Evil Breeding (19 page)

“Maybe you should try breathing in and out of a paper bag,” I suggested to Jocelyn. “If you’re hyperventilating, it helps a lot. And go easy on the tea. Too much caffeine isn’t a good idea.”

The temperature in my house was a comfortable seventy degrees or so. The June day was sunny and mild. My kitchen windows were open to admit a warm breeze. Jocelyn wore a thick, shabby, cowl-necked gray cardigan over a light-blue, threadbare, button-down oxford-cloth shirt and a long blue-denim skirt. Although she was a tall, heavy-boned woman, the clothing was too big for her. The sweater and shirt looked like a man’s discards. I wondered whether they were hand-me-downs from her late husband, Peter, or from B. Robert or Christopher. Inside the wool sweater, she shivered, but her face had gone from greenish-white to flushed red. Beads of moisture had formed on her forehead and nose. If I’m ever actually in charge of a panic clinic, I’m going to make sure that we stock a product I’ve needed now and then myself in the obedience ring, namely, a facial antiperspirant.

My ministrations had, I regret to say, done nothing more than prevent Jocelyn from collapsing. “I have to go,” she insisted, warming her hands on the mug of tea. “I have to get back. Just give me the things. It was a terrible mistake. I must have been out of my mind. If he finds out, he’ll kill me! I have to get back! You have to pretend it never happened!” With a hint of resolution, she repeated, “It
never
happened. Promise me! It never happened!” Seized by a new bout of panic, she demanded, “You didn’t show anything to anyone, did you? You didn’t tell anyone?”

The woman, I swear, was frantic.

“Of course not.” I dismissed the possibility as calmly as I’d have done if I’d been telling the truth. “Why would I have shown it to anyone?”

“I need all of it back right now. Everything. I have to get back. I have to leave right now.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, “I took it all to my office. I left it there.” The closest I have to an office is my study, in other words, Tracker’s room.

The pupils of Jocelyn’s eyes shrank in alarm. “Where? Where’s your office?”

I hate to lie. “In another part of Cambridge.” True! A nearby room wasn’t exactly a distant part of Cambridge, but it certainly was
another
part. What was I supposed to say?
The police have everything?
“I’ll run over and get it, and I’ll return it to you. I’ll drive out with it.”

“NO!” So much for my future at the clinic. I was afraid she’d have a heart attack. “They’ll see you. They’ll find out. I, uh, have to get back. Christ! Meet me at … Can you meet me later? Meet me at … You know where Mount Auburn Cemetery is?”

I said that I did.

“Meet me there. Can you meet me there?” Her speech was rapid and driven. “I take flowers there all the time. That’s where my mother-in-law—” Her voice broke like a teenage boy’s. She took a breath. As if praying for the dead woman’s salvation, Jocelyn added, in fervent defense of the unaccused, “Christina never meant anyone any harm in her whole life, you know. She was the only person like that I ever knew. I take flowers to her grave. I can, uh, I can do that. I do it all the time. I can be there at, uh, five-thirty. Five-thirty?”

I nodded.

Jocelyn’s directions to Christina Motherway’s grave were hurried and jumbled. I kept bobbing my head and saying that yes, yes, I understood. I did, of course. The directions to Christina’s grave were also directions to Peter’s, and I knew exactly where his was.

“Five-thirty,” I said when she’d finished. “I’ll be there. Are you sure you can drive? Can you make it home? And back? Are you sure you … ?”

Her sudden, bitter laugh startled me. The volume and strength were frightening. “If I’m killed in a car accident,
it’ll be a stroke of luck. It’d be a nice way to go.” In parting, she added, as if savoring a tempting possibility, “There’d be nothing personal about it. Not like if someone did it to you. Or if you had the guts to do it yourself.”

Her face wore a freakish smile.

J
OCELYN’S SMILE LINGERED
on the periphery of my consciousness. Her words rang in my ears:
“the guts to do it yourself.”
Her voice had caressed the phrase. Falsely believing that I could return everything she’d sent to me, she’d spoken fondly of her own death. I remembered the night at dog training when Sherry, whose best friend knew Jocelyn, had traced Jocelyn’s problems to low self-esteem. Rita would have said, as Rita always did, that everything was more complicated than that. For Jocelyn, however, suicide would be a simple solution to the simplicity of low self-esteem and to whatever unknown complexities had landed her in her present situation. And she had the means. The Soloxine leaflets had been removed from the lids of bottles. Inside those bottles were deadly little pills.

