All Shots (6 page)

“Kevin, talk to me! Do you think that the dead woman was trying to look like her, too?”

“Nope. The other one’s a scrawny little thing with a short haircut. Severe-looking woman, dark brown hair, all bones. Five feet, five-one. No resemblance, not to you, not to the victim.”

“Not that I care,” I said. “Really, this Holly Winter and I have nothing in common except the planned identity theft. Or thefts. Plural. And that must just have been a matter of convenience. If you’re going to steal identities, it’s probably easier and simpler to use one name instead of two, isn’t it? Especially since we both live in Cambridge. And that’s all there was to it.” I paused. “Unless…Kevin, does the other Holly Winter happen to own a dog?”

“Hates them,” he said. “Hates the sight of them.”

I felt oddly pleased. “Well, that settles it,” I said. “From a cosmic perspective, we have nothing in common at all.”

My father, Buck, is in his element at a dog show. That’s
because his element is a place where he can cause maximum embarrassment with a minimum of effort. My stepmother, Gabrielle, disagrees. They met at a show when Gabrielle was new to the dog game, and in what I’m sure was his most mooselike fashion, Buck stomped in and, according to Gabrielle, poured oil on troubled waters. Nonsense! What does a moose know about oil? I am convinced that Buck trampled down underbrush, tore up saplings, felled trees, locked horns, and bellowed. He always does. But Gabrielle was smitten. According to her, Buck made everything fun.

At the moment, he, at least, was having fun, or so I assumed from the irritating smile plastered on his big face. “What’d you want to go and hire a handler for?” he was demanding in that deep, booming voice of his. “You were the best little junior handler in New England. Why, I remember the time—”

“A time that I am sure no one wants to hear about,” I said quietly. “Or in my case, remember.”

It was nine thirty on a clear, bright Saturday morning. Rowdy, Sammy, and I had had as smooth a trip from Cambridge as Steve’s rattletrap van allowed. The site of the Yankee Spirit Kennel Club show was a fairgrounds in northern Connecticut. I am crazy about outdoor shows, but only if the weather cooperates. Drenching rain ruins even the best grooming job, and mud spoils all the work I do on the dogs’ beautiful white legs and feet. Worse, Rowdy reliably expresses his objection to water, and to summer heat as well, by moping, balking, and otherwise presenting himself to the judge as a droopy sourpuss. Today was Rowdy’s kind of day, dry and cool, and the show was my kind of show, an outdoor festivity with those big white tents that suggest a wedding at a Camelot gone nuts over purebred dogs. We were now under one of the tents in an area packed with grooming tables, crates, folding chairs, tack boxes, powerful dryers, and extension cords, not to mention dogs, owners, and handlers. My father and Gabrielle, who’d driven down from Maine the day before and had spent the night in a motel, had done me the favor of transporting and setting up a grooming table, a dryer, and two big Vari Kennels now occupied by Rowdy and Sammy.

“Your father is just joking,” said Gabrielle, who always makes that excuse for Buck. Reality to the contrary, she may even believe it. As far as I can tell, she is blindly in love with him. As for Buck, what baffles me is the good sense he showed in falling hard for a warm, considerate, flexible, and altogether delightful woman. It’s possible that Gabrielle’s good looks fooled him into imagining that she was as impossible as he is. Although she’s somewhat plump and has fair skin that shows sun damage, her refusal to diet and to use sunscreen almost highlights the loveliness of her bone structure. When I first met her, I thought that her hair was making a natural transition from blond to gray. I now know that the gray is more natural than the blond, but I had to be told; and if I didn’t know better, I’d also assume that she chose her clothing at random and luckily ended up in soft, loose outfits that just so happened to suit her. As to Gabrielle’s ownership of the fluffy little all-white Molly, let me quote the American Kennel Club standard for the bichon frise: “Gentle mannered, sensitive, playful, and affectionate. A cheerful attitude is the hallmark of the breed.”

“What Buck tells me,” Gabrielle continued, “is that if you want something done right, you should hire a professional. And I do. I always use a handler for Molly.”

“‘To every thing there is a season,’” pronounced my father, “‘and a time to every purpose under heaven.’”

What he meant by
under heaven
was, I should explain,
on the grounds of a dog show.

“Okay,” I conceded, “some breeds are harder to owner-handle than others, at least if you want to win.”

“If winning’s all you care about,” said Buck, “why’d you go and fire Faith?”

