Best in Show (18 page)

O
h, it was just the thing, all right. Just the sort of thing to give Aunt Peg and the other board members apoplexy. I could see that reaction coming from a mile away.

“Umm . . .” I said, stalling for time. “Isn't that when they usually hold the drawing for the raffle?”

“Precisely. That's what makes it so perfect, Sister and I having been in charge of the committee and all. It'll be like a double whammy service. The spectators will get two for the price of one.”

A double whammy service, I thought weakly. Just what the club was looking for to lend dignity to its proceedings. I didn't know whether to laugh or run for cover. Both probably would have been in order.

Feeling cowardly, I opted for trying to pass the buck. “Have you spoken to anyone else about the idea? Nancy Hanlon, maybe, or Cliff Spellman?”

“I mentioned it to Cliff. He didn't say yes or no, just told me I needed to talk to Nancy. I haven't had a chance to pin her down yet, but I will. And of course, I'll probably have to run it past the show chairman, too. It's not like I haven't been a card-carrying member of this club for years. I know how things are done.”

Oh no, she didn't, I thought. If Edith Jean had even the slightest inkling of how PCA worked, she would never have proposed such a thing. Aunt Peg would probably have a fit at the very suggestion, and hers might be one of the milder reactions.

“You know there's a good chance they'll turn you down,” I said gently.

“I imagine they might try.” Edith Jean's spine stiffened defiantly. “That doesn't mean they'll succeed. I was thinking about mounting a grassroots campaign. You could help me pass the word along. Like maybe this afternoon when you're out selling tickets, you could talk about the idea, and drum up some support. It will be that much harder for the board to say no if everyone else is already in favor.”

That was an “if” the size of Texas, wasn't it?

“That's all you want me to do?” So help me, my knees were almost weak with relief. “Just let people know about your idea?”

Edith Jean stopped and thought. “Now that you mention it, maybe we ought to get a petition going too. People like to be asked to sign things. It makes them feel important. What do you think?”

I thought that I hadn't mentioned anything of the sort. Not only that, but finding people at PCA who were willing to put their names on
that
particular piece of paper might be about as easy as teaching a Pekingese to point. “A petition might be premature. After all, you haven't even spoken to Nancy yet.”

Edith Jean didn't look deterred. “We can't afford to wait too long to get the ball rolling. After all, we've only got a day and a half to pull the whole shebang together.”

I knew the woman was grieving. I knew that everyone handled grief in his or her own way. But so help me, I had to speak up. “You know, it might help your cause if when you talk to the board, you try not to refer to the memorial service as a shebang. . . or a double whammy.”

Edith Jean regarded me calmly. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I'm a good ole southern gal, sweet pea. Down in Georgia, we know how to speak our minds. We call things like we see them.”

We did that in the north, too. And right about now I was ready to call this whole idea a catastrophe.

Edith Jean was silent for a moment before speaking again. I was afraid that maybe I'd hurt her feelings, but it turned out that she only wanted to change the subject. “I don't mind telling you, your police up here don't seem worth squat.”

They weren't my police, I wasn't even from Maryland.. On the other hand, my home was even farther north of the Mason-Dixon Line, which was probably worse in Edith Jean's mind. “They still don't have any idea who killed Betty Jean?”

“Not a one, far as I can tell. Mostly they just seem to be running themselves around in circles. I guess they've got more important things to do than worry about the death of one poor old lady from somewhere else.”

“I'm sure they're trying their best.” I hadn't a clue if that was true or not. After my initial interview with the detective, my involvement with the police had been limited to periodic updates from Aunt Peg. “I could try to talk to someone if you like.”

“No, don't do that,” Edith Jean said quickly. “I don't want to trouble anyone on my account. Besides, what's done is done. There's not much point in looking back. I'm just going to carry on the best I know how.”

