Murder at the Puppy Fest

by Laurien Berenson

  “Good idea.”

  I set Bud down on the ground and he went scampering back to the house. Sam and I kicked the loose dirt back into the hole and tamped it down into place. Sam found a heavy rock and we stuck it on top of the small depression. Bud wouldn’t be digging here again.

  “Claire told me Joe Brody isn’t a nice guy,” he said as we headed back in together. I figured that was pretty brave of him, considering that he’d already come to grief on this topic once. “I don’t like the fact that he thinks he can push you around.”

  “He can’t,” I said firmly.

  “Do you want me to punch him?”

  I choked on a laugh. “No.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” I reached out and looped my arm through Sam’s. “You don’t have to go all caveman on me. I handled it.”

  “It would be better if you didn’t have to handle anything. Maybe you should just stay away from him.”

  Usually I bristle when Sam tries to tell me what to do. This time, however, we were in complete agreement.

  * * *

  Aunt Peg called early the next morning to say that her minivan had a flat tire. So we swung by and picked her up on the way to the dog show. I told her we were only giving her a ride on one condition. She wasn’t allowed to discuss the upcoming competition with Davey.

  Aunt Peg got back at me for that. She treated us to a running commentary on every piece of scenery we drove past. Since the show was ninety miles away, that encompassed quite a bit of landscape. After the first hour, I was more than ready to cry uncle. Either that or pull over and leave her by the side of the road.

  Sam, as usual, took everything in stride. He and Peg had one discussion about historic covered bridges and another about the merits of dry stone walls versus wet. Every so often, Kevin broke into song and Davey joined in. Their lack of musical ability made Augie press his wrapped ears tight against the sides of his head. I knew just how he felt.

  The show site was a spacious campground nestled in the shadow of a small mountain. By the time we arrived, I think we were all relieved to leave the SUV’s cramped quarters behind. We quickly unpacked and set up under the grooming tent.

  This single dog show, located in the middle of nowhere, always drew a small entry. Most Poodle exhibitors, including our friends Crawford and Terry, had bypassed the event in favor of a three-show weekend in New Jersey. It seemed strange to look around the tent and see very few Poodles out on the tabletops.

  Aunt Peg consulted her catalog. “There are five Standard dogs and two bitches. I hope they all show up.”

  “How many in Davey’s class?” Sam asked.

  “There are three in Open. The other two are puppies.” She squinted at the fine print, then added, “Very young puppies at that. Possibly just here for the experience.”

  “I still have to beat them,” Davey said philosophically. Augie was lying on the table. Davey was line-brushing his off side first.

  “You will—” Aunt Peg began.

  My glare stopped her in her tracks. Just as it was meant to. Even so, her resulting change of subject was so abrupt that it caught me by surprise. “If the Brody family members I met yesterday are indicative of the rest of the group,” she said, “Leo was not to be commended on his child-rearing skills.”

  Sam shot me a quizzical look.

  “Kevin and I went to Puppy Posse. Aunt Peg decided to join us there.”

  “I met Jane and her brother, Joe,” Aunt Peg told him. “And an argumentative youngster who came slinking in at the end.”

  “That was Trace, their nephew,” I said.

  Aunt Peg dismissed the teenager with a wave of her hand. The gesture should have made me move the conversation along. Instead it had the opposite effect. Suddenly it occurred to me that I’d been doing the same thing.

  I’d been concentrating my inquiries on the second generation of Leo Brody’s family—his children—and giving the grandchildren a pass. Maybe that was a mistake. It might even be a big mistake. There’d been something niggling in the back of my mind for several days and now, all at once, I realized what it was.

  “Trace,” I said thoughtfully.

  “What about him?” Sam asked.

  “He was supposed to be at Puppy Fest helping Jane with the puppies. But he never showed up. Later when I asked him about it, Trace told me he was there. I mentioned I hadn’t seen him and he backpedalled and said he was thinking about something else.”

  “He sounds like a typical teenage boy to me,” Sam said. “I bet he told his parents he was going to Puppy Fest, then skipped out and went somewhere else. He was probably afraid you’d bust him if you knew the truth.”

