Rottweiler Rescue (15 page)

“What Jack meant?”

“Yeah. It was a threat. He said it all jokey and everything, but it was the first time I said I thought we ought to retire Max. We can’t afford to send him all over and get him way up in the national rankings. Jack was always pushing for that, and we can’t do it. And so what if we could? He’s got all his health clearances. He’s already got some nice puppies on the ground, and we could breed him as much as we wanted, but we’re being picky about the bitches we accept. So I said I wanted to retire him and show him in obedience myself, and maybe try agility, tracking, maybe herding. It looked like fun. Heck, it
is
fun.”

She had accomplished what her husband hadn’t and lost me entirely with her talk of national rankings, but I had an expert sitting at my kitchen table who could explain anything vaguely dog related to me the minute I hung up. Tawana was going on about her ambitions for Max. I waited for her to pause for breath and broke in.

“So what did he say that you took as a threat?”

“It
was
a threat.”

She was even touchier than her husband. “So what did he say that was a threat?”

“I can’t remember the words exactly. You see, the thing is.... How do you feel about drugs, you know, just a little, ‘recreational use’ as they say?”

The way I felt was inflexibly anti. If I found out anyone had brought an illegal substance into my house, I’d run them out so fast their head would spin from more than the dope. But Tawana wasn’t in my house. Of course, her husband had been, but if he’d had something on him, I’d been blissfully ignorant at the time. My silence gave me away before I decided what to say.

“Yeah, well,” Tawana said. “I’m not too keen on it myself, but Ty, you know, he thinks it’s no worse than a beer, and so you see, after Max won his first Best of Breed, we were all excited, and we took Jack out to dinner, had a few drinks, and then we came back to the house, and Ty did a line, and we all smoked some, and that was that. We were celebrating, and Jack was celebrating with us, and we never thought any more about it.”

“But if Jack did drugs with you, how could he use that to threaten you? He broke the law too.”

“Girl, you are an innocent, aren’t you? Have you ever heard of confiscation laws?”

“I guess so, but isn’t that for dealers?” I asked.

“No, it is not. The law says property used in committing a crime can be confiscated. A little pot won’t do it, but cocaine will. You can lose your car, you can lose your house. And the cops love doing it. It’s all money in their pockets. Maybe white folks living in fancy houses don’t have to worry about it, but Ty and I do, and Jack knew it.”

“So he said if you didn’t try for a national whatever, he’d report you for having cocaine?”

“No, not exactly. He said it like he was joking, but he wasn’t. It was like, it would be a shame if you lost your house because you wanted to play games with your dog instead of letting me show him proper.”

“But you retired the dog and started showing him in obedience yourself before Jack died anyway. Ty told me that today.”

“You’re damn right, I did. But not till after Ty and I fought like caged tigers over it for weeks. For a while I thought we’d end up divorced, only we’d never have been able to agree on custody of Max. Our kids are up and out, but they were starting to figure out something was wrong and getting worried about us.”

“But if you decided to make peace by pretending Ty was right and Jack was joking, and you really didn’t think he was joking, how could you go ahead and retire the dog?”

“Because I got Ty to promise to get rid of everything in the house and not to bring anything else home. Why do you think I can tell you about this? Lord above, we’re grandparents now. It was high time for that college kid foolishness to stop anyway. For all I know you’ll be calling some cop hotline the minute we hang up, but there’s nothing in my house now and never will be again, or my husband will be losing more than custody of the dog.”

Next time I was at a dog show, Tawana was going to be on my list of people to meet. Just from our phone conversation I could tell she was my kind of woman.

“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “And you might like to know you’re not the first person who’s told me something along these lines.”

“Really?” Tawana said. “Joyce Richerson, right? I figured he’d be making jokey threats to her next.”

“No, I haven’t talked to her yet. I’m hoping to see her tomorrow. What makes you think he tried something like that on her?”

“Oops, I’m sorry,” said Tawana in a happy tone without a trace of remorse. “I shouldn’t have said that. Gotta go.”

