by Susan Conant
Anyway, I’d spent Sunday and most of Monday at home with my column. By the time I’d finally finished the column and sent it as a file attached to e-mail to my editor at Dog’s Life, it was five o’clock. After taking a glance at my incoming e-mail—just a quick hit, really, I swear, just enough to take the edge off the craving and stave off incipient delirium tremens—I fed Tracker and the dogs, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and remembered that, gee whiz, there was a whole World Wide World outside my computer, one that, among other things, smelled good to dogs and wouldn’t short-circuit if they lifted their legs on it. Yes, Kimi as well as Rowdy. Hey, Zelda was female, too. And right out in public, she did a lot worse.
Returning home from walking my nondigital dogs in the highly nondigital streets of Cambridge, I noticed that some vandal had defaced my property by jamming a bundle of hard copy into the quaintly decorative object fastened next to the front door of my house. Having inadvertently wandered into a time warp, the dogs and I had been transported back to the paper-polluted days of snail mail. In addition to an extremely inconsiderate missive from the electric company and the premium list for a show I couldn’t afford to enter, the litterer had left yet another of what I had come to think of as my Soloxine packets. This time, instead of mulling over its contents, I did the sensible thing: I called the police. Literally. I stuck my head out the back door of my house and called to Kevin Dennehy, who had pulled into his driveway and was just getting out of his car.
Is everything in neat, linear, chronological order now? It’s Monday. I have finished my column, sent it to my editor, fed my animals, walked the dogs, belatedly taken in my mail, opened what proved to be the last of the mysterious Soloxine packets, and called out to Kevin Dennehy, who has made a fast-food run and is now sitting at my kitchen table. Kevin has devoured one of three quarter-pound cheeseburgers with bacon and half of a large order of fries that he has painted with squiggles of ketchup. Idly wondering whether the Jackson Pollock effect is deliberate, I am chewing a bite of what is supposed to be a fish sandwich, but is obviously a fried fillet of rawhide chew toy. I am suctioning a chocolate milk shake through a straw. Kevin is drinking beer out of a can. Rowdy and Kimi are stationed on either side of Kevin. A droplet of saliva plummets from Kimi’s mouth and hits the floor. A string of drool as fine as a spider web hangs from Rowdy’s lips. Instead of answering my reasonable question about the identity of the tattooed art student I’d first seen at the Gardner Museum and lately noticed at Peter Motherway’s funeral, Kevin has just asked whether I saw a crazy letter to the editor evidently published in today’s paper.
“Lunatic,” pronounces Kevin. When it comes to diagnosing mental illness, he always speaks with clinical authority that Rita, the psychologist, would envy. For good reason. As a cop, he probably has more experience with the extremes of looniness than she does. Rita’s clients, after all, have voluntarily sought psychotherapy. In contrast, a lot of the people who end up in Kevin’s office haven’t exactly made appointments in the hope of finding help and understanding. Of course, his services are free, more or less. Except to the taxpayers.
“What was it about?” I asked, meaning the letter.
“You still got the paper?”
I obediently retrieved it and found the editorial page. “The one about Mrs. Gardner?” I skimmed the letter. “Honestly, this is ridiculous! They must have printed it because it’s so foolish. I’m surprised they published it at all.”
The letter was a response to a short article about the Gardner heist published during the previous week. Both Boston papers were always issuing optimistic updates about hopes for the recovery of the stolen art. The latest one had caught my eye mainly because it had described the FBI as “confident.” The word had tickled me. As I understood matters, a lack of self-confidence wasn’t the Bureau’s most notable problem, or so Kevin always said. The letter in today’s paper, however, had nothing to do with the FBI. In a sentence or two I’d forgotten, the article had apparently provided readers with background on the robbery, the museum, and its founder. The irate writer of the letter objected to two phrases the Globe had used to sum up Isabella Stewart Gardner. According to everything I’d ever read, the Globe was justified in calling her “an eccentric.” Furthermore, there was universal agreement that she had been “no beauty.” Or so I had supposed.
