Hair of the Dog

by Laurien Berenson

  “She had part of his string. Some of the dogs have already gone home. And she managed to pick up only one point all day. I’d hardly say that’s making things work. But here’s something else that’s interesting. I ran into Bertie at the show, and she told me that Barry Turk was notorious for harassing women handlers in the ring.”

  That made Aunt Peg sit up. Her hand, holding a Mallomar, paused on the way to her mouth. “Harassing how?”

  “She said he was apt to rub up against them or make some sort of sexually suggestive remark. According to Bertie, it’s been going on for years.”

  “And nobody ever reported him for it?”

  “Apparently not. The women involved all seemed to think that Barry had enough friends in high places who’d protect him.”

  “He was pretty chummy with the people who counted,” Aunt Peg snorted. “But that doesn’t matter, it’s still outrageous!”

  She was so busy being indignant, I was able to use the opportunity to snag the last Mallomar. A full box to start with, three people eating. Doing the math would have only depressed me.

  “And don’t forget about Ron Pullman,” I said as I chewed.

  “Ron? What’s he got to do with any of this?”

  “Possibly nothing. But he did yank Leo out of Barry’s kennel not too long ago, and nobody seems to want to discuss why. You don’t have to be psychic to figure out that they had some sort of a problem with each other.”

  “A psychic,” Aunt Peg mused. “Maybe that’s what we need to figure all this out.”

  “Maybe the police are doing better than we are,” I mentioned hopefully.

  “Have you spoken with them?”

  “No, I was thinking that could be your job.”

  “My job?” She looked affronted. “I have plenty of better things to do than travel to Poughkeepsie to talk to authorities who probably won’t tell me a thing. Besides, you were the one who told Alicia you’d help.”

  “Right,” I said, standing firm. “And you were the one who sent me to Alicia in the first place. It’s time to put some effort where your mouth is.”

  “I believe that’s supposed to be money.”

  “Try bribing them if you like, but I doubt if it will help.”

  She seemed too surprised by my show of strength to argue any further, so I took that to mean that the matter was settled. It felt good to be giving the orders for a change. It didn’t necessarily mean that she’d follow them, but at least it was a start.

  Nine

  My younger brother, Frank, lives in Cos Cob, a small town on the Connecticut coast between Stamford and Greenwich. In other words, he’s right around the corner. In our case, however, mere convenience isn’t enough to compel us to spend much time with each other.

  Some siblings hate each other as children but become friends when they reach adulthood. Frank and I haven’t achieved that state of equanimity yet, though we do finally seem to be working our way in that direction. My brother scoffs at my tendency to work too hard, and I can’t understand his to continually slack off. Luckily, there is one thing we’ve always agreed upon: that Davey is entitled to the best upbringing we can figure out how to provide.

  With this in mind, Frank has spent the last five years acting as the one constant male influence in my son’s life. At least once a month, the two of them get together on a Saturday and spend the entire day doing something they both enjoy. Their excursions have included everything from soccer matches to the local Scottish games. They have not, so far as I can tell, been to any museums.

  When Frank arrived early Saturday morning, however, I was in for a surprise. He had spoken to Davey on the phone the night before—my son pushing me out of my own bedroom and closing the door for privacy while they spoke. Davey likes to keep their plans a secret, so I hadn’t pressed for details, even though he’d seemed suspiciously smug.

  We were in the front yard when Frank got there. It was just past eight on a beautiful summer morning. Heat had been promised for later on, but for now the temperature hovered in the low seventies and the sun felt like a warm caress.

  Davey, whose shorts and T-shirt had been clean only half an hour earlier, was playing tag with Faith. The game seemed to involve quick sprints, hairpin turns, and a great deal of rolling in the grass, which accounted for most of the stains now decorating my son’s clothing. As I was leaving for the Putnam dog show as soon as Frank picked up Davey, this was Faith’s last chance for exercise and she was making the most of the opportunity.

