Best in Show (15 page)

I introduced myself and sat down beside her.

“I know who you are,” Rosalind said immediately. “You're the skeptic.”

For a moment, I was taken aback. Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to doubt the woman's skills. Then logic prevailed. The communicator hadn't read my mind, she'd been talking to Aunt Peg.

“Not entirely,” I said. “Your presentation yesterday was very convincing. I guess I'm merely reserving judgment on a subject I know very little about.”

“Fair enough. If you've got any questions, ask away.”

In the ring, the Parade of Champions began with the Toy Poodles. The first entrant trotted in and was set up on the table. The dog's resume was read by the announcer.

I glanced at the Poodle, then back at Rosalind. “How did you find out you had this. . . gift?”

“You mean did it come to me all at once like Dr. Dolittle?” Rosalind smiled and shook her head. “Not at all. Ever since I was a little girl, I've known that I was tuned in to the animals around me in a way that most people were not. Don't get me wrong, however. I firmly believe that everyone is born with the gift of communication. It's just that most people never use it. Eventually, they forget how. Like any skill, this one improves the more you practice it.”

“That Poodle there.” I gestured toward the ring. The second Toy, an apricot, was taking its turn. “Could you tell me what it's thinking?”

“For certain, no. Usually, I set up my sessions to take place at a time when things are calm and the animal is quiet. The evening hours work well. I want the dogs to be able to concentrate on me, just as I am concentrating on them.” She gazed into the ring, staring at the little apricot intently. “All I'm getting now is a vibe that goes something like this: happy, happy, happy!”

You didn't have to be a psychic to see that. The Toy Poodle had his tail so high in the air, it was curved up over his back. He was prancing with delight at his owner's side.

“Not very convincing, hmm?” Rosalind didn't sound surprised.

“Not really. What about people? Can you read their thoughts, too?”

“I wouldn't say that I read dogs' thoughts,” Rosalind said carefully. “It's more that they send me pictures and impressions and I interpret them. Animals are very open to this sort of communication. They ‘talk' to one another telepathically all the time.

“Humans, on the other hand, are very resistant to the idea. People value their privacy. Most keep secrets of some sort or another. Nearly all would consider an exercise of that sort an intrusion. It's definitely not something I would try to do.”

As she'd been speaking, Rosalind's tone had changed. Her voice had hardened. I was facing the ring, but I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. “Could you though, if you wanted to?”

“Excuse me,” said Rosalind. “I see someone I need to talk to.”

An interesting lady, I thought as she walked away. I wondered what her secrets were.

A
s the Toy entries finished and the Minis began, I pulled out my cell phone and gave Davey a call.

Unlike most people, I don't usually carry a phone with me. Generally, when I'm out of touch, I like being that way. But being separated from my son for the first time was reason enough to not only have the phone in my purse, but also to actually keep it turned on.

Of course, nearly three days had passed and Davey hadn't called me once. I was having trouble deciding whether that was a good thing or not.

“Hey!” Davey said, when he picked up the phone. “Who's this?”

“It's your mother. In Maryland. Who were you expecting?”

“Nobody,” Davey said quickly.
Too
quickly.

I filed that away to worry about later. “How are things going?”

“Great. Dad and I are having an awesome time. We went to the beach today. Tomorrow he said we could go to Playland.”

Ah, the joys of part-time parenting. There was probably no point in asking if he was eating well unless I wanted to hear about a diet of cotton candy and Creamsicles. “How's Faith doing?”

“Well. . .”

The word dragged on entirely too long for comfort. I had the vet's phone number on speed dial if he needed it. “Yes?” I prompted.

“She likes it here,” said Davey. “But I think she misses you.”

My shoulders relaxed. Horrible mother that I am, I was comforted by the thought that at least
one
of them did. “Are you letting her sleep on your bed at night?”

“Of course.” He sounded insulted by the question. “She's been doing that practically since she was born.”

“And she's eating okay?”

“Fine. I just think she'd rather be with you than with me.”

“Tell her I'll be home on Saturday, okay? Tell her I miss her too.”

“I will.” Davey didn't see anything odd about my request. Clearly I was raising him right.

We talked for another few minutes, and I spoke with Bob briefly. He didn't volunteer any information about the fire engine episode and I didn't ask. He said they were sending out for pizza for dinner. That sounded safe enough to me. I told him Eve and I would be back over the weekend and hung up.

The Miniature Poodles in the parade soon gave way to Standards. Sam did a creditable job of showing off his friend's dog. When their turn came, Aunt Peg and Hope looked as though they were having a better time than they had in the agility ring. At the end, when all one hundred champions crowded back into the ring for their final lap together, the audience stood and cheered.

