Black Ribbon

by Susan Conant

  I heard the siren in the distance and saw Varney’s cruiser pull in because I was on my way to the agility area, not to gawk at the death scene, and certainly not to get a close look at Eva Spitteler’s body, but to rid myself of the insidious suspicion that Eva Spitteler’s supposed death was nothing but one more hoax. It took me a second to identify the big man who emerged from the cruiser as the same guy I’d seen in Doc Grant’s, the cop who’d been drinking coffee while Everett Dow ate. Today, he had on big, ultradark sunglasses, and when he stepped out of the Chevy, he put on the hat I’d noticed the day before, a dusky blue woven-straw Stetson with silver braid trim. On the left breast of his uniform was a silver badge; on the right shoulder, a little American flag. Fastened to his belt were a set of handcuffs, a miniradio, a sidearm in a holster, extra clips, and so many other tools of his trade that at the guess-your-occupation booth at a country fair, he’d have been a sure loser. Maxine, who must have heard the siren, came dashing from the main lodge, approached Varney, and like a dog offering its paw, raised a hand and rested it on his sleeve. In return, he gave her shoulder a few gentle thumps.

  I can only reconstruct what happened after that. Maxine, I’m sure, tried to get Varney to treat Eva Spitteler’s death as a simple accident. One look at Varney, though, should’ve told anyone, even an amateur guesser of occupations, that this guy was a law enforcement professional who took that profession in earnest. Within minutes of his arrival, he’d radioed for backup, ordered a surprisingly large crowd (of people and dogs) out of the agility area, obtained what was probably a cogent account from Sara and Heather, and let it be known that the State Police were on their way.

  When I entered the dining room, I was a little surprised to discover how many other people had also shown up for breakfast. Although I hadn’t eaten anything, I wasn’t hungry.Rather, I suffered from a distinct sense of unreality for which food, I thought, might be a cure. After I’d eaten, I was going to make a quick call home. Then I intended to groom Rowdy, not to work on his appearance, I should point out, but to clean up my own emotions and, I think, to try to clear my conscience.

  As I sat alone eating my eggs and toast, I had the eerie feeling that the dining room was haunted by the ghosts of mean things I’d said and done to Eva Spitteler, the shades of cruel thoughts I’d had about her, the spirits of my own unkindness. Was Eva Spitteler the only person who’d ever wanted a plug in Dog’s Life? The only person whose chair had ever collided with mine? And if she’d perpetrated the dirty tricks? So what! I’d heard her accused and convicted on the basis of no evidence, and I hadn’t felt even a twinge of objection. Eva’s wants now seemed pitifully simple: She’d wanted to be liked. She’d wanted to feel important. In the matter of her death, I had perfect confidence in my own innocence; I suspected almost everyone else; yet I was the one who felt guilty.

  IMAGINE THAT YOU WANTED to summon death, to grab it, to hold it, and to force it even momentarily to do your bidding. I’m serious: If you decided to lure it in, trap it, and boss it around even for one single fleeting moment, where would you begin? With an enticing bait, with an irresistible snare: life itself, and lots of it. Whose life? Anyone’s, everyone’s. Death cares not at all. Bankers will do, clerks, plumbers, salespeople, hairstylists, writers, dog trainers. Taken one by one and considered dispassionately, we—any and all of us—are a motley, humdrum lot, unprepossessing, weak; and when considered as potential raw material for any sort of spiritual purpose or higher goal, worse than unpromising, in fact, hopeless and helpless. And that’s true! When it comes to snagging death, we’re no good one by one. But occupations jettisoned, appearances discarded, our very individuality cast aside? Herein lies the power of the secret society: Banded together, spirits summed, essences merged, we’re the bait that death can’t resist. Tempted, allured, ensnared, death squirms, struggles, lashes out, takes the blows, cringes, and submits, the captor captive, the victor victim, the predator at last the prey.