  “He’s here!” cried Davey.

  He grabbed Faith and held her while Frank pulled his shiny black Eclipse into the driveway. Considering my brother’s spotty employment record, I figured he must have bought the sports car on a twelve-year plan, and was hoping it would last that long.

  “Guess where we’re going?” Davey said. That smug look was back, leading me to believe there was every possibility that the two of them were up to no good.

  “Where?”

  “Guess,” Davey demanded.

  “Hi, guys.” Frank sketched a wave as he unfolded his long frame out of the low-slung car. His hair is brown and straight like mine, but cut considerably shorter. We also share the same hazel eyes and strong bone structure. Unfortunately, I think the effect works better on a man.

  Frank opened his arms and Davey ran into them for a hug. Faith, who is almost always hard on his heels, followed suit. Only a rather nifty balancing act on Frank’s part kept all three of them from going down in a heap. Considering how many times Faith had come out on top in their previous encounters, I was glad to see that my brother was finally working his way up the learning curve.

  “Did Davey tell you where we’re going?” asked Frank.

  “He’s trying to make me guess.” I regarded the two of them thoughtfully. “Bungee-jumping? Parasailing?”

  “No!” Davey crowed.

  “You have an appointment to get matching tattoos?”

  “Not even close.”

  “I think we’d better tell her,” said Frank.

  “You’re right, you’d better tell me. I have a dog show to go to.”

  Davey began to giggle, then quickly clapped a hand over his mouth.

  “As it happens,” said Frank. “So do we.”

  “So do you what?”

  “Have a dog show to go to. That’s where we’re going today. With you.”

  “You’re not,” I said quickly. Nobody jumped in to agree with me.

  “It was Davey’s idea,” said Frank. “You’ve been spending so much time at these dog shows lately, I figured I might as well try one out and see what they’re like.”

  “You told me you thought they were stupid,” I pointed out.

  “I’m ready to be proved wrong.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be Davey’s chance to get away from me for a change.”

  “He will be away from you,” said Frank. “He’ll be with me. You won’t even see us all day.”

  Which didn’t necessarily mean I wouldn’t hear about their exploits from other exhibitors.

  “You’re sure that’s what you want to do?” I asked weakly.

  “Positive,” said Frank. “It’ll be great. You can pretend you don’t even know us. We’ll even take our own car.”

  Davey was already racing toward the black Eclipse. When it comes to hot wheels, nobody has to twist his arm.

  I lifted a brow. “Do you know how to get to the dog show?”

  “No,” Frank admitted. “I was thinking we’d follow you.”

  Right.

  I took Faith inside and got her settled while doing a great job of ignoring the imploring looks she cast my way. Trust me, when it comes to inducing guilt, kids have nothing on Poodles. “Next time,” I said finally. “Okay?”

  When I got back outside, I saw that Frank and Davey had put down the convertible top on the Eclipse. I stood in the driveway and looked from the shiny little sports car to my nice, solid Volvo station wagon.

  Th
ere was a small area behind the bucket seats in the Eclipse that only an optimist would have called a seat, but I noted that it did have seat belts. What the hell, I thought. Why should they have all the fun?

  “Climb in back,” I said to Davey. “I’m coming with you.”

  The Putnam dog show is held in Pound Ridge, an easy twenty-minute drive from Stamford over back-country roads lined with the sumptuous estates of the very rich. Skimming along in a low-slung convertible, the sun in our faces, the wind in our hair, it was hard to see how the trip could have been improved upon. Bearing in mind that I’d invited myself along, I didn’t even say a word about my brother’s flagrant disregard for the posted speed limits.

  Frank did blanch slightly when we arrived at the show ground and he saw that the parking area consisted of a badly mowed and rather steeply inclined meadow. He got out, surveyed the situation, and came to a decision. We parked at the top on the road and hiked down. Then, true to his word, my brother took Davey’s hand and they set off to find their own adventure.

