When I finally reached the show ground, the dog show was in progress, business as usual. The grooming tent and rings were full, as was the exhibitors’ parking. Only the spectators seemed to have stayed away in droves. There were limits, apparently, to what the paying public would put up with.
Regretfully I left the dry haven of my car and slogged through the mud to the grooming tent. There Aunt Peg was holding court, describing an argument she’d had with the superintendent at Westminster that February over her benching assignment. She’d decided to say nothing for the time being about Beau’s disappearance in the hope that the matter might be brought to a quick and quiet resolution. She’d muttered something about the American Kennel Club and proof of parentage, and since I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was talking about, there was nothing I could do but agree. According to Aunt Peg, the dog-show grapevine operated with an efficiency the Pentagon might have envied, but for now her secret seemed safe.
I skirted around her audience and introduced myself to a woman who was brushing out a bushy black Standard Poodle puppy.
“Mildred Davis,” she said, holding out one hand while the other continued to brush, uninterrupted. She was a short, stocky woman who looked like she’d brook no nonsense from dogs or people. Her brown hair was sprinkled with gray, and her skin had the tough, weathered look of too many summers spent in the sun.
I got right to it and delivered my pitch.
“I might be able to help you,” she said at the end. “I have this puppy’s sire at home. His name is Champion Blackwatch Pendragon. He’s young and just beginning his stud career, but I have very high hopes for him.”
That sounded promising. Beau was just beginning his stud career, too, somewhere. I tried to remember all the questions Aunt Peg had coached me to ask.
“I’m looking for a dog with a good front. And one that’s sound, coming and going.”
“That’s Dragon all right. Here let me give you my card.” Mildred dug down into her overflowing tack box and came up with a slightly soiled scrap of paper. “Give me a call. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”
“I’ll definitely be in touch,” I said, tucking the card safely away. Rain and mud forgotten, I found myself grinning as I continued down the aisle. Finally someone had actually nibbled at the bait.
I spent several minutes talking to a man with a Mini who said he had some Standards at home, until I discovered that he, like many of the others, kept only bitches. A woman grooming a small bitch was very interested until I told her I was looking for a large dog with a good coat, then she shrugged her shoulders and I drifted away.
Aunt Peg, I saw, now had her Poodle up on her feet. She was scissoring the bitch’s bracelets and talking to a dapper-looking gray-haired man. He was dressed in an elegant tweed suit, crisp cotton shirt, and a silk rep tie. His only concessions to the storm that raged around him were the rubber boots on his feet and the Burberry raincoat he’d draped casually over his arm.
A patch of color caught my eye, and I realized there was a small green ribbon affixed to his lapel, identifying him as a judge.
A judge? Under the exhibitors’ tent?
I wasn’t the only one who was staring. Crawford Langley was frowning; Randall Tarnower, shaking his head. The heavyset woman I’d met the week before looked openly envious.
What was that all about? I wondered. Now I had two things to discuss with Aunt Peg later.
Twelve
When judging time came, I wove a circuitous route through the grooming tables and crates to the edge of the tent nearest the rings. They were partially covered by a tent of their own, so braving the elements was only a matter of dashing across the forty-foot expanse in between.
I flipped up my hood and was steeling myself for the drenching bath to follow when someone came up beside me. “Excuse me, if you’re on your way to the other tent, do you think you could give me a hand?”
The voice rang a bell. When I turned to look, the startlingly blue eyes completed the picture. I lifted my head and the hood fell back.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
No beating around the bush with this man. Sam Driver looked past me and around the tent. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he was looking for someone else—anyone else—from whom to solicit aid. Finally his gaze returned to me.
“I need to get her over to the ring dry,” he said.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
It wasn’t me, I decided. It was them. These dog people were crazy. Anyone could see that on a day like this, the chances of keeping a dog dry were slim and none. Especially since as soon as the judging started, the Poodles would be sent out from under the tent to gait around the ring in the rain. What was the difference whether they got wet now or later?
“Look,” said Sam, sounding a trifle desperate. “I know she’ll get soaked eventually, but at least I can make a good first impression. Every other Poodle in the Open Bitch class is going to walk into that ring dry, and I’m damned if Casey will be the only one who looks like a drowned rat. I forgot my umbrella, or I could probably manage on my own. Now do you think you can help me or not?”
“I guess so,” I said, grinning. Somehow the sight of a man in distress always cheers me up. “What do you want me to do?”
Quickly Driver shed his slicker. “If you take one side while I get the other, we should be able to hold it over her while we run across. Okay?”
Wordless, I nodded. Under the coat he was wearing a tight polo shirt that stretched smoothly across a well-muscled chest. It was tucked into a pair of khakis that hugged his trim hips and defined the contours of a molded bottom. Even an objective observer had to admit that when it came to admirable attributes, Sam Driver wasn’t entirely lacking.
He shoved the edge of the coat into my hands. “Ready?”
“All set.”
Casey was a compact black Poodle who greeted this new game the humans had thought up with a devilish expression and a wagging tail. She waited patiently while I positioned myself on Sam’s right side. At his signal, the three of us dashed together across the expanse of muddy field and scooted under the flap of the other tent.