Just who do you think you are, demanded the writer, to go around insulting the lady Mrs. Isabella Stewart Gardner who did more for the City of Boston and the World of Art than all of the rest of you combined? You think you know what she looked like better than the great artist John S. Sargent? If she and him was alive today, you wouldn’t have the nerve!!! From now on keep your ignorant opinions to yourself Some people don’t want to hear them. Me for example. If I ever pick up your paper and read that garbage again I’m not subscribing which I don’t anyway.
The letter was unsigned. A sentence stated that the name was being withheld at the request of the writer. “‘Which I don’t anyway!’” I exclaimed. “It must be here for comic relief. Anyway, you’re right. People do go nuts about Isabella Stewart Gardner.”
“Half the City of Boston.”
“Especially about the robbery. You know, Kevin, that really was a very personal crime. It wasn’t like having a bank get robbed. My mother used to take me to the Gardner and tell me about how it used to be Mrs. Gardner’s house, and now it was everyone’s because she gave it to us. After the heist, lots of people felt as if they’d been robbed of things that belonged to them. The letter is silly, but it’s true that Mrs. Gardner gave her house and her art to the public in a direct, personal way. Geraldine R. Dodge did the same thing when she gave dog shows. She gave them as personal gifts.” Need I mention that I’d told Kevin about Mrs. Dodge? Of course I had. I went on. “Maybe the papers really should express some gratitude by saying that Mrs. Gardner was gorgeous. What does it matter now?” I sipped my melted milk shake. “Kevin, have you ever been there?”
“Where?”
“The Gardner Museum.”
“Me?”
“Well, you should go. It’s beautiful.”
Kevin had almost demolished the third cheeseburger. He rolled his eyes, swallowed, and changed the subject. “What else you know about these Motherways?”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you about. Actually, it’s going to be show-and-tell.”
Five minutes later, the fast-food debris was in the trash, the table was covered with everything sent to me in the mystery mailings, and I’d filled Kevin in on what Soloxine was. “I was beginning to think it was Peter Motherway who was sending this stuff,” I said. “Or I wondered, anyway. Obviously, it wasn’t.” I tapped a finger on the most recent material, which consisted of a snapshot of Wagner, the growly black shepherd, a photocopy of Christina Motherway’s death notice, yet another Soloxine leaflet, and a newspaper clipping about Peter Motherway’s murder. “Peter,” I said unnecessarily, “was in no position to send this. I don’t know who did. Possibly Jocelyn, his wife. Possibly someone else, including someone I don’t even know.”
Kevin grunted.
“The implication,” I continued, “as I see it, is that Christina Motherway was murdered. The recurring item is this leaflet about Soloxine. Thyroid medication for hypothyroid dogs. Sent to me. So at first I naturally assumed that in a cryptic way someone was telling me something about dogs. In a way that’s true, but what I think now is that the real message, from the beginning, was about Mrs. Motherway, Christina. The message I didn’t get was that she’d died of thyrotoxicosis. The Motherways have a lot of dogs. What I didn’t know at first, but what I’ve heard since, is that there’s a lot of hypothyroidism in those lines: a lot of dogs, a lot of Soloxine, a lot of brochures.” I hesitated. “And when I put that together, I thought maybe it had been more or less a mercy killing, although I’m far from sure that that kind of death is merciful. Anyway, that’s what I thought. Christina was dying, and the family really wanted her to be able to die at home, not
in an institution. I could sympathize with that. I know you disagree, Kevin, but in some circumstances, I don’t see that as murder.”
Kevin named a doctor and made a slanderous accusation.
“Many doctors,” I insisted, “would have sympathized with a family that decided to speed the death of a woman who was dying anyway, and dying confused and in pain, at least in psychic pain. Besides, there wasn’t necessarily anything to arouse suspicion. Christina was terminally ill. The whole idea was to let her die at home. And then she did. A person who was disoriented to begin with, a person with advanced Alzheimer’s, got to die in familiar surroundings. Good! She died at home. What could be more natural? Why ask questions? Or maybe you wonder about them in private, but why ask them in public?”
“Why ask you?” Kevin demanded. “No doctor’s going to ask you.”