  Metaphorically so, of course, or so I’d always been told. As I understood it, for instance, initiation into Freemasonry represented the strictly symbolic enactment of a battle, an ordeal, a test that pitted life against death, a ritual trial, its outcome predetermined, endlessly repeated, death and rebirth, death and rebirth, not even a fair fight, really, just an elaborately, if credibly, staged wrestling match in which a paid-off death invariably agreed to take the fall. But not this time! What fools we’d been! What dupes! How could we have been so stupid? How could we have trusted him? Had we honestly expected Death not to cheat?

  Behind the glass door of the old-fashioned phone booth tucked away at the back of the lobby, I nervously dialed my own phone number, listened with irritation to Leah’s recorded greeting, waited for the beep, and was starting to leave a worried, angry message when I heard her groggy voice.

  “Leah, haven’t you let Kimi out yet?” I demanded.

  “An hour ago,” she said.

  “You did wait for her.”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “And you are remembering—”

  “Everything! And just in case you wondered how I am—” I felt a pang of remorse. “Leah, I’m sorry. Everything here is … How are you? Is everything going okay?”

  “Fine, except that last night, Jeff brought over a pizza, and Kimi stole the whole thing, and by the time I got it away from her, she’d eaten half of it and slobbered over the rest of it, and then she grabbed the carton and ran into your bedroom and hid in that little space under the headboard of your bed, next to the wall—”

  “That’s where she always takes things,” I said placidly, “because—”

  “You’re not listening! I’m not done. It gets worse. So by the time I finally got her out, she’d chewed up most of the cardboard, and then after Jeff got back with the second pizza, she went into the bathroom and—this is really disgusting—she went into the bathroom, and she came out carrying—”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” I declared. “Are you sure she’s all right?”

  “Kimi is just fine. She’s right here. I nearly died of embarrassment.”

  “Don’t say that!” I explained about Eva Spitteler. I also gave Leah an assignment. “Check Front and Finish,” I told her, “and the Canine Companion. They might have something. But I think our best bet is Dog News. It seems to me that they really covered Passaic—I think there’s a whole article—and also check their gossip column, okay? And anything else you think of. Just scan as much as you can.” I finished by dictating a list of names: Max McGuire, Eric Grimaldi, Don and Phyllis Abbott, Cam and John R.B. White, Ginny Garabedian, Chuck Siegel, Sara, Heather. “And Myrna,” I concluded. “How many people are there named Myrna? She’s from New York or somewhere near there. And Jennifer something. She has a Doberman—working in Open, I think. Anything about Waggin’ Tail. And anything at all about Eva Spitteler. Or her dog.” I spelled Eva’s last name and told Leah to look for ads that Eva might have run for High In Tail; for Bingo’s name—either the call name or the registered name, Benchenfield Farmer’s Dog—and also for oblique references to an unnamed yellow Lab. “The whole thing may be a waste of time,” I warned Leah.

  I hung up with the intention of going straight to my cabin. But I got waylaid before I’d even left the main lodge and ended up back in the dining room, where Maxine was making an announcement to as many campers as she’d been able to gather.

  “Purely as a formality,” she was chirping, “Officer Varney has decided to call in the State Police, which will, I’m told, mean a rather large number of people descending on us, and something called a Crime Lab that’s apparently a van of some kind, but the point is, as I’ve explained to Wayne—to Officer Varney, that is—that we will go ahead with our plans as much as we possibly can in the face of this terrible, terrible tragedy, which is, and I’m sure you’ll all agree, exactly what Eva would have wanted us to do.”

  Reluctant to reenter the dining room, I’d stationed myself against a wall just inside the door. Next
to me, Myrna was whispering loudly to Marie: “Can’t you just hear Eva if it’d been someone else? If they’d canceled agility so they could get the body out, she’d’ve been screaming for a refund for the time she’d missed.”

  “Myrna, for God’s sake,” Marie murmured. “She’s dead, all right?” She looked ill.

  “Yeah, well,” Myrna replied, “if it’d been someone else, she’d’ve been the first person to throw a shit fit.” After a brief pause, she added, “So who do you think finally had the guts?”

  With genuine shock, Marie cried out, “Myrna, really!”

