“What?!!”
Nothing she could have said would have stunned me more. Or been less believable.
“He was married four times!” I said.
“Gay men marry women.”
“Four times,” I repeated.
“Why do you think all those marriages failed?” she asked.
“Because he was a ladies’ man. Anyway, why would Perry Stiles dislike Mitchell because he was gay? Perry is obviously gay.”
“Obviously,” Sandy agreed. “Two reasons: First, Mitchell never came out. Perry doesn’t like men who live in the closet. Second, Mitchell wasn’t attracted to Perry. And Perry never forgave him for that.”
I couldn’t buy Sandy’s story. Mitchell Slater had struck me as one hundred percent straight, granted that I hadn’t known him for long. Could my Gaydar have been that far out of whack? Why would Sandy, who had been married to Mitchell, lie about his sexual preference? There was only one likely answer: revenge.
Mitchell had repeatedly spurned her, after all. And then there was the reality of Matt Koniger, whom Mitchell had never publicly acknowledged as his son. The gay rumor was probably Sandy’s way of punishing Mitchell. But why include Perry in that plan? Unless Sandy had an axe to grind with Perry, too…
I didn’t know Sandy well enough to politely inquire about the legitimacy of her son. So I stated what I’d heard and waited for her response.
“Rumor has it that Mitchell was Matt’s father.”
Her reply was a predictably icy stare. After a long silence, during which I vainly tried to think of ways to change the subject, Sandy said, “Let me guess. Perry told you that.”
“I can’t remember exactly, but, uh, yes, it might have been Perry,” I mumbled. “I haven’t had time to talk to a lot of other people…”
“Other people wouldn’t have told you that,” she said archly.
I assumed she meant because other people had discretion.
“It’s just one more example of Perry’s viciousness,” she said.
“You mean, Matt isn’t Mitchell’s son?”
“For God’s sake, no! His father was my second husband. Everybody knows that!”
I didn’t take the time to censor my next remark. Always a bad idea.
“Then how do you explain the fact that Matt looks just like Mitchell?”
Sandy’s thin, lined face flushed the rosy color of her best-selling snood.
“Can I help it if I have consistent taste in men? I like them tall, blonde, handsome, and straight. My second husband had a lot in common with my first.”
I apologized, but she stalked off before I could finish. I assumed the complimentary snood offer was now null and void.
A voice announced that the judging of Best in Show would begin momentarily. I was confused. When Susan invited Abra and me, she had said that the event ran all weekend long. Yet here we were, mid-afternoon on Saturday, ready to give out the Grand Prize? What was left to compete for tomorrow?
I spotted Brenda Spenser, also on her way to the ring, and asked.
Ms. Perfect Haircut seemed surprised to see me. Or maybe her Botox treatment blunted what was really a look of alarm. She probably feared I might tromp on her Manolo Blahnik again. To reassure her, I took a giant step back.
“The Midwest Afghan Hound Specialty concludes with this round,” she explained pleasantly. “But shows go on all weekend. Tomorrow several area clubs will hold their specialties here-groups from Indianapolis, Toledo, Fort Wayne. Many of our handlers will work those events, too. And some of the dogs you saw today will compete again tomorrow. It depends on which clubs the breeders belong to.”
Brenda excused herself, smiling so sweetly that I felt quite at home. Maybe I’d been wrong-and Sandy had been just plain mean-in assuming that the breeders didn’t like me. True, I didn’t have a clue how dog shows worked. And my Bad Example bitch had run off with a herd of goats. But that didn’t necessarily make me an outcast.
Odette headed toward me, hips wagging. She waved her latest designer bag in the universal sign for “I got money!”
“Peg will be feeling no pain,” she announced.
“Peg’s losing her cat,” I said. “And she’s stuck with that awful tattoo.”
“Peg’s gaining a thousand bucks! Perry’s friend misses that little monster. I’ve already phoned Liam’s second pilot, the one who’s bringing Jeb. He’ll take a slight detour to pick up Yoda, too.”
Odette glanced at her Rolex, a diamond-encrusted model, which I happened to know she had purchased with her latest commission check.
“Liam and I are off to meet with his Chicago people. The next time we speak, Whiskey, I want to hear that you’ve finished looking for Abra, whether you’ve found her or not!”
Odette was the only employee I made a habit of taking orders from. Doing so generally proved profitable.
Now I surveyed the scene around the show ring. Sandy had timed her lunch break well. No one would be buying snoods during the final round of judging. Other vendors had left their booths, too, including the red-haired author of Afghan hound mysteries. Still smiling, the novelist stood with the rest of the crowd. When her eyes briefly met mine, I wondered if she could tell from a distance that I wasn’t a reader.
Spectators had flocked to the ring; at some points they stood two and three people deep. The tall, distinguished judge was in place, like an elder statesman about to preside over matters of national import. I guessed that we were waiting for him to summon the hounds and their handlers. Searching the sidelines for a glimpse of Silverado, I wondered who would be on the other end of his leash.
“I don’t have a hound in this round, but I do have a handler.”
Brenda Spenser had joined me ringside. She winked as if sharing a private joke, which I didn’t get… until the hounds arrived. Stepping lively, Silverado was the third dog to enter the ring, with Matt holding his lead.
I should have known. From our first phone conversation-the one that landed me here-Susan had struck me as a woman who got what she wanted when she wanted it. And she wanted Matt to handle her dog.
As the judge reviewed the finalists, Brenda kept up a chatty commentary about who owned whom, who bred whom, and who won what when. I wanted to pretend to care. Really I did. But the best I could manage was a few vague grunts while my mind wandered as waywardly as my dog.
What had been Liam’s real reason for detouring here en route to Chicago? Was he trying to prove that he loved his wife, or that he had a sexy new business partner? Or did he just enjoy impressing the hoi poloi with the fact that he was rich enough to travel by helicopter?
How much did Liam know about Susan’s kissy-face relationship with Matt? According to Perry, everybody knew about both spouses’ infidelities. The real question was did anybody, Liam and Susan included, care?
I now suspected that the Davies duo were simply exhibitionists. Tiresome ones at that. Everybody they invited into their lives was there for one purpose only: to give them attention.
Like Liam, Kori must have moved on. I couldn’t see Susan, either. But she had to be there somewhere, applauding her dog and her handler, if not also her tidy triumph over Liam and his niece. Frankly, I doubted that Liam cared all that much who handled which dog. He had made it amply clear that he didn’t like dog shows.
Studying Matt standing next to Silverado, I had to agree with Brenda that they looked like winners. In his dark gray suit with his perfect posture and athletic sprint, Matt served only to enhance the sleek dog’s graceful performance.
Brenda was blathering on, no doubt for my enlightenment, about the relationship between handler and hound.
“The handler is there but not there,” she explained. “Like strings on a marionette. The audience can see the strings, but we try not to because they’re not part of the show.”
I was impressed that anyone as handsome as Matt could blend into the background. And yet he ensured that every moment was all about the dog.