Too late I realized that I’d forgotten to flip my hood back up. My hair hung in limp strands around my head; rivulets of water gathered at the tips to flow down the front of my jacket and onto my pants. As Sam bent down to check Casey’s condition, I devoted myself to making amends. I wiped the water off my face and ran my fingers through my hair. It all did about as much good as solar energy in an Alaskan winter.
Sam finished with the Poodle and looked up at me. I must have flunked the inspection because he fished Casey’s metal comb out of his pocket and handed it over. As I ran it through my hair, he shook out his slicker and put it back on.
“Thanks for the help.” Sam’s grip tightened on Casey’s lead as he led her away into the crowd.
I stood there staring after him for a long moment. It wasn’t until the next set of exhibitors making the tent-to-tent run jostled me aside that I realized I still had his comb. He would need it in the ring, I knew. Especially on a day like this, the primping never stopped, even while the dog was being judged.
I pushed through the crowds that had gathered in the dry center aisle until I found the ring where the Poodle judging was already in progress. Sam was standing by the in-gate, adjusting his armband as the steward called out his number to enter the ring.
“Wait!” I called.
He turned to look, and I tossed the comb to him. Sam snatched it out of the air, flashed a smile, then hurried Casey into the lineup. They won the Open Class handily, and also went on to take the points. Idly, I hung around and watched as the photographer was called for and the win pictures taken.
“See what I mean?” asked Aunt Peg, materializing at my side. Her bitch, who had gone Reserve, danced around us, a felt squeaky toy clutched between her teeth.
“What?” Nobody seemed to be paying the slightest
bit of attention to us, so I figured it was safe to talk.
“The man is a dreamboat. Now if I were twenty years younger. . .”
“If you were twenty years younger, you’d still be married to Max.”
“Spoilsport.”
I knew full well what Aunt Peg was doing. She wasn’t wishing for herself; she was trying to tempt me. But though Sam Driver might be the sort of man that dreams were made of, it wasn’t going to work. I’d put my dreams away when my marriage ended. I had no intention of resurrecting them now.
When I looked around again, Aunt Peg was gone. I probably should have left as well, but the thought of sloshing back through the rain and mud held little appeal. When the man whose Poodle had won Winners Dog went marching angrily over to the steward’s table in the corner of the ring, I was just as pleased to wait and see what would happen next.
I missed the first thing he said to the steward and took that as a clear indication that I needed to move closer. As I inched in along the rail, the judge finished with her pictures and headed back toward the table. Obviously she was experienced with inclement weather, for she was encased in clear plastic from head to toe. The steward intercepted her as she drew near. He whispered something, and she nodded. She gathered together her judge’s book and her other belongings, then turned to face the irate exhibitor.
“This dog needs only a major to finish,” he said.
“So you told me. In the ring.”
From the tone of her voice, I gathered that was something that wasn’t done.
“The major was in bitches.”
“I can count as well as you can, sir.”
“If you could,” the man said rudely. “You would have put him Best Of Winners.”
Sharing the points, it was called. I knew all about it thanks to Aunt Peg’s explanations. While both Winners Dog and Winners Bitch were awarded points, the number varied according to how many dogs of their sex each defeated. It was possible, and often happened, that one sex had only enough entrants for one point while the other might provide two or three. During the course of the Best Of Variety judging, either the Winners Dog or the Winners Bitch was chosen as Best Of Winners. That dog then received the higher number of points awarded on the day, whether they came from his sex or not.
Further complicating the issue was the fact that in the course of compiling fifteen points to secure a championship, each dog had to win at least two “majors.” Major wins were those consisting of at least three points, which meant that a sizable amount of competition had to be present. Majors were often hard to find and always hard to win. According to today’s catalogue, there’d been two Standard Poodle dogs entered, and thirteen bitches. I gathered this exhibitor thought today’s major in bitches should have been his as well.
The man leaned over the knee-high railing. Clearly his posture was meant to be intimidating. “This dog,” he snapped, “was Winners Dog at a specialty last week. That judge knew what he was doing.”
“That judge,” the woman said calmly, “perhaps saw something deserving in your dog that I did not. The bitch beat him on merit—”
“The bitch already had the major!”
“I can’t help that.” The judge picked up her things, shouldered past the man, out of the ring, and kept right on going. Good for her, I thought.
“Shit.”
The man was still standing there, staring after her. I scanned his armband and looked up the number in the catalogue. Will Perkins, it said. He hadn’t been entered at the show I’d gone to the weekend before, or at least I hadn’t seen him. As to his Poodles, he obviously kept males; there was one on the end of his leash now.
“Got a minute?” I asked.
Perkins’s laugh held no humor at all. “Sure,” he said. “What’s one more minute? All I have to do is take Bravo back to the setup, break down his coat, wrap his ears, load my car, and drive the hundred miles home. How long could that possibly take? Especially if you don’t count the fact that with all the rain that got in his coat today, I’ll pretty much have to bathe him the minute I get home. Then blowing dry, that’s another three hours or so, even if I don’t put him back in oil. But hey, what’s another minute?”
