Evil Breeding

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 me!”
    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