Several people moved in to comfort-or stop- Sandy, and soon I couldn’t see her at all.
Watching the handlers lead their dogs from the ring, I realized that Matt was not the only casualty of this round. Silverado, best in show, was gone. I hadn’t seen him when the lights first came up, and I couldn’t see him now. The dog had vanished.
Had Susan even noticed? When Silverado charged out the side door earlier in the day, she had freaked. But that had no doubt been to highlight Kori’s incompetence. As Perry had suggested, the gaffe was surely a set-up intended to make Liam’s niece look bad.
This scene differed in every detail. First and foremost, it appeared to be murder. Susan would look shallow indeed if she showed as much concern for a missing hound as for a mortally wounded handler.
I couldn’t imagine who or what had taken Matt down. It was unthinkable that one of his fellow competitors would kill him at close range. There was not only the logistical problem of shooting, stabbing, or bludgeoning to death a man running in the dark; there was also that longstanding AKC tradition of sportsmanship. At least inside the ring.
Yet the handler of the best dog in show was down, presumably dead or dying. And the winning dog was gone. Sirens grew louder as, once again, emergency vehicles converged on the Barnyard Inn.
The Two L’s stood nearby, identically pale and drawn. Although they paid no attention to me, I heard Lauren tell Lindsey, “Thank god Susan never hires us.”
Whoever took the dog had probably killed Matt. But what came first: the plan to steal the dog, or the plan to kill Matt? In other words, which was the primary crime? I was sure, without quite knowing why, that one was the motive and the other a consequence. Or a side effect.
EMTs dashed into the ring, dissolving the clot of bystanders. I glimpsed Matt-still in the same sprawled position-with Susan kneeling to his right and Sandy standing to his left.
What had happened here? I replayed my mental snapshot of the side door opening to reveal a large man in silhouette. There was no dog in that picture. Unless… the man had been carrying the dog. Mature male Afghan hounds like Silverado weigh about 70 pounds. The man in my memory was large enough to carry such a load. Who could he be, and why would he kill Matt? Or maybe his goal was to take the dog, and Matt’s death was collateral damage. Had Matt made the fatal mistake of trying to save Silverado?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There was no point watching the EMTs. I was quite sure that this time they wouldn’t be able to work their medical magic. And I desperately needed a breath of fresh air. My sour stomach had returned with a vengeance that I couldn’t blame on the concession stand.
Across the ring, I spotted the red-haired writer furiously jotting notes on a pad. Either she doubled as a local newspaper reporter, or she was harvesting material for a future novel. Odette had said she wrote humorous mysteries. How the hell do you make murder amusing?
I chose to exit via the side door, not only because it was closer, but also because I was curious about the man whom I’d glimpsed using it. Would I find any trace of him? Or Silverado?
What I did find when I pushed open the heavy metal door was my undercover bodyguard. Down on all fours.
“Did you lose a contact lens?” I said.
With surprising agility, he sprang upright.
“No. But I found this.”
I didn’t at first understand the significance of what he showed me. Or even recognize what it was. MacArthur waited as I studied the tiny item resting in the broad palm of his hand.
“It’s a bristle from a pin brush, isn’t it?” I said. “The kind a groomer uses.”
“Or a handler,” MacArthur said.
“You know about Matt?” I asked. When he nodded, I said, “We should have assigned you to him and his dad instead of to Susan, Ramona, and me.”
Then I considered that Ramona had been shot, too, and Susan had lost her prize pooch. All in all, MacArthur was making a hash of his job this weekend, even if he was doing it for free. Maybe he was distracted.
“Seen Kori lately?” I asked.
“She’s in her room, packing to leave,” he replied.
“And you know that because…?”
“Deely and Dr. David said so. Fleggers are protesting in the parking lot. They said Kori stopped to make a donation before going to her room.”
I told MacArthur what I’d seen inside the exhibit hall from the moment the lights banged down. When I got to the part about seeing a large man silhouetted in the doorway, I stopped.
“When were you last inside?”
“About thirty minutes ago,” he said. “I watched Liam Davies confer with his wife in a storage area next to the concession stand. They both became a bit agitated, so I stayed close by. Then she went her way, and he went his. I followed him and Odette out to the helicopter and saw them leave. So I missed the final round.”
MacArthur’s size made him a perfect match, at least in silhouette, to the man I’d seen. Why would he lie? Unless he was trying to protect someone. But his job was to protect Susan, Ramona, and me.
“I saw a man leave through the side door. And now Silverado is gone.” I pointed to the pin brush bristle still resting in MacArthur’s palm. “Do you think that means anything?”
“It means something. The question is what. Most likely, at this spot, one of three things happened: someone was grooming a dog, or a dog shook off a bristle caught in his coat, or a human shook off a bristle caught in his or her clothes. I’ve been studying this area closely, and I’m certain that bristle wasn’t here an hour ago.”
I wanted to believe everything MacArthur said. After all, when he wasn’t being a bodyguard or cleaner, he supposedly worked for me. Or he would work for me once the real estate market rebounded. Meanwhile, he lived with my surly stepdaughter and her adorable twins. Although I could understand him cheating on Avery, I was concerned about the ramifications for my grandbabies. Would they soon be back at Vestige with me? Catching MacArthur kissing Kori made me question his fidelity. Seeing people die, and a canine champion go missing, made me question his skills.
“Incoming!” MacArthur shouted over the roar of another approaching helicopter.
“It’s Jeb this time!” I said. “Coming to help me find Abra!”
MacArthur nodded before I finished as if he knew more than I did. He motioned for us to go meet the chopper. Jogging behind him, I wondered how much he really knew about Silverado, Matt, Mitchell Slater, and Ramona. MacArthur’s fundamentally mysterious nature made him either a sexy bad boy or a scary bad boy.
By now Fleggers had expanded their protest from the makeshift stage to a circuit of the entire parking lot. Some carried signs. Others marched and shouted. The theme was more or less consistent although the chants varied: “Dogs deserve a full life, too!” “Let your dog be as free as you and me!” “Animals are natural beauties! Boycott dog shows now!”
For just an instant I wondered if Silverado had succumbed to this propaganda and excused himself from the ring. Who was I kidding? He was a good dog; Abra was the rebel hellion.
The protesters scattered as the second helicopter descended thunderously into the parking lot. MacArthur pointed to Dr. David and then jogged off in that direction; I assumed he was going to ask the good vet if he’d seen anything helpful.
When the helicopter door opened, the first person out was not my ex-husband but my next-door neighbor Chester, who ducked dramatically as he debarked. That amused me. At four feet tall, Chester was hardly endangered by the churning blades. Then I saw the real reason for his hunched posture: the poor child was toting both a duffel bag and a large plastic case.
Involuntarily my heart lifted when I spotted Jeb. He still moved in the loose, youthful way of that boy I’d fallen in love with back in high school. He had less hair now, but not from this distance. From here, he might as well have been seventeen again because that was how young and hopeful he made me feel. Time to remind myself of our long, bumpy history: heartbreak, disappointment, divorce. How could I possibly be tempted again? And yet I was…