I talked fast, whether for his sake or my own, I wasn’t sure. In no time at all I managed to ascertain that Perkins owned several other stud dogs besides the Poodle he’d brought to the show. He tore the back page out of my catalogue and wrote in a looping scrawl his name, address, phone number, and the names of his other dogs.
As he handed it back, he asked, “When do you expect your bitch to come in?”
“Come in what?”
Perkins snorted. “In season. When do you think she might be ready to breed?”
That was a new question. How the hell was I supposed to know when a nonexistent bitch might be ready for breeding? First the Poodle needed a pedigree. Now it seemed she needed a due date. Hoping bitches ran true to female form, I said, “I’m not really sure. She’s not terribly regular. It should be sometime soon, though.”
“Well, let me know when the time comes. Or before, if you want to see the dogs.”
From there I walked over to the food stand where I bought a tepid hot dog on a soggy bun. The grooming tent was emptying fast as breed after breed finished for the day and the rain continued to pour down. I looked around for Aunt Peg, but she had already packed up and left. Cold, wet, and tired, I decided to follow suit.
As I slogged back across the field to my car, I remembered the crumpled card in my pocket. The sliver of paper was damp and somewhat the worse for wear, but still legible nonetheless. Finally I had two real leads to follow up. Aunt Peg would have to be pleased by that.
Figuring it was just as easy to be warm and dry at her house as at mine, I drove straight there from the show. Aunt Peg answered the door wrapped in a thick terry cloth robe, having just emerged from a hot shower.
She looked cozy and comfortable and restored, which was everything I was not. I sighed as she directed me to the middle of the kitchen floor so that I could drip on the linoleum rather than her rugs. With some show of heart, she heated up a pot of tea. Not quite the black coffee I’d been hoping for, but it was warming, which was something.
“I have great news,” I announced, wrapping my frigid fingers around the mug.
Aunt Peg cocked a brow and calmly took a sip from her steaming cup.
“I met a woman named Mildred Davis. She has a young stud dog named Champion Blackwatch Pendragon and—”
“He won’t do,” Aunt Peg said with infuriating certainty. “What else have you got?”
“What do you mean he won’t do? I haven’t even told you anything about him yet. The dog’s new at stud and she seemed very anxious to get him bred. How can you possibly say he won’t do?”
This time Aunt Peg let me finish, but she stood there shaking her head throughout. “Didn’t she tell you that the dog is white?”
“White?” I stared at her stupidly. “He can’t be. I saw one of his puppies at the show and it was black. And his name is Blackwatch . . .”
Aunt Peg was still shaking her head. “I’ve seen the dog, last year when he was being shown. He most definitely is a white dog. Blackwatch is the name of the kennel, like Cedar Crest is mine. It has nothing at all to do with the dog’s color.”
“Even with a black puppy?” I protested weakly.
“Sorry, but that doesn’t mean a thing. White dogs sire black puppies all the time. I don’t mix between the colors, but many breeders do. Do you know anything about genetics?”
“I majored in English.”
“Dominant and recessive genes?”
“Like Mendel?”
“Good for you.” Aunt Peg nodded. “This is going to be an oversimplified view, but color breeding is all a matter of dominant and recessive genes. Black is the dominant color in Poodles, so that any dog who carries the black gene shows it. That is to say, he’s black.
“But a black Poodle might carry any number of recessive
color genes—cream, blue, brown, or even the rarer colors, silver and apricot. All of those colors can be produced by a black Poodle providing he carries the appropriate gene and is bred to a bitch who does also. So you see, the breeding of a white dog and a black bitch could very easily have produced the puppy you saw today.”
“I guess so.” It wasn’t that I wasn’t convinced, only that it was disheartening to realize that once again I’d come up empty.
“What about the man who went Winners Dog? I saw you talking to him. Will Perkins, wasn’t it?”
“Do you know him?”
Aunt Peg waved a hand. “Poodle breeders and exhibitors are actually a pretty small family. I don’t know everybody, but I know who most people are. Will’s from upstate New York, I believe.”
“Chatham.” I pulled out the crumpled page I’d torn from the back of my catalogue.
“I don’t know another thing about him except that he’s shown some rather nice Poodles. What else did he tell you?”
“He’s got a bunch of stud dogs, and I’ve been invited to go have a look.”
“What’s their breeding?”
“Dover and Regency lines,” I read from the paper.
Aunt Peg looked thoughtful, “Those are both compatible with Beau’s breeding. I don’t see any reason why Beau couldn’t be passed off as a Regency dog. It seems Will Perkins might definitely merit a closer look.”
“Really?” I’d been brushed off so many times it took a moment to digest the fact that I’d actually found something of value.
“Why not? You didn’t think we were going to keep running around in circles forever, did you?”
I didn’t dare tell her that was exactly what I was beginning to think, so instead I changed the subject. “Who was that man I saw you talking to?” I asked. “The one wearing the judge’s badge.”
“Oh that was Carl Holden.” Aunt Peg smiled. “He sent me a note when Max died, but he wanted to come by and offer his condolences in person.”
“Everybody was staring at the two of you. Is the judge allowed to come and talk to the exhibitors like that?”
A Pedigree to Die For Page 9