  “Possibly.” I wasn’t convinced. “But the subject came up again yesterday. Jane and Joe were talking about it.”

  “I don’t remember that,” said Aunt Peg.

  “It was before you got there. Jane and Joe got into a spat about it. Jane denied that Trace was ever there, while Joe maintained that he’d seen him arriving at Leo Brody’s house that morning.”

  “Maybe Joe was mistaken,” Sam said.

  “I doubt it. The kid drives a black Porsche Carrera. It’s kind of hard to mistake that.”

  “A Porsche Carrera?” That got Davey’s attention. “Cool.”

  “Not really.” I suddenly remembered something else. “The first time I met Trace, he nearly ran me over with it.”

  “He did what?” All eyes turned my way.

  “Trace said it was an accident, that he hadn’t seen me standing there,” I told them. “At the time, I believed him. At worst, I thought he was just showing off. But now . . .”

  Aunt Peg knew immediately what I was thinking. “If Trace didn’t go to his grandfather’s house to work on Puppy Fest like he was supposed to, why was he there? And why did he lie about it later?”

  “I hope he wasn’t there to deliver a plate of cookies,” I said darkly.

  “Cookies?” Kevin looked up. He was playing in the grass at out feet. “Time for cookies?”

  “Not now, sweetie. Maybe after Davey and Augie go in the ring.”

  “Chocolate chip.” Kev placed his order. “They’re my favorite.” Like we didn’t already know that.

  “Maybe Detective Young would like to hear about this,” I said.

  “I should say so,” Aunt Peg agreed.

  Even Sam nodded. “You should go talk to him tomorrow.”

  A consensus was a rare occurrence in my family.

  “I will,” I said. “I’ll tell him everything and see what he makes of it.”

  “Now that that’s settled,” said Davey, “is anybody going to help me with Augie’s topknot?”

  “Me!” Kevin jumped to his feet.

  “I don’t think so.” I leaned down and lifted him up. “But you and I can go pick up Davey’s armband.”

  I held out my hand, but Kevin ignored it. Instead he wriggled between two sets of stacked crates and dodged handily through the next row of setups. He spurted out of the tent and took off toward the show rings.

  “Apparently we’re on our way,” I said. “Be back in a few minutes.”

  To nobody’s surprise, Kevin and I got sidetracked several times. We stopped to watch a class of Great Danes gait around their ring. Then we saw a black Labrador Retriever who was splashing around in a wading pool to cool off. Luckily maternal instinct kicked in just in time, and a quick move on my part prevented Kevin from hopping in to join him.

  The Poodle ring was running on time and we picked up Davey’s number from the steward. I squatted down and ran two rubber bands up to the top of Kevin’s slender arm. When they were firmly in place, I slipped the cardboard square beneath them. Kev cocked his elbow outward and admired my handiwork. He began to swing his arm from side to side.

  “Don’t lose that,” I told him. “Augie needs it to go in the ring.”

  “Augie’s going to win,” Kevin informed me. He must have been talking to Aunt Peg.

  B
ack at the handlers’ tent, Sam and Davey had Augie’s topknot in and they were beginning to spray up his neck hair. Since he’d been shown the week before, the big dog would only need a cursory scissoring. He was almost ready to go.

  Aunt Peg was standing at the edge of the setup. “I’ve had a discreet look around,” she said in a low tone. “There isn’t another Standard here today that can touch this dog.”

  “If I said something like that,” I mentioned, “you would yell at me for jinxing them.”

  “Don’t be a spoilsport,” Aunt Peg sniffed. “I’m merely stating a fact.”

  “Yeah, Mom.” Davey grinned. “Do as I say, not as I do.”

  “You are a fresh kid,” I told him. The halfhearted rebuke was softened by a laugh. “And you’re not even a teenager yet.”

  “Six weeks ’til my birthday,” Davey said. “Then watch out.”

  “What’s going on in the ring?” Sam asked. Luckily one of us was keeping his mind on business.