  Undaunted, Myrna replied, “ ‘Really’ yourself! I wonder if it was her dog. It could’ve been, you know. I mean, we just had to put up with her at shows and stuff; poor old Bingo had to live with her, and if that wouldn’t drive anyone to murder, I don’t know what would. It’s a miracle he didn’t—”

  “Oh, honestly,” Marie said.

  “Honestly! Think about it. She must’ve had him off lead, right? Why not? In the middle of the night? No one around? So she leaves him on a sit-stay or a down-stay, and she goes crawling under the A-frame, and what’s he going to do? Break, right? Same as ever. So there she is, under the A-frame, and he breaks, and as soon as he goes charging up on it, the whole thing comes crashing down on her! And if that’s not how it happened, then you tell me—”

  “But not on purpose!” Marie countered fiercely. “Yeah, maybe Bingo did go and jump on the A-frame, except that those things weigh a ton, and it could’ve just slipped, but even if he … Myrna, even if he landed on it, it was just an accident! He didn’t murder her! Honestly, what an awful thing to say about a dog!”

  With a triumphant smirk, Myrna shot back: “Yeah, well, so if he’s innocent, how come he took off, then? Huh? You see? He murdered her, and then he fled the scene of the crime.”

  “You know, Myrna, it’s really not funny.” Marie’s eyes were blazing.

  “So if he’s not, uh, what do you call it, fleeing the long arm of the law, then where is he?” Myrna demanded.

  “Where any other dog would be,” Marie said. “He got loose, and he took off. For God’s sake! He probably just took off after a bitch in season.”

  Marie’s frivolous-sounding guess eventually proved correct. The myths of the fancy, of course, abound in stories of death-denying canine devotion to deceased masters. According to legend, for instance, and as far as I know, according to fact as well, for nine years after the death in 1925 of Professor Eisaburo Ueno of Tokyo University, his loyal Akita, Hachiko, went daily to the railway station to meet the train of a man whose terrestrial commuting days were over. Instead of meeting trains, Hachiko might have staged a series of howling concerts at his master’s grave. Vocal gifts failing him, he could always have refused to taste a morsel of food offered by a hand other than his master’s, thus hastening his celestial reunion with the professor. When you think about it, he had a lot of options. What’s clear, though, is that if the sport of dog agility had existed in 1925, and if Professor Ueno, having taken it up, had had the bad luck to perish under one of the obstacles, the faithful Hachiko would have stuck around.

  Hachiko was the stuff of legends. Bingo was not. A healthy, young, hormone-driven male, he was discovered in the yard of a neat little white house near the center of Rangeley, the home of a golden retriever in her first heat. According to Ginny, who’d organized the search for Bingo and who’d also been the one to locate him, the bitch’s owners had been really quite nasty about the whole thing—and stupid, too. Desperate to rid themselves of Bingo before he could destroy the screen door at the front of the house, these ridiculous people had demonstrated their fathomless ignorance of the Labrador retriever by turning a hose on him! Could I believe it? Indeed I could, I told Ginny. People went out and bought malamutes, I said, and then had the audacity to turn around and complain—complain!—when their arctic bulldozers pulled, of all things! So if people thought that water would repel a Lab, it didn’t surprise me at all.

  “And instead of thanking me,” Ginny reported, “they actually tried to get me to pay for replacing the screen on their door! Ignoramuses! The bitch should be spayed, anyway; she’s definitely not of breeding quality. Among other things, I didn’t like the looks of her hips one bit, and I told them so, too.”

  We were just outside my cabin, where I’d been peacefully grooming Rowdy when Ginny and Wiz had appeared and Ginny had begun to tell me all about finding Bingo, who now occupied Wiz’s crate in the room that Ginny and Cam shared. Wiz herself had exchanged sniffs with Rowdy and dropped to the ground in a quivering mass of ingratiation. With what must have been Rowdy’s implicit permission, she’d then risen to her feet and was now adding to my grooming efforts by vigorously scouring his muzzle with her pink tongue.

  Idly raking out undercoat, I said, “Well, at least you found Bingo.”

