BEST IN SHOW
Seanan McGuire
The office was dark. Michael had found that the sort of clients who went looking for a private investigator in a strip mall rather than hiring one online wanted that classic Phillip Marlowe vibe as part of the service. They wanted to open the door and feel like they were stepping into a noir movie, complete with leggy dames, liquid lunches, and the threat of being gunned down at any moment.
Michael would have preferred bright lights and an ergonomic desk. But that would have been bad for business, and he liked his job. He liked setting his own hours, and he liked the fact that no two days were the same. If he had to live in the city until he’d saved up enough to buy himself a farm, a degree of enforced noir was a small price to pay for doing it the way he wanted.
Except on days like this one. The couple currently sitting across from him looked like they’d stepped out of a movie, and not one where the heroic detective saved the day with quick thinking and legwork. No, they were from the sort of murder mystery where a little old lady with blue-rinsed hair came along after half the cast was dead, declared that the butler had done it, and went home for tea. The man was tall, thin to the point of verging on cadaverous, and wearing a suit that was easily thirty years out of style, but was still impeccably pressed. The woman was slightly softer, with enough meat on her to keep her skin from actually sticking to her bones, and wearing a sensible pantsuit that was probably pale lavender. Under the dim office lights, it was exactly the color of grave dust.
Michael frowned. “I’m sorry, you want me to do what, exactly?”
“We want you to find proof that the Harrisons are cheating,” said the woman, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world.
“At cat shows.”
“And dog shows, although that’s less important at the moment.” The man smiled, the smug, self-satisfied expression of someone who had always been able to get what he wanted out of life, and wasn’t intending to change that any time soon. “Westminster is months away. The North American Grand Championship title will be awarded this coming weekend. I’m sure you can see where time is of the essence.”
“Of course,” said Michael slowly. “But if you’re so confident that these people are cheating, why not bring it to the attention of the governing board of your association? I’m sure there are rules.”
“We have brought it to their attention, and they’ve informed us that there are no signs of impropriety,” snapped the woman. “It simply isn’t true. No one has a cat that well-groomed, that well-behaved, and that obedient. Cats aren’t like that. Dogs, maybe—”
“Although even the best dog will act up more than Thea Harrison’s Great Dane,” said the man, cutting her off without a trace of apology. “These people are doing something. Witchcraft, robotics, drugs, I don’t know, and I don’t care. It needs to stop. You’re going to find out what it is, and then we’re going to put a stop to it.”
“I’m afraid this isn’t my normal area of expertise,” said Michael carefully. He didn’t like refusing work, and more, he didn’t like refusing work offered by the sort of entitled, arrogant customers who’d think it was completely appropriate to leave him bad reviews on all the website aggregators. Sometimes he thought wistfully about burning Yelp to the ground. Not because the company itself had done anything wrong, but because the mere existence of a public review system had turned the entire world into a baying pack of hostage-takers, willing to dangle a good review or threaten a bad one for the slightest infraction.
“We were told you were the best,” said the woman. She sniffed, gaze turning suddenly sharp. “Were we mis-informed?”
“If you could tell me who referred you—”
“Elizabeth Denkinger.”
Michael frowned. Elizabeth Denkinger had been an embezzlement case: she was a small business owner whose profits had gone into freefall after her new boyfriend’s teenage son had figured out how to access her accounting software. She’d lost the boyfriend but gained a great deal of peace of mind, and a much better safety net, after using Michael’s services.
“I’m not sure her case relates to yours,” he said.
“Of course it does,” said the man. “Those titles are ours. They’re being stolen from us. Every time we come in second—or worse, fail to place at all—our business is devalued. It’s embezzlement, plain and simple.”
“I see.” If he thought about it that way, he could almost see where they were coming from. And being able to pay his bills would, as always, be a rare thrill. “My usual rates apply.”
“Naturally. We’ve brought the first payment.” The man offered an envelope across the desk.
Michael took it, opened the flap, and looked inside. He managed not to whistle at the figure on the check, instead mustering a professional smile and asking, “Where do you want me to get started?”