  “The judge is right on time.” I turned back to Davey. “And he’s not taking his dogs in catalog order. So you probably want to go to the head of the line.”

  Most judges can find a good dog anywhere. But it never hurts to give them a subliminal nudge by placing your dog where you intend for it to be when the judging is finished.

  “That’ll give Stan an eyeful right off the bat,” Aunt Peg said with satisfaction.

  “Who’s Stan?” I asked.

  “Stan Harvey. The judge.”

  “We’re on a first-name basis with the judge?” Somehow that seemed almost indecent to me.

  Not to Aunt Peg. She stopped just short of rolling her eyes. “In case you’ve forgotten, Melanie, I’m a judge too.”

  There was that.

  “And when other judges have questions about the Poodle breed, who do you think they turn to?”

  There was that too.

  Feeling suitably chastened, I said, “Is Stan a good judge?”

  “He’d better be,” Aunt Peg muttered. “I taught him everything he knows.”

  That tidbit of information took us up to the ring in good spirits.

  We waited near the in-gate and observed the Standard Poodle Puppy Dog class. Mr. Harvey sorted out the small entry with a capable eye and a kind hand. He was smiling as he watched the pair of playful puppies make their last circuit of the ring.

  Kevin was standing on the ground in front of me. As Davey prepared to enter the ring, Kev reached up and tugged on the hem of my shirt. I wondered if he couldn’t see from where he was.

  “Do you want me to pick you up?” I asked.

  Kev didn’t answer. Instead he simply pointed to the top of his arm.

  “Oh crap!” I snatched the numbered armband out from beneath the rubber bands that were holding it in place. “Davey, wait!”

  Luckily the switch only took a moment and Davey and Augie still managed to be the first pair into the ring when the Open Dog class was called. A big white dog with a coarse head and flat feet fell into line behind them. A weedy silver with a conspicuously low tail set followed.

  “What did I tell you?” Aunt Peg whispered out of the side of her mouth.

  I shushed her and kept my eyes trained on the ring. I was happy to see that in contrast to their performance the previous weekend, Davey and Augie were now working as a team. This time, the two of them were having fun. Augie showed like a dream and managed to make it look effortless.

  I wasn’t surprised but I was relieved when Augie won the Open class. Then I held my breath until the judge had picked him over the Puppy winner and awarded Augie the purple ribbon for Winners Dog.

  While I was busy congratulating my son on a job well done, Mr. Harvey made short work of his small bitch entry. No specials were entered in Standard Poodles so when the Best of Variety class was called to the ring, Davey and Augie found themselves once again at the head of the line. It was a position they never relinquished.

  When the breed judging was over, Davey emerged from the ring with a huge smile on his face and Augie dancing at his side. Davey was clutching both the blue-and-white Best of Winners ribbon and the purple-and-gold rosette for Best of Variety.

  “Holy cow,” I said. “You won the whole thing.”

  Augie wouldn’t gain any extra points for the BOV win. But the honor of having him chosen as the best Standard Poodle at the dog show was enough to make us all giddy.

  “You know what this means,” Aunt Peg said.

  Our ringside celebration paused briefly. We were having such a wonderful moment that none of us had given a thought to anything beyond it. Except of course, for Aunt Peg.

  “Now we have to stay for the group,” she announced.

  Chapter 24

  The Non-Sporting group was scheduled to be judged last. That gave us several hours to kill. We ate lunch, then wandered around the show ground, stopping to peruse the activity at various rings. Davey was particularly interested in the obedience dogs competing in the Utility class.

  He watched a Border Collie lie down, then sit up in response to its handler’s silent signals from across the ring. “Maybe Augie and I will try that next,” he said.

  “Not agility?” Sam was surprised.

  “Nope.” Davey cast a telling glance in Aunt Peg’s direction. Between judging assignments, she competed in agility with Eve’s littermate, Zeke.

  “Utility is the PhD of obedience,” I told him. “You and Augie will have to begin with the basics and work your way up.”

  “That’s okay. It makes sense to start with easy stuff. And speaking of which . . .” Davey let the sentence dangle until both Sam and I had turned to face him. “I think Sam should show Augie in the group.”

