Terrier Terror, page 20
I was surprised by her offer. I would need a few weeks to decide how I felt about working long-term for her, though. “Okay. Thanks.”
She studied my expression, looking slightly cross. “Give it serious consideration, Allie.”
“I will.”
“For that matter, I’d be happy to hire you to work with my show dogs, as well. I like the way you carry yourself in the ring. You appear to be impressed, and proud to be showing the dog. That’s an X factor that not many handlers have.”
She had hired Terrington Leach to present her conformation entrees. Curious, I asked, “Do you think Terrington had an X factor?”
“Not exactly. With him, he gave off the impression that he wouldn’t deign to present anything below the best in show. It worked for him. But then, he had that male superiority complex. Whereas for me, I’ve grown weary of the whole racket. I need to take off my hair shirt. It no longer serves me.”
“Meaning it used to serve you well?”
“Absolutely,” Valerie said. “I would never have risen above being the neighborhood spinster who raises puppies because she can’t have children of her own. You can’t be a pushover, and you can’t be a shrinking violet. Maybe I went overboard these last couple of years. These days, I’m almost afraid to be nice.”
“But...what are you risking by simply being nice? You’ve already established a solid reputation as the go-to breeder for Terriers in Colorado. Do you truly need to maintain a tough-as-nails persona?”
“Yes, Allie. Unfortunately I do. I’ll be in my seventies soon. Nobody under the age of fifty even notices women in their seventies and up. I can’t lose my edge and still have the dog-community’s respect I’ve fought so hard for.”
Her answer gave me pause. She walked away before I could formulate a reply.
An hour or two later, I sought a quiet place where I could perhaps stare at the distant mountains and unwind. I desperately needed to sort out my thoughts. For Baxter’s sake if nothing else, I didn’t even want to tell him about how suspicious both Valerie and I were about bribery. Yet at the same time, I wanted the injustice to be stopped, and the culprits to be punished. I decided to head for the back of the building, some ten-feet away from the wire-fenced property line. As I started to round the corner, I heard low voices and froze, realizing it was Mark and Marsala, not wanting to stumble into a mutual tryst, but also not wanting to desert Marsala if she was in danger.
“Don’t you talk to me about bribes,” Marsala said, raising her voice. “I’m the one who’s well aware of all the lines you’ve crossed. Everyone looks the other way about the Airedale you got from Valerie.”
“I didn’t get him from her. I rescued him from owners that didn’t want him. That has never affected my judging!”
“Of course it did! And then you sabotaged Jesse’s Airedale!”
“And that’s what this is really about,” Mark retorted.
“Shush!” Marsal hissed. “Keep your voice down!”
I could no longer make out what they were saying. I wasn’t going to let this continue. I strode around the corner. They both stopped talking and gaped at me.
“Hi, there. I overheard you talking about bribes. Are you two conspiring?”
“Allie,” Marsala snarled. “You’re like that old commercial for American Express. You’re everywhere I want to be.”
“Thanks, Allida,” Mark said. “I couldn’t decide when to call enough ‘enough.’ Now you’ve made the decision for me.” He unzipped his ever-present safari vest and held the right side open. A thin, black wire extended from a jacket pocket. The wire led to a black, button-shaped microphone fastened near the top of the zipper. “I’ve been wearing a wire.”
“Wearing a wire?” Marsala shrieked. “What are you? A Narc?”
“No, just a concerned dog-show lover. It’s always bugged me...the bribery that went on at this dog show. Ever so slightly, but ever so constant.”
“I didn’t say or do a single unethical thing to you,” Marsala growled, pointing her finger at him as if she wished it were a dagger.
“That’s arguable. What is as clear as day, though, is that you’ve been getting special treatment from Kiki for at least two years running, in return for money. It was just your rotten luck that I had a crisis of conscience last year and caught you in the act this year.”
“He’s lying through his teeth,” Marsala said to me.
Frankly, I was having trouble deciding how to react.
