by Susan Conant
Chapter Twenty-eight
I’D FINALLY FOUND a Mount Auburn guard. I fumbled at his wrist for a pulse. Finding none, I forced myself to put my fingers on his throat. Although I knew that Peter Motherway had been garroted, I’d avoided dwelling on the details of how he must have died. Consequently, it took me a second to interpret the thin, sickeningly unnatural indentation in the bristly flesh. When I did, my hand sprang away all of its own accord, as if my fingers had brushed a hot iron. The reaction was instantaneous and involuntary. This, I told myself, was an unconditioned reflex, a primitive reaction from deep in the brain. Stimulus: sudden and unexpected physical contact with a dead body. Response: a startle of revulsion. Once my hand had fled, I felt pity. There was something pitiful about the stubble on the man’s neck, about dying while needing a shave. Still, I found myself compulsively rubbing my hand on my sleeve before I reached out to hold Rowdy.
I knew I had to touch the body again. Were the Mount Auburn guards armed? If this one had carried a weapon, it would be foolish not to take it. But all I found was a walkie-talkie of some sort, a little box clipped to his belt. It felt like a small radio with a series of buttons and a square of plastic mesh that must have covered the speaker. I had no idea how to operate the gadget. Tinkering blindly, I could set off the kind of brassy squawk you hear in police cruisers and taxis; in trying to rouse help, I’d broadcast my presence. In case the guard had dropped a weapon when he’d been attacked, I searched the ground around the body. All I found was a little plastic bottle with the distinctive shape of a nasal-spray dispenser. The poor man had apparently been killed while defending himself against a stuffy nose.
If the attacker approached, Rowdy would warn me, wouldn’t he? Not deliberately, I thought. On the contrary, Rowdy would prepare himself to extend his usual happy greeting. On the other hand, he wouldn’t just sit there and let someone garrote me. He stands twenty-five inches at the withers and weighs close to ninety pounds. The power of his breed is even greater than the size would suggest. I comforted myself with the memory that in his youth, Tazs, my friend Delores’s somersaulting malamute, had often pulled forty times his own weight. Forty times! Tazs, the famous Pulling Machine, had a Working Weight Pull Dog Excellent title and a history of weight-pull triumphs that Rowdy lacked. But the two dogs weighed the same! And Rowdy loved me as devotedly as Tazs loved Delores, which is to say with a concentrated adoration equal to a million times his own weight. I felt certain that Rowdy would bring a physical attack to an immediate, violent halt. I didn’t want to see Superdog in action, though. In particular, I didn’t want to see bullets penetrate his chest instead of bouncing off.
As if to shield Rowdy, I shortened his leash and forced my way ahead of him. The guard’s corpse lay near an intersection of roads. At a guess, it wouldn’t have been left where Motherway and the tattooed man would cross it on their return route. From where I stood, with my back toward Coolidge Avenue, the body was on the left. Therefore, I should head to the right. And at another guess, the men had taken Jocelyn to the Gardner vault, which I was quite sure was somewhere to my right. Mary Baker Eddy’s monument, readily visible in the daytime from Coolidge Avenue, was definitely to my right. It was the size of a building and was made of pale stone; even at night, it would be impossible to miss. If I reached it, I’d know I’d gone too far. The Gardner vault was deeper into the cemetery than the Eddy Memorial. I’d need to bear right and cut toward the interior of Mount Auburn. I’d also need to leave the paved roads. The Gardner vault, the family crypt, sat on the shores of a little artificial lake in what might have been a natural valley. Some sort of path ran near the lakeshore, but I was positive that I’d looked down on the vault and its neighbors from a trail on the high ground above. Unfortunately, it also seemed to me that even for one of the old sections of Mount Auburn, the area was an exceptionally tortuous maze of streets, paths, ponds, monuments, and crypts. Worse, it wasn’t a section I knew well because there was only one dog monument nearby, and Dr. Stanton, Rowdy’s former owner, was buried elsewhere.
