Terrier Terror, page 17
“—not going to get sued for this! Anything suspicious. Anyone standing where they shouldn’t be or absent from where they should have been. Tell the security men everything. Let them decide if it’s meaningful or not.” He paused. “Does anybody know where Cooper Hayes is?”
“Right here,” Cooper called from behind me. I turned. He was just ten feet or so away. He must have followed me here. “Why?”
“I...want to know if you...if everybody has an alibi for who they were with when the sprinklers went off.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I got just as drenched as everyone else. I was talking to a couple and their young daughter who were thinking of entering their Golden in next year’s show. We were near the main entrance, and they left. I don’t know if they came back in, though. The little girl’s name was Emily.”
“Allida Babcock,” Davis said, glaring at me. “Do you have an alibi?”
“Yes, Baxter and I were together and had just left his office. A minute or two after talking to Kiki.”
“Why didn’t you report that someone had taken your shoes and put a tack in one of them?” Davis asked accusingly.
“I did report it. To Kiki, who’s serving as the secretary and is in charge of the incidents book.”
“When and where did this happen?”
“A couple of hours ago in Baxter’s office.”
Davis merely stared at me.
Nobody spoke or raised their hand.
Cooper was now standing beside me. He bent toward me and whispered, “I wish I’d listened to you and stayed away. They’re going to accuse me of setting off the fire alarm.”
“Maybe your alibi family reentered, and they can prove you didn’t do it.”
“Maybe. But my luck would have to change. I’m hoping the security guards caught something on a recording.”
“I hope so, too. And maybe they can identify whoever boobytrapped my shoe.” Cooper’s story came to mind about his using his ex-wife’s key to open her locker, and Valerie reading evil intentions into that action.
Meanwhile, Davis was quietly conferring with the two security guards and a couple of men in suits who had rather officious bearings. Baxter joined Cooper and me.
“Hey, pretty lady,” he said.
“Hi. Glad you got the water turned off so quickly.”
“Me, too. I’m sure nobody’s happy with their dowsing, even so. Those are city officials that Davis is talking to. They’re probably concerned about lawsuits if someone slips. At least the water damage itself looks pretty minimal. One of the building maintenance guys already found a heat sensor with some black-soot marks around it.”
“Hmm,” Cooper said. “It wasn’t near the front door, was it? Where I was when the sprinklers went off?”
“I don’t know,” Baxter answered. “I didn’t—”
Davis clapped his hands twice to regain everyone’s attention. “Raise your hands if you don’t have an alibi.”
“Excuse me?” someone called.
“What constitutes an alibi?” a middle-aged woman asked. “I was walking down an aisle when the water went off. “There were a dozen or so people in the general area. But I wasn’t memorizing their appearances or getting their names.”
“If you don’t know the identities of anyone next to you at the time, that does not constitute an alibi,” Davis said, annoyed.
“I was standing in line for coffee,” a man said. “I could pick out two of the people in the line with me, if I could get them in a lineup.”
“We aren’t doing a lineup, so that isn’t an alibi, either.”
Nobody was raising their hands.
“You two should both have your hands up,” Davis snarled, pointing at the two people who’d questioned him. Several people raised their hands, all of them glaring at Davis. Cooper had his arms crossed.
“Your headcount is annoying, Mr. Miller,” Mark Singer said. “This was probably just a prank. For the record, I left the other building to have a smoke. I heard a big commotion and came in to see what was going on. Nobody was with me outside. So I can take you out to show you the cigarette butt I ground out before I ran over here. Are you going to ask the three or four hundred people that are in the general area if they have an alibi?”
Davis looked enraged. “No. I just want alibis from the people hired to work for me. If anyone has a problem with that, raise your hand.”
This time, we all raised our hands. For me, it came down to the principle. I wanted the sabotager to be identified, removed, and subjected to whatever legal penalties were dealt for menacing on a large scale. Especially because the murderer and the prankster could be one and the same. But Davis taking a public rollcall of the paid staff members struck me as demeaning and a time waster.
I looked over at Cooper. He pivoted and left the room.
Chapter 22
The second building had indeed escaped the chaos of the activated ceiling e sprinklers. Neither the cafeteria nor the agility arena was in any way affected. Next up was the Standard trial. This was designed as more of an obedience style of a race. The dogs had to cool their jets in the middle of their race. That was an interesting who’s-the-boss challenge. The dog needed to run, jump, climb, as fast as he can, then jump onto a square block and stay there on all four paws for five seconds, then go run, jump, and climb again as fast as he could.
This time we were going from shortest to tallest divisions. That was good for me, in a way. Sophie was a pro at standard agility races. She liked the waiting game. Where she was concerned, it was the chance to show off her speed twice.
As Valerie, Sophie, and I entered the main room, I paused. It was packed. Every seat was taken, and many people were sitting on the floor or in camping-style chairs they’d brought themselves.
“Wow,” I said. “I guess the audience members fleeing from the main building during the sprinklers malfunction has helped our turnout.”
Valerie snorted. “It’s always like this, Allie. If anything, it’s less crowded than last year. Sophie Sophistica has a large fan base. Most attendees work, so they can’t get here until late afternoon.”
