Black Ribbon

by Susan Conant

  With rage, I realized that Phyllis didn’t even need to get that metal leg out of Elsa’s mouth to accomplish her purpose. To explain the presence of her fingerprints, all she needed to do was touch it.

  “ ‘A judge,’ ” I quoted loudly, “ ‘a title that implies dignity and position.’ ”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eric get up off the dock. He must have assumed that I was making fun of Phyllis.

  I went on: “ ‘The manner in which judges exercise their authority has a direct impact on the sport.’ ”

  “Holly,” said Eric, no longer amused, “just what—?”

  I spoke only to Phyllis. No, that’s not quite right. I addressed only her conscience: “ ‘An individual’s success as a judge rests on the basic attributes of good character and knowledge.’ ”

  Attracted by the hubbub and probably by some sense of oddity in the air, Cam, Ginny, Maxine, Don Abbott, and six or eight other people had made their way down to the little pebble beach. Phyllis still faced away from us, toward Elsa and toward the lake.

  “Mrs. Abbott,” I continued, “I have always had the highest respect for you as an obedience judge. I have always found you to be one of the most knowledgeable, impartial, fair, responsible, and otherwise altogether estimable judges ever to enter an obedience ring. And, you know, when AKC says that judges represent the entire sport? I take that seriously. And I want to know something. Judges are allowed to discuss the regulations, right? It’s part of your responsibility: to help people learn. So, is this mess really how you want to represent what we’re about? Is this really it? Because if it is—”

  Don Abbott’s deep voice boomed over mine. “Phyllis,” he told his wife, “turn around and get out of the water! You are contributing to a scene!”

  “Mrs. Abbott can speak for herself,” I said.

  “She can’t, you know.” The voice was Cam’s, as calm and controlled as ever.

  “She certainly can,” Don Abbott proclaimed, “and she can get out of that lake this minute. Phyllis, you are making a fool of yourself! Get out of there!”

  “Leave her alone!” Cam told him. “The whole thing is your fault! Left to her own devices, Phyllis would never in this world have put me or herself or anyone else in anything even remotely resembling a compromising position! Phyllis didn’t ask to judge that runoff! She was appointed! You were the one who had to go and make sure that you got John’s ear and that once you had, you held it. You were the one who schemed and finagled and made damn well sure that John had no choice but to invite you home. I wish I’d never entered Passaic! You know, I deserved that trophy! I earned it! And now I wish that Sandy Battista had taken it home, after all.”

  Lost? I was, too. Turning to me, his face stubborn and ugly, Don said, “I don’t remember you!”

  “My name is Holly Winter. I’m in the other unit in your—”

  Cam, who’d understood him, said, “Don, Holly wasn’t even at Passaic.” She paused. “Were you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well,” Cam said, “count your blessings. The rest of us should’ve stayed home, too. I don’t know how you got involved in this, but the whole mess was Don’s fault. We earned that one ninety-nine! How was Phyllis supposed to know that we’d end up tied for High in Trial? If she’d planned it, she’d have had a hard time pulling it off!”

  “That’s what the trophy was for,” I said. “High in Trial.” Cam looked surprised, as if I should already have known. I went on. “You had two legs. Did Sandy?”

  “Yes. With her old dog. The one she’s showing now is just getting started, Ogden. He’s good. Obviously. Tied for High in Trial out of Novice B? One ninety-nine. Sandy was surprised.”

  “Easy judge?” I asked.

  “Easier than Phyllis,” Cam said. “Mr. McWhorter.”

  Let me remind you that Phyllis Abbott, clad in pajamas, a kimono, and bedroom slippers, was still standing in the lake. She had stopped calling to Elsa, who still hadn’t come out of the water. At the time, however, I had no sense of the surrealism of the conversation, and I don’t think that Cam did, either. Both of us spoke our lines as if we’d memorized them.

  “And Phyllis judged the runoff,” I said. “You won. You won for the third time, so you retired the trophy. And the runoff was very close. Nicky was good. Sandy’s dog must’ve done really well, too.”

  Cam corrected me. “That sit was crooked. I don’t know what anyone told you, but I was right there, and that sit was crooked. I saw it. If you’d been the judge, you’d’ve taken off a half-point, too.”

