Evil Breeding

possible that the murderer didn’t even know it was the Gardner vault. He could’ve just picked any vault, anything that looked like a house.”
    “It’s an out-of-the-way spot,” Artie observed.
    Unwittingly picking one of the forbidden words, I said, “Yes, down in a depression.” I corrected myself. “In a little valley by that tiny lake. At night you wouldn’t see anything going on there unless you were close to the vault.”
    A young woman in a kimono appeared with our main courses. By the time she was done, meat was sizzling on a stone above tiny flames, and the whole table was covered with dishes and bowls of all sizes.
    “Well,” Artie said jovially, “here we are gathered around the campfire.”
    I coughed up a bit of shrimp. Steve didn’t choke on anything. He just turned silently red. “Rita tells me you’re a backpacker,” he ventured.
    There followed one of those interminable conversations about the Sierras, preferred brands of hiking boots, the merits of various tents, and other matters about which I knew almost nothing and Rita knew not a single thing. I decided that salvation lay in letting the males bond. Deliberately addressing only Rita, I said, “Do you read German?”
    “What?”
    “The language spoken in Berlin. Do you read it?”
    “Why?” Her expression was suspicious. She probably thought I wanted her to translate a book with Hunde in the title.
    “I got something odd in the mail today. There are a couple of things in German. At least I think it’s German.”
    “This isn’t about...?”
    “No,” I assured her. “It has something to do with Mrs. Dodge.” When Rita first heard about Geraldine R. Dodge and the book, she was thrilled that I was writing about someone whose name was frequently mentioned on public radio and public television. I suppose she thought that my career was turning toward respectability, which is to say, away from dogs.
    After chewing and swallowing what seemed to be a slice of yam, I said, “It was really very strange. I got a sort of little package addressed in block capitals, no return address. Inside was an old photograph. I’ll show it to you when we get home. It seems to be a group of servants. Maids with frilly aprons and caps. A couple of men. A butler, maybe. Footmen. I don’t know. But I think it must have been taken at Giralda, Mrs. Dodge’s estate. The people are all standing outside on a staircase, sort of formally posed. And there were also three letters. The one in English is a letter of reference written by Geraldine Dodge for someone named Eva Kappe. She was apparently a housemaid. I guess she’s one of the women in the picture.”
    “What does the letter say?”
    “Eva was industrious, tidy, and trustworthy. It’s dated June 1939. I’m only guessing, but I think the others, the letters in German, are more or less the same.” I may as well leap ahead by revealing that the letters were, in fact, in German, that Rita translated them, and that they were indeed similar to the one written by Mrs. Dodge. But back to the present. “The letters are dated 1938, and the same name is in them, Eva Kappe.”
    “German name,” Rita remarked.
    “My hunch is that this Eva Kappe came to America with these two letters of recommendation from people in Ger-; many. Then she worked for Mrs. Dodge. And when she left, Mrs. Dodge wrote her this letter.” I went on to tell Rita about the mysterious envelopes I’d received previously, including the letter to Bro from Eva written from Giralda.
    “This is quite bizarre,” Rita said.
    “Why do you think I’m telling it to a shrink? It’s weird. I mean, by now' a lot of people know I’m writing this book and I’m interested in Mrs. Dodge, but why send me this stuff? I mean, a picture of her’ ’—I dropped my voice to a whisper— “kennel help might be relevant.” I resumed my normal volume. “But why send anything anonymously? And what am I supposed to do with bits and pieces about a housemaid?”
     

Chapter Sixteen
     
    BEFORE RITA, ARTIE, STEVE, and I had left for the restaurant, I had performed the usual dog person’s predeparture safety survey. The procedure bears a superficial resemblance to normal home security precautions like fire and burglary prevention, but is, in fact, exclusively aimed at making sure that the dogs don’t die of smoke inhalation or get kicked, poisoned, or stolen by thieves. I’d made sure that the stove was off and that the front door and the