  “And none too soon! These people were so stupid! I don’t know why they didn’t just grab him and tie him up! If I hadn’t been there, they’d have bungled everything, and sooner or later, he’d have gotten to that bitch! And these were just the kinds of people who’d’ve put up a sign at the side of the road and given the puppies away to anyone who stopped.”

  Although I hadn’t met the people, the assumption seemed unwarranted. Also, I felt pretty sure that Ginny had made just as poor an impression on the golden’s owners as they had on her. Among other things, she was wearing what I think is called a crusher hat, a funny-looking green felt thing that rested absurdly on top of her basketlike coils of thin braid. Everyone in dogs was used to her appearance, and none of us would have been startled by a spay-neuter lecture. In the outside world, though, people must have considered her something of an eccentric.

  Pulling the undercoat rake through Rowdy’s tail, I said, “Well, I am glad that Bingo’s safe. That tear on his ear and the scratches on his muzzle happened last night, you know. He got into a scrap with that Cairn—or whatever he is. Lucky. Otherwise, Bingo’s okay?”

  “By some miracle,” Ginny said. “You know, that woman really was an idiot.”

  “The woman in Rangeley who—?”

  “That Eva Spitteler! Going out in the middle of the night and fooling around with that damn equipment! I mean, what kind of judgment does that show? The poor dog! God only knows how long it’ll take me to rehabilitate him.”

  Sensing a tremor in my hand, perhaps, or a change in my breathing, Rowdy fastened dark, questioning eyes on my face. I spoke hesitantly. “Ginny, I know it’s always hard to remember, but, uh, legally, dogs are property, and—”

  “Oh, that’s strictly a nonissue,” Ginny said blithely. “No one else is going to want him. And I have right of first refusal. It’s in my contract.” Breeders, as I’ve mentioned, place great faith in those documents. In a satisfied tone, Ginny repeated what she’d just said: “Right of first refusal. It’s in my contract.”

  “I COULD NOT HELP overhearing.”

  Phyllis Abbott spoke what I took to be the literal truth. She’d been sitting on her side of our shared deck doing what I’d been doing, grooming a dog and wondering what to do with herself, or so she confided to me. “I must say,” Phyllis continued, “that if you didn’t know Ginny, you’d be bound to think, ‘Well, what a heartless response!’ Really, it’s just shock. Ginny’s not a young woman, you know, and she was worried sick about the whole situation with Eva Spitteler and that dog, and then worried sick when the dog disappeared. Ginny really hasn’t had time to absorb what’s happened. Once she does, she’ll feel just as dreadful about it as all the rest of us. What a terrible, terrible tragedy!” Phyllis swept the air with a tiny slicker brush.

  Uninvited but not unwelcome, Phyllis was joining me in an impromptu grooming workshop. Rowdy was resting in belly-up nirvana on a beach towel while I used a porcupine brush on his inner thighs. Phyllis had coopted the steps that led up to my part of the deck as a makeshift grooming table.Handsome little Nigel stood patiently as she systematically back-brushed layer after lay
er of his lovely coat.

  “Grooming is so therapeutic, isn’t it?” Phyllis remarked softly. “What on earth would we do without our dogs!”

  “Yes, what on earth?” I agreed, momentarily interrupting my work on Rowdy’s coat to run my fingers down his neck.

  The exchange led us into a discussion of antidog legislation. Like virtually everyone else in the fancy, we opposed breed-specific legislation. One personal source of my opposition was stretched on the ground having his tummy brushed: The town that begins by outlawing pit bulls may soon create a list of prohibited breeds, a list that eventually includes the Alaskan malamute. Furthermore, as Phyllis understood, legislation forbidding the ownership of specific breeds sets a precedent for global legislation forbidding the ownership of any dog at all.

  Lifting Nigel and turning him around, she asked whether I happened to know whether the town of Rangeley had enacted any such legislation.

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “I’d be amazed. I can’t imagine … If anything, Rangeley seems like a very prodog place. There aren’t a lot of show dogs, maybe, but almost everyone hunts, so a lot of people have gun dogs, and there’s sled dog racing, pets … Besides, people around here are big on individual freedom. I can’t see them supporting legislation that would threaten their right to own dogs.”