* * *
According to his clients—the Sanfords, of the Rhode Island Sanfords, although what East Coast old money was doing in California was anybody’s guess—the Harrisons never appeared together when there was a show. One of them always stayed home with the animals, while the other went to smile at the judges, greet the onlookers, and keep the cats or dogs that they had on display from going completely out of their minds. Because this weekend was a cat show, Nathaniel Harrison would be present, along with a selection of the couples’ Maine Coon cats…and of course, their three-time International Grand Champion queen, Unto the Maine’s Lady of Shallot, more commonly referred to as “Shelly.” He’d been showing her for nearly five years, and it seemed like there wasn’t a ribbon or award in North America not claimed by that cat.
(That wasn’t quite true. There were awards reserved exclusively for kittens, and Shelly had done her first show as a two-year-old adult. The more Michael read about the dizzying web of rules and regulations governing the world of show cats, the more convinced he became that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.)
Getting into the show was easy. Michael paid his forty dollars at the door, electing against the upgraded eighty dollar ticket that would have come with a goodie bag and early access to the judging rings, and he was in. The woman in charge of taking his money smiled as she affixed a plastic band to his wrist, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper as she said, “You made the right choice. I’m supposed to upsell you, but we’ve sold so damn many ‘VIP’ bands that it won’t make any difference at this point. Save your money, get yourself something nice.”
“Thank you for the advice,” he said, with a polite nod. “Do you think you could point me in the right direction? My sweetie’s been asking about getting a Maine Coon, and I thought I’d come and have a look at the local breeders.”
“Oh, you’ll want aisle six in the main show room.” The woman beamed, bright as a fluorescent bulb. “There are some incredible cats there. Wonderful bloodlines on display. I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
“I hope so.”
That had been a good fifteen minutes ago. When he’d been approaching the cat show, he had expected this to be an easy assignment. Get in, find the Harrisons, take some pictures, maybe ask a few pointed questions about whether anyone other than his clients felt the couple cheated. Instead, he’d found himself wandering through a maze of makeshift rows formed from folding tables, collapsible cat cages, and portable awnings that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a flea market or Renaissance Fair. There were vendors selling cat-themed merchandise everywhere he looked, their products ranging from sweaters and embroidered pillows to portraits of your pet painted while you wait.
And of course, there were the cats. Everywhere cats. So many cats. Most of the fancy awnings belonged to the breeders, creating little enclaves of cat-dom where a single expression of a single breed could reign supreme. Fluffy cats, naked cats, big cats, little cats, cats, cats, cats. More cats than Michael had ever seen in his life. More types of cat than he had been aware existed.
He stopped in front of a sign proclaiming “FairyTail Siamese: We Put the Wow Back in Meow.” There was a woman in the booth on the other side of the sign, dangling a feather on a string above a playpen filled with Siamese kittens. They were mostly snowy white at this age, with sooty paws and noses. Michael wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything more adorable, and was equally sure that there would be something twice as cute on the next aisle. Which was why he needed to get out of here. He was going to suffer permanent cuteness overload if he didn’t.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” he said.
The woman looked up and smiled, dazzlingly bright. She had the sort of teeth that really qualified more as an investment, white and straight and perfectly aligned. Michael fought the urge to shy back from the glare.
“Yes?”
“Can you tell me how to find the Maine Coons? I thought it was going to be simple, but all of this,” he waved his hands vaguely, “is more complex than I’d expected.”
The woman’s expression softened, the frighteningly white teeth vanishing behind expertly painted lips. “Oh, you poor dear,” she said. “First cat show?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go to the end of the row. Make a left at the kiosk selling catnip tea, go down two aisles, and turn right. You’ll come to the Maine Coons. Although if you’re here because you’re looking for the perfect cat for your lifestyle, may I suggest the Siamese? You look like an active fellow. Maine Coons need a lot of brushing, on a daily basis, and they won’t appreciate it if you need to leave the house for work. A Siamese, on the other hand, will be a devoted companion who understands that sometimes you need your own space. The best of all possible worlds.”
“I’ll take that under advisement, ma’am,” he said. “Thank you for the directions.”
“Think nothing of it,” she said, and went back to dangling the feather over her bushel of kittens. They jumped and swatted, tempting in every possible way, and Michael found himself thinking about how nice it would be to have a cat at home.
