The Deadly Dog Show (Roger and Suzanne South American Mystery Series Book 6)

by Jerold Last

  Two hands went up. A middle-aged woman from nearby Santa Rosa, about an hour north of San Francisco, spoke up. "I'm a breeder and only judge infrequently at dog shows. I was called in to judge working breeds a couple of weeks ago. They told me the original judge was from Guadalajara, Mexico and couldn't make it at the last minute because he had visa problems."

  A second middle-aged woman from Milpitas, southeast of San Francisco in the bay area, also chimed in. "I'm a breeder too, and also judge pretty infrequently. I only accept assignments a short distance away from my family. They called me a couple of weeks ago to judge some of the hounds and miscellaneous breeds. They gave me almost exactly the same story they told my colleague," pointing to the woman from Santa Rosa, "that the original judge was from Mazatlan, Mexico and couldn't make it at the last minute because he had visa problems."

  "Does anyone else have anything to add?" asked Mrs. McGyver. Nobody replied.

  "I think that's it then, Mr. Bowman. I hope this was helpful to you even though I don't see how it could have been."

  I thanked Marlene and the other judges and walked back to Juliet's designated bench area.

  Suzanne and Bruce were already there, waiting for me. Robert was taking a nap peacefully in his baby carriage. Several people stopped as they walked by to ask whether he was "benched" or not in that configuration. Juliet was on display on her bench, drawing attention from quite a few passers-by, which in turn kept Bruce pretty busy.

  We compared notes from our various groups. Bruce had spent enough time with the handlers to come away with the impression there weren't any new facts to share, although there were a lot of opinions and gossip. The general consensus among the handlers was a pissed-off owner with a losing dog from a previous show had evened the score with old "Awful". A few of the handlers that "Awful" favored would miss him, but the handler group as a whole didn't seem to care too much about his sudden demise. However, it was making the entire show a lot more interesting for them.

  Suzanne had liked the owners she’d met, mainly from the sporting group, whose dogs were benched near Juliet's assigned spot. Several had wandered over to meet Juliet's new owners. Some of them had already met Bruce and me at the Woodland show and greeted Suzanne and Robert as if they were old friends. Suzanne was mostly struck by how they all seemed to be warm and generous people, trying hard to make her, a newcomer, feel at home in the dog show world. Unless they also owned German Shorthaired Pointers, in which case they were competitive, critical, and generally catty and cantankerous. One older woman with a GSP, who was a good eight inches shorter than Suzanne, actually elbowed her out of the way as she walked by.

  The consensus of opinion among the small set of owners Suzanne had talked to was that "Awful" had died in a random act of violence. A popular theory was it might have been a crazed drug addict committing a robbery to feed their habit. Generally, the owners assured Suzanne the murder was totally unrelated to the victim’s status as a judge in a prestigious dog show.

  I repeated what I had learned from the judges and told Suzanne and Bruce we were now on the good side of the local law enforcement agency.

  The rest of the day was more of the same both in terms of showing our new dog to the local fans who walked by and gossiping with our various cohorts of dog show personnel. I spent some time walking Robert around in his carriage. He was quite a babe magnet, but all of the babes were the age of my mother or grandmother. Still, it was fun and something I didn't do enough when I was home and busy. Juliet eventually returned to the ring to compete in the Sporting dog group. The judge took a long look at her, which Bruce later explained meant that he liked her. She made the cut into the top eight in the group, which the judge selected by pointing to the individual dogs, who were lined up separately in the center of the ring while the other dogs stepped back out of the way. Sherry was getting very excited by this time, but Juliet didn't place and her day in the show ring was over.

  The police detective in charge of the murder case, Stephen Callahan, came by the ring to congratulate Juliet and ask if I had learned any more about the murder during the day. I told him everything Bruce, Suzanne, and I had learned that could be useful to him, which didn't take long.

  He handed me a folded sheaf of papers. "I checked you out with a friend of mine on the LAPD. He told me I really lucked out if I can get to work with you on this case. Here’s a little light reading for you when you get a chance. It's some background material on the murder victim and the preliminary forensics I can share. Look it over and keep talking to people. Something may ring a bell with you. Here's another copy of my card. Call me anytime you see or hear anything that might be useful. Quite frankly, we haven't a clue who did it and I have a bad feeling about whether this one is going to be solved."

  We said our good-byes while I put the pages in my pocket for future study when things quieted down.

  Sunday was more of the same, except no new dead bodies. Juliet was awarded 3 points as a Select Bitch, but "Best of Breed" went to Ingrid Schleck's dog Max and "Best Opposite Sex" went to one of the other specials competing. Sherry's bitch Doulla didn't win anything, but she looked good in the ring to us. We chatted some more with owners and handlers, as well as with people who stopped by our bench area. Many of these people had just come to the show for the day. Often they knew little about dogs and were here trying to figure out which breed they wanted to buy for themselves as a pet. We got lots of questions about temperament and how the GSP was around little children (excellent) or babies (perfect). Only one event marred the day.

