Black Ribbon

by Susan Conant

Genres: Animals; Amateur Sleuth; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

“[Susan] Conant might be the dog lovers’ answer to Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who series.”—Rocky Mountain News

Canine-loving detective Holly Winter is a columnist for Dog’s Life magazine. She thinks a week at Waggin’ Tail, a camp for canines in the scenic Maine woods, will be a vacation in pet heaven. So does Rowdy, her champion malamute—especially when there are pooches galore: mixed breeds, Pekes, cairn terriers, Labradors, shelties, and a gorgeous mastiff pup. But upon Holly’s arrival at the camp, things swiftly go to the dogs. Instead of the advertised gourmet food, there’s olive loaf and soggy pudding. The human campers are given to nasty back-stabbing. And Holly receives a black-edged card consoling her for the loss of her dog. Is this someone’s sick idea of a joke?

Suddenly Waggin’ Tail seems like the summer camp from hell. Then a dog owner turns up dead in a freak accident. The probable cause? The victim’s own dog! Holly suspects a four-footed frame-up and with Rowdy sets out to find the real culprit. She’s on the scent and closing fast—which makes her the perfect target for a killer whose bite is definitely worse than his bark.

Release date: January 5, 2011

Publisher: Crimeline

Print pages: 288

Sample

CONSIDER THE ETERNAL QUEST for Order.
 
Loyal Order of Moose, Fraternal Order of Eagles, Patriotic and Protective Order of Stags, Order of the Blue Goose, Ancient Order of Foresters, Modern Woodmen of America, Knights of Pythias, Tall Cedars of Lebanon, Order of DeMolay, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Knights of Malta, Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Constellation of Junior Stars, Red Cross of Constantine, Supreme Conclave True Kindred, Grand Order of Galilian Fishermen, Mystic Order of Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm …
 
Or so it once was. No longer the Loyal and multitudinous Order of yesteryear, Moose International, Inc., recently substituted bright-colored blazers for the traditional black satin cape. No more tah, either; no more backward spelling at all. Modernization is paying off: 168,000 new Moose last year. Progress. Or so the poor Moose suppose. Total membership; 1.27 million. Pitiful. Masons: 4.1 million in 1959. Today? 2.5 million. Elks, too. Eagles. Decline, decline. Thus falters the quest for Order: The Lodge dislodges; the fez falls apart; the conclave cannot hold. Snippets of rite drift from the aeries where Eagles soared. Bits of regalia lie scattered where once roamed droves of Patriotic and Protective Stags. Tall Cedars of Lebanon petrify to dead wood.
 
But hark! Is that a yelp I hear? A yip, a ruff, a bold, resounding woo-woo-woo? It is all these things and more. Read the numbers: in the United States of America, 54 million dogs, 2.5 million Masons, thus 21.6 dogs for every Mason; and 4.1 million Masons in 1959, peak membership, but only 2.5 million Masons today, 1.6 million fewer members. And remember that number, because American Kennel Club individual dog registrations last year alone equaled exactly 1,528,392, a figure that rounds off to … Well, work it out for yourselves! Indeed! For every member lost to Freemasonry since 1959, the American Kennel Club has registered a new canine in the past year alone. Out of order, chaos; and out of chaos, the Ancient, Benevolent, and Protective Order of Mystic Stalwarts of the Highborn Pooch.
 
“Boy, oh, boy,” said my editor, “do you ever need a vacation.”
 
Any editor who phones at seven A.M. deserves a brush-off. But a dog writer’s editor? Sorry, but if you can’t endure the ordeal-by-pun, you don’t belong in dogs, the land of Lixit waterers, Rebark booties, Pupsicle frozen beef treats, and antiparasitics with brand names so gut-wrenching that you don’t even need to shove the products down Fido’s throat, but can just catch his eye and holler: Erliworm! Panacur! Evict! or Good Riddance!
 
“And the other organizations are even worse off!” I exclaimed into the phone. “Thirty-six dogs per Elk, and the Moose are really trying hard, but you’ve got to feel sorry for them, because for them, it’s—”
 
Bonnie groaned. “The camp is called Waggin’ Tail,” she said. “It’s in Maine.” She paused. “Vacationland,” she added significantly.
 
“I grew up there,” I reminded her.
 
“On the coast. This is in Rangeley. Doesn’t your grandmother …?”
 
“She’s in Bethel. It’s nearby.”
 
“There. You see? The cool north woods of home. And, Holly? Maxine McGuire has mortgaged her soul to get this thing going. You will love it.” Bonnie was instructing, not predicting. “And your dogs will love it even more than you will. That’s very, very important. They’ll adore every second. Focus on the dogs. Their reactions, their quirks, their experience. You’re in the picture, but you’re in the background.”
 
Teaching your grandam to suck rawhide.
 
Bonnie persisted. “Max is sending you the preregistration packet. Camp’s the last week in August. I want the article as soon as possible after camp ends. Compris?”
 
“ ‘How We Spent Our Summer Vacation in Dog Heaven.’ ”
 
“Wonderful! There you go. And I also need something very, very positive about …” Bonnie’s voice faded.
 
“I can’t hear you.”
 
“AKC!” she shouted. For those of you new to the fancy, I should explain. AKC: Antiquated Kennel Club. “Write me something about AKC. About shows?”
 
Bonnie is a good editor. If there’s one thing that AKC does splendidly, it’s a dog show. The American Kennel Club itself does not hold shows; it approves them. Clubs run shows—kennel clubs, national breed clubs, obedience clubs—1,169 all-breed shows, 1,729 specialty shows, and 405 obedience trials last year alone, and if I were a few hundred people instead of just one, I’d have attended every all-breed show, every specialty, and every trial in the country, and I’d have had fun at every one. Have I lost you? Specialty: a single-breed dog show, limited to Siberian huskies, Pulik, German shepherd dogs, whatever. Preferably, from my point of view, Alaskan malamutes.
 