  Alone at last, but not for long. The handlers’ tent was just at the edge of the parking area, and the first person I saw was Ralphie Otterbach, Beth’s boyfriend. He was unloading the maroon van and wearing a ferocious scowl.

  “Need some help?” I asked, pretty sure that he did. It was almost nine o’clock, which meant that the judging had already started. The rest of the professional handlers would have had their vans unloaded and their setups in place hours before.

  “Screw this,” said Ralphie. The scowl turned in my direction. “Who are you?”

  “Melanie Travis.” I tried out a sunny smile, which had not the slightest effect on his expression. “We met last week.”

  “You dog people are crazy, you know that?”

  “It’s been said before,” I agreed. “Is Beth under the tent?”

  He waved vaguely to the right. I picked up a box of supplies that was sitting on the ground and set off to see for myself. As Standard Poodles weren’t scheduled to be judged until afternoon, most of the owner-exhibitors like Sam and Aunt Peg had yet to arrive. All the pros, however, were already hard at work. I passed Crawford’s setup, where Terry was blowing dry the legs on a Tibetan Terrier.

  His memory was obviously a good bit better than Ralphie’s, because when he saw me, he leaned out into the aisle and gave my cheek a loud smooch. “Are we having fun?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said, smiling. “I just got here. Is Beth Wycowski over here?”

  “Barry’s Beth?”

  I nodded.

  “Keep walking.”

  I found her a moment later. She looked frazzled and her small setup was a mess. Crates were stacked haphazardly; there were two Miniature Poodles out on grooming tables, and Beth was standing between them, holding a brush in each hand. I set the box of supplies down and pushed it out of the way under a table.

  “Did you see Ralphie?” she asked.

  “Yes. He’s not happy.”

  “He’s not a morning person.” Beth shrugged, as if she had more important things to worry about. And as it turned out, she did. “I know you show a Standard. How are you with Minis?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Brushing, topknot, spray.”

  I looked at the two medium-size Poodles. Both were clean and clipped, but they were a long way from being ready to go in the ring. “When do they show?”

  “Half an hour.”

  The chances of my being able to get a Poodle ready to be shown in that amount of time were right up there with the possibility that I might scale Mt. Everest. Actually they were worse, because I happen to like heights.

  My answer must have shown on my face, because Beth shoved a brush in my hand and said, “Don’t make me beg, I don’t have time. Whatever you get done is better than nothing.”

  With confidence like that, how could I help but be inspired?

  I had the Mini lying on her side and was brushing quickly through her coat, when Ralphie came puffing up the aisle, carrying a large crate in his hands. He maneuvered the crate in next to the tack box, then stacked two smaller ones on top.

  “That’s the last of it,” he said to Beth. “I’m outta here.”

  “You’ll be back around four?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He lifted a big, meaty hand and brushed his bangs up off his forehead. Almost immediately, they fell back down. “Unless something comes up.”

  If Ralphie had been my boyfriend, I would have protested an arrangement like that. Actually, if Ralphie had been my boyfriend, I’d have been thinking of slitting my wrists. Beth, however, didn’t seem to mind. She just kept right on brushing as Ralphie lumbered away in the direction of the van.

  I picked up my little black bitch and turned her over so I could do the other side. It wasn’t up to me to make disparaging comments. Of course, that’s never stopped me before.

  “Ralphie seems like an interesting guy,” I tried, aiming for a diplomatic approach.

  “Yeah, sometimes,” said Beth. “When he isn’t acting like an ass.”

  So much for diplomacy.

  “Have you known him long?”

  “About a year. The van broke down last summer and Barry took it in for servicing. I went with him to pick it up. Ralphie was the guy who fixed it.”

  I thought of my old Volvo that had been traded in that spring. With more than two hundred thousand miles on the odometer, I knew plenty about all the things that could go wrong with cars. “Must be kind of handy having your own mechanic around all the time.”

  “Oh, he’s handy all right.”

  The tone of her voice made me look up, and I saw that Beth was smiling. “That good, huh?”