No, he silently scolded. Bad. He had a job to do, and besides, white cat hairs on a black duster didn’t really go with the “big, bad noir detective” reputation he was trying to cultivate. It might be attractive to a very specific sort of clientele…but working for those people might wind up dumping him in more situations like this one, where he was expected to prove cheating by a cat. Could cats even cheat? Most of the cats he knew spent their time sleeping in the sun and complaining about the state of their food dishes. Not much cheating there.
The woman’s directions were good: in no time at all, he found himself walking down an aisle filled with the sort of cats that weren’t actually supposed to exist outside of horror movies. The smallest one in sight had to weigh at least fifteen pounds, making it look more like a long-tailed bobcat than anything that belonged in a private home, and according to the tag on its cage, it was competing in the kitten category. The kitten category.
“If that’s a kitten, I’m the Queen of Denmark,” he muttered, staring at the cat. The cat stared back with unnervingly pumpkin-colored eyes and licked its lips, like it was considering what a private investigator casserole would taste like.
“I assure you, that’s a kitten, Your Majesty,” said a friendly voice.
Michael looked away from the cat to find himself facing a tall, slender man cast in varying shades of brown, from tawny skin to chestnut hair, with eyes that were somewhere in the middle. He swallowed, hoping the action would be enough to keep him from flushing. It wasn’t fair how people were allowed to wander around being so damned attractive all the time.
“It’s enormous,” said Michael.
“Yes, she is,” said the man. He cast a fond look at the cage. The kitten, in turn, looked up at him and made an odd chirping noise. “This is Unto the Maine’s Sweet Lady May. She’s on the track to place this show, which would be lovely for both of us. I assume you’re here because you want to see Shelly?”
It took Michael a moment to remember that “Shelly” was the name of the cat he was supposedly here to spy on. He still didn’t know how a cat could cheat. He also, upon some minor reflection, didn’t know why this man was offering to show her to him.
“How did you know?” he asked.
The man grinned. “Because everyone is here to see Unto the Maine’s Lady of Shallot. I could come with just her, and she’d still have admirers dropping by every five minutes to ooh and aah over her. It’s giving her a swelled head, if you ask me, but what do I know? I’m just the human who changes her litterbox. I’m Nathaniel Harrison, by the way. I assume you have a name, apart from your royal title?”
Michael blinked at him for a moment before he remembered his comment about being the Queen of Denmark. This time, he couldn’t keep his cheeks from turning red. “I mostly try to keep a low profile on the whole ‘royalty’ thing,” he said, as solemnly as he could. “You can call me Michael.”
“Well, Michael, what’s your interest in the Maine Coon?”
That wasn’t a question he’d been anticipating. Michael froze before blurting the first thing that came into his head: “They’re huge! I didn’t know domestic cats could be this big. It’s amazing.”
“Ah. ‘Huge’ and ‘amazing’ are both accurate descriptors for the Maine Coon or, as some more old-school aficionados call it, ‘that Yankee cat.’ Come with me.” Nathaniel stepped back, fading into the stall and leaving Michael with little choice but to follow him.
Unto the Maine had one of the simpler setups in this area: it was just Nathaniel, a single chair behind a low table, and the cats. Three kittens, three adults. The adults were big enough to make the kittens seem like they were actually to scale. The adults...
Michael had been more right than he knew when he’d looked at Sweet Lady May and declared Maine Coons to be huge. The adults were at least four times her size, still proportionate to themselves; they looked more like longhaired bobcats with raccoon tails than domestic cats.
“May I introduce my pride and joy, Unto the Maine’s Lady of Shallot.” Nathaniel gestured grandly toward the largest cat, a smoky gray tabby with hints of orange. “I’m afraid I can’t ask if you’d like to hold her, for health reasons—hers, not yours, although she might scratch you if you’re as bad at holding cats as you look—but I can answer any questions you have, and I’m happy to brush her if you want to see whether her color comes off.”
Michael blinked. Nathaniel smirked.
