Michael Malone - Weebly

drove past.
Next door, the Argyle Standard (left by the
housekeeper's MacDermott nephew in the brass letter
slot beneath the brass eagle knocker on the Ransoms'
orange front door) fell out when Ernest Ransom opened
the door. He had an American flag under the arm of his
jogging suit. The eight orange-shuttered front windows
gave the house an almost Caribbean air, like a Colonial
hotel in the West Indies. How Ernie's wife talked him
into allowing her to have those shutters painted orange,
when they'd been black for two hundred years, was
one of the mysteries of married life unfathomable, Miss
Dingley concluded, to the unwed. Standing on the white
wooden milk box, Ransom ran up a Bennington flag
beside his door. A crescent of stars above the number
76 unfurled in pure bright color. Ransom set off jogging
down his walk.
I'm sure he thought about it, Ramona said to herself.
And I guess he doesn't see any impropriety in going for
a run the morning after a guest dies in his home. Well,
but he's right. Life goes on.
Next door a newspaper was stuck in the brass ring