I cursed myself for having given the photographs, the leaflets, the note from Giralda, the birth certificate, and the other original materials to Kevin Dennehy. Only a few of the photocopies I’d left with Althea would pass as originals. But they would have to do; they were all I had. When I kept my appointment with Jocelyn at Christina’s grave, I could not arrive empty-handed. I would give her a sealed packet. It would not, however, be all I had to offer. Jocelyn had sent the material to me because she’d seen me as a source of help. She hadn’t been entirely wrong. Getting low scores in the obedience
ring because you’re docked points for handler errors? I can fix that. And I really could have helped with Wagner the Growling Shepherd. Then there’s Alaskan Malamute Rescue. I am not merely an active member of Alaskan Malamute Rescue of New England, but an ardent proselytizer. Interested in adopting a homeless malamute? Call me! Better yet, visit our Web site at
http://www.amrone.org
.

See? I’m a proselytizer. But what I do is
Malamute
Rescue. People Rescue is Rita’s job. I intended to enlist her help. Jocelyn’s husband had just been murdered. Her mother-in-law had died under suspicious circumstances. Jocelyn could be the next murder victim. She was terrified. Once she discovered the absence of the documents she’d sent me, she might become suicidal. Rita would know. Rita knew about women’s shelters. She knew about women! People! Clinics, hospitals, resources. My task, then, was to talk Jocelyn into returning home with me. I was meeting her at five-thirty. Rita was usually back by seven-fifteen, sometimes earlier. She would see Jocelyn’s terror for herself. She would make phone calls. She and I would drive Jocelyn to a haven, a sanctuary, a safe house. If I failed to convince Jocelyn? At least she’d have the photocopies. For all I knew, the copies would serve whatever purpose she had in mind. They’d have to!

It was now three-thirty. I could zip out to Newton, retrieve the things I’d left with Althea, and be back in plenty of time to meet Jocelyn. When I politely called Althea to say I’d be stopping in, I got stuck in a prolonged conversation with Ceci, who can take longer to say nothing than anyone else I’ve ever met. Then I scribbled a note to my cousin Leah, who handles Kimi in breed and obedience. Leah was due at my house at four to train Kimi. She wouldn’t need my help, and she had a key. I’d probably be back soon after she arrived. My note said so. I signed it in the manner of a real dog person, which is to say, someone who has a hard time remembering not to add the names of her dogs when she endorses a check. I wrote, “Love, Holly and Rowdy.”

When I pulled up in front of Ceci’s big white colonial, I left the engine running and didn’t take Rowdy with me as I dashed to the front door. Unfortunately, it was Ceci who answered
the bell. Even more unfortunately, instead of listening to what I’d said on the phone, namely, that I was popping in for a few seconds, she’d not only decided that I was coming for tea, but had announced my visit to Althea. Ten years younger than Althea, Ceci looks like a tiny, pretty version of her rawboned older sister, but has spent her whole life cultivating an air of scatterbrained girlishness that contrasts radically with Althea’s rationality.

“Althea was so thrilled to hear that you were coming for tea,” Ceci gushed. “She simply loves to
entertain.
” Lowering her voice, she confided, “It’s such a welcome change from that
institution
she was in, where she was unable to offer her visitors anything even remotely like
hospitality.
I should never, ever have left her in that place, so it gives her particular pleasure, as it does me, too, of course, I’m always delighted to see you, and your beautiful dogs, too, as goes without saying, doesn’t it? Speaking of which, where are they? Would they like a nice run in the yard while we have our tea? Mary has fixed us a strawberry shortcake, she left ten minutes ago, I do wish she’d live in, but she refuses, and the water is boiling. You do like Earl Grey, don’t you? Oh they are perfectly welcome to join us. As you know, dogs are always more than welcome in my home….” Ceci continued in this fashion for what felt like an hour before drifting back to the topic of her sister, who, she said, “was dying, simply dying, well, not
dying
, of course, in the literal sense, there’s nothing wrong with her health except the usual, but filled with
ideas
she is eager to share with you”—she made ideas sound like foreign entities—“
ideas
about all these bewildering documents she’s had me reading to her until I practically have no voice left!”

