Drop Dead on Recall (12 page)

34

I put Greg’s message
out of my mind when I walked into Dog Dayz twenty minutes later. People and dogs of all sizes and styles were arranged around the room in various poses and configurations. A Sheltie, a Miniature Poodle, a Beagle, and a Rottweiler were lined up at the back of one ring practicing a group sit-stay and watching their owners chatter to one another thirty feet away.

I set up my crate, put Jay inside, and went to see what was up with the gathering by the table that hugs one wall of the training room. Ten or so people surrounded it, oohing and aahing. A sheet cake held center stage among paper plates, napkins, and plastic forks, and although pieces had already been carved from its fringes, the design in the center was intact, a digital icing photo of Fly taking a jump, and underneath it the icing caption
Fly
…
Congratulations for soaring above the rest!
A sign drawn in a rainbow of marker colors hung on the wall above the cake, announcing the reason:

New OTCH

Scotswool On the Fly

New UDX

#2 Border Collie in Open Obedience for last year!

In the running for #1 this year!

A big bowl of homemade dog biscuits sat to the side of the cake.

I checked out the room to see who else was there. Mostly I noticed who wasn’t. Not that I really cared where Tom Saunders was, I reminded myself.

“Isn’t it exciting?” Marietta Santini had stepped in beside me. “That makes four OTCH dogs who have trained here!”

Here and elsewhere
, I thought, although I didn’t say it. Truth is, most of the best trainers and competitors take classes, seminars, and lessons from anyone they think can teach them to be better trainers and competitors. But still, Suzette had been training at Dog Dayz since she got her first dog, a Shetland Sheepdog named Mimi.

There’s nothing quite like having your peers admire your dog’s achievements, and Suzette was wallowing in the outpouring of congratulations when I walked up to the table. “Fly has a chance to be number one Border Collie this year now,” I heard her say.
Now? As in now that Abigail and Pip are out of the running?
Despite what she’d said at her house, she didn’t sound all that worried about Pip and Abigail’s absence demeaning her standing with Fly. Suzette tossed a cakey plate into the trash, then picked up a clean paper plate and fanned her face with it.

“Is it hot in here, or is it me?” Her face was flushed, and tiny beads of perspiration glistened on her forehead. She folded the plate and shoved it into her back pocket. “I think I’ll take Fly out to pee.” They exited through the back door.

_____

Suzette came back without Fly and I walked over to congratulate her a little more privately.
Who do you think you’re kidding?
The Janet Demon was back.
You want to see if she says anything incriminating.

Suzette’s face was glossy with perspiration and pale but for two bright-pink spots on her cheeks.

“Are you okay?” I asked, putting my hand on her shoulder.

She swayed slightly. “Must be all the excitement. I don’t feel too great. I think I’m getting the flu or something. Think I’m gonna go home.” She swayed again, and gulped down half a bottle of water. “I’m so thirsty.” She finished off the bottle.

I put a hand on her arm to try to get her to sit down for a minute. “My God, Suzette, you’re burning up!” I offered to drive her home, but she declined. “I just need some sleep. I already put Fly in the car.” She started to leave, but turned back. “I need to talk to you. Was going to tonight … but …” She put her hand against the wall and panted. “God, I think I’m gonna barf.” She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed, then very softly said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow” and turned to leave.

I offered again to drive her home, but she waved me off. “Feel better!” I called to her back. Suzette raised her right hand in acknowledgment as she disappeared out the door.

35

Marietta Santini made her
usual pre-class announcements, including an invitation to finish the cake so she wouldn’t have to do it herself. I thought a few extra calories would help her long frame look a little less skeletal, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Then she picked up a beautifully wrapped package and looked around for Suzette and Fly, so I piped up. “Suzette wasn’t feeling well and went home, but she asked me to thank you all for your support.” People and dogs dispersed and resumed training, and I turned to find Tom and Drake standing behind me.

“Hi.” Tom grinned. His brown, green, and white plaid shirt made his eyes look like melted milk chocolate, which I’m sure is why my mouth began to water. “How’s your mom? I heard what happened.” He squatted down and ruffled Jay’s ears with both hands. “You’re a genuine doggy hero, aren’t you, fella?”

“Where did you hear that?” News always races along the dog-training grapevine like a pack of Beagles on a hot scent, but the speed of this transmission had to be record-shattering.

