Dog Eat Dog

by Laurien Berenson

  “Did I hear Peg say you’re her niece?” he asked. “Louis LaPlante, club treasurer. I hope you’re planning on joining Belle Haven. We could certainly use some fresh blood. My wife and I have Yorkies. What’s your breed?”

  Joining? Fresh blood? I was barely two feet inside the door. Beside me, Aunt Peg was grinning like a magpie.

  “I have a Standard Poodle. She’s only a puppy. Actually I’m just getting started—”

  “Poodles, of course. I should have known.” He set down both drinks. The scotch went beside the raincoat. The other he set in front of a woman with frosted, shoulder length hair who was sitting one place down. She had a leather purse the size of a knapsack in her lap and was pawing through it with great concentration.

  “Honey,” said Louis. “This is Melanie. She has Poodles.”

  I got a distracted wave, but no eye contact.

  “My wife, Sharon.” He cast her a fond gaze. “She’s always looking for something. She’ll surface about the time the salad arrives.”

  “Look!” said Aunt Peg, pointing suddenly. “Two seats together. I think we better go grab them.”

  “Nice meeting you.” I’d barely gotten the words out before I was being hustled across the room.

  Aunt Peg homed in on the seats in question, tossing her purse on one and waving me toward the other.

  “I take it we didn’t want to sit with Monica or Louis and Sharon?” I asked in an undertone.

  “Louis and Sharon are fine. He’s a lawyer in town, and he’s recently applied to judge. Dogs, that is; not people.”

  Aunt Peg busied herself with getting settled. “Monica Freedman’s the one we’re avoiding. She’ll talk your ear off, telling you every single solitary thing she’s done in the last two weeks. Then she’ll expect you to reciprocate, and she’ll have an opinion about everything you have to say, most of them annoying. Just the thought of having a conversation with that woman wears me out.”

  “Does she hold a position in the club?”

  “Corresponding secretary.”

  “I thought that was your job.”

  “Almost, but not quite. I’m recording secretary. The secretary position involves a tremendous amount of work, so most clubs split the job in half. Monica handles all the club mailings. I’m responsible for the minutes of the meetings.” She opened her commodious purse, pulled out a pen and a fat notebook, and laid both on the table in front of her.

  “I see you’re all ready to get started, Peg. As usual.” The comment could have been innocuous, but the tone in which it was delivered had just enough edge to give it sting.

  The woman speaking tipped back the chair on the other side of Aunt Peg and sat down. She had small, sharp features and dark blond hair, liberally streaked with gray. A covered rubber band gathered it into a careless pony tail at the nape of her neck.

  Judging by her clothes—a chunky cardigan sweater and a heathered wool skirt that fell to beneath her knees—she might have spent the afternoon walking the Scottish moors. I’d have guessed her age at fifty, but with the frown lines that seemed permanently etched on either side of her mouth, it was hard to tell.

  “Punctuality is a virtue, Lydia.” Aunt Peg glanced at her watch meaningfully. “One you might try a little harder to cultivate.”

  The woman managed to laugh without sounding the least bit amused. “There’s no starting a dinner meeting on time at the Belle Haven Kennel Club. Everybody knows that. You may as well relax and have a drink, Peg. They won’t even start bringing up the salads until everyone’s seated.”

  The room was filling rapidly now. One by one, most of the chairs were being taken.

  Aunt Peg leaned back in her seat, so that I could see across in front of her. “Melanie, this is our club president, Lydia Applebaum. She breeds Miniature Dachshunds and she’s the person in charge of this melee. If you have any complaints, you must take them directly to her.” Aunt Peg’s dark eyes gleamed mischievously. “Lydia, my niece, Melanie Travis.”

  “Complaints?” Lydia snorted. “With friends like these, what could anyone possibly have to complain about?”

  On my other side, the chair pulled back. A stocky woman with a ruddy complexion sat down. “You’re new,” she said. “I know everyone who belongs to Belle Haven, and I’ve never seen you before.”