  “No way,” I said quickly.

  “Think about it, Mom. No group judge is going to look at a dog with a kid on the end of the lead.”

  “That’s not true,” said Aunt Peg.

  “Maybe not when you’re judging,” Davey allowed. “But you’re different.”

  She cleared her throat. “I shall endeavor to take that as a compliment.”

  Davey looked at the three of us. “Sam’s won plenty of groups. Augie deserves to be shown by someone who can do a better job with him than I can.”

  “You and Augie are a team,” Aunt Peg said firmly.

  “What that dog deserves is to walk into the big, scary group ring with his best friend at his side.”

  If I had expressed that sentiment, Davey would have brushed it off. But coming from Aunt Peg, it made his face glow. All right, I’ll admit it. It made mine glow a little too.

  “I’m glad that’s settled,” said Sam.

  An English Setter won the Sporting Group. A Scottish Deerhound triumphed in Hounds. One by one, the groups went by. It was almost five o’clock by the time a Briard was sent to the first place marker in the penultimate Working group. Non-Sporting was next and last.

  Sam stayed by Davey’s side until he and Augie were ready to enter the ring. Then he hurried around to join us on the other side.

  In group judging, the breeds line up in size order. The larger, faster dogs are at the head of the line and the slower, smaller ones bring up the rear. Though Standard Poodles often lead the Non-Sporting dogs, Sam had advised Davey to fall in behind the Dalmatian so he and Augie could follow someone with more experience.

  Davey started out a little stiff, but by the time the group of dogs had made their first circuit around the ring, he began to relax and enjoy himself. Augie was a big moving Poodle, and the dimensions of the larger arena worked to his advantage. I knew I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed how long the judge’s gaze had lingered on him during the first go-round.

  Davey and Augie completed their individual examination and went to the back of the line. Eighteen breeds had shown up for the group. The judge was working his way through them quickly and efficiently.

  “This isn’t the best group of Non-Sporting dogs I’ve ever seen,” Aunt Peg said under her breath. “Augie looks rathe
r good in there.”

  “Don’t,” I shushed her quickly. “Don’t even say it.”

  I was thrilled for Davey’s sake when he and Augie made the cut. Sam had the good grace not to wince when I grabbed his arm and held on tight. Fortunately the competition was almost over and he didn’t have to suffer long.

  The judge swiftly rearranged his remaining dogs, then sent them around the ring one last time before pointing at his winners. “I’ll have the Bichon, the Löwchen, the Shar-Pei, and the Standard Poodle.”

  The last words were barely out of his mouth before Davey’s cheering section began to jump up and down and scream like crazy people. Okay, maybe that was just me. Inside the ring, my son ducked his head in momentary embarrassment, but there was no mistaking the huge grin on his face when the judge handed him the big white rosette for fourth place.

  “Davey’s winning!” Kevin shrieked.

  “He is indeed,” Aunt Peg agreed. “That was well done.”

  Sam grabbed a comb and made minor repairs to Augie’s ears and neck hair while the photographer set up to take pictures. Davey was still smiling when it was Augie’s turn in front of the camera. My son’s euphoria must have been contagious because the judge and the photographer ended up grinning with him. I was sure the resulting picture would end up hanging on his bedroom wall.

  We remained at ringside to watch Best in Show. The Bichon that had beaten Davey was a contender, but in the end the judge went with the Old English Sheepdog from the Herding group.

  “I would have put up the English Setter,” Davey said as we headed back to the handlers’ tent.

  “Why?” Aunt Peg wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. I just liked him best.”

  “I did too,” Peg concurred. “It’ll be a shame when you decide to move on. The obedience ring’s gain will be conformation’s loss.”

  “Maybe,” Davey said under his breath. “We’ll see.”

  We were a quieter group on the long drive home from the dog show, but it was a contented silence. Davey and Augie had turned in the winning performance, but we all shared in their sense of accomplishment. Drifting along in our happy bubble, none of us paid any attention to the first sign that something might be amiss.