Killing of Monday Brown

I could hear them before I could see them. The Dodge van stopped at the end of the lane that led to my house. It was a class act, painted a deep cherry red with black and silver detailing and tinted windows all around. It was a knockout piece of vehicle and didn't belong to anyone I knew. Yet. I walked over to the spigot on the side of the porch and turned off the water, dropped the hose I was holding, and squinted against the sun to see who was inside the van. No one was getting out, and it was making me nervous. My house sits in an isolated area; my nearest neighbor is a good half mile away. It had been vacant for many years and had the reputation of being a hangout for beer busts and God only knew what else. Six months ago I moved in and had the cops out every weekend for the first month. Reputations are easy to earn and die hard, even for one-hundred-year-old three-story houses. I was about to turn and walk into the house when the door on the side of the van slid back, and several Indians piled out. Two young boys and a girl bolted toward me, ran past, and disappeared into the trees to the right of the house. A tall man, over six feet, with long, traditional braids, a John Deere duck-billed cap on his head, wearing Tony Lamas, Levi's, and a pearl-buttoned western shirt, strode toward me. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his jeans, and his face, the color of earthen clay, showed no emotion as he covered the ground between us with long strides. A brooding younger man, eighteen, maybe twenty, leaned against the van and listened with a deaf ear as a young woman chewed on him about something I couldn't make out. He reached in through an open window on the passenger side and brought out a can, lifted it to his lips, and drank. The young woman looked at me quickly, a flush of embarrassment on her face. I didn't see the two women on either side of an old, old woman until they were almost upon me. No one said a word until the old woman was led to the stairs going up to the porch and gently sat down. The man standing a few feet from me spit chew on the ground and looked me dead in the eyes. I could hear the kids, squealing and laughing as they ran out of the woods and bounded up the stairs onto the porch. Immediately, all three were on the rail, using it as a tightrope. I took a step toward the porch, prepared to rescue, or maim, whichever came first, one or all of them. "Hey! You could get--" "Kyle Old Wolf is my cousin. He said we should come to you." "Who? He said what?" I was doing one of those head turns that you see only at a tennis match, trying to give equal time to the kids and the man who was talking to me. Then the phone started ringing inside the house. "Could you wait just a minute?" I reached the phone on the seventh or eighth ring. If I didn't sound out of breath or hysterical or both, it was a miracle of self-control. "Phoebe," the familiar voice said bluntly. "I thought I should call." "You're a little late, Kyle. All, and I meanall,of them are here." He laughed. "The whole family came, huh?" "Oh, I don't know. It could be two, maybe three families for what that's worth. What's going on?" "Been reading the papers?" "Only my horoscope and 'The Far Side.' " "Have you followed the news about the woman down on TwentProwell, Sandra West is the author of 'Killing of Monday Brown' with ISBN 9780553569698 and ISBN 0553569694.