  “Melanie Travis,” I said. “First time.” I stuck out my hand and it was firmly shaken.

  “Joanne Pinkus. I sell insurance. Let me give you my card.”

  I started to demur, but it was already too late. “You never know when you could use some extra coverage,” she said as she handed over the card. “I have Norwich Terriers. Want to see a picture?”

  It seemed pointless to say no; I didn’t even bother. Joanne opened a large, white cardboard envelope, and pulled out several eight by ten glossy photographs. Win pictures from dog shows.

  “This is Camille,” she said, passing the top one. “And this is Rupert.”

  Beside me, Aunt Peg rolled her eyes.

  I was still thumbing through photographs five minutes later when the waitress came by to take our drink order. I’m not usually much of a drinker. Then again, I’d never been to a Belle Haven Kennel Club meeting before.

  I pulled out my wallet and ordered a double.

  Four

  I had assumed that the purpose of a dinner meeting was to hold the dinner and the meeting simultaneously, but it turned out I was wrong.

  “We eat first,” Aunt Peg told me, digging eagerly into a steak that looked like it weighed more than a pound. “The meeting’s after. Much more practical than trying to chew and argue at the same time.”

  Only for people who didn’t have young children waiting at home with the neighbors.

  I tried to remember that I was a guest and not be grouchy. Because of the size of our party, orders for the food had been made in advance, which meant I was in Aunt Peg’s hands. My plate held a sirloin nearly the size of her own. The potato next to it oozed sour cream. I didn’t see a sign of vegetables anywhere.

  The club members fell to eating like a pack of carnivores who’d just chased down the weakest member of the herd. I pushed my steak around my plate and let my gaze wander. Seated on one leg of the horseshoe was a squat, broad shouldered man with a carefully cultivated tan and profuse white hair. His movements seemed awkward and after a moment I figured out why. He was eating his steak one-handed.

  The other hand—wide and beefy, with short, blunt fingers—was resting on that of the woman seated beside him. Her manicured nails were rose tipped. From the look of boredom on her face, I suspected if he hadn’t been holding her fingers they’d have been drumming. Her plate of chicken appeared untouched.

  I nudged Aunt Peg. She was nosing around in the bread basket, having discovered to her delight that it contained garlic bread. I wondered where I’d been when God was handing out fast metabolisms. Aunt Peg had obviously passed through that line twice.

  “Who’s that?” I asked. “The man with the white hair. Next to the blond.”

  Aunt Peg nudged the wedge of bread onto the edge of her already full plate, then had a look. “Cy Rubicov. The woman next to him is his wife, Barbara.”

  “What’s their breed?” The question made me feel very smug. See how fast I was catching on?

  To my surprise, Aunt Peg stopped to consider. That was the type of information she could usually supply off the top of her head. “I guess you’d have to say it was Dalmatians,” she said finally.

  “You don’t sound too sure.”

  “That’s because the Rubicovs aren’t actually breeders in the sense that most of the people in this room are. They don’t have a breeding program, and they’re not committed to a particular breed of dog.”

  “What do they do?”

  “They show dogs.”

  “You show dogs, too,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, but in their case, it’s different. Every time I breed a litter, I’m hoping to come one step closer to producing the perfect St
andard Poodle. Each of my puppies is the culmination of years of planning. I’m proud of my Poodles and I enjoy showing them off in the ring, but it’s the breeding that’s the important part. Winning at a dog show is just the icing on the cake.”

  Over the last ten months, my exploration of the dog show world had taught me that few people had as pure an attitude toward the breeding of dogs as Aunt Peg. Many people would have called her old-fashioned, if not downright out of touch. Dog showing and dog breeding was big business, with the sky-high handling fees and flashy advertising campaigns to prove it.

  “I take it the Rubicovs take winning a little more seriously than you do?”

  “I should say so.” She piled some baked potato on her garlic bread and took a bite. “The Rubicovs aren’t interested in breeding good dogs, only in owning them. They’re much more apt to buy than breed, the purpose being to sponsor the dog’s career in the show ring.”