“Ran into Connie at the gas station on my way here.”

“Gad. I talked to her less than an hour ago, on
my
way here.”

“Your mom okay?”

I filled him in.

“So Jay saw her and barked?”

“He couldn’t have seen her. She was lying on the ground in a little meditation garden there at the church.” I caressed Jay’s silky cheek with the back of my hand and felt the love from his warm brown eyes wash over me. “Sometimes they just know, don’t they?”

Tom waited a heartbeat as he gazed into Jay’s eyes and stroked the dog’s soft cheek with his thumb, then stood and shifted topics. “Are you going to the funeral?” Abigail’s service was at ten the next morning.

“Not much looking forward to it.”
Talk about an understatement
. “But yes, I’ll be there. You?”

“I have student conferences all morning, winding things up before finals, so it’s not a good time to cancel.” He paused, his eyelids drooping a bit and the corners of his mouth matching them briefly. Then his eyes regained their sparkle, and he said, “Hey! How about I take you out for dinner tomorrow evening and you fill me in?”

Some small, non-hormonal part of my brain registered how clever and cute that was—the grown-up version of the yawn-and-stretch arm-around-the-shoulder technique so well known to teenage boys of my generation. Some things never change, do they? You’d think the thirty years since he invited some lucky girl to the prom would make it easier to ask for a date.

A date?
Dinner with a friend isn’t a date
, whispered one of my little friends. I wasn’t at all sure which one, demon or angel, or whether she was right, but the point was moot in any case. I was on deadline to get some photos out to one of my publishers, so I asked for a rain check.

Tom nodded and smiled, but I thought his shoulders sagged a notch. He promised to cash the rain check soon.

36

I arrived at St.
Hubert’s around 9:45 and found small clusters of friends and family members in the lobby outside the chapel. I paid my respects to Greg, who greeted me as warmly as ever in spite of his “butt out” e-mail of the night before. Maybe he was out of his mind with grief?

Connie was standing outside the chapel, signing the guest book, so I joined her, greeting a few people I knew on the way. “Hey.”

She put the pen down and turned around. She glanced at something behind me and curled her lip in a positively feline snarl.

Giselle had just emerged from the ladies room, dabbing at her face with what might have been a bright pink bandana, though it was so wadded up that it was hard to tell. Her skin was even more sallow than usual, except for a number of red blotches scattered across her cheeks and chins like cartoon cherries. She clumped into the group surrounding Greg, parting the well-wishers like a rhino through a herd of antelope. Her black stretch leggings reached half way down her calves, highlighting every roll and dimple along the way, and her faded black knit tunic clung to the ample contours of her torso. Fuschia roll-down socks peeked out between the fish-belly skin of her legs and her black canvas high-tops, underlining a huge crescent moon tattooed on the outside of her left calf. Black nail polish, eye shadow, and lipstick, and her trademark greasy hair, completed the look.

“Oh, Greg, it’s so sad!” she sobbed, making an open-armed lunge toward the widower.

Even at that distance, I could see Greg’s jaw muscles clench, and the crimson tinge of his cheeks made me wonder which was winning, his urge to flee or his urge to clamp his fingers around Giselle’s throat and squeeze. Socialization trumped biology and he held his ground, fending off Giselle’s proffered embrace by turning ninety degrees, as he might to teach a puppy not to jump up. He gave her a venomous glance, then turned toward the chapel and said to the other people gathered around him, “I think it’s time.”

The only comment I could conjure was, “Hunh.”

“Right.” Connie unpursed her lips and took my arm. “Come on, we may as well take a seat.”

We sat down behind Marietta and several Dog Dayz members, about halfway to the front of the chapel, and I asked Connie if I’d missed any other excitement.

“Suzette’s not here,” she whispered. “Pretty tacky of her not to show up.”

“She wasn’t feeling well last night. Maybe she’s sick.”

“Even so, she could have made an effort out of respect for Greg.” Connie lowered her voice further so I had to strain to hear her. “Let’s face it, not many people are here because they loved Abigail. And Suzette and Greg … uh …” She shifted in her seat. “Anyway …”

“What?”

“I’m a blabbermouth. Forget it, okay?”

I was a bit put out, because in all the time I’ve known Connie, I’ve never thought she said or did anything by accident, and the sense I had now that she was trying to plant ideas in my head bothered me. “I don’t know, I just don’t see it with Suzette and Greg. But I guess it’s possible.” I rolled the idea around in my mind. “Do you really think they were involved?”