I was more than a little skeptical, yet she pointed with her chin, and I spotted a banner that indeed read: “Sophie Sophistica 3rd Fan Club.” There were forty or fifty people wearing T-shirts with a picture of Sophie jumping over a gate with the same verbiage as the banner. Their motto wasn’t especially creative. They should have gone with “SST” and shown her on a rocket. Or used an emoji of an electric fan in the place of the word.
We both turned our attention to the electronic board, giving us the order or dogs competing. Sophie would be called soon. I needed to go play with her for a bit. “It’s going to be up to you to see that she hasn’t lost her edge by being forced to compete an hour later than anticipated,” Valerie told me.
“Well, Sophie doesn’t know that she’s been delayed by an hour.”
She put her hands on her hips and gave me a stare-down “You disappoint me, Allie. You know how dogs absorb their persons’ moods and energies. She’s been getting anticipatory jitters for an extra hour.”
“True. Sorry.”
She handed me her leash. “Don’t lose.”
I led Sophie to the practice jump and unhooked her leash. She looked at me as if surprised I’d deigned to take her for a practice jump, but she did fine. I played a game of patty paws with her and gave her a tummy rub. I decided to forgo hooking on her leash to lead her to the start line and left it on the designated table. This time I could see neither Valerie, nor Jesse from my position at the starting line. I was certain they were both in attendance. The lighting had changed somewhat since the morning round.
The residual tenderness in my toe was only noticeable now when I thought about it. I felt a surge of adrenaline. I looked down at Sophie, and she was looking up at me, awaiting my signal. From this angle, she looked like she was smiling. I could tell she felt it, too. We were ready to fly through this course.
“On your mark,” I told her, the command Valerie always used that meant to stand right behind the starting line. Meanwhile, I took several steps in front of her toward the first obstacle—a two-pole jump.
The starter said “go,” and we were off. Once again I was grateful for having played competitive college basketball. I slipped into my steely concentration mode. It felt like Sophie and I were on the identical wavelength.
Sophie was at her best. Regardless of what type of enterprise it is, beauty is on display when someone performs as if they were so in tune with their every motion that not a single movement is wasted. There was not even an instant of hesitation or distraction. I was superfluous in the ring; she had memorized the course from the moment she’d seen it. She leapt onto the paws-pause podium.
I eyed the automatic clock and counted along with it: “One. Two. Three. Four. Off!” I cried instead of five.
She tore around Mark as if he was inconsequential. This time, he remained motionless and silent. I, however, had put too much weight on my injured toe and took an awkward step. Yet Sophie did her thing and flew through the tire jump that served as the finish line.
On an impulse, I held out my arms, and she leapt into them with ease. The crowd let out a collective “Aww!” With the added five seconds for the pause table, she came in at 35.55 seconds, which was excellent for a preliminary eight-inch Standard competition. That was within six seconds of her time in the first round and was precisely what Valerie and I wanted to see from her.
There were two other eight-inch class jumpers yet to compete, but Sophie was in first place and would definitely have a top-three seed in her division. Again, her fan club was cheering wildly. I helped her to wave at them, even though I knew Valerie wouldn’t approve of my playfulness. To my surprise, when she met me at the exit gate, she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Well done, Allida. Well done.” The lines in Babe, a movie about a pig that competes in a dog-herding competition, popped into my brain. Babe’s owner says to him, “That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.” I grinned at the thought but kept it to myself. It wasn’t all that flattering to be compared to a pig.
I bided my time while awaiting my Standard-course run with Dog Face. He was the last competitor in the twenty-inch class. I was nervous. He wasn’t always disciplined at the pause table. Leaving early was a five-second penalty times the number of second-fractions in which he jumped the gun. Maybe it was bad karma. Maybe it was my anxiousness. Maybe the noise we both heard. In any case, Dog Face did indeed jump the gun. It was a five-second penalty. Everything else was clean and precise. His finishing time was 29.67 seconds, 34.67 with the penalty. He finished in second place in the twenty-inch jumps division. Sophie, too, had bested him in this second round, which I’m sure elated Valerie.
Jesse hugged me as I sagged a little in relief. “He made the finals! Easily!” he said. Border Collies rocked at agility training. They were pretty much born with these kinds of skills. Even so, both Sophie and Dog Face were in wonderful shape to win their respective divisions.
“No pause table in the finals,” I said, happily.
Baxter headed toward me. “You nailed it,” he said, giving me and then Jesse a high-five. “What’s up next for you?”
“Best in Toy,” Valerie answered for me as she approached.
Baxter and I merely looked at Valerie, surprise by her interruption.
“The doors here will reopen at seven tonight,” she continued, “and we can walk the Finals course. Meanwhile, we need to get going for the Best Toy Dog competition.”
“We do? Did one of your Yorkies qualify for Best in Toy division?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m surprised you didn’t hear Marsala trying to insult me on that very issue. She herself had chickened out and removed Tallyho from competing. Remember?”
“Oh, right.” Valerie was getting on my nerves again, and I struggled to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “At the time, I was occupied with having driven a half-inch tack into my toe. How self-centered of me.”