  “You mean they pay all the expenses?”

  “Precisely.”

  “That must take a lot of money.”

  “It does. On that level, showing dogs is a very expensive hobby. Then again, so is owning a football team. And there seem to be plenty of people who are eager to do that. For some people, it’s all about associating your name with a winner. As to the cost, I don’t think the Rubicovs are particularly concerned about that.”

  I snuck another look down the table without trying to be too obvious about it. The Belle Haven Kennel Club had its headquarters in Greenwich, so I guessed that a number of its members would come from money. Still, for the most part, the attitude and dress around the table was casual. Barbara Rubicov was the lone exception.

  Seated, she appeared to be several inches taller than her husband. Her sleek blond hair was bobbed to chin length, and her navy blue Donna Karan suit fit as though it had been tailored specially for her. An abundance of gold jewelry glittered in the light from the chandelier, and the diamond on her left hand must have been blinding at close range. Her age could have been anywhere between forty and fifty, although I guessed she was closer to the latter, with good grooming and skillful attention to detail holding the years at bay.

  Beside me, Aunt Peg was busy cleaning her plate. She chose clothing with an eye toward utility, not style. I doubted if she’d noticed Barbara Rubicov’s outfit, or if it would have made an impression on her if she had. The records of the Rubicovs’ dogs, however, were another matter.

  “I’ve heard mention of an Irish Setter,” she was saying. “And they did a fair amount of winning with a Dalmatian last year. Spot, his call name is. Have you ever heard anything so ludicrous? Crawford Langley handles it for them.”

  “Crawford? I thought he was a Poodle handler.”

  “He is, primarily. But the coat care with Poodles is a lot of work. By comparison, Dalmatians are a breeze. And since the handlers get paid almost the same no matter what kind of dog they take in the ring, you can see why he might be just as happy to branch out.”

  Aunt Peg used her fork to push the last piece of steak around her plate, sopping up the remaining drops of juice. The acquisitive glance she cast at my uneaten sirloin wasn’t even subtle.

  “That’s going home in a doggie bag,” I said firmly.

  Aunt Peg’s look was filled with injured innocence. “Did I say a word?”

  “No, but you thought it. If you’re looking for leftovers, you might try Cy’s wife. She doesn’t seem to have touched her food.”

  “Barbara never does. She thinks eating at a steak house is beneath her. And as for dining with the rest of us ...” Peg chuckled gleefully. “I think she’d sooner break bread with Pygmies. At least there might be some charity value in that.”

  “Then why does she come to the meetings?”

  “For Cy. It makes him happy. And it makes him think she’s a good sport, even if everybody else knows that she’s anything but.”

  Two seats down, Lydia Applebaum finished eating and rose to her feet. Immediately Joanne, on my left, picked up her spoon and began tapping it against her glass. Lydia sent her an annoyed look as the room quieted.

  “While they’re clearing and serving coffee, I’d like to go ahead and call the meeting to order,” the club president said. “We have plenty of business on the agenda and we don’t want to be here all night.”

  “Here! Here!” cried Paul Heins.

  “In lieu of roll call, we’ve passed around a sign-up sheet. Everybody, please be sure to sign in. As the minutes from the last meeting were published in this month’s newsletter, perhaps someone would like to make a motion to dispense with reading them?”

  I gathered this was a procedure they’d followed many times. Lydia looked around the room expectantly as several hands shot up. The motion was made, seconded, and carried.

  I surreptitiously checked my watch. It was already past eight o’clock and the meeting was just beginning. I wondered if there was any way I could slip out and call Alice Brickman and tell her I was going to be a little late picking Davey up. And on a school night, no less.

  The waitress plopped a slice of half melted ice cream cake roll down on the table in front of me. “Regular or decaf?” she inquired brightly.

  “Regular.”

  I added a dollop of half and half and took a cautious first sip. The coffee was hot and strong, just the way I like it.

  “We’ll move on to the president’s report then,” said Lydia. “And I’m afraid I have to start off with some bad news. It appears that the dinner checks collected at last month’s meeting are missing.”