“Oh, come now. I appreciate that the Sanfords have at least gone outside the cat show community for their latest spy, but you couldn’t be more out of place if you were carrying a large sign that read ‘I have been hired to poke my nose into your business, please show me your secrets.’ We have nothing to hide. Shelly is exactly as she appears. I can’t blame you for taking a job—one assumes you need to make a living like everyone else—and you haven’t done anything truly offensive as yet. That doesn’t mean you won’t.”
Michael’s cheeks flushed red again, this time with mortification. “I’d try to tell you that they have honest concerns, but really, I can’t,” he said. “They just sounded like sore losers to me. Sore losers who’d been referred to me by a good client, which means I have to at least pretend to take them seriously. Like you say, I need to make a living like everyone else.”
Unto the Maine’s Lady of Shallot made a squeaking noise that wasn’t quite a meow and wasn’t quite a warble. Michael stared at her.
“I think your cat is malfunctioning.”
“No, that’s what a Maine Coon is meant to sound like,” said Nathaniel. “Look. I have to get Sweet Lady May to judging, and Shelly is up this afternoon. I don’t mind your spying on us as much as I probably should, but I don’t have time for it right now. How do you feel about coming by the house early next week? We can show you around the property, and you can make up your mind for yourself?”
Michael thought about it for less than thirty seconds. “Absolutely,” he said. “Just give me the address.”
Nathaniel smiled.
* * *
The Harrisons lived almost an hour’s drive outside of city limits. Michael drove down a series of increasingly rural roads with the windows of his car rolled all the way down, breathing in the scent of green growing things and unprocessed air. People who’d seen his office tended to assume that he didn’t care for sunlight. The reality was that he didn’t like city sunlight. It was too sterile, too…stale after being filtered through windows and crammed into the spaces between buildings. He’d rather sit in the dark than stand in city sun. But this, this was sun the way it was meant to be, clean and unfettered and falling on the grassy fields to either side without anything to slow it down.
The urge to pull over, climb over a fence, and run was remarkably strong. Michael forced himself to keep on going. Running around in other people’s fields was a good way to get arrested, and not a good way to do his job.
Maybe later. On the way home.
The Harrisons lived in a converted farmhouse surrounded by a perfectly cliché white picket fence. There was what looked like a barn out back, and several large dogs playing in the field, which had an equally traditional, if less suburban cattle fence around it. Michael parked behind the single car that was in the driveway, wiping his hands nervously against his jeans, and went to ring the doorbell.
The door opened. A woman with ashy blonde hair smiled at him through the screen, saying, “You must be Michael. Nathaniel told me you’d be dropping by today. Please, come in.” She opened the screen door. “I hope you don’t mind dogs.”
“No, ma’am, although sometimes they mind me.” Michael stepped into the front room. It was as traditional as the yard: floral couch, bookshelves, television neatly tucked away in an antique wood cabinet. It looked almost fake, like it had been copied out of a magazine. Only the battered cat tree in one corner made it feel like a real place. There was a cat curled there, massive and orange and fluffy.
Ms. Harrison’s eyes narrowed. “Dogs don’t like you?”
“Some do. I guess I’ve just been around a lot of, you know.” He gestured helplessly with his hands. “Small dogs. They get skittish when there are new people around.”
“Oh.” She smiled, looking relieved. “Small dogs aren’t going to be an issue here. I’m Thea. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Why don’t you come with?” She turned and walked out of the room, heading down a short hall to the kitchen. Michael followed.
The impression that the front room wasn’t real was just reinforced by the kitchen, which was so real that it could have made anything seem artificial. There was a large dining table, piled high with paperwork and with cats; Michael could see three of them sleeping among the paperwork, including Sweet Lady May, who was sprawled on her back with her belly exposed to the ceiling. A pair of braided rag rugs blunted the hardwood floor, and the appliances, while all reasonably modern, were clearly well-used.
There was also a dog, a Great Dane the size of a small pony, with dark brown fur, sleeping in the middle of the larger of the two rugs. Fiona stopped, giving it a fondly exasperated look.
“May I introduce Unto the Maine’s Sketchy Character—we call him ‘Stretch.’ I’m assuming that when the Sanfords hired you, they mentioned that we also show dogs?”