  Just after lunch we were all standing in Juliet’s benched area trying to decide when we could leave. A 20-something year old man wearing a gray Tee-shirt labeled Clarkson Florists on the front and "Our Business is Blooming" on the back, delivered a bunch of flowers (red roses and blue violets) to Suzanne. It was a replay of the first flower delivery in Beverly Hills. I grabbed him, slipped him a $10 tip, and asked who had sent the flowers. The order had been made over the Internet and the delivery guy had no idea who the person that had sent them was, or even where the order had originated. He had little to add except the florist had been given detailed instructions about how to find Suzanne in the chaos of this huge venue---the benching area where Juliet would be. Obviously, we were dealing with a stalker who understood the dog show scene. It was yet another piece of evidence that Suzanne had picked him up during our dinner with the AKC executives.

  There was a card embedded in the floral arrangement with a verse clearly written with fancy calligraphy software on a laser printer. The poem read:

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue

  There's a cold dark place

  Just waiting for you

  From your biggest fan,

  Suzanne.

  Nasty stuff, however you interpreted it. I called Vincent on his cell phone at home to get him started trying to trace the flower order, but wasn't too hopeful.

  Suzanne was less upset and much angrier than I expected. "This is starting to very seriously piss me off," was her comment. "I think it's time we did something about my twisted admirer. We can discuss what, and who, during our drive back."

  Shortly after this episode everyone said their good-byes and started home. We touched base with Sherry just before we left. While she didn't agree with the judge's picks in GSPs at this show, nothing looked or felt terribly wrong with the dogs the judges did pick during the two-day show. Consistent with the prevailing opinion of the other owners, Sherry ascribed the murder to a random act of violence and didn’t think it was related to our job with the AKC judging issues.

  We were home in Los Angeles before midnight, all agreeing that something had to be done about Suzanne's flower sender. Unfortunately, nobody had any good ideas what or to whom.

  My bedtime reading consisted of the papers Detective Callahan gave me at the show. There were a couple of pages written in police jargon confirming the cause of Orval Krause's death as strangulation with a thin show lead and he'd
died before eating breakfast. He’d been in reasonably good heath except for mild hardening of the arteries and recently treated gonorrhea. Several additional pages contained miscellaneous background material on the victim, obviously supplied by various law enforcement sources, which I read carefully.

  Orval was born 60-odd years ago in the small town of Cloaca, Arkansas. When he was 5 years old, his family moved to a small border town on the Rio Grande River in West Texas named San Francisco, where he lived until he graduated from high school. He then moved to El Paso and remained there for the rest of his life, becoming a used car salesman shortly after arriving in El Paso and turning out to be very good at selling junk cars. Orval made a lot of money and progressed to owning several new and used car dealerships. The excess income led him into breeding and showing dogs as a hobby. His breed of choice in the heat of West Texas was the Doberman Pinscher, a short-haired breed. He had never been arrested or convicted of a crime, but there were several interesting paragraphs of gossip, innuendo, and "intelligence" regarding Orval's sources of wealth.

  In dry, jargon littered "cop-ese", the report told me "Orval made too much money for the demographics of his car dealerships," "he travelled extensively in connection with his duties as an AKC judge," and "he is alleged to have had a lucrative market for his guard-dog bred Dobermans among drug cartel members and associates on both sides of the border." These entries were in the "hard data" part of the background material. There was also a section labeled "Speculations and Conclusions". The major assumption was Orval was dirty and involved in the drug business, either peripherally as a supplier of guard dogs to bad people or directly in some manner yet unknown.

  I poked Suzanne in the ribs, provoking a grunt of acknowledgment. "You know what? Old Orval Krause was probably an awful person as well as an awful dog show judge."

  The response was a mumbled "Go to sleep!"

  Chapter16.Tempus fugit and we fidget: The second wave of dog shows

  The next three months went by in a blur of travel and dog shows. Bruce and I hit six show weekends on the circuit over a span of twelve weeks. After a bit they seemed pretty much all the same---a long trip by car, a boring motel, the local county fairgrounds or a similar venue of comparable size. Most of the shows were larger events, with many more dogs entered, which would allow the winning dogs to score more points. Because of the AKC’s concerns, we deliberately went to a couple of smaller shows as well. We rapidly discovered that most of the shows we would attend were in Northern California, a long way from Los Angeles,. The venues for the dog shows had to accommodate thousands of dogs and people so the county fairgrounds in California's Central Valley, the agricultural part of the state, were a relatively inexpensive place to hold these events. Quite simply, the rural areas of Fresno, Stockton, Woodland, Vallejo, and Sacramento not only had larger venues for the events, but also affordable food and lodging. The much higher population density in urbanized Southern California had pretty much used up its convenient space for large outdoor events. Except for the old-fashioned, even anachronistic, indoor facilities like the Cow Palace, the San Francisco Bay area also had too many people in too little space for hosting large dog shows.

  Our first show after the Golden Gate in San Francisco was the Sun Maid Kennel Club of Fresno's All Breed competition, a smaller event hosted two weeks later. It was held at the Fresno County Fairgrounds, located on the aptly named South Chance Avenue in Fresno. As we would get used to, we drove north on Interstate 5 ("the 5" to Southern Californians, with its long, straight, exceedingly boring, well-maintained highway, 70 mph speed limit, de jure, and 80 mph speed limit, de facto) until the proper exit, and with gentle guidance by our GPS unit's calm voice were soon at the fairgrounds.

