Black Ribbon (32 page)

But Eva’s murder had obviously required knowledge of agility—not expertise, not general information about it, but a detailed understanding of the construction of Heather and Sara’s A-frame. Anyone could have heard Eva announce her intention of going to the agility area at one
A.M
., but not everyone could have planned the murder. Don Abbott, for instance, would have had no idea that pins ran through the hinges or that raising the obstacle would require going under
it to adjust the chains. The murder had had an obvious second requirement: the ability to predict Bingo’s behavior. In a sense, when Myrna had joked about Bingo being the obvious murderer, she’d been right: Whoever had killed Eva had been able to predict that, left on a down-stay while Eva adjusted the A-frame, the Lab would break, head for the obstacle, miss the contact zone, land hard, and send it crashing down on Eva. Maxine hadn’t attended agility: She was thus exonerated, as was Everett Dow. Cam met the requirements, and she also had the organizational skills to carry out the murder, a requirement that Maxine so demonstrably lacked. But if Cam had decided to murder anyone, she’d have used a neat, sure method. The uncertainty of this one bothered me, as I was sure it had bothered Phyllis Abbott. What if, for once in his life, Bingo had obeyed? What if he’d broken his stay before Eva reached the obstacle? What if …? Phyllis Abbott was not a sloppy person. My hair dry, my body warm, I wondered what Phyllis’s backup plan had been: for Eva Spitteler. For me, too.

IN DIMINISHING the momentous by magnifying trivia, death gives rise to vain, self-serving thoughts. I first noticed the phenomenon just after my mother died. Whenever I went to the bathroom sink to bathe my swollen eyes, I’d look in the mirror and admire the haircut I’d gotten the day before. Worse than this evidence of my coldhearted conceit was the jarring sense of self-congratulation that accompanied it, as if I’d anticipated the funeral and deserved credit for my cleverness and practicality. By chance, I wore new underwear that day. The panties had lace trim. The prettiness seemed important. I was young. At the time, these observations led me to conclude that I was a horrible human being. I have since learned to forgive myself for rejoicing in tokens of my own survival.

Tonight, I dressed with absurd care: new underwear, as on the day my mother died; navy socks with red toes and red stripes; a matching sweater, navy with a red sled dog team racing across my breasts; hiking boots tightly laced. It must have been midnight. The legendary loyalty of dogs extends
beyond us to our daily routines. True to bedtime, Rowdy slept curled in his crate, its door open. As aware of Phyllis Abbott’s presence on the other side of the cabin as if she’d been a corpse laid out there, I took a seat at the desk and pawed through the materials still strewn on its surface: a pen, legal pads, notes, magazines, lists of AKC transgressions, copies of rules, regulations, and guidelines, the Holy Writ applying to registration, dog shows, obedience trials, and AKC judges, the Word, the Commandments, all of it spread out where Judge Phyllis Abbott had seen it when she’d stopped in to say that Leah had called.

I ran my eyes over the written rules in search of one that Phyllis Abbott might have violated: attempting to obtain judging assignments, looking at a catalog before the judging was complete, smoking in the ring, dressing in clothes that offended the dictates of good tastes.
Phyllis Abbott?
I tried to picture her in a low-cut satin top, a brass-studded leather miniskirt, and fishnet stockings, one high-heeled foot fetchingly propped on a baby gate, a catalog in her hand, and a cigarette dangling from her mouth as she brazenly solicited assignments. I found it impossible to imagine her as anything but a model of judicial propriety and responsibility. Like every other obedience judge in the country, she probably got letters of complaint from OTCH people about such momentous matters as half-point deductions for sits that looked perfectly straight from one angle and ever so slightly crooked from another. I felt certain that she handled such routine griping with her usual courtesy and authority. Phyllis knew the regulations, followed the procedures, and met the requirements; and she did so with admirable fairness and impartiality. Neither on nor off show grounds would she ever have abused a dog, uttered obscenities, or done anything else I could think of to merit even a mild reprimand from the AKC. Phyllis’s self-appointed priest, I examined her conscience and found it
clean of sin—except, of course, that she’d murdered Eva Spitteler and then tried to drown me.

Neither crime, I realized, was specifically forbidden by any of the rules, regulations, or guidelines. In that respect, murder and attempted murder were not alone. A dignified body, the American Kennel Club refused to compromise itself, its judges, and the fancy as a whole by acknowledging the existence of the unspeakable. The need for judicial sobriety, for example, went without saying. A few judges—very few—occasionally broke the unwritten rule. The two or three I’d been warned to avoid were conformation judges. Somewhere, sometime, an obedience judge must at least have sipped a little wine before entering the ring. But Phyllis Abbott? Don Abbott was a heavy drinker. Phyllis wasn’t. She didn’t abstain, either. Nothing about her suggested a woman on the wagon. Secret drinking would have worked, especially tipsiness in the ring: It would certainly have been a violation of an unwritten rule. Eva could somehow have found out. Don Abbott had his eye on the presidency of the AKC. His hope didn’t necessarily coincide with reality, of course. How many hopes do? He had the business background. And despite his obvious lack of interest in particular representatives of
canis familiaris
, Don was undoubtedly in dogs. He’d even written a book on getting started in the fancy. But married to a judge who entered the ring with alcohol on her breath? Damn! It would’ve done just fine. The American Kennel Club is possibly the single stuffiest, stodgiest, most conservative organization in the country. Especially on the grounds of an AKC show, its president’s wife would have to be like Caesar’s, above reproach.

What the hell could Phyllis have done?

