Someone to watch over me

them.
    “Yes,“ Walker said. “Lily, will you go with us?“ He herded the two women into the Duesie before Mrs. White could interfere.
    They got Roxanne in the backseat with Lily and sped off. “Does your brother live with you?“ Lily asked.
    Roxanne stared at her for a moment, red-eyed, as if having to concentrate on processing the question. “Yes, he’s a widower. His wife died of tuberculosis last year, and he and his daughter came to live with us. He can’t find work, but he helps take care of the children when I leave the house, and he does all the heavy work in the garden. Chief Walker, how did my husband die?“
    “We’ll talk about this when we get you home with your family,“ Walker said.
    Lily had never been to the Andersons’ house. It was about halfway up the hill on a road she’d never been on. It was big but shabby. It badly needed painting, a screen door was askew, and there was a broken window on the second floor. The land ran uphill slightly behind the house and then quickly became very steep, but there was a large flat area in front, filled entirely with the vegetable garden. A tall wall of roughly hewn stones kept the garden from eroding into the drive.
    “Stop for a moment,“ Roxanne said, at the bottom of the gravel drive. “I can’t let the children see me like this.”
    Lily had a fresh handkerchief in the pocket of her dress and gave it to Roxanne, who mopped her eyes and face, blew her nose, sat up straight, and composed herself with an obvious effort.
    “I’m ready now,“ she said.
    Robert pulled up the drive to the front door, where a tall man was standing. Roxanne got out of the car, the rest following a decent distance behind her. The man came down the steps and embraced her silently.
    Roxanne turned and said, “This is my brother, Eugene.“ She introduced the others to him. “Do the children know?“ she asked her brother. He shook his head no.
    “Could you take them outside to play in back? I’ll tell them later,“ Roxanne said.
    Eugene went and gathered them up, while the rest of them waited outside. Then they entered the house.
    “I’ll fix some coffee,“ Lily said. “I think we all need some.”
    Roxanne collapsed in a chair in the front room with a colorful hand-knitted throw over it while Lily went to the kitchen. Eugene had already started the coffee and Lily hunted down cups for the four of them, putting them on a tray. The kitchen was spotless, the old dishes neatly stacked. Roxanne was a good housekeeper as well as a good gardener.
    Through the kitchen window she could see Eugene playing a game with the children on the hill behind the house. She’d never seen or met him before and wondered if he was a bit simple. He was big, older than Roxanne, apparently, slow to move, and hadn’t spoken. He kept warily looking back at the house.
    Lily put spoons, cups, sugar, and the last of a bottle of milk on a tray and went back to the front room.
    Roxanne took an obligatory sip and said to Walker, “Tell me.“
    “What’s your husband’s first name, Mrs. Anderson?“
    “Donald.”
    Walker wrote it down in his notebook, as if he hadn’t known it already. “And his age?”
    “Thirty-seven.”
    Walker wrote this down as well and said, “I’m so sorry this has happened. He sustained a sharp blow to his temple.”
    There was a long silence before Roxanne asked, “How?“
    “We don’t know yet. It appears that it might have been administered by someone else. There’s no sign that he fell on anything where he was found, and I have my men looking through the woods for a weapon.”
    Roxanne put her hands over her face for a long moment, then looked up. “Are you telling me he was murdered?“
    “It’s too soon to say for sure, but that’s my first impression,“ Walker said softly. “I could be wrong.”
    “Who would do such a thing?“
    “That’s what we’ll find out, if the coroner agrees it wasn’t an accident. Mrs. Anderson, I hate making this harder for you, but you need to answer some questions.”
    She mopped her face again and sighed deeply. “When was the last time you saw Donald?”
    “Yesterday morning. He went off as usual to look for work.“
    “And he didn’t come home last night?“
    “Sometimes he didn’t,“ she said. “If he’d gone a long way to find a job, he’d stay over—camping out in the woods or staying with a family he was working for, so he could start over in the morning if he hadn’t found other work