“I’m going to call Davis and Kiki right now.” Mark pressed some buttons on his phone. “Davis? It’s Mark Singer. I’m having a heated discussion with Marsala outside. Meet us and Allie Babcock in the staff conference room. It’s about the activity between Marsala and your daughter. Both of you are going to want to hear my evidence.” He promptly hung up and stuffed his cellphone back into his vest pocket.
Marsala gasped. “What are you talking about! Are you out of your mind? I’m not about to go chat about this with everyone.” She tried to walk past me, but I blocked her path.
“Your dog is inside, Marsala,” Mark said. “I’m not above holding him hostage. Either way, you’re going to have to answer to the charges I’m filing against you and Kiki. This whole week, I’ve recorded all of my private conversations with the two of you.”
Marsala paled. After a pause, she said, “I guess I have no choice but to defend myself.” She looked at me. “Hopefully somebody sane will stop this nonsense before it goes too far.”
Meanwhile, Mark had unlocked the back door and was now holding it open. “After you, ladies.”
Marsala glanced back at me as if to see if I would lead the way. I decided I could likely outrun Mark if she decided to make a run for her Bull Terrier, so I brushed past her. The three of us made the short walk to the small conference room, which was empty. Marsala’s face had regained its color, as well as its angry expression. She paced in the back of the room like a caged animal. After a minute or two, Davis entered, with Kiki in tow.
“This is an outrage,” Marsala immediately said. “You either fire this sham of a so-called judge and issue an apology, or I’m going to sue FCDC for its every last dime!”
“Sit down, Marsala,” Davis said sternly. “Obviously we need to hear Mark out before I can take action.”
Mark and I took seats and a moment later, so did Marsala.
“I have no idea why I’m here, Daddy,” Kiki said. “I have work to do. I can’t be—”
“Sit,” Davis told her, pointing at a chair. She rolled her eyes and groaned, then plopped down in the designated chair. Davis remained standing and glared at Mark. “Now, what is all of this about? And I’m warning you, it had better be good.”
“I discovered that your daughter is taking bribes from Marsala. Marsala tried to be Kiki’s go-between in bribing me, as well.”
“I did no such thing. I was trying to see if Kiki’s sales pitches were true. That’s all.”
“Sales pitches?” Davis repeated, looking stunned.
“This is ridiculous,” Kiki said. “I’m not a judge in the show. Mark is. He must be covering for himself. I can’t impact a dog’s show results or standings. Nobody can bribe me to do anything whatsoever for them.”
“Except by aligning yourself with the judges,” Mark retorted, “talking up dogs, telling them to do you a favor and overlook this or that. And it’s all paid for by increasing the size of the donation on the receipts.”
“That’s preposterous. The Fort Collins Dog Club has to file reports to the IRS,” Kiki said. “I’d never be able to get away with cooking the books like that.”
“You can and you have...up until the IRS notices irregularities and does an audit. I’ve also recorded some interesting statements from Terrington Leach. He was onto you, wasn’t he? He bragged to me that you were giving him kickbacks.”
“No. That’s just the way Terrington is. Was, rather. Always bragging about himself. Making himself the star of every interaction.”
“You got it all switched around,” Marsala said. “She coached him. They could look for their favorable judges. She would set up the judges, and he would give her a percentage of his bonus for first place.”
Kiki gasped. “She’s lying! If any of that was actually true, I’d have been hurting my profits by killing him.”
“You got too greedy,” Mark said snidely. “And you got yourself in trouble because there were three quality breeders in the Terrier class who were showing their own dogs. Valerie, Jesse, and Marsala. But then Jesse broke his leg by falling off a dog’s teetertotter.”
“I didn’t kill Terrington. I didn’t set off the sprinkler system. I didn’t accept bribes from anybody.”
“But you put the tack in my shoe,” I said.
She shot me a glare. I could see in her eyes that I’d guessed correctly, and she didn’t want to turn her attention away from defending the more serious accusations.
“The trouble is, Kiki,” Mark continued, “I was already prepared to turn over every dollar you gave me under the table. That’s why I recorded everything.” He grabbed his tiny recorder from his vest pocket, removed the microphone, and placed them both on the table. He looked up at Davis and slid the recorder toward him. “All you need to do is listen.”