She wasn’t going to let the cat another inch out of the bag, and she had already helped me out more than I’d dared hope. We said goodbye with mutual promises to look each other up at the February show, and I turned to report to Susan, who was barely containing her impatience.

“Drugs? Jack was into drugs?” Susan said with disbelief.

“No, he wasn’t, not really.” I summarized Tawana’s side of the phone call for her.

When I was done, we sat in silence for a minute, then I got up and started making coffee to give Susan time to absorb it all.

When she spoke her voice was faint with shock. “I can hardly believe it, but so many people have told you things like this. She thinks he tried a threat like that with Joyce Richerson? Oh, Lord, I hope not. I can’t imagine her standing for anyone even trying that. Joyce is a tough, tough woman, very demanding, but Jack was doing so well for her. She must have been happy with the way he handled her dogs. Anyone would be. In fact I remember Jack telling me it was good timing that the Mullins retired Max because that young dog he’s showing for Joyce is top quality, and he couldn’t do justice to them both.”

“Tawana was talking about getting a national ranking. She said Jack was always pushing them to do that with Max but they couldn’t afford it. What’s that all about?” I asked her.

Susan was silent so long I was about to ask what was wrong, when she finally spoke. “National rankings are a whole different ball game. If we’re talking about national rankings....”

The coffee was done and I set out cups and filled them, then prodded Susan into telling me more. “So does showing for a national ranking take more skill, or what?”

“Not exactly,” said Susan, “but it’s turned into something close to a chess game these days. The competition is divided by sex, so let’s say we’re talking about the number one male Rottweiler in the country this year. That’s going to be the male Rottweiler that beats the most other dogs over the course of the year. So let’s say that there are two shows coming up. First of all you decide on the probable number of Rotties that are going to be shown in each place. Let’s say there are going to be fifty Rottweilers at one show and a hundred at the other.”

“Then you enter the show where there will be a hundred.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. That’s where strategy comes in. You look and see who’s judging Rottweilers at each show. Maybe your dog has been shown under them before and you know how they like him, maybe you have to ask around about what the judges like.”

“So if the judge at the smaller show is the one who likes your dog, you go there,” I said.

“Not necessarily. You also want to know what other top dogs might be at each show. What if the judge of the bigger show likes your dog, but he likes some other dog just a little better, and that other dog may be at the bigger show?”

“Okay, I see how it can get complicated,” I said. “So you want your handler to be able to help you figure all this out?”

“Yes, but I haven’t even begun to list all the factors. If your dog wins Best of Breed, he’s given credit for beating every Rottweiler shown that day, but if he wins the Working Group, he’s given credit for beating every dog of every one of AKC’s Working Group breeds that was there that day, and at an all breed show, maybe the group judge is a different one from the Rottweiler judge. Your dog might be able to win over only fifty Rottweilers, but if he won the group, he might win over hundreds of dogs, and if he won Best in Show....”

“He’d have won over every single dog at the show, maybe more than a thousand dogs at big all breed shows,” I finished for her.

“Exactly, so let’s also say that you know of another show where the Rottweiler judge loves your dog, and the Working Group judge has said that your dog is the best dog of any breed he’s seen in twenty years, and he’s also judging Best in Show, but that show is in, oh, let’s say, Massachusetts. What do you do then?”

“Wish you were in Massachusetts?” I suggested.

“No. Your handler packs up your dog and the two of them fly to Massachusetts for the big win.”

“Wow, I never imagined. Don’t dogs get so stressed out they get sick?”

“Sometimes. Ideally you have not only a great conformation dog, but one that loves the hubbub of the show ring and doesn’t mind traveling and flying. And you need the same in a handler.”

“I see.” What I saw was that at every show there should be little dollar signs floating over the dogs, or maybe over their handlers. “So Tawana wasn’t kidding when she said they couldn’t afford it.”

