April Evil Read Online Free PDF Page A

Please call them in the morning and jump on them. They’ll listen to you quicker. This is not one of the best days. Sue is being plaintive about going to the movies on a school night.”
    “No.”
    “I told her that too. And Toby had an experience.”
    Toby came into the kitchen then. “Hi, Dad. She’s right. An experience. Brother!”
    “He didn’t know the Mather house next door had beenrented. Neither did I. I guess they took it today. When he got home from school he …”
    “Gee, Mom, let me tell it. I took the spinning rod and went over on the dock. I just had time to hit the tide change. I figured on maybe a red in that hole out there. I just got to make one cast and this real mean guy comes running down out of the house. He says to me, just like this, ‘Get the God damn hell off this property.’ He looked like some kind of gangster, honest. He looked like he was going to hit me. I tried to say I didn’t know it had been rented, and he just said it again. So … I came home. There’s a woman there too. I saw her through the window. She was looking out. You know who she kind of looks like? That Dagmar on the television.”
    “We’ll see about this,” Ben said.
    He went to the phone and got hold of Hedges at his home. “Bud? This is Ben Piersall. You’ve got an exclusive on that Mather house. I thought we had a gentleman’s agreement about what you’d put in there. What kind of people have you got in there now?”
    “Their name is Wheeler. I think they’re okay. That’s a tough property to rent when it gets to be …”
    “I don’t care how tough it is. The man cussed out Toby. Toby went over to the dock there. He didn’t know it was rented. The man was profane and abusive.”
    “I’m sorry as hell about that. I thought it would be all right because they were so insistent on complete privacy. I don’t think they’ll bother you at all. They’re Illinois people. Just down until May fifteenth. She’s quite a dish, boy.”
    “Put the butter away, Bud. I’m a little annoyed.”
    “You’ve got a right to be. I should have phoned Joan and told her. I had it on my mind but I forgot it. It’s my fault.”
    Ben Piersall was mollified. They chatted about other matters. He hung up, and went back to the kitchen. “Hedges was trying to make that fast buck. The Wilkinsons paid a season rate and left last week. The odds were against it renting again. We and the kids just stay away from these Wheelers. That clear, Toby?”
    “Gosh, I wouldn’t go over there again.”
    Sue was firmly informed that there would be no school-night movie. She phoned her girl friend to say it was off. She tried to maintain an attitude of chilly indifference, haughty resignation, a princess condemned to dine with the palace serfs, but she forgot her role after a half-hour.
    Ben mixed a drink before dinner. After dinner he read while Joan and Sue did the dishes and Toby did homework. The kids went to bed at nine-thirty with the usual token protests. When he and Joan were alone in the living room, he put his book aside and told her the details of the conversation with Lenora Parks.
    “Could they do such a thing?”
    “It’s unlikely—unless Doctor Tomlin has failed pretty badly in the last two months. I haven’t seen him since sometime in January.”
    “How can she and Dil even think of doing a thing like that?”
    “It’s more Lennie than Dil. She’s restless … and ruthless.”
    “She’s a bad person, Benjamin.”
    He thought that was not entirely accurate, but he had no stomach for arguing on Lennie’s side. It wasn’t badness. More it was a misdirected strength. He was glad that he had not married Lenora, as he had seriously considered doing at one time. He liked kids, for one thing. When Dil was younger he had been in the sort of jam that decisively proved his fertility. It was evident that Lennie was the barren one. In spite of her hungers there seemed to be a curious sterility about her. It would