Free two vintage holly winter stories by Susan Conant

 
    Murder in Ring 19
     
     
    Change in obedience judge," the sign read. "Mrs. Annette Cormier will replace Mr. A. J. Nelson in Open A." A. J. Nelson, a paragon of fairness and friendliness, always drew a big entry. Annette Cormier seldom had the chance to draw any at all. Judge Leo Cormier had a good reputation, but his wife was so unpopular that only the most desperate clubs ever hired her. I swore.
    Dog shows are my heaven. If I arrive at the pearly gates to steward for St. Peter and find that he's been replaced by Beelzebub, I'll probably curse there, too. If I'm let in anyway, I'll at least know my way around. Of the twenty celestial rings, only four will be devoted to obedience, and all four will be on the far side of paradise, as were the earthly ones inside the Bayside Expo Center.
    Opposite rings 19 and 20 stood a megadisplay of texturizing, concentrated, brightening, whitening, tearless, conditioning, antistatic, medicated, nondrying, tangle-fighting, hypoallergenic, anti-itch, protein-enhanced, organic, deodorizing, everything-scented, and fragrance-free shampoos, all stacked next to row after row of foggers, collars, dips, powders, and aerosol and nonaerosol sprays guaranteed to do in fleas for twenty-eight days (ticks for twenty-one) on your dog or in your yard, kennel, carpets, or your entire house, to prevent hatching and to give a quick kill, too.
    In ring 20, Mr. Cormier, who looked like a handsome, ruddy-cheeked mastiff, was conferring with an official. In ring 19, Mrs. Cormier was conferring with herself. She paced sourly back and forth, combing her fingers through her cap of short, dark hair.
    The obedience table ran along one side of ring 19. The breed club sponsoring the show and trial always had trouble recruiting members to steward in obedience, so the Cambridge Dog Training Club had loaned me out. I introduced myself to the chief steward, a dapper little guy who was handing out catalogs and royal blue stewards' badges. "Holly Winter," I said. "What happened to Mr. Nelson?"
    "Perforated ulcer." The chief steward shook his head sadly. "Last night." As he led two other stewards and me to ring 19, he told us at least three times how fortunate it was that Mrs. Cormier had graciously agreed to step in at the last minute. I can take a hint. No matter what our judge did, he expected his stewards to be good sports.
    Before we'd even entered the ring, Mrs. Cormier was swooping toward us and proclaiming loudly, "You're late! How am I supposed to instruct my stewards if they're late?"
    It was 8:30, exactly when we were due in her ring—a half-hour before the start of judging and, if I remembered the regulations correctly, the deadline for Open A exhibitors unsatisfied with the substitute judge to withdraw and have their entry fees refunded. "And," she went on, "I'll bet not one of you knows the first thing about obedience."
    No one corrected her. The other stewards were Nancy What's-her-name—the one with the long brown hair whose sheltie made it to the Gaines Regional last year—and Happy Green. She's that big, tall white-haired woman with Labs—you see her in Utility all the time. A. J. Nelson or Mr. Cormier would've recognized us and probably asked after our dogs, too. Mrs. Cormier, having NQ'd us in advance, gripped her clipboard in both hands and lectured us about the role of the steward in obedience, which, as we all knew, is to help the judge, not to advise. Then she put Nancy on the gate. As ring stewards, Happy and I would be spared the worst of the grumbling I expected from handlers forced to choose between forfeiting their fees and showing under an unpopular substitute judge.
    A few minutes later, a relief steward came to announce that four Open A dogs, including the first two, had been withdrawn. Nancy, who'd been checking in handlers and distributing armbands, drew X's through the first two numbers on the poster by the gate and looked around for the first dog, the original third. "Number eight?"