Rose Gold Read Online Free Page B

“Second floor, it’s the first door on your right.”
    The frown transformed into a grin and she ran up the stairs with an awkward, fetching gait.
    I heard knocking and then the girls screaming at the top of their lungs. For all of Feather’s maturity, she was just another kid among her school friends.
    I could hear their feet clomping around through the ceiling as Feather showed her guest the features of her new room.
    Walking back to the couch, I was accompanied by small echoes of my own footsteps in the mostly empty space. Behind me came the scratchy clicking of the little yellow dog’s claws. He had come downstairs to avoid those banging feet and loud squeals.
    “Come on and sit with me, dog,” I said.
    I sat and he leaped up next to me. We perched there side by side while Feather and her friend laughed and screeched overhead.
    “This is my friend Peggy Nishio,” Feather said half an hour or so later. “We took algebra together in summer school but I didn’t know she lived right across the street. They just moved there a month ago. Can I go over to her house for dinner?”
    “Is it okay with your mother?” I asked Peggy.
    She frowned and nodded.
    “Okay,” I said, and the girls ran for the front door and out.
    Frenchie stood up, alert at the sudden departure. I scratched behind his ears and he settled down again.
    I wanted to walk around the house making a mental list of what I had to do and buy for the place. But Roger Frisk’s visit kept interrupting. Ever since the accident I’d had a declining interest in being a private detective. But what else could I do? I was a black man with a sixth-grade education. I could read as well as many college graduates and I knew math from working on building projects. I had no degree, however, no certification. On paper I was qualified to wash dishes or sweep floors, not nearly enough to afford Feather’s Ivy Prep tuition.
    I thought of old Marley in
A Christmas Carol
. He dragged the chains of his mortal life behind him like some slave that had escaped with the manacles still attached to his wrists and ankles. I was free but every step was a challenge. I was my own man; but that man owed his soul to the company store.
    When the doorbell chimed this time it was like an old friend.
    The man standing there on the front porch was a dandy with some heft to him. He had the mannerisms of a small man, delicate and precise, but he was beefy. While he had the poise of a fop, his flinty eyes and hard jawline spoke of trench warfare replete with mud, blood, and shit.
    “Mr. Rawlins?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Tout Manning.” I was happy that he didn’t offer to shake hands. “Roger Frisk sent me.”
    “Well,” I said reluctantly, “come on in, I guess.”
    I led the big man into the living room and offered him the couch. I took the upholstered maroon chair that was designed to look like a plush seashell throne.
    “Just moved in?” he asked. Tout Manning’s suit was somewhere between gold and green in color. It had stingy lapels and only two buttons. Despite the color it was a professional-looking ensemble—almost a uniform.
    “Today.”
    “That’s something. Sorry to have to bother you in the middle of all that.”
    “How did you find me?”
    “Frisk.”
    “How did he find me?”
    “Sent the Three Stooges around your old neighborhood asking about where you might be.”
    I had told a woman, Grace Matthews, who lived across the street from my Genesee home, that I was going to move closer to Feather’s school.
    “That’s a whole lotta legwork just to find me.”
    “You’re an important man, Mr. Rawlins, Ezekiel.”
    We went silent for a few moments. That’s when Frenchie began to bark at Tout. It was as vicious a complaint as a three-pound dog could make. Tout turned his head to contemplate my intelligent pet, and then the man bared his own teeth and growled.
    Frenchie yelped and ran from the room.
    “Nice dog,” my guest said.
    “As I understand it, Rosemary