Frustrated, I leafed through the guidelines for conformation judges and wished that Phyllis Abbott had become one. The guidelines were so tough! So specific, so clear, so rigid! And so rigidly enforced, too! Damn Phyllis! And damn the AKC for allowing obedience judges so much leeway, for leaving
so much to their discretion and good taste. Without that freedom, as I well knew, the sport of obedience would lose its judges, almost all of whom worked for expenses, not fees, and who’d quit judging if judging meant abandoning all friendships in the world of dogs. Even so! The ban on travel: “Judges should not travel to or from shows or stay with anyone who is likely to be exhibiting or handling under them.”
Conformation
judges. The warning about social functions: “Judges should not accept invitations to social functions immediately before a show where the host or guests are likely to be exhibiting under them.”
Conformation
judges. But obedience judges? “A judge who has a shadow of doubt cast upon any of his decisions has caused his integrity, as well as the integrity of The American Kennel Club and of the Sport, to be compromised.”

And I suddenly thought I knew, more or less, what Phyllis had done—almost nothing, really—and what Eva Spitteler had known. To firm up the guess, I needed a map of the area around the Passaic show site, a New Jersey map that would let me trace a route. The show site, Leah had told me, was in a place called Millington. I fished through my notes of our conversation. The Abbotts lived in a place called Chester, Cam and John R.B. White in Basking Ridge.

“Rowdy, wake up! Good boy. Go for a walk?”

I once had a dog named Rafe who loved to sleep. Day after day, year after year, Rafe slept through twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours. With only sixty noncomatose minutes a day in which to cram such life-sustaining activities as eating and drinking, Rafe was a challenge to train. After a while, I gave up. The only command I really needed, but needed frequently, was: “RAFE, WAKE UP!” Rafe was afraid of everything, especially consciousness. He obeyed reluctantly. I was very patient with Rafe. Therefore, Rowdy. Karma. With one hand locked on his leather lead and the other holding a flashlight, I made my way down the steps of
the cabin. The Abbotts’ lights were out. So were everyone else’s.

Although no one but me was looking, Rowdy lifted his leg on every tree we passed and, in the parking lot, had to be reminded that tires were off limits. The parking lot at the Passaic show was the final scene in the narrative I was constructing. At Passaic, Eva Spitteler had entered Bingo in Novice A under Judge Phyllis Abbott. Eva had been there; she’d said so. Bingo hadn’t qualified; if he’d earned a leg, Eva would definitely have bragged about it. Consequently, Eva, who’d always groused about everything, had been disgruntled. Later, Eva had watched Cam and Nicky in Phyllis’s Open B ring; she’d said so. Eva had probably seen Phyllis hand Cam the blue first-place ribbon. At camp, Eva had intruded on the personal time of instructors. It would have been just like her to hang around the show until she found the opportunity to interrogate a judge about her dog’s score. Dutiful obedience judge that she was, Phyllis would have been willing to discuss her scoring, but she’d have avoided participating in the kind of argument that Eva would have tried to start. To avoid creating even the appearance of a dispute, she’d have skillfully cut Eva off by denying her the opportunity to cause trouble. And if Phyllis had said she was busy, she’d have been telling the truth. She’d judged Novice A and Open B; and she’d undoubtedly had friends to see and social obligations to fulfill. Her husband had been there. Don had had politicking to do. He’d been seen with John R.B. White, a young Turk at the AKC, Cam’s husband. And when Don was done with politics? He and Phyllis would have gone home together, of course. But that was the point: Don Abbott was never really done with politics. I didn’t know how Phyllis Abbott had arrived at the show. But I was willing to bet that she’d gone home with her husband, Don, and that the two had traveled with John R.B. White. And with his wife, of course, with Cam, whose dog had just gone High in Trial out of Open B.

The U.S. atlas of road maps turned out to be wedged under the front passenger seat of my car. I pulled it out, opened to the map of New Jersey, and in the bright light of the flashlight beam, found Millington, site of the Passaic show. Basking Ridge, where Cam and John R.B. lived, was right nearby, a little north and west. Northwest of Basking Ridge was Chester, where the Abbotts lived. So who had ridden home with whom? I wasn’t sure, but my best guess was that Don and Phyllis had gone with Cam and John R.B. White, mainly because of the four people, Cam had been the only one with a dog entered at Passaic. Cam and Nicky could have traveled with someone else, but I thought that she’d probably driven her big, beautifully organized van. To reach the Abbotts’, Cam and John R.B. would’ve had to go out of their way, of course, past Basking Ridge to Chester, then back home. But the details didn’t matter. The map answered my question: Leaving the Passaic site, the Whites and the Abbotts had to head in the same direction.

An obedience judge leaving a trial with an exhibitor to whom she’d just given a good score? Hey, no big deal. Among other things, conformation judges
give
opinions, but in obedience, scores are
earned
, not just handed out; and if an obedience judge
awards
an unearned point, the vigilant, outraged spectators write to
Front and Finish
, to the judge, and to the AKC; and the judge gets a call from On High asking what went on. Judges’ decisions are final, and the AKC really supports judges. Even so, the judge in the obedience ring knows that she’s under close scrutiny, and she scores accordingly. Consequently, riding home with someone who’d
earned
a good score in her ring was a situation that an obedience judge would prefer to avoid, certainly not a situation that an obedience judge would like to see bruited about, but in almost all circumstances, it was no big deal.

Almost
all. There is at least one exception. Obedience fanatic, are you? If not, just take the following for what it was, a
sentence spoken to me in a dream that night, a dream in which Rowdy and Kimi were dashing wildly around in a grassy field. But if you think you know your obedience, here’s a
challenge.
That’s the first hint. The second is what the voice said to me in the dream, a simple piece of advice, a broad hint. Here it is: “Tie your dogs so they don’t run off.”

I repeat. A challenge: “Tie your dogs so they don’t run off.” And therein lies the exception.