Oh, he is infuriating! First of all, showing dogs is incredibly competitive, as he of all people knew; second, he himself was competition personified; and third, no matter how well Faith had handled Rowdy and no matter how often he’d won with her, Buck had done nothing but criticize every single thing about her. And now this!

“We have had a parting of the ways,” I said. Faith had failed to turn up one time too many, and she’d violated our agreement that if she weren’t available, she’d provide a substitute professional handler. “I’ve watched Teller handle a million times, and so have you. You know how good he is.”

John Teller, who was always called by his last name, was first-rate. Like a lot of other top professional handlers, he moved with a dancer’s grace and had an uncanny ability to connect with dogs and bring out the best in them. Also, judges knew exactly who he was, and that knowledge never hurts.

“Politics,” Buck spat out. “It’s an insult to Rowdy. He doesn’t need that SOB. And what about Sammy?”

“Teller is providing a handler for Sammy in case we need one.”

This is a bit of oversimplification, but here goes: Sammy, who hadn’t finished his championship, was entered in the regular class called Open Dogs. Teller was going to handle him there. If Sammy won that class and then beat the winners of the other regular classes (Puppy, Novice, Bred by Exhibitor, and American Bred) to go Winners Dog, then he, together with the Winners Bitch, the top female competing for championship points, would end up in the Best of Breed competition. Rowdy, however, was what’s called a “special,” a champion eligible only for the Best of Breed competition, where he’d go up against the Winners Dog, the Winners Bitch, and the other specials. Consequently, if Sammy went WD, both of my dogs would be in the ring at the same time, and we’d need two handlers, Teller for Rowdy, a second handler for Sammy.

“So, is this your first show?” Buck demanded. “You’re so new to this that you trust this guy?”

“Phyllis!” I exclaimed a little too loudly. “Over here!”

I was always glad to see Phyllis Hamilton, who was, as I’d told Kevin, an expert on blue malamutes, in fact,
the
person best qualified to comment on the photo found at the murder scene. She was also a friend of mine and just the sort of sympathetic, considerate person who’d be happy to distract my father and thus get him to let up on me. Phyllis showed her dogs all the time. Consequently, she knew Buck and thus knew exactly what he was like. The only unfortunate thing about Phyllis’s arrival was that she wore show-ring attire, a neat pantsuit with a plaid jacket, and was obviously going to handle the malamute she had with her, a lovely seal-and-white bitch who looked about Sammy’s age.

Before Phyllis had even reached us, my father started up again. “Now, you see? There’s no reason on God’s green earth why you can’t do what Phyllis does. She handles her youngsters herself, and she uses a handler for—”

“Phyllis, your bitch is beautiful! What’s her name?” I asked.

“Heart. This is Benchmark Heart’s Desire,” said Phyllis in that distinctive voice of hers, well-bred and musical.

The canine introduction having been performed, I greeted Phyllis properly and introduced her to Gabrielle. “And you know my father,” I added, without appending any obvious phrase such as
unfortunately for you
or
to my everlasting embarrassment
.

Gabrielle responded graciously, and Buck, as I’d hoped, shifted his attention to Heart, who reciprocated by wagging her beautiful plumy white tail and bestowing on him the sort of adoring gaze that he inevitably elicits from dogs. I was itching to get Phyllis’s opinion of the blue malamute in the photo, but I had no intention of telling my father anything about the murder and, in particular, anything about the apparent intent to steal my identity and the finding of the photo among the victim’s possessions. Buck viewed Cambridge and all other cities outside the state of Maine as dangerous. Buck was right in the sense that Maine does have a low murder rate, principally because everyone knows that everyone else has a gun, or so my father always argued. With the intention of transforming Cambridge into Augusta, Portland, or Bangor, Buck had once given me a Smith & Wesson LadySmith, as I intended to remind him if he heard about the murder and threatened to move in with me to serve as my bodyguard until Steve returned. DoG forbid! If you want to know what Buck is like as a houseguest, consider that the revolver was, incredibly, a hostess gift, my father’s notion of an appropriate alternative to a good bottle of wine or a florist-delivered basket of fresh flowers.

Checking my watch, I saw that we had an hour until malamutes were due in the ring. I’d already had Rowdy and Sammy on the grooming table, so they’d need only a few spritzes of water and a bit of fluffing up with a brush to be ready. Phyllis wouldn’t need more than a few minutes to study the photo and talk to me about it, and I wanted to catch her now, before the malamute judging, in case she had plans for later. I retrieved the photo from my gear bag, where it had been protected by a plastic bag and sheets of cardboard.