  “And then you and Phyllis left together. In your van?”

  Cam nodded.

  “All four of you. You and John R.B., Don and Phyllis. And Eva followed Phyllis. She pursued her. She followed her out to the parking lot. And she’d watched the runoff for High in Trial.”

  And that, of course, is what my dream meant. Tie your dogs so they don’t run off. When two handlers are tied for High in Trial, the winner is determined in a runoff that consists of one exercise, off-lead heeling.

  “Phyllis tried!” Cam insisted. “I tried! But John kept telling me that he couldn’t just disinvite them! When they made this plan, when the men did, they didn’t even know I was showing under Phyllis. Neither of them really knows anything about obedience. And John had gotten dragged into the politics. And both of them just said it didn’t matter, and nobody’d know, anyway, and as long as there wasn’t an obvious public breach of decorum … And it’s not strictly illegal! It is for breed judges. But for obedience judges, the guidelines are ambiguous.”

  Phyllis swung around to confront Cam. “You’re wrong,” she said, very clearly. “The phrase you want is ‘violative of the spirit of the guidelines.’ It was not in the best interest of the Sport.” You could hear the capital in her voice: the Sport. “Cam,” she added, “I am really very grateful for your support. To compromise my own position was wrong; to compromise yours was inexcusable. I should have done what I threatened to do; I should have walked all the way home before I got in your van.”

  The American Kennel Club expects its judges to be treated with respect. Elsa had been slow to recognize authority, but she did not let the AKC down. Or maybe the metal table leg finally became burdensome. Maybe she just felt ignored. In any case, she dropped it in the shallow water at Judge Phyllis Abbott’s feet. The American Kennel Club expects its judges to be ladies and gentlemen at all times. Like Elsa, Phyllis, too, did not let the AKC down. She was a perfect lady. Stooping to pick up the metal bar, frowning at it, turning it over in her hands, and wading out of the water, ridiculously costumed, she apologized to me. “I hope you understand,” she added.

  I accepted the apology. No one referred to the murder of Eva Spitteler.

  “YOUR MOTHER,” said Rita. She spoke the words as only a therapist can. After a pause that apparently meant more to Rita than it did to me, she added, “and her representatives.” Rita had used the phrase before. I liked it. Your mother. (Pause) And her representatives, as if my Marissa had thoughtfully anticipated her death by appointing a vast number of like-minded agents to administer and adjudicate her posthumous maternal affairs, emotional executors whose never-ending task it was to carry out the provisions of her iron will.

  “Nonsense,” I said. “My mother had golden retrievers. Phyllis Abbott has Pomeranians. There’s no resemblance whatsoever.” Rita thought I was joking. She is not a member of the fancy. The precepts of her own order are rather different from those of mine.

  She raised an eyebrow. “So what’s this Pan shtick, then? You grew up in the country. When did you suddenly develop some fear of the woods? You weren’t afraid of Pan, for God’s sake. What you were afraid of was betrayal—betraying your mother, betrayal by her.” Rita paused. “And her representatives.”

  I ask you: What choice did I have? An objective examination of the facts will reveal that the decision was made not by me, but by a Chesapeake Bay retriever, and a particularly brilliant one at that. Be
sides, it would’ve been my word against the word of an AKC obedience judge, and Don would’ve alibied his wife, anyway. I did, by the way, learn something about him that shouldn’t have surprised me at all. He’s a Mason! And a Shriner, at that, a benefactor of the hospitals that provide free care to children with severe burns. So the next time you watch a parade, keep your eye on those minicars, because one of the guys in the fezzes just might be Don Abbott. And laugh all you want at fraternal organizations! But if you do, make sure the batteries in your smoke detectors are fresh, and keep your children and grandchildren away from the stove, or you just might have to take all this secret society business more seriously than you’d ever dreamed.

