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and a quick gust of wet wind made me shiver.
My aunt Lena looked up from a conversation she was having with
another neighbor. She leaned in to the woman, said something, then
headed our direction.
    A voice yelled, “Moose,” and my uncle
turned.
    “ Talk to your aunt,” he
said, and started to walk off. A second later he came back, handed
me the umbrella and disappeared into the anxious crowd.
    “ What is going on?” I
asked Aunt Lena with an emphasis on each word.
    Women will tell women things; they don’t try
to hedge and protect the way men tend to. I watched resolve come
over her features. Her dark eyes tightened, making them seem
smaller within deep wrinkles. She’d been crying. Her words came out
trembling, pained: “Evelyn Vicks was murdered.”
    My mouth dropped. I’d just seen her a few
hours ago. How could this be true? It seemed surreal . . . some
sort of joke.
    I tried to wrap my mind around her statement
feeling like I didn’t completely comprehend. I started to say,
“You’re kidding,” but stopped myself when I realized how stupid
that would sound. All I could do was repeat the word that hit me
hardest. “Murdered?”
    Aunt Lena nodded; she bit her lip. “Someone
broke in.”
    Evelyn Vicks had been a good friend to all
of us for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t imagine who would
murder such a sweet, helpless woman. I shivered again, this time
from more than just the cold night air.
    “ Broke in,” Aunt Lena
repeated, then stopped herself short with a strangled laugh. “What
a joke, huh? You know she always kept her doors
unlocked.”
    Well, most of the time, I thought.
“Yeah.”
    She shook her head again. “Someone just
waltzed in, killed her, and took off.” The squads’ blue lights
flashed on my aunt’s face like an uneven strobe, illuminating the
tight pain in her expression. “The bastards.” Though her body faced
me, her attention stayed directed toward the movement in and out of
Mrs. Vicks’ house.
    “ A robbery?” I asked. The
rain had slowed enough for me to lower the umbrella. Thank
goodness; I was fighting a sense of claustrophobia. I wanted to
know what had happened. I wanted to know it all. Now.
    “ Nobody’s telling us
anything. But, you remember how Russ Bednarski used to be a Chicago
cop?” She gestured with her chin toward a cluster of people. Mr.
Bednarski had his hands out in front, gesturing as he spoke. “Well,
Russ was able to talk to some of the officers over there, and they
said it didn’t look like a robbery to them.”
    “ But I just saw her,” I
said, as though my words could somehow change the events of the
evening. With a stab, I remembered the smell of the steaming pork
roast, and the way she’d promised me a special dinner tomorrow
night. I felt my eyes sting, my throat tighten. I pulled my shawl
snug around my body, suddenly craving the warmth and comfort I’d
felt at her house earlier. And then I remembered something else.
“Diana? What about Diana?”
    Aunt Lena shifted her weight from one foot
to the other. She wasn’t a heavy woman, but standing out on the wet
cement wearing only house slippers had to be uncomfortable for
someone in her late sixties. “That’s who found her. They’re talking
to her now, inside one of the squad cars. She called 911, and then
she called us.”
    “ When did it
happen?”
    My aunt shook her head and shrugged,
glancing at me briefly. “Moose picked up the phone around nine. I
could hear the poor girl screaming, and I was all the way in the
bedroom getting changed for bed. I came out to see what was wrong,
but Moose couldn’t get her to settle down. We came over here right
away. I thought she might’ve made some mistake and maybe Evelyn had
just fallen, or something.”
    I nodded. “I talked to her,” I said, almost
to myself. “Around six-thirty.”
    My aunt made a sympathetic noise. “You never
know, do you? You just never know.” A half-second later, I heard
her sharp intake of breath.