If the sounds hadn’t led me there, I might never have found it. The voice I heard now was different from the one that had cried out. There were words. I couldn’t understand them. The sex was male. The tone was belligerent. Rowdy crowded against me. I could feel his muscles tighten. He has a nose for trouble. On his own, hearing it and smelling it, he’d head directly for its source. With misgivings, I loosened his leash to give him free run within its six-foot length. With a questioning glance at me—This is what you want, isn’t it?—he confidently hit the end of the leash and justified the view of all the dumb people who’d ever said, “Hey, lady, who’s taking who for a walk?” Rowdy plainly knew where he was going. More than that! I knew as well as I knew my dog that he was, indeed, gleefully pulling toward trouble. The hitch was Rowdy’s varied conception of trouble. Rowdy might be making for human conflict. Alternatively, he could be in ardent pursuit of a meal of plump raccoon.
We suddenly came to a place I remembered, a passageway between walls of polished stone. I couldn’t read the names on the walls now, couldn’t even remember whether they were cut into the rock or engraved on brass plaques, but I knew they were there. If we followed the passageway and turned sharply right, there’d be a little body of water on our left and, on our right, happily situated on the shore like a row of summer cottages, the quaint buildings that were, in fact, family crypts. The Gardner vault was in the row.
But we didn’t follow the passageway. I tugged on Rowdy’s leash and managed to persuade him to reverse direction. I didn’t need to see his face to read his disgusted expression. I could almost hear him silently groan. My stupid ideas are a great trial to him. By patting my thigh and stepping enthusiastically forward, I convinced him to indulge me. Now that I finally had my bearings, I quickly found the little footpath that ran parallel to the shore of the tiny lake on the miniature hillside above the family vaults. The passing of clouds brightened the sky a shade or two, so I didn’t need to grope my way, but moved swiftly until the roofs of the squat crypts were below me and, below them, the water. I could hear movement. There was a soft splash. Someone was mumbling. Jocelyn? Yes. She repeated a series of syllables. The pills had thickened her voice. She seemed to be saying the same thing over and over, but I couldn’t make out what it was. I heard whispers. One had a tone of impatience. I was too far away to understand the words.
In frustration, I dropped to my hands and knees and began to creep slowly downhill. I shortened Rowdy’s leash and gripped it tightly in my hand. I must not raise my hindquarters and lower my shoulders, I reminded myself; in the universal body language of dogs, the “play bow” is an invitation to start leaping and tearing around. To my relief, Rowdy seemed content to join me in a game of silent stealth. The short distance we covered put me close enough to hear the phrase that Jocelyn was now uttering again and again in a drugged, yet weirdly insistent, voice.
“Brother and sister, brother and sister, brother and sister,” she mumbled. Her tone changed to one of surprise. “Brother and sister! Brother and sister! Christina, my Christina!”
“Gerhard, for Christ’s sake,” B. Robert grumbled, “hurry up! Your orders are clear! Get her head underwater and hold it there! Is that too complicated? First, get her head underwater. Then hold it there! And no marks!”
I could now see B. Robert Motherway’s tall figure pace back and forth on what seemed to be a gravel path in front of the Gardner vault. Between the path and the water was a large, low, rectangular object I couldn’t identify, a tomb, perhaps, or dignified housing for equipment that pumped water to the artificial lake. Or aired out the crypts? Anyway, Jocelyn was stretched out on it. Facing the lake, Gerhard sat on it in the pose of The Thinker. Suddenly, he exclaimed at almost normal volume, “It’s concrete! I could smash her head against it!”
“Brother and sister,” Jocelyn muttered compulsively, “brother and sister.”
“Shut up!” Motherway quietly ordered her. “Oh, f
or Christ’s sake! Why is it impossible to get people to obey orders! It is a terrible thing,” he added, obviously to himself, “to lose the strength of manhood. It is a terrible thing to grow old.” Again issuing orders, he strutted toward the two figures, pointed a menacing hand, and said, “We have planned all this in detail and at length! Hold her head underwater! Do it now, you moron! Overcome with guilt and remorse, she washes off the stain of murder! Hurry! This should have been over in minutes! You had her in the water! Take her there again! Take her there now!”
“Here lie the remains,” Gerhard announced in the tone of a museum guide, “of a public benefactress, a beautiful woman who suffered the slings and arrowroots of outraged—” His voice broke off. My mouth must have been hanging open. Arrowroots? Wasn’t arrowroot a thickener used in cooking? A type of bland cookie?
In any case, the outraged one was Motherway. “Enough crazy talk! Enough!”