I stopped by the raffle table after that, finding that Edith Jean had already packed things up for the night. Over in the grooming area, I ran into Bertie as I was releasing Eve from her crate. Sam and Peg had already invited her to dinner, she said. We were meeting in the hotel restaurant in an hour. It was nice that
someone
thought to clue me in on the plan.

An hour gave me plenty of time to drive back to the hotel and give my Poodle a long, luxurious run in the exercise area before going to meet everyone. Spending a week on the road was hard on a puppy, especially one who was accustomed to living in a home, not a kennel. Faith might be missing my company, but I knew she was better off at home with Davey than she would have been with us.

Back in our room, I mixed Eve's dinner in her big, stainless-steel bowl and took a quick shower while she ate it. I still had a few minutes before heading downstairs to the restaurant when a knock came at the door. Immediately Eve jumped off the bed and ran to see who it was. She sniffed at the crack beneath the door and her tail began to wag. I took that as a good sign.

Sam was standing in the hallway. Obviously he'd gotten delayed at the show longer than I had. He looked hot, and rumpled, and somewhat harried. I had cold beer in my refrigerator. I wondered if that was what he'd come for.

Then he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. His mouth came down and covered mine. The stubble on his jaw rasped along my cheek. His fingers tangled in my hair. For a full minute, the world seemed to spin in circles around us.

“Ahhh,” said Sam when he finally pulled away. “Much better.”

I tilted my head and gazed up at him. “And here I thought you'd come for the beer.”

“What beer?”

“I have Coors in the mini fridge with Eve's food.”

“You didn't mention
that.”
Sam strode past me and helped himself. He popped the top off the bottle and took a long cold swallow. “Ready to go down to dinner?”

I was. Sam carried the beer with him, drinking it as we wound through the hallways. Thankfully he finished it just before we reached the restaurant. Aunt Peg would not have been amused.

She and Bertie had already gotten a table. They were perusing their menus when we joined them.

“Thank goodness you're here,” Aunt Peg said. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her.”

Bertie rolled her eyes. I suspected she was beginning to realize that being a member of the Travis/Trumbull family was not always the easiest game in town. Sam grinned and pulled out my chair for me. He'd seen the worst my relatives had to offer and still kept coming back. Go figure.

“Now what?” I asked.

“She thinks she's having an ice cream sundae for dinner.”

“Suddenly
she
thinks she's in charge of my life,” Bertie retorted.

“I think the whole thing's none of my business,” said Sam. He buried his face behind his menu.

“An ice cream sundae sounds good,” I said. “I'm on vacation, after all. Maybe I'll have one too.”

“Steak,” Sam muttered. He might have been speaking to himself. “Thick and rare. Maybe a baked potato on the side.”

“You can't eat ice cream for dinner,” Aunt Peg said pointedly. “Not in your condition.”

“If I had wanted to listen to the food police”—Bertie's tone was equally sharp—“I'd have brought Frank with me.”

Sam's menu was vibrating. I suspected he might have been laughing.

“I have an idea. Let's talk about something else. Betty Jean Boone, for instance.” I looked around the table. “Amazing isn't it, that there's been a murder in our midst, and nobody even talks about it? The show just goes on as if nothing happened.”

Aunt Peg looked at me reprovingly. “Now, Melanie. It is PCA after all.”

Most people reserve that hallowed tone for referring to the Vatican.

“Besides,” said Bertie, “the police are handling things. Aren't they?”

“I suppose. I spoke with Detective Mandahar yesterday.”

“I met him Monday night,” said Peg. “I understand from Cliff that they're still nosing around and conducting interviews. I don't know what they've turned up, however. Nobody seems inclined to keep the board informed.”

A grievous oversight on the part of the local police, I thought. But hardly surprising when you stopped to consider that they might still be exploring the possibility of interclub warfare.

The waitress came and took our orders. Aunt Peg sighed loudly, but didn't interfere when Bertie and I both ordered ice cream. At least Bertie went for the banana split. The only fruit I asked for was extra cherries.

“That was too bad today for Edith Jean,” Bertie said when the waitress had gone. “I was hoping Bubba would win.”

“Edith Jean was very disappointed,” I said. “Roger came over afterward and apologized. He said the loss was all his fault.”

“That's a hard call to make,” said Peg. “But his handling in the winners ring certainly didn't help matters any.”

“He fell over his own dog,” Bertie snorted. She was an accomplished professional handler herself. She could afford to throw stones. “No wonder Edith Jean was upset. That's a beginner's mistake.”

“He was looking for the biggest win of his life,” said Sam. “Maybe he was nervous.”

“Or maybe someone distracted him on purpose,” I said. “Harry'd already tried several times to remove Bubba from the competition. Maybe he sent someone up into the stands to take one last shot at keeping the puppy from winning.”