Carrying on was beginning to sound like a good idea to me, too. I picked up the basket and headed out. Miniatures had finished for the day in ring one. Toys were about to start. In the Standard Poodle ring, the Novice Bitch class was ending. It would be followed by a lunch break.

Day by day, raffle tickets were becoming harder and harder to sell. For one thing, due to our diligent efforts, most exhibitors and spectators had already had an opportunity to purchase them. For another, everyone had now had several days to browse the concession stands in the hallway outside the upper tier of seats. Spare cash, hoarded all year to bring to the specialty show, was going fast.

I sold some tickets in the grooming area, and a few more to the dealers manning the concessions. Then I headed out the upper doors to the parking lot where the professional handlers had parked their big rigs. Many had opted not to unload inside and were prepping dogs beside their motor homes.

As I'd hoped, I found Terry and Crawford at home. Crawford was using the lunch break in the Standard ring to grab a bite to eat. He was seated in a director's chair in the shade; jacket off, tie loosened, munching on a tuna fish sandwich. Terry, who'd set up a boom box and tuned it to a local rap channel, was standing at a grooming table nearby, working on a Toy Poodle.

Terry flashed me a big smile; Crawford was more reserved. “Checking out here for mice?” he asked. One silver brow lifted archly.

“Mice?” Terry squeaked. He took a hasty look around. “I should hope not.”

“Melanie thought she saw one the other night at the hotel.” His eyes never leaving me, Crawford stood up, reached over and turned off the radio. The sudden silence came as a relief. “Or maybe she was mistaken.”

“Actually it wasn't a mouse.” I plopped the raffle basket down on an empty grooming table and helped myself to a seat. “What I saw was a rat.”

“Ahhh.” Terry nodded knowingly. “Plenty of those around.”

“Harry Gandolf,” I said.

Crawford considered that. “Harry made you scream?”

“You screamed?” Terry turned to stare. “I would like to have heard that.”

“I can demonstrate.”

“No need,” said Crawford. “Once was plenty. What did Harry do?”

“Roger Carew was scissoring his puppy, Bubba, and Harry was about to knock into him. He'd been trying all week to get that puppy out of his way. Roger didn't see Harry coming. It was the only way I could think to warn him in time.”

“It must have worked,” said Terry. “Bubba looked fine yesterday. Until Roger tripped over him, that is. So Harry ended up getting what he needed anyway.”

“Needed?” My ears perked. “You mean wanted, don't you?”

“Kind of both the same in this case. Last month, Harry made a deal to sell Vic to a breeder in Japan for mucho yen. The Japanese breeder had been burned before, however. He'd bought dogs from overseas that turned out not to be the quality he'd been promised.

“Apparently Harry'd done some bragging about Vic. He told the Japanese breeder that he was good enough to win at PCA. ‘Fine,' said the breeder. ‘Prove it. I'll pay you after the puppy wins.' So you might say that Harry was feeling the heat. No Winners, no sale.”

I nodded slowly. “That explains why he offered Edith Jean money not to show Bubba.”

“What he offered her was probably only a fraction of what he expected to get for Vic,” said Terry. “Toy Poodles are a hot commodity in Japan, and with the strength of the yen against the dollar, there's plenty of shopping going on. The same breeder had approached us earlier in the year; that's how we knew he ended up with Harry. And the money he had to spend—”

Crawford cleared his throat loudly. He leveled his assistant a look.

“Thousands,” Terry whispered out of the side of his mouth. “Enough to make even someone like me think twice.”

“We didn't have what he was looking for,” said Crawford. “Period.”

“Too bad,” I said. “And a lucky break for Harry.”

“As long as he could make it happen,” said Terry.

Indeed.

I turned and looked at Crawford. “Aunt Peg told me you were the one who recommended Rosalind Romanescue to her for the seminar.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So I was surprised by that. I can't imagine you talking to an animal psychic.”

The older man's mocking look was back. “Why is that?”