“Mama!” Gerhard cried. “Mama! Your little Jackie is here! Your little Jackie has come back! He has come with presents! You like pretty things, don’t you, Mama? All the pretty swastikas on your little house? Your pretty little boy? Your beautiful pictures? Mama, your little Jackie has come back to make sacrifices for you. Mama? Mama?”
Jackie? Isabella Stewart Gardner was Mrs. Jack Gardner. For short, she was Mrs. Jack. Jackie: her only child, the son who died in infancy. Gardner! Gerhard! This Gerhard had not the slightest trace of a German accent; in fact, from his vowels, I’d have guessed that he grew up in one of the suburbs south of Boston or on the South Shore. I felt suddenly certain that he’d taken the name himself, picked it because it reminded him of Gardner.
As I watched, Jocelyn unexpectedly sat up. “Brother and sister,” she repeated.
Motherway abruptly lost patience. I saw him reach into his pocket and produce what must have been the handgun he’d had in the car. He stepped stiffly to Gerhard. “Pick her up, take her to the water, submerge her! Do it now!” The one he pointed the gun at, though, was Jocelyn. If Gerhard didn’t drown her, Motherway would shoot her. Did it matter which way she died?
If it hadn’t been for Rowdy, I’d have lacked inspiration to act. As I struggled to think of almost anything to do, a great many sirens wailed faintly somewhere far away. But not too far for Rowdy’s sharp ears. Clicker training, I remind you, increases the frequency, intensity, and duration of target behavior. Does it ever! Raising his mighty head, Rowdy howled back. Ahhhhh-wooooo! Ahhhhh-wooooo! Unmuffled by walls, his operatic voice rang through the night air.
I leaped to my feet. A few steps put me on the turf-covered roof of the Gardner family vault. In what I hoped would pass with Gerhard as the elegant turn-of-the-century cadences of Isabella Stewart Gardner, I took advantage of Rowdy’s bloodcurdling accompaniment to declaim, “I am Mrs. Jack Gardner! I sleep here in peace! Why do you desecrate my memory?”
My desperate, loony act apparently took in Gerhard. He fell to his knees facing the vault. Motherway’s head jerked around to where Jocelyn sat, then jerked back. Could he see me? Could he see Rowdy? Even if he could, he’d have to be a first-rate marksman to hit either of us using a handgun at this distance at night.
Boldly, I added in my Isabella voice, “Do not kill the woman!” Mrs. Gardner, I reminded myself, had owned dogs. I allowed a hint of my dog-trainer assertiveness to slip in. “Save her! Save her life! Do it for roe!”
Preoccupied with my role and with the weapon in Motherway’s hand, I failed to keep an eye in other directions. Motherway still faced the vault. He was just starting uphill toward me when a weirdly identical figure came running at full speed along the path by the lake.
“What the hell is going on here?” Christopher Motherway’s voice was a young man’s version of his grandfather’s. “Mother left me a note. She must’ve been desperate.”
“Christopher, go home!” Motherway commanded.
Far from being roused by her son’s arrival, Jocelyn slid back down. “Brother and sister,” she mumbled. “Brother and sister. Christina, I am so sorry! I didn’t know! I didn’t know! I didn’t think he’d do it! I didn’t know!”
In ludicrous understatement, Christopher exclaimed, “This situation is unacceptable!”
“Get off your high horse!” his grandfather snapped. “You had no qualms about Peter, did you? And if you had obeyed orders then instead of hiring this crazy Gerhard, this would be unnecessary. But you had to get greedy, didn’t you? You couldn’t go and pay full price for a professional, could you, Christopher? You had to keep half the fee for yourself. You always were a greedy little boy.”
It would have been easy to hear the traded accusations as an ardent family spat about where Christopher had taken a suit to be dry-cleaned. In reality, the grandfather and grandson were quarreling about arrangements for the murder of the grandfather’s son, the grandson’s father. The full sickness of the family hit me at last.
“Peter could have been bought off,” responded Christopher, sounding like his grandfather’s identical twin. “And he was a mean bastard. But Mother’s done nothing. Not a thing.” As if to disclaim any respect he might have for Jocelyn, he added, “She doesn’t have it in her.”
B. Robert Motherway was haughty. “To the contrary, she is a sneak who has been scheming to reveal everything.” He paused. “And I mean everything.”
“Impossible,” Christopher replied. “She doesn’t know a thing.”