“If so, it worked,” said Peg. “Not that Harry's puppy wasn't a good one. I imagine there's every possibility that Vic would have won anyway. But after that initial mishap, Bubba never really recovered. He didn't show nearly as well in the winners ring as he had earlier in his own class.”

“Roger told Edith Jean that the puppy was tired. He said he'd let too many people come and look at him after he won the puppy class.”

“He did,” Aunt Peg agreed. “There was a crowd around that table all afternoon. I don't know why Roger didn't put a stop to it.”

“Because this is PCA,” said Sam. “And the things you might think to do at a regular show go right out the window when you suddenly find yourself the center of attention here. It's a heady feeling. Not that Roger made the right decision, but I can see how he might have succumbed to the temptation to bask for a little while.”

“Nevertheless,” Bertie interjected, “Harry Gandolf kept his eye on the ball, and he's the one who got what he wanted. I went by his setup earlier today when I was in the grooming area. Did you know he brought a string of thirteen Poodles to PCA? You'd think that would give him plenty of chances to do well. I wonder why he was so determined to win with that particular puppy.”

Before the rest of us could offer opinions, the waitress appeared with our food. I'd chosen a butterscotch sundae with butter pecan ice cream. It tasted wonderful. I decided I ought to have ice cream for dinner more often.

My bowl was half empty when I paused with a spoonful of whipped cream on the way to my mouth. “I saw something odd this afternoon.”

“What's that?” asked Peg. Oddities are her specialty. She was eating very proper pork chops, but I'd have been willing to bet she wasn't enjoying her dinner half as much as I was.

“Did you ever happen to notice that one of the Boone sisters wore a locket around her neck?”

“Now that you mention it, yes.” Aunt Peg frowned briefly. “Though I could never remember which one it was. She had a habit of playing with it which caused some comment once among the committee members. It probably seems unkind now.”

“What does?” asked Bertie.

“I'm afraid we began to speculate about whose picture might be inside. None of us, as you might imagine, knew enough about their personal lives to hazard an informed guess. Someone thought that perhaps, being a southerner, Sister was keeping a picture of Elvis near and dear to her heart. In the end, consensus among the group was that the locket probably contained a photo of their favorite Poodle.”

Sam was laughing again. Maybe that. was why he kept coming back. Never a dull moment around here.

“So?” he asked me. “Who is inside?”

“I have no idea. That wasn't what I was wondering about. Earlier I could have sworn that Betty Jean was the sister who wore the locket. Today I saw it on Edith Jean.”

“Maybe they both had lockets,” said Bertie. Her banana split had vanished. The bowl it had come in couldn't have been any cleaner if she'd licked it. “They seemed to do everything else alike.”

“Or maybe you got it backwards,” said Peg. “Maybe Edith Jean was the one who's had it all along.”

“Since we're speaking of the Boone family,” said Sam, “and the police investigation, does anybody know who stood to profit from Betty Jean's death? Who's going to inherit?”

“I would think everything would simply go to the surviving sister,” said Aunt Peg.

“There's no other family back in Georgia,” I said. “That's why Edith Jean wasn't anxious to go home after her sister died.”

“So if no one back there had anything to gain from Betty Jean's death,” Bertie mused, “then the murderer must have been someone who had something to gain here.”

“Harry Gandolf,” I said quickly.

“Not necessarily,” Aunt Peg came right back. “Harry may have expected that Edith Jean would pull Bubba from the competition after her sister died. In fact, we probably all did. But when she didn't, things could have gone the other way with the sympathy vote working to her advantage.”

“Harry wouldn't have known that ahead of time though.”

“I agree that he doesn't seem like a particularly pleasant man,” said Bertie. “But that's a long way from being capable of committing murder.”

“If not Harry, then who?” I asked.

“The way Betty Jean was killed seems to indicate that the act wasn't premeditated,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Whoever it was, simply saw their chance and took it.”

“I'll tell you who comes to my mind,” Aunt Peg said. “Damien Bradley.”

“He always comes to your mind,” I retorted. “While you're at it, are you sure you wouldn't like to try to blame him for global warming and deficit spending?”

“Melanie's feeling a little touchy where Damien Bradley is concerned,” said Sam. “They were having a cozy chat when I arrived the other night. I gather he charmed her socks off.”

Aunt Peg's brow rose. “Not literally, I hope.”

“Trust me.” I snorted. “There was nothing cozy going on. Our chat took place in full view of the entire back of the hotel. I have to admit, however, that I didn't find him to be the demon that everyone makes him out to be.”

“He must have wanted something from you,” said Peg. “That's what brings out Damien's charming side.”