  “You wouldn’t think it to look at him, would you?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Catch Ralphie in just the right mood,” Beth confided. “And he can be positively inspired.”

  At least that cleared up one mystery. Now I knew what she saw in him. I raked a slicker through the bracelets on the bitch’s legs, then rolled her upright so she was lying straight. Luckily, she’d been shown before and knew the routine.

  Some Poodle people wrap ear hair and band topknots. Some wrap the hair on both. Beth was of the latter school. Using the last tooth in my comb, I snagged the rubber band holding the first wrapper in her topknot and yanked it hard enough to pop.

  As I moved on to the next wrap, I said, “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “About Barry?” Beside me, Beth was moving faster than I was. She already had her Mini’s topknot undone and was brushing through it to straighten and untangle the long strands. “Sure, go ahead.” She glanced down at her watch. “Just as long as you can brush and talk at the same time. That doesn’t have to be perfect, you know.”

  I popped the last rubber band and quickly unrolled the wrappers. The hair was curly from being folded. I spritzed it with water and began to brush. Beth was already fishing around in the tack box for the knitting needle she’d use to make parts for the new, tighter topknot that the bitch would wear in the ring.

  “Do you know Alberta Kennedy?” I asked.

  “Bertie? Sure. I see her around all the time.”

  “She told me she’d had some trouble with Barry.”

  Beth’s brow furrowed. “What kind of trouble?”

  “She called it sexual harassment.”

  “Barry?” She sounded as though she were aiming for outrage, but the act wasn’t very convincing.

  “According to Bertie, she’s not the only one who had a problem.”

  Beth was holding some rubber bands between her lips while her fingers were busy with the hair. Handlers did it all the time, but now she used the fact that her mouth was full as an excuse not to answer.

  “Well?” I said finally.

  “You know Barry,” Beth mumbled.

  “Actually, I didn’t know him. At least, not very well. Why don’t you tell me about him?”

  “He was a pretty simple guy. He figured h
e worked hard, so he was entitled to play just as hard. To him, sex was playing.”

  “I doubt that any of the women he rubbed himself up against in the ring were amused,” I said dryly.

  “He was just trying to have a little fun.”

  I wondered how much Alicia had known about Barry’s propensity for having fun.

  “Why are you defending him?” I asked.

  “Because it wasn’t any big deal,” Beth insisted. “Now that he’s not here to defend himself, people can say all sorts of things. There’s no reason to let it all get blown out of proportion.”

  “Did he ever try anything with you?”

  Beth shrugged. “How’s that bitch coming?”

  “Topknot’s in.”

  Luckily she didn’t bother to look. The bubble over the Mini’s eyes had turned out flat and the whole thing had a serious list to one side. If there’d been time, I’d have redone it. There wasn’t, so I took the can of hair spray Beth held out to me and went on.

  “I’ll tell you something,” she said as we sprayed. “But it’s just between you and me. I don’t want you spreading. it around, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Barry and I . . . we kind of had a fling.”

  Why wasn’t I surprised? “When?”

  “Last winter.”

  “After Alicia had moved in.”

  “Yeah,” Beth admitted. “I guess.”

  I wondered if Beth realized her involvement could be construed as a possible motive for murder. “Didn’t it bother you that Alicia was living with him?”

  “I figured if it didn’t bother him, why should it bother me?”

  “Did he tell you he was going to leave her?”

  “Why would he have done that?”

  This was like walking through deep mud with suction cups on my feet. “Well, since the two of you were having an affair . . .”

  “You thought I might be looking for something more permanent with Barry?” Beth shook her head emphatically. “Believe me, that wasn’t what I was after. Barry wasn’t that big a prize.”

  “Then why were you sleeping with him?”

  “It just kind of happened. You know.”

  No I didn’t, thank goodness. I waited a little, keeping busy with my hair spray. When her Mini was finally looking like it was almost ready, she elaborated.