“No! It’s Marsala,” Kiki cried. “She’s the one who bribed Tamara Barnes to pick her dog! And I don’t know who bribed you to undermine Dog Face’s trials. It obviously didn’t work, anyway.”
“I don’t know anything about this,” Marsala said. “I simply gave Kiki a check for a charity she set up for ending puppy farms, which also helps honest breeders like me charge a fair price for our dogs. If it’s phony so that she can launder money, I want my money back.”
“Yet you just won your division,” I said. At Jesse’s expense, I thought.
“Rightfully so! My dog was the best Terrier!”
“Kiki would never do something like that!” Davis cried.
Mark started pushing buttons on his recorder. “Do you recognize your own daughter’s voice on this recording?” He held it up.
“Hi, Marsala. Mark says you wanted to talk to me about donating to a good cause. We can even put it in the name of your dog.” The voice was Kiki’s.
“Right,” Marsala’s recorded voice replied. “He was saying something about the chances of increasing my dog’s chances of winning.”
“Yes, absolutely. We put the name of your dog in the ‘in honor of’ field, along with his or her status, such as ‘winner of Best in Terrier Class at Fort Collins show.’ In exchange for a donation of at least a thousand dollars, that is.”
“I don’t see how that will help Chardonnay, for example,” Marsala said.
“I will tell the judges about their increased profile. How they are widely considered the top competitor, for example. Which is true, of course. There is only one in each division that can be a top donor, and to be given extra points...or attention, really, by the judge.”
“A thousand dollars? That’s awfully steep.”
“It’s tax deductible. And it’s for a great cause that we all want to help along. Puppy mills need to be permanently banned in this country.”
“Well, sure. I thought they were already banned.”
“Not everywhere. And it’s not happening quickly enough. Right, Mark?”
“Right. We need to promote good breeders like you. Raise your sales. Especially when that money goes to the judges. Like me.”
Davis stared at Kiki as if he was seeing her for the first time. “How could you do this to me? To the Fort Collins Dog Club? It’s not like you needed the money. Or the acclaim. I gave you and your mother everything you ever wanted.”
“You taught me how easy it was to take people’s money.”
“I taught you how to be a shrewd businessman! I never taught you how to steal and cheat!”
“Of course you did! You taught me that everything was negotiable. That the best side got the spoils. That’s all I did. I gave people what they wanted in exchange for what I wanted. Money.”
“And you committed tax fraud to do it!”
“Which is what you said you paid your lawyer to do on our family’s behalf!”
Mark said, “I knew it. I was right. She killed Terrington Leach.”
“No, I didn’t. That isn’t true.”
Mark grabbed his phone. “I’m calling nine-one-one.”
“This is nuts! Stop it, Mark!” She stepped toward me. “Allie! You’re supposedly the Nancy Drew of the dog world. Stop this! Right now! Yes, Terrington and I were partners, and we bilked money out of the attendees. I’d be the last person on earth who wanted him killed.”
“Yes,” he said into the phone. “I’m Mark Singer, a judge at the dog show in the Fort Collins Fairgrounds main building. We need a police unit to come and arrest Terrington Leach’s killer. Her name is Kiki Miller.”
She shaped her hands like a cone and shouted at Mark’s phone, “I’m innocent!” She spread her arms. “I also tried to recruit Mark. I knew he’d been crossing the line all the time. Sucking up to young women. Tipping the scale in his judging.”
Mark peered at her.
“We both know you tried to sabotage Dog Face’s scores!” Kiki cried.
He covered his phone, pressing his meaty hand against the top edge. “To slow him down! I also have it on my tape when you’d bribed me to have him win! He did anyway! I didn’t want others to think I was in on it with you when I made the recordings public.”
Kiki’s cheeks reddened. She looked pleadingly at her father. “Daddy, you have to help me. Tell the police I’m telling the truth. Mark, Allie. You saw I didn’t have much blood on me. Daddy! You know I’m innocent!”
