Free All Shots by Susan Conant Page A

the revolver was, incredibly, a hostess gift, my father’s notion of an appropriate alternative to a good bottle of wine or a florist-delivered basket of fresh flowers.
    Checking my watch, I saw that we had an hour until malamutes were due in the ring. I’d already had Rowdy and Sammy on the grooming table, so they’d need only a few spritzes of water and a bit of fluffing up with a brush to be ready. Phyllis wouldn’t need more than a few minutes to study the photo and talk to me about it, and I wanted to catch her now, before the malamute judging, in case she had plans for later. I retrieved the photo from my gear bag, where it had been protected by a plastic bag and sheets of cardboard.
    Phyllis and Gabrielle were intent on another glossy print, a show photo of Gabrielle’s bichon, Molly. Surrounded by the elements of the show scene, their gazes fixed on the picture of the bichon, their heads bent at the same angle, they made such an appealing picture that I wished that I had a camera handy. Their hair, I noticed, was almost the same shade of blond. Phyllis’s was a bit shorter than Gabrielle’s, but the similarity of coloring and their identical poses made them look like sisters. I wished I could the capture the image and hated to interrupt.
    Fortunately, I didn’t need to. Spotting the print in my hand, Gabrielle said, “You finally have new pictures for me!”
    “I do at home,” I said. “But this is one I want Phyllis’s opinion about. It’s a blue malamute.”
    Why in Buck’s presence was I stupid enough to say that I wanted someone else’s opinion of a dog? Won’t I ever learn? Before Phyllis had a chance to take the photo from my hand, Buck seized it and, worse, held it so that no one else could see it at all.
    “Blue,” he said. “You got that right.”
    “Is your name Phyllis Hamilton?” I demanded.
    “Of course that’s her name,” said Buck, whose misunderstanding was, I felt certain, deliberate and controlling. “You’ve known Phyllis for years. Holly, are you all right?”
    “Buck,” said Gabrielle, “others would like to look, too.”
    “Dilute seal,” said my father. “A bitch.”
    If I’d had a second copy of the photo with me, I’d have risked tearing this one by snatching it back. As it was, I left matters to Gabrielle, who reached up, plucked the picture from Buck’s hand, gave it to Phyllis, and said to my father, “What an odd color! Blue? Is that what you call it?”
    A professional handler hired to manage Buck couldn’t have done better. My father took Gabrielle’s bait and began to lecture her about coat color in the Alaskan malamute and the genetics of coat color in dogs. As he went on about sable, mahogany sable, red, black, and Alaskan seal, not to mention gray, wolf gray, dark wolf gray, all white, and tricolor, for example, and then about pigmentation, alleles, homozygosity, modifiers, and the recessive d, I said softly to Phyllis, “What can you tell me about her?” I did not, I might mention, apologize for Buck’s behavior, nor did I sigh, roll my eyes, or say that although the notion that a wife should have to manage her husband was abhorrent to me, I still felt unbounded gratitude to my stepmother for doing just that.
    “How old is she?” asked Phyllis, meaning, of course, the blue malamute and not Gabrielle.
    “I have no idea. I’m guessing four or five. Not old, I guess. But what do you think?”
    Phyllis nodded. “Mature. Not a puppy.”
    “I really don’t know a thing about her. All I have is this picture.” I lowered my voice to the softest whisper. “A cop gave it to me. I don’t want to talk about that in front of Buck.” At normal volume, I said, “I don’t think she’s from your lines. Her ears look a little big. Not gigantic, but bigger than in your dogs. And I’d expect more facial markings. But I could be wrong.”
    “No, you’re right,” Phyllis said. “And she is a dilute seal and white, but she’s not from my