April Evil Read Online Free

getting enough of a slice with a number four wood. It sliced all right and left him in the deepest trap on the course. He didn’t get enough sand and left himself with a thirty-foot putt. He holed out for the six, which put him one over par for the nine.
    “Ben, I want to talk to you.”
    “What about?”
    “Go take your shower first. I’ll be on the porch. This will be a business conversation.”
    “Those belong in the office.”
    “Don’t be so stuffy. Do you know you’re getting terribly stuffy lately? You’re afraid it will get back to Joan. You can tell her it was business, and tell her just what business it was, if lawyers’ wives get in on lawyers’ secrets.”
    Again he couldn’t get out of it gracefully. When he came out onto the porch Lennie sat in one of the big chairs in the dusk. She had her drink in her hand and there was one for him on the round table between the two chairs. But for them, the porch was empty.
    “Scotch old-fashioned? Is that right?”
    “That’s a habit that hasn’t changed, Lennie. What’s on your mind?”
    “It’s something I don’t like, Ben. It’s about Dil’s uncle.”
    “Doctor Tomlin is Dil’s great uncle, actually.”
    “Oh, I know that. But Dil is his closest living relative.”
    “They don’t get along.”
    “That isn’t our fault,” she said hotly. “My God, I’ve tried. Your father used to handle Paul Tomlin’s legal business. Do you handle it now?”
    “I guess I would if he had any.”
    “Is there a will?”
    “There may be. I don’t know. I didn’t handle it. Even if I did, I couldn’t tell you what was in it.”
    “That isn’t what was on my mind. I know better than that. It’s something else.”
    She was leaning toward him. The fading light was odd against her face, slanting, showing bone structure. “Ben, you know how he is. He’s nearly eighty. He’s been quite mad for years.”
    “Eccentric.”
    “You use that word because he’s rich. If he was poor you’d say mad and he would have been put away.”
    “He’s not that bad.”
    “You don’t know how bad he is. Have you heard about that couple?”
    “They’re relatives, aren’t they?”
    “They claim to be. Fiftieth cousins or something. Dil neverheard of them. Dil and I have been over all that genealogy stuff his mother was so interested in before she died. We can’t trace them accurately. There are people named Preston in the family. These people claim their name is Preston. We didn’t know anything about it until he’d taken them in. I can’t understand his taking anybody into that … that damn fortress with him. But he did. He’s senile, Ben. God only knows what they’re telling him, what they’re getting out of him.”
    “I heard some relatives had moved in with him. I thought it was strange at the time.”
    “It
is
strange. And Dil is so dang wishy-washy. He doesn’t want to
do
anything. I was going to come and see you in the office. Maybe this is better, to run into you here.”
    “What can you do? You can’t run those people out. They’re his guests.”
    “Face it. He’s quite mad. We’re his nearest relatives. I think it’s high time we ought to start proceedings and get him committed.”
    She waited in silence for his answer. Ben thought it over a long time. The longer he thought, the less he liked it. “I wouldn’t have any part of anything like that. He isn’t a menace to anybody. Lennie you’re just damn scared that those Prestons are going to cut you out. It’s just greed talking.”
    “Say no if you want to, but don’t get moralistic.”
    “Maybe you can get somebody to try it. But you’re going to get your nose bumped. He’s an impressive old duck. He’d talk well at a hearing. It would fall through and you’d guarantee you would get nothing when he dies.”
    “When he dies. Sometimes it seems as if I’ve been waiting half my life for him to die.”
    “Dil had his chance with the old man. Dil just didn’t take