Gerhard suddenly tuned in to the present. “Oh yes she does! I keep telling you and telling you! She knows! I don’t know how, but she does! She knows about the dogs! She said, Wasn’t it a miracle! All those canvases, and they didn’t get chewed by dogs! Shepherds! All those shepherds, she said, and they didn’t chew the paintings! She said it, she said it, she said it!”
I was the one who’d talked about the shepherds and the paintings. I’d meant Geraldine R. Dodge’s dogs and Geraldine R. Dodge’s paintings, of course. Although Steve and I had been at Mrs. Gardner’s museum, I hadn’t been talking about her at all.
I was eager to hear more, but the elder Mr. Motherway finally lost patience. To my surprise, he didn’t shoot Gerhard, but slammed him on the head with the butt of the gun. Gerhard fell to the ground and lay motionless.
As if she were the one who’d received a hard blow to the temple, Jocelyn groaned. “Christina, my poor Christina! He brought her back from Germany, you know. She was happy there. He brought her back to case the mansion for him, to tell him what was where! Brother and sister! Brother and sister!”
“Pay no attention to her,” the elder Motherway said. “She came from nowhere. Her parentage is unknown. She is a nobody.” He moved to Jocelyn and held the gun to her head. The drug that was causing the compulsive babbling seemed also to have made her oblivious to the peril of her situation; she hadn’t tried to escape.
“What is she talking about?” her son demanded. Then he asked Jocelyn directly. “What the hell are you going on about?”
“I am cursed with women who babble!” Motherway exploded.
“Let her answer!” ordered Christopher, shoving his grandfather away from Jocelyn. “What’s this about a brother and sister?”
Jocelyn’s voice was wild with melodrama. “He fell in love with her! Oh, he fell madly in love with her! She was so beautiful! Christina! He brought her back to work for the rich old lady, and then he fell in love with her! And he married her.”
“The old lady?” Christopher asked, bewildered. “What old lady?”
“No, no!” Jocelyn was getting groggy again. Her voice dropped. “His sister. His very own sister.”
The grandfather raised the arm that held the gun. “Christopher, get out of the way!”
Almost simultaneously, Christopher must have understood the personal implication of what Jocelyn had revealed. With a roar, he sprang on his grandfather. “You son of a bitch! You dirty son of a bitch! Parentage! Hah! Parentage! Pig! Filthy pig!” Although grandfather and grandson seemed the same man at different ages, Christopher had
no difficulty in wresting the gun from his grandfather. And no apparent difficulty in shooting him, either.
Chapter Twenty-nine
THE CRUISERS AND THE AMBULANCES arrived with sirens silent and headlights off. Still, a short distance behind me, engines hummed, and tires droned. I could have sworn that the temperature suddenly rose a degree or two, warmed by the body heat of a large, yet furtive, presence. Someone, I felt certain, had discovered the slain guard’s body; only murder could speedily have summoned a force this large.
I saw no reason to remain at the scene. If my testimony were needed later, I would provide it. All I felt now was the primitive urge to get away and to take Rowdy with me. Rita informs me that I need feel no guilt about the impulse to flee. My horror, she claims, and my overwhelming compulsion to distance myself were normal, indeed, universal human responses to incest. “Hence,” Rita says smugly, “the taboo.” Human, maybe. But universal? Not half so universal as it ought to be, if you want my opinion. B. Robert and Christina. Rather, B. Robert and Eva Kappe. Brother and sister.
Also, I was scared of crossfire. Christopher’s bullet must have shattered his grandfather’s skull and penetrated the brain, and Gerhard was comatose, at least for now, but Christopher was able and armed. Having come to his mother’s rescue, he’d be unlikely to risk a gun battle that could leave Jocelyn an innocent casualty. Still, I couldn’t be sure.
The police would certainly approach on Mount Auburn’s roads and paths. The paved streets and the trails all around the lake would be under surveillance, if not actually occupied, and there was bound to be a substantial force at the intersection where I’d found the dead guard’s body. Consequently, my spur-of-the-moment plan for evading detection called for staying off Mount Auburn’s major and minor thoroughfares; wherever possible, Rowdy and I would wend our way from monument to monument, stone to stone, tree to tree. Our destination would be the same gate through which we’d entered. It would be watched now, perhaps barred. But we’d deal with that problem when we came to it. If necessary, we’d go to some distant part of Mount Auburn and hide out until morning.