Davis pivoted and walked away, saying over his shoulder, “I don’t know the first thing about you. You’re no daughter of mine.”
Chapter 27
Baxter and I felt utterly drained as we drove home after midnight. We’d been fortunate enough to get in touch with our part-time employee a few hours earlier, and she was able to feed and tend to our poor, neglected dogs. My mother was always on backup call, as we were for her Golden and Collie, but I would have hated to send her out to Dacona in the middle of the night.
The police did indeed arrest Kiki, and they took Marsala in for questioning as well. Mark left with one pair of officers to give his testimony and file charges. Valerie told me that she and Davis had a powwow in his office; she’d seen him storm out of the conference room. She assured me that Davis gave digital files to the officers that would provide them with all the financial records for the Fort Collins Dog Club and was confident investigators would be able to detect if Kiki was indeed committing fraud and theft. Jesse returned to the Fairgrounds and said that he had spoken with investigators, and they were homing in on the true culprit. Jessie said they’d asked him about bribery and Kiki’s involvement. He opined that Terrington had probably been blackmailing her.
The next morning, Baxter and I tried to make up for our dog-owner negligence, while giving ourselves an energy boost with coffee and power shakes. As we drove toward Fort Collins, Baxter patted my knee. “The doors close at noon. This is going to be ten times easier than any day this week.”
“Especially for me. Thanks to Eeyore being cheated, I’m a mere spectator for Best of Show honors.” I’d also be totally free to watch the remaining Best in Divisions for the Sporting, Working, and Herding Classes. The Hound and Non-sporting winners had already been determined, but I didn’t know the results. Thinking of the original Eeyore, I lowered my voice and grumbled, “If it is a good morning.”
Neither of us spoke for a couple of minutes. “I hope you’re adopting Winnie the Pooh’s attitude this morning, not Eeyore’s,” Baxter said.
“You hope that I’ll be searching for a honey pot?”
“No,” he said with a laugh. “That we can be cheerful, because the hard part is over.”
To my annoyance, as much as I wanted to, I didn’t agree with that assessment. “I certainly hope it is. And I really do suspect Kiki was the killer. But last night, I kept trying to play out the scene in my head. As far as I know, nobody saw her at the Brunswick Café. Maybe she’d driven into the back parking lot, called Terrington, and asked him to come out and meet her. But, if so, she then had to go inside, enter the kitchen, and grab the knife. The thing is, Baxter, if the murder was premeditated, she’d have brought a knife from home. If it wasn’t premeditated, what pushed her over the edge? Terrington was inside, arguing with Cooper, waiting for me to arrive. Valerie, Terrington, Marsala, and Mark were inside the restaurant. Who was left to set her off? To make her think she had to murder Terrington that very moment?”
“Maybe some dog owner from one of the other divisions said something about meeting with Terrington. Or maybe he told her he was about to meet—” Baxter broke off, a quick grimace crossing his features.
A shiver ran down my spine. “Me,” I said sadly. “Terrington could have told Kiki he was meeting me at the café after all, and that he was going to spill the beans.” I hated that possibility. I didn’t want to believe if I’d been on time, things might have gone very differently. “She’d have to be cold-blooded enough to drive around the block a couple of minutes later and wave at me as if nothing happened.”
Baxter reached over and patted my thigh. “This is why the police are trained to examine crime scenes and suspects. They’ll catch whoever is responsible.”
“Hopefully, they already have the right person in custody. If so, it’s all pretty much over.”
“If it is a good morning,” Baxter said mimicking my own pessimistic tones.
Later that morning, while Baxter was busy with his managerial duties, I was watching the Non-sporting competition. My phone beeped. Tracy had sent me the full video of Bingley’s competition. I watched it, grinning at the dog’s and my antics in spite of myself. I decided to indulge myself in watching it on Baxter’s much larger computer screen. I forwarded it to him, then texted that I’d like to watch the video and needed access to his office. He sent me a thumbs-up emoji.
