanatics about the accurate representation of breeds and about the safety of toys. Could the sale of shoddy dog merchandise have kept Bud in business? Never. And would Farrell, who had already visited the Cherrybrook tent, have bought overpriced grooming powder from Bud? Of course not. The organization that employed both Bud and Farrell (remember? conspiracy and narcotics trafficking?) took advantage of the cover offered by dog shows. As a concessionaire, Bud could travel from show to show on a predictable schedule to distribute his white powder to a few select customers. When Farrell became a threat to their organization, which was not eager to have him chat with the FBI, Bud followed orders to supply a deadly substitute for grooming powder. The layer of cocaine at the top of the canister was pure---uncut and thus fatal. I guess you could say that John Richard Farrell really died by his own nose.
The FBI is obviously and regrettably not run by real dog people---hobby, indeed---but it didn't take a dog person to realize that Farrell might turn up at a show. The clean-cut young men, though, turned out to be handlers after all. Their shepherd had no difficulty identifying Bud as the source of the cocaine and thus as Farrell's murderer. I tried to corroborate the shepherd's testimony by explaining that I'd seen Bud sell the canister to Farrell, but the FBI agents didn't seem to put much faith in the statement of a human (and thus fallible) witness. Quite correctly, they trusted only their dog.
Like other breeders, Pam should screen her buyers, but don't you think that culling her human mistakes would have been a bit extreme? And the AKC rep was outraged to discover that criminal activities had been taking place on the grounds of shows, but the only murder weapon he ever contemplated using was the permanent suspension of privileges. Mr. Pastern, the Koehler disciple? One of Koehler's principal justifications for rough dog training methods was that any problem creature has a moral right to rehabilitation. Mr. Pastern might have strung Farrell up, but he wouldn't have killed him.
By the way, the mal from Tiny's lines was OFA Excellent; the supposed hip dysplasia originated in the vicious imagination of a jealous gossip who lied to Pam. Also, in case you wondered, real show people never suspected what Bud was actually selling because, of course, the heaviest drugs in common use in purebred dogdom are Nemex-2 and Panacur, and the only time we snort is when fools of judges put up the wrong dogs, which is to say, not ours.
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