She clicked her tongue. “I’ll see you in the ring. Good luck.”
“You’re handling your Yorkie yourself?”
“Yes. Hence my comment about seeing you in the ring.” She hesitated. “Do you want to walk over there with me?”
“No, I have to force Bingley the Beagle to race around the novice agility course first,” I said. I glanced over at the ring, where the crew was already removing two of the obstacles and simplifying the course.
“They’re doing that now? I assumed they did that first thing this morning, per usual.”
“I think they want to establish a relaxed mood and lower audience expectations from the Masters competitions. In any case, Bingley is up first.”
“I can see how that might be a good idea.” She grinned. “In fact, I’m sticking around to watch this, too.”
Chapter 23
A few minutes later, the cameraman had gotten set up along with a second crew member who was probably in charge of the lighting. Tracy and I were struggling to help get Bingley measured. He kept turning in circles and growling, barely willing to allow the official to measure his height. Not that it mattered. Tracy and I knew he was going to be disqualified for “failure to perform.” Judging by the grins on all of the volunteers’ faces, someone had either conspired with Tracy to let him compete, or she’d clued Mark in that this was all for fun. It already felt as if I should be dressed in a clown costume.
Tracy and the cameraman were allowed to be in the ring with us; they just weren’t allowed within the vicinity of the obstacle course itself. Mark patiently waited for the cameraman to give him the thumbs up.
Bingley was obeying my “sit” command behind the start line right next to me. There was no reason to get a head start on him. I could outrun him on the course, and if he chose to instead head for the hills, it didn’t matter if he outraced me. He’d simply be disqualified sooner rather than later.
Mark gave the “go” command. To my delight, Bingley leapt over the first jump, then the second. Next up, he ran up the dog walk—also called a bridge—and stopped dead at the top.
I tried everything I could think of that was within the no-touching-no-luring rules to get him to come down. He simply sat down with his front paws dangling off the side and looked at me. The audience was laughing and clapping. Finally, I sprawled out on the floor by the foot of the dog walk, and he finally deigned to come down and licked my face. I sprang to my feet and got him to navigate the next jump by racing up to them, making him think I was joining him, but dodging it and running backward beside him instead.
He jumped over the wall. He stopped in front of the seesaw. I did a ridiculous duck walk alongside of him, increasing my height as he slowly walked up to the fulcrum. When it flipped down, I got almost teary-eyed I was so thrilled that he was actually crossing the seesaw correctly. Then, however, he decided to ignore the bottom half of the seesaw and jumped down right in front in front of me. That was a five-point penalty, adding five seconds to his time.
At the start of the tunnel, Bingley lay on his back and begged for a tummy rub. With creativity born from desperation, I straddled the entrance to the tunnel and bent down and looked through my legs at him. That got Bingley to enter the tunnel. I ran to the exit and called his name. When he didn’t emerge. I dropped onto my hands and knees to look into the tunnel. He was lying down a few feet away. I kept repeatedly calling his name, told him to come, and patted the floor. He finally trotted out, licking my nose yet again.
Bingley sat down when I gave him the “weave” signal at the entrance to the series of six posts he was supposed to weave through. I tried to click my fingers to get him to peek through at least the first and second posts. He finally did so, but ignored me as I clicked my fingers at the opposite side of the second post. There was zero chance that he would qualify, so I turned and started to walk to the broad jump, his next apparatus. He weaved through the second and third posts perfectly and followed me in a heel position. He squeezed under the next jump, then wove around its supports to return to the entry point. Once again, the crowd roared with laughter.
Mark Singer was still standing in front of the tunnel, and he grinned at me. “You’re sure making all the other dogs look good,” he said, even though talking to a contestant or vice versa was strictly prohibited.
“Yep. This is an exercise in patience. And/or futility.”
“Thanks for being a good sport about it,” he replied.
“You, too.”
Bingley was supposed to go through the tunnel again, but I wasn’t that good of a sport as to make him reenter it and risk his falling asleep inside. For one thing, he’d already surpassed the maximum time limit, so he had already been disqualified.
I made half-hearted efforts at commanding him to jump over the final hurdles. He rounded them with me instead and started walking on his back paws for no discernable reason, unless in his mind he wanted to demonstrate to the audience how agile and yet disobedient he was. The finish line was the tire jump, which he raced in full circles around twice. Time to call an end to this.
After curtsying to the video camera, on a whim, I made a fist in front of Bingley’s face, lowered my fist to the ground, and said, “Bow,” instead of “Lie down.” That particular technique teaches a dog to lie down, because the dog seeks to eat the treat in the trainer’s fist. To my and the crowd’s delight, Bingley did indeed bow for the audience—more commonly called “downward dog” in Yoga class. We left the ring, with the audience giving us a standing ovation.
Tracy yelled, “Cut” at her cameraman, then swept up her dog and gave me a big hug.
“See? What did I tell you! That’s going to be the hit videotape of the entire event. You’ll get tons of business, and next year, they’ll have a big crowd watching at the agility trials. It’s a win-win.”