  There was a moment of shocked silence, then everyone was speaking at once.

  “Missing?” cried Monica Freedman. “As in stolen?”

  “They were probably just misplaced,” said Cy.

  “Order! Order!” said Lydia. I got the distinct impression she would have loved having a gavel to pound. “The chair has the floor.”

  Several hands around the room came up. Lydia ignored them and turned to the club treasurer. “Louis, since you were directly involved in what happened, perhaps you’d like to explain further.”

  Reluctantly, Louis nodded. “You’re all familiar with the routine. If you’re going to attend the meeting, you make your reservations in advance with Monica, then pay for your dinner when you arrive. I write a check to the restaurant from the club account when we leave. The checks you’ve given me are put in a pouch and I deposit them in the account, usually sometime during the following week.”

  “I’m sure I paid last month,” a woman at the end of the table said belligerently.

  It seemed to me she was missing the point. I lifted a brow at Peg.

  “Penny Romano,” she whispered, shaking her head slightly.

  “We paid too!” said Darla Heins.

  Others around the room nodded in agreement.

  “I’m sure we all paid,” Aunt Peg said in a loud voice before anyone else could speak up. “Now let’s let Louis tell us what happened.”

  Lydia shot Peg an irritated look. Clearly she didn’t like having her authority usurped. Complacently, Aunt Peg ignored her.

  “Yes, well ...” Louis cleared his throat and consulted a note on the table in front of him. “I had collected a total of four hundred and sixty-eight dollars, including twenty-three checks and eighty-four dollars in cash. The collection took place before the meeting and I placed the money in the pouch as usual.”

  “Then where did it go?” Monica demanded and earned another stormy look from Lydia. I was just as pleased she’d spoken up; I wanted the story to move along too.

  “That’s just it. I don’t know. When I opened my briefcase the next morning, the pouch was gone. I don’t know how to explain it. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  Beside me, Joanne sat up straight. “Maybe it was taken from your house,” she suggested.

  Sharon LaPlante shook her head. “It couldn’t have been. There’s nobody home but the two of us. Unless you count the dogs, of course ...” Her voice t
railed away in nervous laughter.

  “Then you’re saying it must have been taken by one of us,” Monica pointed out unnecessarily, and once again the room erupted in a babble of voices. This time Lydia let the private conversations run their course.

  “That’s very odd,” Aunt Peg said in a low tone. “The eighty-four dollars in cash is certainly negotiable. But the checks wouldn’t be. They should have been made out to the Belle Haven Kennel Club. It seems like someone went to a lot of trouble for very little gain.”

  “Clearly this is all Louis’s fault.” One voice, loud and accusing, drowned out all the rest. Aside from Lydia, all the club members had spoken from their seats. Penny Romano, however, rose to her feet. She swayed slightly and the man beside her put up a steadying hand. “Louis is the club treasurer, and we trusted him to take care of our money. He should have been more careful.”

  “Now Penny.” Louis’s voice sounded sad. “I followed the same procedure I always have.”

  “I think we’ve had enough discussion,” said Lydia, reasserting her control. “Especially since this is an issue we’re not going to be able to resolve. I propose we wait and see what happens. Perhaps the pouch will turn up.” She looked slowly and meaningfully around the room.

  “What if it doesn’t?” asked Monica.

  Lydia didn’t give an answer.

  I wondered if she had one.

  Five

  With that excitement behind us, the meeting moved on to more mundane matters.

  By eight forty-five, I’d finished my second cup of coffee and checked my watch three times. The club members were arguing over whether or not to raise the entry fees for the following year’s show. The topic had come up under the heading of “Unfinished Business” and had all the earmarks of an old fight:

  It was also the fourth disagreement that had arisen in less than twenty minutes. The other three had gotten themselves talked into the ground and then tabled for future discussion. Clearly none of these people had ever heard of compromise, not to mention closure. At this rate, it was looking as though I should have packed pajamas in Davey’s backpack in case his play date turned into a sleepover.