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her face, Shotsie Grone knelt on the ground beside a man’s limp form. The two appeared fused into a single shadow, only hazily lit by the glow of the moon and the streetlamp half a block up.
    “Mrs. Grone?” Helen said, and came up behind her.
    Shotsie raised her head slowly and met Helen’s gaze. Tears ran down her bloodless cheeks, dripping from eyes turned glassy with shock.
    Her movement allowed Helen a glimpse of the man who lay on the unkempt lawn. His skin appeared waxy and gray. His eyes stared blankly into the night.
    Shotsie said something, mumbling words so unintelligible that Helen couldn’t make out a one. But she didn’t need to hear. Helen knew precisely what she’d said.
    Milton Grone was dead.

 
    Chapter 3
    A T H ELEN’S URGING, several members of the crowd took off for Amos Melville’s. The doctor arrived barely five minutes after, his white hair ruffled and brown bag clutched in his hand. He wore a coat thrown over striped pajamas and his feet were stuffed into a pair of loafers.
    As gently as she could, Helen pried Shotsie away from her husband. The woman whimpered at first, but then her sobs fast turned into pitiful wails. Helen anchored an arm around Shotsie’s trembling shoulders, holding her a safe distance back from the body as Doc Melville got down on hands and knees beside it.
    Someone had rounded up flashlights, and they were beamed down as Amos worked.
    Helen looked on with the rest as the doctor shined a pin light into Milton’s unseeing pupils, touched his fingers to the man’s throat, and then lifted a lifeless hand upward to check fingernails for color.
    After a quick listen with his stethoscope, Doc Melville stuffed it back into his bag. “The light, please, turn it here,” he said, before he rolled Milton’s head toward him, clucking aloud as he scrutinized the side of the skull that had rested upon an uprooted stone.
    He sighed as he gently lowered the head to the position in which he’d found it. Without a word, he closed his leather satchel and rose from his knees, brushing dirt from his pajamas as he faced Shotsie Grone.
    Helen tightened her arm around the woman as Amos Melville pressed a finger to the bridge of his spectacles, moving nearer to the pair.
    He glanced at Helen, clearing his throat before he told Shotsie, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Grone, but I warned Milton many times to take better care of himself. His heart just wasn’t what it used to be, despite how robust he appeared. If he’d only been more serious about his condition . . . if he’d used the nitroglycerine prescription I asked him to take . . . well, perhaps we might have prolonged his life by a few more years.”
    Shotsie’s teary eyes widened. “What exactly are you saying, Doc? What’s this ‘condition’ you mentioned? You don’t mean his hemorrhoids?”
    Before the doctor addressed Shotsie’s questions, he met Helen’s eyes again for a brief moment. He looked equally puzzled. “You didn’t know about Milton’s myocardial infarction ten years back?”
    “His myo . . . what?” Shotsie shook her head, clearly confused. “I don’t understand.”
    “He had a massive heart attack,” Doc explained, sounding surprised by her ignorance. He chuckled softly. “I was your husband’s physician for more years than I’d like to recall, and he was as stubborn as an ox every one of them. His heart problems were his Achilles’ heel. I guess he didn’t want to trouble you about it, what with you being younger than he was.”
    “A heart attack,” Shotsie murmured.
    “He was in the hospital for nearly a month,” Amos told her. “I must say that, for a time, we were afraid he wasn’t going to make it. But his orneriness pulled him through, all right.”
    Shotsie pulled away from Helen and looked at the people who still milled about as if searching for someone. She hesitated before pointing a finger at Ida Bell. “She said Miltie’s father died of a heart attack. Is that true?”
    Doc