“Sure,” I told Bonnie. “Anything you want except one more article on the search for a new president. That one’s been done to death.”
 
“Do me a nice hands-on, how-to piece,” Bonnie said.
 
“How to Amateur-Handle Your Dog to Best of Breed at Westminster.” Short article. Entire text: Don’t. Hire a professional.
 
Bonnie added a thought. “Something about judges. Etiquette for exhibitors. Making the judge’s job easy. Do’s and Don’t’s. You have the guidelines?”
 
In what may at first seem like a digression, let me point out that in conventional Masonry, G stands for God and Geometry. In the fancy, it means Guidelines: “Guidelines for Dog Show Judges” and “Guidelines for Obedience Judges.” R is also sacred to us: “Rules Applying to Dog Shows,” “Rules Applying to Registration and Discipline,” “Obedience Regulations,” single copies of which used to be free, sort of like Gideon Bibles, but now cost a dollar apiece. Before long, the Gideons’ll start tacking a nominal rental fee onto motel rates. Anyway, in Masonry, G refers to God’s compass, and in our order, it refers to Guidelines, which is to say that in both orders, G, the last letter in you-know-what, defines the limits of good and evil. Have I lost you? Well, the Moose may have discarded the tah, but in the fancy, we’re as backward as ever.
 
The promised preregistration packet arrived a week after Bonnie’s call, on a July day when the sun burning over Cambridge, Massachusetts, was as red as the letters that spelled out the camp name and motto on the big white envelope:
 
WAGGIN’ TAIL
Where All the Dogs Are Happy Campers
And All the Owners “Ruff It In Luxury”!
 
Torn open and upended on my kitchen table, the thick envelope yielded one color-glossy promotional brochure for Waggin’ Tail Camp and dozens of photocopied pages that I spread out and sorted through. The brochure, a slick professional product, displayed several appealing photographs: one of a sunset reflected in a sapphire blue lake; one of a gigantic log cabin with miniature clone-cabins arrayed on either side; one of a mastiff bitch, Maxine McGuire’s, no doubt, with a large litter of pups similarly clustered about her. Maxine and my editor, I might mention, belonged to the same lodge—Bonnie’s mastiffs went back to Maxine’s lines—thus Bonnie’s loyalty to Maxine and the eagerness of Dog’s Life magazine to support Maxine’s new enterprise.
 
The text of the camp’s brochure contained a great many exclamation points. It was principally devoted to persuading the reader that, in contrast to competing institutions, Waggin’ Tail offered a high degree of—and here I don’t just talk the talk, but quote the quotes—“civilization.” For the last week of August, Waggin’ Tail, it proclaimed, had exclusive possession of the newly refurbished Mooselookmeguntic Four Seasons Resort Lodge and Cabins, located in Maine’s beautiful and unspoiled Rangeley Lakes region, where campers would enjoy home-cooked gourmet meals featuring sumptuous regional delicacies (“including lobster!!!”), a daily cocktail hour, wine with dinner, and various other alcoholic and nonalcoholic extravagances unavailable at competing camps!!! “Ruff It in Luxury!”
 
Despite the promises of lavish accommodations, epicurean delights, and copious tippling, what obviously set Waggin’ Tail apart from numerous similar camps was that it cost a ridiculous amount of money. The fees appeared not in the brochure, but on one of the photocopied enclosures. Of necessity, the figures were in fine print; otherwise, they wouldn’t have fit on the page. I had no idea why I’d even been sent the fee schedule. In return for the laudatory piece I’d been assigned to produce, my dogs and I were on full scholarship.
 
The remaining material consisted of a five-page welcome-to-camp form letter from Maxine McGuire; a tentative schedule of camp activities that included every dog sport and activity I’d ever heard of and a bewildering number of workshops, seminars, and courses on topics such as leash-braiding and canine first aid; detailed directions to the resort; a long list of items to pack; two copies of a lengthy contract entitled “Waiver of All Liability and Release and Indemnification Agreement,” one of which had to be signed and returned; and two health certificates to be filled in by my veterinarian. The absence of a corresponding form to be completed by my M.D. was, I thought, a sure sign that Maxine McGuire was a real dog person, which is to say, someone who demands written proof that a dog is fecal negative and up-to-date on his shots, but assumes that a mere human being doesn’t have anything worth catching, anyway.
 
Ah, but speaking of real dog people, let me explain why my bitch, Kimi, didn’t go to camp by remarking on how ill-deserved is the Old Testament’s reputation for antidog bias! It’s there, of course, and it’s perfectly understandable. Even by my standards, the ancient Egyptians really were dog nuts, and I can imagine that if I were held in bondage by a bunch of reptile-worshippers, I probably wouldn’t run out and get a pet chameleon the second I finally got free, so if establishing the Mount Sinai Kennel Club and chairing its first all-breed show wasn’t exactly Moses’s top priority, you can’t blame him, or God, either. I mean, by comparison with Job, Biblical dog lovers got off easy, and in return for their trials, received more than fair compensation in the consoling verse that I recited to myself on the morning of Sunday, August 22, when I left Kimi, as well as my Cambridge three- decker, in the care of my cousin Leah, and headed for Rangeley, Maine, accompanied only by my male malamute, Rowdy, a creature of many purposes and times, but one blessedly free of the cycles to which Kimi is subject. Indeed, in the words of Ecclesiastes, to every thing there is a season.