Read War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel for Free Online

way to convince him that preventing other kids from eating a healthy lunch by taking their funds was not a good thing.
    That would take some diplomacy on my part. Jimmy felt like he wasn’t good at most things. To take away one of the few things he did well would be a blow to his ego.
    I pulled up in front of the house. It was large and well maintained, loved in that way that people who appreciated what they had gave their homes. The Grimshaws didn’t own the house — Sturdy Investments did — but the place was a great improvement over the three-bedroom apartment the family had been living in last summer.
    The woman I was seeing, Laura Hathaway, ran Sturdy. It had been her father’s company, and she had taken it over in January, trying to cure the mismanagement and corruption her father and his cronies had built into the company. One of her first acts had been to rent the Grimshaws this house at below-market rates.
    Her investment was paying off. The Grimshaws were making improvements to the home as if it were their own.
    A large front porch encircled the place. The lawn was mowed, and someone had trimmed the plants beside the sidewalk. Peonies budded near the front porch, and someone had planted bleeding hearts beside it. Pansies peeked out of pots that Althea had placed along the stairs.
    As I got out of the car, I heard yells and screams and children’s laughter. I couldn’t see the kids, so I assumed they were in the backyard. So did Jimmy. He immediately ran around the house to see what games the kids were playing.
    Franklin’s wife , Althea , sat on the porch, shucking peas into a bowl. I hadn’t seen anyone do that in years. She looked like the matriarchs of my youth, sitting in her rocking chair, surveying the neighborhood as she worked.
    “You growing your own peas now?” I asked.
    “Franklin got them in trade from a downstater,” she said. “Apparently he’s giving everyone advice these days.”
    Franklin consulted with various black businesses and politicians. He loved the work, and was quite successful at it, but he was also taking night classes for a law degree.
    “Is Malcolm home?” I asked.
    “Just got off shift,” she said. “I’d say he’d be out of the shower by now.”
    She didn’t ask me what I wanted Malcolm for, and I didn’t tell her. Malcolm had assisted me in previous cases, and Althea had never approved. But unlike Grace Kirkland, Althea didn’t repeatedly talk to me about her disapproval. Nor did she try to change me.
    I appreciated that.
    I went inside the house. It was warm, and smelled faintly of baking bread. Unlike most of the women I knew, Althea didn’t work — not even when the Grimshaw family had been crammed in that tiny apartment.
    She saw her job as raising children and saving the family money, from baking the bread to finding creative ways to use leftovers. Last summer, I learned a lot from Althea about bargain shopping and raising a child on a budget. I was good with money, but I couldn’t make a dollar stretch in six different directions the way Althea could.
    Malcolm was coming out of the bathroom. He wore only a pair of blue jeans. His feet were bare and he was toweling off his hair.
    “Malcolm?” I said.
    He jumped half a foot. “Jeez, Bill, I didn’t see you. Don’t sneak up on a guy like that.”
    He looked tired and he had burns along both forearms. I recognized those burns. They came from grease spatter. I’d had a few myself during my first years in Memphis when I had to have a second job to support myself while my own business took off.
    “I didn’t mean to surprise you,” I said. “Can I talk to you?”
    He kept toweling his hair, his gaze not meeting mine. “Is it important?”
    Malcolm usually wasn’t reluctant to talk to me.
    “Yeah, actually,” I said. “I have a job for you, but it’s unusual and it might require some thought on your part.”
    “A job.” He draped the towel around his neck. Some of the shower water beaded on