“I know that. What does seem possible is that the family didn’t do this together. Someone ended Christina’s life. Someone else knew that and didn’t consider it mercy killing. But in that case, the logical thing would be to go to Christina’s doctor and start asking questions. Or go to the police. I mean, why send mysterious collections of hints to someone who’s writing a book about famous old dog shows? Believe me, Kevin, it doesn’t make any more sense to me than it does to you. But what’s solid, what’s not just speculation, is that Peter Motherway was murdered. And this strange collection of stuff that’s been sent to me is about Christina’s death and, as of what arrived today, Peter’s murder. That’s why I’m showing it to you. It’s your business, not mine. For all I know, someone knew we were friends and sent this stuff to me on the assumption that I’d do exactly what I’m doing right now.”
Chapter Twenty
AT NINE O’CLOCK the next morning, the wail of sirens on Concord Avenue set off sympathetic vibrations in my dogs’ vocal cords. With all the free will of fine crystal shattering in response to the power of a high soprano note, I snatched a little yellow-and-white noisemaker and a handful of cheese cubes and began to click and treat. The scenario serves as a handy paradigm. An environmental stimulus triggers a response in dogs that itself acts as a stimulus for a human behavior. This neat behavioral chain is what we in the profession succinctly refer to as “dog training.” I am happy to report that a mastery of the fundamentals of this sport enables the trainer to generalize her skills to the modification of human behavior.
Consider, for example, my success in letting Kevin Dennehy elicit a ton of homicide-relevant behavior from me while supplying me with hardly any information. What had I learned from Kevin? That Peter had not been murdered at Mount Auburn. That the murder weapon had been a length of wire. That B. Robert Motherway and his look-alike grandson, Christopher, alibied each other for the time of Peter Motherway’s demise, and that Jocelyn claimed to have been home alone. So what? I already knew that the elderly Mr. Motherway lacked the physical strength to have garroted Peter or to have moved the body to the Gardner vault. Although Christopher was young and powerful, what motive could he have had to kill his father? Although he was B. Robert’s biological grandson, Christopher was, in effect, his grandfather’s favorite son. Why do in a rival he had already defeated?
And the unalibied Jocelyn? I continued to see her as the victim, not the victimizer. This was, after all, a woman who passively played the role of servant to her in-laws. She couldn’t even stand up to an ill-mannered dog. In desperation, she might have lashed out at her husband. But Peter had been intercepted at Logan Airport, not killed at home, and he’d been garroted. The murderer must have prepared the garrote in advance. And the method was gruesome. Kevin might be right that murder was often a family affair. But murder by garroting? Women shot their husbands and lovers, didn’t they? They poisoned them. Or stabbed them with kitchen knives. If I decided to murder someone, I’d choose a weapon I at least knew how to use. A length of wire: How long? With handles fastened to the ends? Handles? What kind? Fastened how? Then wrap it around the victim’s neck. But what if the victim resisted? Even if he didn’t, then what? Yank hard? Once? Repeatedly? Twist the weapon? Or not? Pull and keep pulling? For how long? I couldn’t possibly garrote anyone. Even if I were that kind of person, I wouldn’t know how. And Jocelyn? Even if she had the specialized knowledge I lacked, did she have the requisite force of will?
But let me return to the application of the principles of dog training to the shaping of human behavior in everyday life. After making great progress in using the click-and-treat method with the dogs, I settled in front of my computer and retrieved my e-mail, which included a message from my coauthor, Elizabeth Kublansky. “IMHO,” she wrote in e-mail jargon—in my humble opinion—“if you cannot get it together to turn out straightforward text in your usual orderly fashion, you should just say so, and I’ll find someone who can. I don’t know about you, but I need the second half of our pitiful advance. My part of this book is done. Where’s yours?”
With one click of the mouse, I deleted Elizabeth’s message. The treat was the Web. Having resolved to obey Elizabeth’s sensible command by writing publishable sentences to accompany her photographs instead of continuing to amass increasing amounts of useless information, I rewarded myself with what was supposed to be a minute or two on-line to search for anything about Eva Kappe, the housemaid recommended by Mrs. Dodge, the writer of the 1939 letter from Giralda. There wouldn’t be anything. Why would there? In five minutes, after finding nothing, I’d be off-line and dutifully double-clicking the icon for my word-processing program, opening the file for the first chapter of the book, and otherwise clicking and treating the computer instead of letting it act like an untrained dog that dragged me around and dropped me where it pleased.