“Well. . . because I've always thought of you as being more practical than that. I can't imagine you're the kind of person who'd be taken in by sleight of hand and hocus pocus.”

“Is that what you think Rosalind does, magic tricks?”

“Quite possibly.”

“You might consider letting her do a reading for you. There's a good chance you'd change your mind.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Has she done one for you?”

“Several, actually. Though as it happens, we'd never met before this week. Rosalind usually does her communicating over the phone. That way she can get in touch with clients all over the country.”

I tried, without success, to picture how that might work. “Like you hold the receiver up to the dog's ear?”

“No.” Terry giggled. He was no help.

“She communicates with the animals telepathically,” said Crawford. “The phone is so she can talk to the humans. You pick a time and call her. She taps into your dog's thoughts and you talk to him through her.”

“And you've actually done this?”

“I just said that, didn't I? Pay attention, Melanie, and try not to look so shocked.”

“Yes, sir.”

That earned me a glare. Crawford doesn't do sarcasm.

“The first time was on a circuit over the winter. One of the dogs I'd brought with me to show was behaving very oddly. Up until then, he'd been the easiest Standard Poodle in the world. Suddenly he wasn't eating, he wouldn't walk on a leash. He didn't even want to come out of his crate. And if you reached in to get him, he'd snap and pull away. You can see why I was worried.”

I certainly could. Fortunately, that was
most
un-Poodle-like behavior. “Did you have a vet look at him?”

“Not right away. After all, we were hundreds of miles from home. Besides, the dog wasn't running a temperature, and he didn't have any obvious symptoms. We couldn't figure out what was the matter.

“Roger and I got to talking about him one day. By then, I'd stopped showing him. I couldn't even slip the leash over his head without a fight. Roger said he had these clients, a pair of dotty sisters from the south, who'd had some luck consulting a psychic. By that time, I was desperate enough to try anything. He got the number for me and I gave Rosalind a call.”

“And?” I asked.

“The dog had an infected tooth, one of the molars way in the back. The root was about to abscess. From the front everything looked fine, but the poor guy was really in pain. No wonder he didn't want us touching anything in the area.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I know Poodles are smart, but are you saying that a dog
told
you his tooth was going to abscess?”

“Not in those exact words,” said Crawford. “He let Rosalind know that his head hurt. And he let her know where. We added some deductive reasoning and a visit to a canine dentist. But her assessment of the situation was what got us started in the right direction.”

Hmm, I thought.

“Tell her about Stretch,” said Terry.

“Who's Stretch?” I asked.

“Another client's dog that Rosalind talked to.”

“You tell her.” Crawford settled back in his chair. “I'm eating.”

Besides, there were few things Terry enjoyed more than a good story.

“Okay, so we were showing this Standard named Stretch. A nice boy, easily finishable, though he came by his name honestly.” Terry held up his hands, wide apart, indicating a more than optimal length of back.

“Let's move it along, shall we?” Crawford was a firm believer in the dog show credo that you never advertise your dog's faults.

“Good old Stretch was just about finished. He only needed his last major when we hit a month where there weren't going to be any good judges for him. Rather than have him sit around the kennel all that time, we sent him home for a break.”

“That was brave of you,” I said. Most Poodle handlers won't trust their clients with dogs that are in show coats.

“No, it was all right. We knew Natalie could do hair. A couple of weeks went by and we entered Stretch in some shows. But when Natalie sent him back, he was all mopey and depressed.”

That wasn't entirely unusual. For some dogs, depending on their home situation, it was very difficult to make the transition between owner and handler.

“So Crawford called Natalie and asked how Stretch had been when he was home. You know, did anything unusual happen since we'd seen him last? Natalie said everything was fine. The only thing that was different was that she'd whelped a litter of puppies while Stretch was there. As it happened, they were his puppies, though she couldn't imagine how he would know that. For some reason he was fascinated by the litter and was always trying to get into the puppy room to see them.”