STELLA LIVED THREE doors down from me. She had an orange Pinto with edges of rust around the tires. She waved hi-there to me whenever she saw me outside my house.
I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary on the night she died, but for years afterward, I imagined being jolted awake by the sharp sound of a g*n going off and the collapse of her body hitting the floor. Somewhere in the distance a wolf would howl as a warning, and moments later a police car and an ambulance would be parked in front of her house where no one would speak above a whisper.
For a week after Stella died, yellow stripes of POLICE SCENE – DO NOT CROSS flapped about in the wind across her door. Sheets of aluminum, painted white, skirted the foundation of her modest trailer home, which were nothing than columns of pa
