Night of the Toads Read Online Free PDF Page A

Caught at last? Except, I saw Anne Terry as more of a hornet, with sting.
    The bankbooks were in a bottom drawer. A savings account with nothing: $197. A checking account, the stubs showing no pattern of deposit except the weekly modelling cheque, and showing near zero too often—saved by a sudden deposit, sometimes good, sometimes not. The weekly pay cheque from the regular job interested me. Most companies like to pay monthly or biweekly at most. It had to be an arrangement she had wanted.
    The cancelled checks themselves seemed uninteresting at first: mostly bills from the payees, and regular ones to The New Player’s—she was a real owner, not a decoration for Ted Marshall. But after I had stacked them, I had a small pile of cheques made out to cash . Normal, except that there was a pattern. Almost all the cash-cheques were for the same amount, fifty dollars, and almost all were dated on Fridays. I checked the calendar.
    I sat back and stared at the cash-cheques. She was neat, but was anyone that regular in her kind of life? It could be nothing, but—? There were missing Fridays, yes, a few drawn on Thursdays, but in general the uniformity of day and amount was too much coincidence. In a hectic life, did a girl always run out of cash on Friday? And could she always need exactly fifty dollars? All right, a special need; regular, routine. What? Blackmail? Fifty dollars? A regular contribution? But in cash, so she wasn’t sending it home, or anywhere by mail.
    I was still mulling it, turning it over and considering all angles, when the doorbell rang. I jumped a foot in the chair, then had a surge of something like joy. Anne Terry, coming home? I was coming to like the girl, and not in the way Ricardo Vega liked girls. I was also losing my grip. Would a girl ring her own doorbell?
    I was out of the chair. The police? They would have been here to check that she was really gone, but, from the look of the place, they hadn’t searched much. She had not been gone long enough to make them take it seriously at first—off on a binge, ninety-nine percent. But they would have another, closer, look if she didn’t turn up. So I had my leg over the window sill to the fire escape when the door was tried and given a violent kick.
    I came back inside, and trotted lightly to the door. The police don’t kick in doors of empty apartments; they get the super to open up. I slid behind where the door would open as a second good kick cracked the lock. The third kick would do it. It did. The door flew open and all the way back to me. I took a bash on the knuckles, but held the door from swinging back out.
    The man stumbled into the room, off balance. I got one quick look at him as he went by the crack between door and frame. The blond again—Rick, or Sean, McBride. Vega’s new volunteer helper—for friendship. I stayed where I was, out of sight, my lone hand ready in a fist if he closed the door. He didn’t, he was that much an amateur, and that nervous. He hurried for the bedroom. When I heard a drawer open, I went after him, picking up a handy, large, but not too heavy vase on the way.
    He bent over a drawer in the bedroom, his back to me. I wanted to ask him what he was up to, but it’s not often that easy. I had no gun, and I didn’t expect he was going to tell much without heavy pressure. I did the next best thing. I whacked him good with the vase. Not too good, just enough. It was a pleasure. He collapsed in a heap. I got out of there fast.
    I was out the door, and one flight down, when I heard them coming up. Two men who had not rung the girl’s doorbell, and a pair of lighter feet coming behind them. I beat it back up. McBride was moving inside clearly, with groans. I made the stairs up to the roof, hidden from Anne Terry’s doorway. The two men had eyes only for the open door. I heard them go in. There was a scuffle, and voices.
    ‘Who are you? What’s the story?’
    ‘Someone hit me!’ McBride’s outraged voice. The