If only
, I thought. Althea claimed that as an infant, Ceci had gone by the baby name Leather Lungs. I should add that I have always liked Ceci. Her blather is heartfelt. And she really wants to make reparation for having left Althea in a nursing home, even an excellent one. Today, the coffee table in front of the fireplace in the living room held a silver tea service, delicate cups and saucers, and the promised strawberry shortcake, as well as an elaborate cut-glass contraption
that suggested a three-story apartment building inhabited by tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off. From her wheelchair next to the coffee table, Althea gave me a little wave. “Two visits in one day! We are honored.”

What could I do? I went back to the old Bronco, killed the engine, and got Rowdy, to whom I delivered a brief, stern talking-to about shortcake, sandwiches, and the social graces expected of a civilized dog. It was now four-fifteen. I absolutely, positively had to be on my way back to Cambridge by five o’clock, as I immediately and apologetically warned Ceci and Althea.

“I have an appointment with Jocelyn,” I explained to Althea. “At five-thirty. If I’m a minute late, she may take off.”

“We understand completely,” said Althea, directing an authoritative look at Ceci.

Responding perhaps to Althea’s schoolmistress tone, Rowdy remained on a down-stay at my feet, and Ceci devoted herself to pouring tea and passing plates of goodies. The strawberry shortcake was made with real shortcake, not store-bought sponge cake, and had a generous ratio of fresh berries and whipped cream to carbohydrates. Consequently, I had something better to do with my mouth than interrupt Althea, who went directly and enthusiastically to the point.

“The final packet you received,” Althea pronounced, “consists of the following items: a photograph of a black male German shepherd, a newspaper clipping about the murder of Peter Motherway, a second clipping, this one about the death of Christina Motherway, and an informational brochure for a drug with the capacity to induce thyrotoxicosis.” She paused for a sip of tea. “Holly, you
do
know what a rebus is?”

I’d taken a larger mouthful of shortcake than my mother would have liked. I chewed and swallowed. “A puzzle.”

“A puzzle with pictures,” Althea informed me. “The pictures spell out syllables or words. A picture of an eye, for example”—she raised a hand to one of her own faded blue eyes—“conventionally represents the first-person-singular pronoun, nominative case, I, as in I
myself.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Consider the dog,” Althea said. Hearing herself, she burbled in glee. “As you so often do! But in this case, consider the photograph as a rebus.”

“A shepherd? A German shepherd dog. German?”

“But your time is short. I will stop playing games. Regardless of the breed, a black male dog. Black. Male.”

It occurred to me that if Althea had been my English teacher, I might have understood
Ulysses.
Or at least finished reading it. “Blackmail,” I said.

“Indeed. Blackmail. What has been missing, of course, in questions surrounding the murder of Peter Motherway, is a motive, other than the obvious and universal in such circumstances, which was, of course, that someone wanted him dead. Our correspondent supplies a more specific motive than that by means of a rebus. Blackmail. Shall I translate? Peter was blackmailing his murderer, who had used Soloxine to kill Peter’s mother, Christina Motherway. Or so it seems to me.”

“If so,” I said, “Peter would have been blackmailing—”

“A member of the household,” Althea finished. “A member of his own family, which is to say, someone with access to Christina, access to this dog medicine, and the opportunity to administer it to her. And a motive, too, of course.”

“Mercy killing?” I suggested.

“Hah! Mercy!” Althea was, well, merciless. “The object was to keep her out of an institution.”

Ceci fussed nervously with the teapot. “Holly, may I offer you … ?”

“Ceci, hush,” Althea ordered. “All that is forgotten. And we are not discussing ourselves. Holly’s time and my energy are limited. We must press onward. So, why this apparently altruistic determination to spare a demented woman, a woman almost certainly lost in the past, oblivious to the present, the supposed horrors of a medical facility? Where, in my experience, far from enduring pain, the poor thing would have been doped to the gills with analgesics and antidepressants?”

“Now, Althea,” Ceci began, “the Gateway was not, of course, a suitable home for you, but during the unfortunate period when you, uh, resided there, you were perfectly
compos
mentis
, although the same cannot, alas, be said of your roommate, Helen What’s-her-name, who perhaps
was
doped to the gills, now that you mention it, and where on earth did you of all people ever pick up that vulgar phrase? I cannot—”