two vintage holly winter stories by Susan Conant

Author:Susan Conant
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 1996-11-14T08:00:00+00:00

Solution: Murder Well-groomed

Show people are fanatics about the accurate representation of breeds and about the safety of toys. Could the sale of shoddy dog merchandise have kept Bud in business? Never. And would Farrell, who had already visited the Cherrybrook tent, have bought overpriced grooming powder from Bud? Of course not. The organization that employed both Bud and Farrell (remember? conspiracy and narcotics trafficking?) took advantage of the cover offered by dog shows. As a concessionaire, Bud could travel from show to show on a predictable schedule to distribute his white powder to a few select customers. When Farrell became a threat to their organization, which was not eager to have him chat with the FBI, Bud followed orders to supply a deadly substitute for grooming powder. The layer of cocaine at the top of the canister was pure—uncut and thus fatal. I guess you could say that John Richard Farrell really died by his own nose.

The FBI is obviously and regrettably not run by real dog people—hobby, indeed—but it didn't take a dog person to realize that Farrell might turn up at a show. The clean-cut young men, though, turned out to be handlers after all. Their shepherd had no difficulty identifying Bud as the source of the cocaine and thus as Farrell's murderer. I tried to corroborate the shepherd's testimony by explaining that I'd seen Bud sell the canister to Farrell, but the FBI agents didn't seem to put much faith in the statement of a human (and thus fallible) witness. Quite correctly, they trusted only their dog.

Like other breeders, Pam should screen her buyers, but don't you think that culling her human mistakes would have been a bit extreme? And the AKC rep was outraged to discover that criminal activities had been taking place on the grounds of shows, but the only murder weapon he ever contemplated using was the permanent suspension of privileges. Mr. Pastern, the Koehler disciple? One of Koehler's principal justifications for rough dog training methods was that any problem creature has a moral right to rehabilitation. Mr. Pastern might have strung Farrell up, but he wouldn’t have killed him.

By the way, the mal from Tiny’s lines was OFA Excellent; the supposed hip dysplasia originated in the vicious imagination of a jealous gossip who lied to Pam. Also, in case you wondered, real show people never suspected what Bud was actually selling because, of course, the heaviest drugs in common use in purebred dogdom are Nemex-2 and Panacur, and the only time we snort is when fools of judges put up the wrong dogs, which is to say, not ours.

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