Michael nodded.
“I mostly handle preparing and showing the Great Danes. Stretch here has taken three Grand Championships, and he’s gearing up for a fourth. Great Danes are relatively mellow dogs, which makes them a good match for Maine Coon cats. They just get on with things. Unlike the Sanfords, who essentially embody the concept of the little yappy dog. They’d bite the ankles of the universe if they thought it would get them something.”
“I don’t have any trouble picturing that, ma’am,” said Michael. He crouched down, looking at the Great Dane. “You don’t do anything by halves, do you? Giant cats, giant dogs. It’s all big around here.”
“We enjoy sturdy things.”
Michael looked at the dog for a few more seconds, taking in the shape of its bones, the angles of its long face. Then he whistled softly. The dog opened its eyes.
“Huh,” said Michael. He stood, turning back to Fiona. “Where’s Mr. Harrison, ma’am?”
“He couldn’t be here today.”
“So he’s out?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“No, ma’am, it isn’t, quite. I was just wondering, you see, if he messed up his count when he asked if I wanted to come for a visit. I’m guessing he’s a quarter-moon type of guy, since I assume he’d be on two legs right now if he could.”
Fiona blinked. There was a low growl from behind him. The dog was up, then. Good: this was always easier if everyone heard it at the same time.
“I wasn’t sure,” he said apologetically. “I mean, it seemed odd that you would show both cats and dogs, but I don’t know much about the show world. It could have been perfectly normal. So I did a little digging. You came out of nowhere, the pair of you, with the best cat and the best dog anyone had seen in years. No kitten or puppy pictures, though. It was like you’d just found them. No one’s ever seen a picture of the four of you, or of you with Lady of Shallot, or Nathaniel with Sketchy Character. You don’t breed them. You don’t appear with them. You missed a cat show last year when it fell on the quarter-moon. Do you not have a backup handler for when Nathaniel isn’t available?”
Fiona said nothing. Her eyes blazed hatred. That was answer enough.
There was a bump as Sketchy Character—Nathaniel’s—nose hit the back of Michael’s knees. Michael smiled a little. “I guess the logical thing here is for one of you to bite me. Can’t give you away if I’m one of you. There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?” asked Fiona, through gritted teeth.
“It won’t work.”
“I assure you.” She smiled. There was nothing pleasant about it. “It will work just fine.”
“No, it won’t.” He held up his hand. How he hated this part. Only going partway was like thinking about masturbating: frustrating and ultimately fruitless. But it was what had to happen next. He concentrated.
The skin of his hand rippled, darkened, and began to spread, first fusing his fingers into a single mass, and then pulling back as his nails became thick and pink, expanding into a hoof. A few wispy strands of fur accompanied the change, but it stopped short of becoming true fur: if he let it go that far, he’d burst his clothes, and pants weren’t cheap.
“You can’t infect another therianthrope, ma’am,” he said, still apologetic.
Fiona stared. “You’re a horse,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“They…those fools hired a werehorse to figure out whether we were cheating. A werehorse. What are the odds?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.” He shrugged. “There are four P.I.s working that beat, so I suppose one in four.” His hoof rippled, melting back into a hand. He grimaced. “Wow, that itches.”
Fiona’s stare softened. “You poor thing,” she said. “You live in the city, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When’s the last time you really got to run?”
Michael blinked at her before slowly, shyly, beginning to smile.
* * *
Some people were surprised when Unto the Maine expanded to begin showing Friesian horses alongside the dogs and cats they already had. Others felt it was a good thing: that sort of overreach would inevitably result in their quality slipping and other people being able to snatch up the prizes that were rightfully theirs. No one was quite sure what the relationship was between the Harrisons and their new live-in trainer, Michael Collins, but the three were thick as thieves. Michael took over the cat shows, while Fiona continued to show the dogs, and Nathaniel showed the horses.
No matter the phase of the moon, they never missed another competition. And if some people swore they’d seen a black Friesian racing around the Harrisons’ farm with a blue tabby Maine Coon clinging to its saddle and a brown Great Dane running at its heels, well, fresh country air can be intoxicating to those who aren’t accustomed to it.