  Curiously enough, as I found out from Cam, it was through Don’s Masonic contacts that the Abbotts eventually traced Dog Beat’s false report of Phyllis’s death to Eva Spitteler and simultaneously cast light upon the mystery of the black ribbon for Bingo. Hanging around at shows, bad-mouthing the judges, the exhibitors, and the dogs, Eva Spitteler had, as I should have guessed, attracted the attention of Dog Beat’s editor in chief, an individual about whom I prefer to say nothing except to report that this cancer on the fancy, recognizing Eva’s natural potential, recruited her as a so-called contributor to his vile publication, thus enabling her easily to feed the report of Phyllis’s death to Dog Beat’s office, a single room in Manhattan staffed by a struggling young would-be romance novelist named Clarissa B. Good, who happened to be a number of things—and whether good numbered among them, I won’t presume to judge. I continue: Clarissa B. Good happened to be the daughter of a member of Don Abbott’s lodge and a former Rainbow Girl, who, while waiting until her recently submitted manuscript raised itself above the ordinary Brunos and bodices of Harlequin’s slush pile, was forced to work a loathsome day job as Dog Beat’s trash compactor, in which capacity she answered the phone and keyboarded the copy. Clarissa did, however, get to take her dog to work, a really quite decent-looking Norwich terrier, Cam says, a dog that certainly didn’t merit the insults that Eva Spitteler had spewed forth the time that she’d burst into Dog Beat’s office to demand immediate cash reimbursement for a paycheck that had just bounced. Eva was, of course, so memorable that when she called Dog Beat to report the death of Judge Phyllis Abbott, Clarissa not only recognized Eva’s voice, but questioned her veracity and her motives even more than had become routine for her since she’d started the job. Checking up on Eva, Clarissa’s editor in chief called the Abbotts’ number, asked to speak to Phyllis, and, when told that he was already doing so, hung up and published the report anyway. As Clarissa’s story reached me, it was he who decided to teach Eva a lesson about using Dog Beat for her own ends. It’s possible, however, that Clarissa herself was responsible for the false black ribbon.

  Whether you read Dog Beat or any of the reputable dog publications, you know by now that Don Abbott did not become the president of the American Kennel Club. I believe that he overdid the politicking and that his efforts backfired. Or perhaps John R.B. White used his considerable influence. Speaking of John R.B. White, Front and Finish included him in the photo of Cam and Nicky that appeared with the article about the Wilhelmina E. Pruett Memorial Challenge Trophy. Also present in the picture were Phyllis Abbott, who’d judged the runoff, and Adelaide J. Barnaby, who offered the trophy, which was the kind of big silver fruit bowl you never see anymore, and sterling, too, not plate. When I read the details, I was sorry I’d missed Passaic. Cam and Nicky, with a 199 out of Open B, had been tied for HIT with Sandra Battista and her young golden, Shoretowyn’s Candy’s Dandy, out of Novice B. Like most important trophies, this one was for permanent possession by the owner who won it three times, not necessarily with the same dog, and what made the runoff really exciting was that Cam and Sandy had each won it twice before. Whether Sandy and Ogden really deserved to lose the half-point that Judge Abbott deducted for a slightly crooked sit, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I am convinced, however, that in Judge Phyllis Abbott’s eyes, the sit was not perfectly straight. I have never doubted Phyllis’s impartiality and fairness in the ring. One of these days, I may show under her again. After all, my mother is dead. Her representatives are all I have left. Who am I to oppose my mother’s wishes?

  In her own way, Eva Spitteler, too, left me a legacy. I used to go around telling myself and everyone else that scores don’t count. I’ve learned better. These days, Rowdy and I are training harder than we used to, and not just because Rowdy is going up against Tundra, either. No, the real reason is that a half-point deduction for a crooked sit was ultimately what cost Eva Spitteler her life. If Rowdy and I ever end up in a runoff, I’ll know that the outcome may be highly consequential. I intend to be ready. I intend to win. Victory is, after all, what my mother would have wanted. My mother. And her representatives.

  About the Author

  SUSAN CONANT, three-time recipient of the Maxwell Award for fiction writing given by the Dog Writer’s Association of America, lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two cats, and two Alaskan malamutes—Frostfield Firestar’s Kobuk, CGC, and Frostfield Perfect Crime, called Rowdy. Her work has appeared in Pure-bred Dog/American Kennel Gazette and DOGworld. She is the author of nine Dog Lover’s mysteries, and is now at work on her tenth.

