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The widow had begun to wail, loud and wordless, raw pain. The girl was beginning to shake. “You’re her father, but you’re their grandfather. Act like it. Get them out of here.”

Anger flickered in his eyes then. “How dare you?”

He wasn’t going to listen to me. I was just an intrusion on their grief. The oldest, a boy of about five, was staring up at me. His brown eyes were huge, his thin face so pale it looked ghostly.

“I think it is you who should go,” the grandfather said.

“You’re right. You are so right,” I said. I walked around them out into the grass and the summer heat. I couldn’t help the children. I couldn’t help them, just as no one had been there to help me. I had survived. So would they, maybe.

Manny and Rosita were waiting for me. Rosita hugged me. “You must come to Sunday dinner after church.”

I smiled. “I don’t think I can make it, but thanks for asking.”

“My cousin Albert will be there,” she said. “He is an engineer. He will be a good provider.”

“I don’t need a good provider, Rosita.”

She sighed. “You make too much money for a woman. It makes you not need a man.”

I shrugged. If I ever did marry, which I’d begun to doubt, it wouldn’t be for money. Love. Shit, was I waiting for love? Naw, not me.

“We have to pick up Tomas at kindergarten,” Manny said. He was smiling at me apologetically around Rosita’s shoulder. She was nearly a foot taller than he. She towered over me, too.

“Sure, tell the little guy hi for me.”

“You should come to dinner,” Rosita said, “Albert is a very handsome man.”

“Thanks for thinking of me, Rosita, but I’ll skip it.”

“Come on, wife,” Manny said. “Our son is waiting for us.”

She let him pull her towards the car, but her brown face was set in disapproval. It offended some deep part of Rosita that I was twenty-four and had no prospects of marriage. Her and my stepmother.

Charles was nowhere to be seen. Hurrying back to the office to see clients. I thought Jamison had, too, but he stood in the grass, waiting for me.

He was dressed impeccably, crossed-lapels, narrow red tie with small dark dots on it. His tie clip was onyx and silver. He smiled at me, always a bad sign.

His greenish eyes looked hollow, like someone had erased part of the skin. If you cry enough, the skin goes from puffy red to hollow white. “I’m glad so many of us showed up,” he said.

“I know he was a friend of yours, Jamison. I’m sorry.”

He nodded and looked down at his hands. He was holding a pair of sunglasses loosely. He looked up at me, eyes staring straight into mine. All serious.

“The police won’t tell the family anything,” he said. “Peter gets blown away, and they don’t have a clue who did it.”

I wanted to tell him the police were doing their best, because they were. But there are a hell of a lot of murders in St. Louis over a year. We were giving Washington, D.C. a run for their money as murder capital of the United States. “They’re doing their best, Jamison.”

“Then why won’t they tell us anything?” His hands convulsed. The sound of breaking plastic was a crumbling sharp sound. He didn’t seem to notice.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Anita, you’re in good with the police. Could you ask?” His eyes were naked, full of such real pain. Most of the time I could ignore, or even dislike, Jamison. He was a tease, a flirt, a bleeding-heart liberal who thought that vampires were just people with fangs. But today . . . today he was real.

“What do you want me to ask?”

“Are they making any progress? Do they have any suspects? That sort of thing.”

They were vague questions, but important ones. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

He gave a watery smile. “Thanks, Anita, really, thanks.” He held out his hand. I took it. We shook. He noticed his broken sunglasses. “Damn, ninety-five dollars down the tubes.”

Ninety-five dollars for sunglasses? He had to be kidding. A group of mourners were taking the family away at last. The mother was smothered in well-meaning male relatives. They were literally carrying her away from the grave. The children and Grampa brought