  Fresno is the center of the raisin industry in the United States, so a "Sun Maid" Kennel Club sponsoring the show made a certain amount of sense. Several of the dog show circuit regulars who we had first met in Woodland had already parked their RVs and welcomed us warmly upon our arrival. We said our hellos to the Breeds, Schlecks, Todds, and the others. I assured Howard Breed that we had brought a few bottles of wine that actually had corks in them to share later this evening. Bruce picked up a couple of wins with Juliet, who went Best of Breed both days against a slightly less competitive cohort of bitches and dogs than we had seen at the Golden Gate Kennel Club show. We also had an interesting episode take place on Sunday.

  After the breed judging was completed, Bruce led Juliet to the photo station set up by the club to get a photo taken of them with the Judge and the new rosette ribbon she had just won. As Bruce walked towards the platform, with its floral backdrop featuring the club’s logo, a fat 40-something owner of one of the bitches Juliet had just beaten walked in front of Bruce and Juliet, deliberately inserting himself into Bruce's space. He looked like a high school lineman gone to seed. At about six feet tall he towered over Bruce and looked to be twice as wide. His nose had the broken capillaries of a serious drinker. There had probably been a lot of muscle on his arms and body in his youth but too many beers and not enough exercise had taken its toll. In a shrill but clearly pugnacious tone dripping with accents from the south and full of malice he challenged Bruce.

  "Mah name is Billy-Bob, you little California fairy. Y’all don't belong here. If y’all don't want to regret today for the rest of youah lahf, y’all'd best go home and play with all the other little fairies."

  Bruce tried to ignore the hateful behavior but the guy was drunk and wasn't going away without a fight. Bruce knew a fight on the grounds would get both of them expelled from the show and he’d be suspended from handling Juliet.

  Juliet was less tolerant of drunks and fools than Bruce was. She moved closer to Bruce's side, making sure her flank was in full contact with his leg, bared her teeth with her head low and body rigid, and growled at the drunk. Her body language was saying loud and clear, "Get away from my human's space or I'll protect him, and attack you if I have to."

  Bruce gave Juliet a correction in a soft voice. "Stand down Juliet. I appreciate your help but I don't need it. This isn't your fight."

  Juliet looked lovingly at Bruce and crouched down by his side with her tail up and quivering. Her hind legs were tucked under her, ready to spring and obviously on the alert. Her body language was now saying, "I'll do whatever you want me to do. I'm here if you need my help."

  Bruce's lack of a direct response to the bully and his calming influence on Juliet just made the fat drunk bolder, foolishly bolder. Billy-Bob took another step, even closer to Bruce. "What's the matter Twinkletoes? Ah y’all scared?"

  He finally got a response from Bruce, who spoke in a well-modulated tone, but loud enough to be heard by all of the spectators gathered around the show ring. By now there were a lot of them. "In all fairness I should probably tell you I was a Navy SEAL and served two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't want to fight you, but if I have to, I will. You won't be at all happy with the result. So, in the immortal words of my favorite actor Clint Eastwood in my favorite movie Dirty Harry, 'Do you feel lucky today? Go ahead, make my day!' But whatever you plan to do, please do it right now."

  Apparently a modicum of sobriety remained and reason finally prevailed. Billy-Bob, deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, ungraciously muttered "some other time, Twinkletoes," and stalked away.

  Several of the professional handlers and a few of the dog owners around the ring broke into spontaneous applause and gave Bruce a classic standing ovation. The professional photographer and the judge, who were waiting for Bruce and Juliet, joined in the applause.

  The following weekend we had a break. It was a typical evening. We were all sharing the Family Room, just hanging out and relaxing. Suzanne and Robert were playing a lively game of construction and destruction with Robert’s blocks. Suzanne built small houses and interesting piles. She worked as fast as she could, but couldn’t keep up with his rapid demolition of whatever she built. Loud giggles and squeals punctuated Robert’s ongoin
g orgy of destruction. I was watching TV, while Bruce was trying to fix a dysfunctional electric shaver and Juliet was napping on the floor alongside Bruce’s chair. Amidst the chaos, relative peace and quiet reigned supreme. All of a sudden, with no warning of any sort, Juliet ran at full speed to one of the front windows and started barking loudly. She continued barking and jumped up on a chair to see outside.

  Not only was the continuous barking extremely irritating, but I couldn’t hear the TV over all the noise. “What’s going on, Bruce? I thought you had her better trained than that!”

  “I do. She’s alerting us. That’s exactly what she’s supposed to do. Nobody’s going to be able to sneak up on you, Robert, or Suzanne ever again. Wait a moment or two longer and you’ll see.”

  On cue, the doorbell rang.

  Suzanne received yet another floral gift, this time a plant with lots of pretty buds and flowers and another bit of poetry.

  Violets are blue

  Roses are red

  It won't be long