  According to myth, the New England colonists fled the British Isles in search of religious freedom. In truth, they were extradited—summarily booted out of the homeland of dog worship following a little-known incident, an act of heresy, if you will, that took place at the famous Canterbury Cathedral. There a rebellious clique of Brewsters, Bradfords, Aldens, and Standishes refused to join their fellow worshipers in what would otherwise have been the unequivocally fervent rendering of “All Creatures Great and Small.” As everyone knows, the involuntary expatriates first sought refuge in Holland. In the course of a barge tour of Amsterdam, however, one of their number—a Standish, I believe—uttered a very loud and extremely rude remark about a Keeshond, thus causing the previously hospitable Dutch to toss the future colonists over the dikes and into the cold seas of the Atlantic, where they drifted for many months before finally washing up on shore in the vicinity of a large rock on which many of them deservedly cracked their heads. Fable? Fact: The New England colonists attached dire theological significance to the backward spelling of d-o-g. The black mass: the litany backward. The dog: the creature of Satan.

  What leads me to the topic of the New England colonies is not the hotel’s decor, which was Hawaiian, but my conviction that somewhere on Maui, the Milestone chain has erected a hotel and conference facility structurally identical to the one in Danville, Massachusetts, but adorned with Ye Olde New England materials and motifs. The building itself is, I believe, the same as this one: the two-story motel-hotel at one end, the exhibition hall at the other, with the space between devoted to a large lobby, a bar, two restaurants, a variety of meeting, assembly, and banquet rooms, and the center consisting of a cavernous mock atrium that does not open to the sky and contains some droopy-looking trees that obviously wish it did and many others that, being plastic, don’t care. Through the center of the atrium at the Maui Milestone flows a miniature artificial trout stream spanned by a tiny replica of a genuine New England covered bridge. Unwary guests trip on the legs of spinning wheels, regain their balance, set down drinks on cobbler’s bench tables, and order refills from service personnel garbed for a grammar-school reenactment of the First Thanksgiving.

  The Milestone chain being a microcosm of a balanced universe, here in New England the equally cavernous atrium, the Lagoon, was, as its name suggested, a sort of South Seas grotto, the focal point of which was a tropical lava-rock waterfall overhung by artificial coconut palms and set near a plastic-mahogany bar shaped like an outrigger canoe. The walls, papered in what I think was grass cloth, were festooned with exotic-looking paddles, feather headdresses, bunches of fake bananas, and so many ukuleles that, if strummed in unison, their strings could have drowned out the music being piped into the lobby: a Muzak ve
rsion of “As Time Goes By” with the synthesizer set to the sound of Hawaiian guitars.

  My room, however, was luxurious and, even if it hadn’t been, the Danville Milestone possessed the one advantage that offsets anything from outrigger bars and ukuleles to bathrooms with rusty baseboards and no hot water: It allowed dogs!

  Such was the gist of the violent complaint currently being lodged with the hotel manager by a red-faced man who brandished a clenched fist at the innocent-looking black announcement board built into the wall of the hotel lobby. The white plastic letters stuck into the grooves spelled out:

  Thursday, October 31

  The Danville Milestone Hotel

  and Conference Facility

  Aloha!

  Alaskan Malamute National Specialty—

  Oahu Room

  Luncheon and Meeting—Wahiawa Room

  Lofgren-Jenkinson Wedding Party

  Bachelor Dinner—Kailua Room

  Bride’s Dinner—Wahiawa Room

  “Crystal plans her wedding,” boomed the man, “a full goddamn year in advance! She checks out restaurants, she visits historical houses, she goes to hotels, museums—and she picks this place! And her mother comes and sees it, and then she drags Greg out here, and they drag me out here, and frankly, all this South Seas shit puts me off, but, hey, they’re going to Hawaii for their honeymoon, and Crystal’s crazy about the idea … And this is the middle of last winter! Booked in advance! For three goddamn days! We got two dinners tonight, and we got the rehearsal tomorrow, and we got the rehearsal dinner, and then we got the wedding breakfast, and then we got the wedding and the reception, and NOW! Five minutes ago! Now, we pull in, and what do we find? This place booked ten months ahead of time, and you, you sneaky little son of a bitch, did not see fit to inform us that Crystal and Greg’s dream wedding was gonna happen in the middle of a fucking dog show!”