A scant thirty minutes later, I was revisiting the Web site devoted to the alumni of the Princeton, New Jersey, high school attended by B. Robert Motherway. As I’d previously discovered, Mr. Motherway had failed to stay in touch with the class of 1926. I didn’t wonder a lot about whether he’d been more loyal to Princeton than to his public high school. Which diploma hung on his wall? Anyway, the same high school’s class of 1930, I now saw, was searching for a member, Eva Kappe, who did not graduate, but left at the end of her sophomore year.
Chronology of the life of Eva Kappe: Due to graduate from high school in 1930? At age eighteen? So, she is born in about 1912. In 1928, she lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where she is a high school sophomore. At the end of the year, she leaves the school. By the thirties, she is working as a maid in Germany; she receives letters of reference from her employers. Rita had translated the letters for me; the recommendations were strong. In 1939, Eva Kappe is back in New Jersey. This time, she is in Madison, at Giralda, where she works as a housemaid for Geraldine R. Dodge. From Giralda, she writes a short note to Bro, whoever he is. She poses for a group photograph of Mrs. Dodge’s household help. She leaves with a recommendation from Mrs. Dodge.
From New Jersey in the late twenties to Germany in the thirties. In the late thirties, back to New Jersey. She speaks enough English to attend an American high school, enough German to work in Germany. Back and forth. A go-between? Yes, my mysterious mailings were about the death of Christina Motherway and, as of yesterday, about the murder of her son, Peter. But the odd collection of items included the photograph of servants at Giralda, the note written from there, and Eva Kappe’s recommendations from German employers and from Mrs. Dodge. Could my cryptic messages have a double or triple meaning? Christina’s death. Her murder? Peter’s murder. And treasonous activity at Mrs. Dodge’s estate.
Ah yes, Mrs. Dodge, Giralda, the Morris and Essex shows. My book. Our book. Elizabeth’s justified ire. My unpaid bills. Web: silky net spun by predatory arachnids to trap prey. My love of animals, I reminded myself, did not extend to spiders. As a useful high-tech aid to the professional writer, the computer ranked somewhere below the stylus.
Fresh out of styluses, I settled for a pen, yellow legal pad, and the manila folders containing copies of articles culled from old microfilme
d issues of the New York Times. Sitting at the kitchen table instead of at the computer, I would go through the reports on the Morris and Essex shows, and I’d study stories about the Dodges. Today, now, damn it, I would go through these folders for the last time, taking notes on articles that were gratifyingly unavailable in cyberspace. My notes, I resolved, would consist exclusively of information directly relevant to the book.
And so it went. For two scribbled pages. Then I happened on a little three-paragraph, three-sentence article published in the financial section of the New York Times on July 5, 1928. It read, in its entirety:
H. DODGE JR. RIDES STEER
John D. Rockefeller’s Nephew Wins
Applause at Montana Rodeo
LIVINGSTON, Mont., July 4 (AP)—Hartley Dodge Jr. of New York, a nephew of John D. Rockefeller, has won his spurs in range fashion.
The youth of 19 thrilled spectators at a rodeo here yesterday when he rode a wild steer “to a finish.”
Dodge is visiting here with a party from New York, including his father, head of the Remington Arms Company, and his mother.
Hold it! I’d heard this story before, and certainly not from the lips of M. Hartley Dodge, Jr., who had died in France only two years after riding that wild steer to a finish. The storyteller had been B. Robert Motherway. A teller of tales he’d been! In his version, who was the youth who had won the applause at that Montana rodeo? Who had won his spurs by riding a wild steer to the finish?
It was remotely possible that B. Robert Motherway had been among the party that accompanied Mr. and Mrs. M. H. Dodge and their son to Montana that summer. If the nephew of John D. Rockefeller, the son of the head of Remington Arms, rode a wild steer, the feat deserved mention in the financial section of the New York Times. Not so the equally daring accomplishment of a townie classmate. But if the young B. Robert Motherway had, in fact, traveled to Montana as a guest of the Dodges, the elderly Mr. Motherway would undoubtedly have exercised brag rights by telling me so. Furthermore, he’d have used his own words instead of precisely the phrases printed in the New York Times.