Phyllis and Gabrielle were intent on another glossy print, a show photo of Gabrielle’s bichon, Molly. Surrounded by the elements of the show scene, their gazes fixed on the picture of the bichon, their heads bent at the same angle, they made such an appealing picture that I wished that I had a camera handy. Their hair, I noticed, was almost the same shade of blond. Phyllis’s was a bit shorter than Gabrielle’s, but the similarity of coloring and their identical poses made them look like sisters. I wished I could the capture the image and hated to interrupt.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to. Spotting the print in my hand, Gabrielle said, “You finally have new pictures for me!”

“I do at home,” I said. “But this is one I want Phyllis’s opinion about. It’s a blue malamute.”

Why in Buck’s presence was I stupid enough to say that I wanted someone else’s opinion of a dog? Won’t I ever learn? Before Phyllis had a chance to take the photo from my hand, Buck seized it and, worse, held it so that no one else could see it at all.

“Blue,” he said. “You got that right.”

“Is your name Phyllis Hamilton?” I demanded.

“Of course that’s her name,” said Buck, whose misunderstanding was, I felt certain, deliberate and controlling. “You’ve known Phyllis for years. Holly, are you all right?”

“Buck,” said Gabrielle, “others would like to look, too.”

“Dilute seal,” said my father. “A bitch.”

If I’d had a second copy of the photo with me, I’d have risked tearing this one by snatching it back. As it was, I left matters to Gabrielle, who reached up, plucked the picture from Buck’s hand, gave it to Phyllis, and said to my father, “What an odd color! Blue? Is that what you call it?”

A professional handler hired to manage Buck couldn’t have done better. My father took Gabrielle’s bait and began to lecture her about coat color in the Alaskan malamute and the genetics of coat color in dogs. As he went on about sable, mahogany sable, red, black, and Alaskan seal, not to mention gray, wolf gray, dark wolf gray, all white, and tricolor, for example, and then about pigmentation, alleles, homozygosity, modifiers, and the recessive d, I said softly to Phyllis, “What can you tell me about her?” I did not, I might mention, apologize for Buck’s behavior, nor did I sigh, roll my eyes, or say that although the notion that a wife should have to manage her husband was abhorrent to me, I still felt unbounded gratitude to my stepmother for doing just that.

“How old is she?” asked Phyllis, meaning, of course, the blue malamute and not Gabrielle.

“I have no idea. I’m guessing four or five. Not old, I guess. But what do you think?”

Phyllis nodded. “Mature. Not a puppy.”

“I really don’t know a thing about her. All I have is this picture.” I lowered my voice to the softest whisper. “A cop gave it to me. I don’t want to talk about that in front of Buck.” At normal volume, I said, “I don’t think she’s from your lines. Her ears look a little big. Not gigantic, but bigger than in your dogs. And I’d expect more facial markings. But I could be wrong.”

“No, you’re right,” Phyllis said. “And she is a dilute seal and white, but she’s not from my lines.”

To avoid sounding like my father, let me limit myself to saying that a seal-and-white malamute is what most people would and, in fact, often do call black and white. A true black and white, however, has a dark undercoat beneath the black outercoat—the coarse, water-repellant guard coat—whereas a seal and white has a light undercoat. At the risk of sounding exactly like Buck, I also need to say that the recessive d gene dilutes black to what is called “blue.”

“Have you ever seen her?”

“No. I’d remember.”

“I know you would. Do you have any idea where she could’ve come from?” My question was about bloodlines. An established kennel with a careful breeding program develops a characteristic style of dog, and someone with a deep knowledge of a breed can sometimes spot a family resemblance. Sometimes. Not always.

“It’s hard to say. Let me think about it. Something…there’s something I can’t put my finger on.”

Once again, I resorted to whispering. “I’ll call you and tell you the whole story.”

“Sorry not to be able to help more. I’ll have to think about it. I’ll be home on Monday.”

“Keep the picture.” I’d scanned the one Kevin had given me. “And we’ll talk when you’re home.”

Phyllis smiled warmly. “Holly, your father?” She paused. “Buck is such a…presence.” She paused again. “Get his opinion, too. Don’t discount what he has to say. He has a good eye for a dog.”

Phyllis was right. Furthermore, as was about to be demonstrated, he had an infuriating habit of making himself obnoxious about something and then—damn it all—turning out to be right.