“I don’t really like to gossip.”
Yeah, right.
Connie leaned forward and said something to Marietta, and I decided to drop the Suzette and Greg issue until later. The morning sun cast shafts of gold and rose and heavenly blue through the stained-glass window behind the altar, washing the front of the chapel in shades of faith and hope. The altar itself was a simple affair of warm golden oak flanked by two simple sprays of white lilies.

The pews were filling quickly, and about half the faces were familiar. Sylvia Eckhorn smiled sadly at me. Many of the others were people I saw often at obedience and agility trials, and I mentally matched them with their dogs. I’d photographed lots of them, and although I couldn’t remember most of the people’s names, I never forget a furry face. There was Bullet’s person, and owners of at least two canine Abbys, which I was sure Abigail would have enjoyed, and … you get the picture.

In the pew behind the family, among the blondes and brunettes, auburns and silvers, I spotted a head of incandescent red. Francine Peterson, Pip’s breeder. She was leaning forward across the back of the other pew, toward the side of Greg’s head, talking nonstop and chopping at the wood in front of her with the heel of her right hand. She had people’s attention, and Greg looked none too happy about it.

Greg shifted in his seat and turned toward the jabbering woman, his hand held up in a “stop” gesture. I couldn’t hear him, but saw him glare at Francine and round his mouth into “No!” before he turned his back on her.

Francine froze for a few seconds, then clambered over the people seated to her left, stumbled into the center aisle, and scurried toward the rear exit of the church. Her face was fury incarnate, and she was talking again, this time to herself. As she flew past us I caught two words that spilled like ice water down my spine: “… be sorry!”

37

A murmur swept the
chapel in Francine’s wake, and every eye following her retreat.

“Boy, you weren’t kidding when you said she was odd.”

“That was way past odd. That was certifiable.” Connie resettled herself facing the front of the chapel. “Talk about bad timing. You’d think she could wait until his wife is in the ground.”

“Wait for what?”

She combed back an errant lock of strawberry blonde with her manicured fingers. “To pester Greg about the dog.”

“The dog?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“She wants Pip.”

“How do you know that?”

Connie leaned toward me, her blue eyes gone a dull gray. “I heard her talking to Greg before you got here. She said that as Pip’s breeder she should get him back.” A responsible breeder would be willing to take her puppy back at any age if he wasn’t wanted by his owner, but I had seen the love between Greg and Pip and knew he was more than just Abigail’s competition dog. He was family.

“What did Greg say?”

“He told her that Pip was staying right where he is.”

Made sense to me. “Maybe she wanted to be sure he knew she’d take him if Greg didn’t want him?”

“She wasn’t asking, she was telling.”

_____

The pastor talked about Abigail’s love of animals and her work with Border Collie Rescue, and Greg’s brother offered a brief eulogy, mostly about Abigail’s relationship to her dogs. It was fitting, upbeat, and twenty minutes long at the outside.

I couldn’t see everyone from where we sat, but you’d have to be as deaf as the stained-glass saints to miss the mournful sobs and lamentations for “Poor, poor Abigail” emanating from Giselle’s pew. Even the pastor was giving her “tone it down” looks, but Giselle was oblivious. And loud.

When it was all over and we were drifting out of the chapel, I whispered to Connie, “That was the most interesting assortment of music I’ve ever heard at a funeral.” A young soloist from the choir had filled the chapel at strategic points in the service with his rich tenor renditions of
I Can See Clearly Now
,
I Hope You Dance
, and
Walking on Sunshine
.

“Greg said that Abigail left instructions with her will, including the music, and how she wanted to be dressed. Did you see her?”

“Uh, no. I’m not all that keen on viewing dead people.”

“Her favorite black obedience slacks, and her ‘Come Over to the Dark Side’ sweatshirt.” Connie grinned at me. “I guess the pastor had a hissy fit about that until Greg explained that the Dark Side means Border Collies.”

“I bet.” I was thinking once again that there must have been a side to Abigail that I’d never seen—a side I would have liked.

“She also wanted her favorite braided leash and photos of her dogs. I wonder what St. Peter will make of those when she presents them at the Pearly Gates?”

“Forget the Gates. She’s going to the Bridge!” I meant the Rainbow Bridge, where pets are said to wait for their people to join them on the other side.