“No, because you also have to consider that if a handler is traveling all over the country for one client, he can’t be at the local shows for clients who want their dogs shown there. So the handler is going to want some compensation for the business he’s going to lose. And the fact is Max is a nice dog, a very nice dog, and he finished in the top ten last year as it was, but if you’re talking about the very top — some years it’s a very hard row to hoe. You need the dog, you need the handler, you need the money, and you need more than a bit of luck. Of course, it can also be very worthwhile if you want your dog to become one of the top stud dogs in the country, being bred to only the best bitches, producing stunning puppies everyone wants.”

“Not to mention what an ego trip it is,” I said.

“There is that,” Susan admitted with a smile.

“So does Joyce Richerson have the money and ambition to campaign a dog the way Jack wanted?” I asked.

“Yes, she certainly does,” Susan said.

“Is this young dog she has now good enough?”

“Probably.”

“And would she have let Jack campaign him?”

Susan hesitated, then said, “No, I don’t think so. That’s what got me to thinking when you mentioned national rankings. Right after Jack died, she sent the dog to a top California handler who showed the number one dog a couple of years ago, and the number two dog last year. And if Joyce has her heart set on Carter being the number one Rottweiler in the country next year, she’d have sent him there no matter what Jack wanted.”

“So it’s possible Jack may have tried to get her to let him campaign the dog nationally with one of his little blackmail schemes?”

“Oh, Lord, I hope not,” said Susan. “She would have squashed him like a bug.”

We stared at each other a moment, struck by the meaning of what she had just said. Then Susan reversed herself.

“I didn’t mean that. You just say those kind of things — she’d kill him if — I didn’t really mean it. Joyce wouldn’t try to have anyone killed, especially not over something like who shows one of her dogs, and Jack can’t have known anything about her that would give him any leverage over her. She’d just fire him. For that matter I can’t believe whoever did kill him attacked you. Are you sure it wasn’t a mugger after money?”

I laughed out loud over her wistful tone. “It really shows how bad things are when you’re wishing for a mugger. I’m sorry, Susan, but I’m very sure. My purse was sitting right there.”

After Susan left, I admitted to my own wish that my attacker had been a mugger. A mugger or anything at all other than a man who dressed and masked himself for a deliberate and planned murder. How much longer did I have to identify him before he came after me again?

Dialing Joyce Richerson’s number Monday
morning, I reflected that the weekend had not been entirely wasted. Unless Tawana Mullin was making things up, Jack Sheffield had graduated from looking for an edge in any situation he saw as competitive to threatening clients to try to keep them in line. Behavior like that had to be the motive for his murder. Surely someone on my list would let slip information that would point me in the direction of the person who had murdered Jack rather than give in to his demands.

Joyce owned the kind of dog that could have fulfilled Jack’s national ambitions. Had he tried a spot of blackmail on her? Even if Joyce wouldn’t discuss her own relationship with Jack, she must have information that could help me. She should have ideas as to who had hated Jack, who had envied him, who might have wanted him dead.

As these thoughts ran through my mind, the phone rang so many times I expected to hear the sound of the call rolling over to voice mail, but then Joyce herself picked up.

After introducing myself and describing my troubles, I got right to the point, would she be willing to help me with information about her former handler?

“I’ve been hearing rumors about Jack’s death and what you saw from half the dog world,” Joyce said. “I’d love to get the straight skinny right from the source. What do you think I can tell you?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted, “but I’m hoping just talking about Jack and the handling he did for you might give me some ideas. Would you mind a visit? I’d love to see all your dogs anyway.” If that last didn’t get me in her door, she wasn’t a real dog person.

“I’d be happy to show you the kennels,” Joyce said. “You realize that Carter isn’t home right now? With Jack gone, I went ahead and sent him to Joseph Loomis in California. Do you know Joe?”

Thanks to Susan’s insider’s picture of the upper stratosphere of dog show competition, I did know that Carter was the dog Joyce was planning a national campaign for in the coming year and that Joe Loomis was the California handler she thought could deliver the goods.

“I don’t know Joe, but I’ve certainly heard of him,” I said. “I’m sorry to miss Carter, but seeing the dogs you do have at home will be a treat.”