April Evil (3 page)

Ben knew his big husky body needed regular exercise. He knew that he needed the complete relaxation that came after the shower and the drive home. It was more pleasure to play with the others, but better to play alone than not to play at all.

He dropped the iron shot five feet from the pin and canned the putt for his birdie. Playing alone there was no need to mark a card. He was a minus one thus far, and anticipated finishing the nine somewhere around par plus two or three.

When he walked onto the fourth tee, still one under, he saw a caddy cart about a hundred and seventy yards out, on the right side of the fairway. There was a bright red bag on the cart. He saw no player. He teed up and drove, getting a bit too much under the ball, wasting distance with too much altitude.

When he had walked about a hundred yards, the woman came out of the brush, club in hand. He recognized Lenora Parks. She took a new ball from the red bag and tossed it out
and waited for him.

“You all alone, Ben?” she called as he came toward her.

“The assassins took off without me.”

“Let’s play along together then. That dang slice. I think I could have found it, but something rustled in there. I kept thinking of snakes. Maybe you can smell out that dang slice.”

“Let’s see.”

She took a number three wood from her bag, waggled it, squinted at the green and swung. The ball, crisply hit, streaked up the center of the fairway and then faded right.

“See?”

“Sure. You’ve changed your stance, Lennie. It’s too open. You’re trying to steer the ball. Close the stance and just hit it. Don’t think about a slice or think about trying to compensate for it by aiming left. It just makes it worse.”

“Old Doctor Piersall’s home remedy.”

“It will work.”

They walked up to his ball and she waited while he played a four iron all the way to the edge of the green.

“Wow!” she said. “You haven’t lost your sock, old Ben. Remember how we used to play all the time?”

“Sure I remember.”

They played along together. His advice worked. She was delighted. Lenora Parks was one of the better women golfers in the club. She was a dainty blonde woman with a figure still as good as it had been at eighteen, when they had gone together for over a year, back when she had been Lennie Keffler, before she married Dil Parks. It made him feel guilty and uncomfortable to play with her. Joan was quite aware of the past romance with Lennie. Joan had a cold eye for Lennie. And that was Lennie’s fault, as Joan was not a particularly jealous wife. He and Joan kept running into Lennie and Dil at too many big parties. And Lennie, after the second drink, seemed to take a very proprietary attitude toward Ben Piersall. Ben suspected Lennie did that on purpose, knowing that it would cause Joan to give Ben a bad time. There was mockery in her eyes when she did it. He had long since guessed that it
was a form of revenge. Theirs had been quite a turbulent affair, and he was the one who had ended it. He was careful not to stand alone with Lennie at any of the parties.

Dil Parks was about ninety-five per cent slob. Lennie had married him on the rebound from Ben. Lennie had made little bits of trouble here and there between her husband and herself. There were those in Flamingo who excused her on the grounds that a steady diet of Dil would drive anybody into the wrong bed. The other faction had a higher regard for marriage, Dil or no Dil. There had never been any actual proof of her inconstancy. The closest thing to proof was the garbled stories which came back from New Orleans the time three couples had gone over to Mardi Gras. But some of that could be blamed on inadequate reservations, three couples going when there were only reservations for two. Other comment was mostly locker room talk.

It made him feel uncomfortable to be with her, and he hoped that Joan wouldn’t hear about it. He did not see how he could have gotten out of it gracefully. When he walked behind her and saw her trim hips under the pleated skirt, and saw her blonde hair bobbing as she walked, it seemed that she was exactly the same as the girl of eighteen summers—sixteen years years ago. He remembered her mannerisms well enough to know that she was striking poses for him, displaying herself for him, trying in small delicate ways to arouse desire. But he knew that he would have none of that. Nor would he make any attempt even to find out if it was still available. He thought instead of the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the faint lines bracketing her mouth—and the grotesque and entirely unforgettable scene she had made at the time they had broken up.

But she was an attractive woman, and he knew that under the fragility, the blonde demureness, she was a most earthy woman. And he knew that he was making at least one concession to that by showing off. Like a boy chinning himself on a limb. He relished the little squeal she made when he hit a tremendous towering six iron shot that nearly holed out for an eagle.

“Remember the day we played sixty-three holes of golf, Ben?”

“The day before that dance?”

“I was so dang tired I thought I was going to go to sleep dancing with you.”

“You slept all the way home.”

She tilted her head and grinned at him. “Not
all
the way home.”

“Your putt.”

“Poor old Ben. You get so stuffy and flustered. We’re all grown up now, aren’t we? Don’t you think we are?”

“I guess so.”

“That was all kid stuff.”

“Watch yourself. This green is faster than the others.”

She sat on her heels and lined the putt up. She stepped up to the ball, stroked it delicately. It ran twelve feet, hit the back of the cup and dropped.

“Nice putt!”

“I always used to play better when I played with you. I always used to do everything better.”

“Drop the needle, Lennie.”

“Needle? Gosh sakes, I wouldn’t needle old Ben.”

But there had been enough needle so that his drive on the ninth put him ’way over in the rough behind some cabbage palms. He could see the green through a two-foot gap between the palm trunks. He tried a two iron and nearly decapitated himself when the ball came back off a palm trunk like a bullet. It put him far enough back and gave him a better lie. So he gambled on 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 never
heard 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 it.”

“If anybody could do it, Ben, you could. He’s really mad. You know that. We would … meet any fee you ask.”

“I’m not that hungry.”

“But that money! Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that enough evidence?”

“There’s no law that says you have to keep money in a bank. There’s no law that says you can’t turn your home into a vault and guard it. He lost money twenty years ago when the bank closed. He decided he wouldn’t lose it that way again. And remember, Lennie, there’s a lot of people around here who were treated by him when he was still practicing. He has quite a backlog of good will. Suppose you did get him put away. There’d be talk. You’d find it tough to keep on living here.”

“With that money we wouldn’t have to live here.”

“It couldn’t be touched until his death, anyway.”

In a voice so low he could barely hear her, she said, “The change would probably kill him.”

“That’s pretty vicious, Lennie.”

“It’s realistic. What good is it to him? We’ve been living over our heads for years. Counting on that money. Do you know what we owe? Never mind. It’s a fine fat figure. The agency would have to sell a hundred cars tomorrow to get us out of deep water. Now summer’s coming up. I frankly don’t know how we’re going to squeak through, honestly. Dil even tried to borrow from Uncle Paul. Hah! That was a big fat mistake. I’m looking out for myself, Ben. I’m so dang sick of everything. I am.”

“But you haven’t hit on the way out. That’s a bad idea.”

“Got a better one? Got any kind of an idea?”

“No.”

“Somebody will help, Ben. Somebody will try it.”

“Probably. Not me.”

“Thanks for everything. You’re so sweet.”

“Thanks for the drink. I’ve got to run.”

“Give Joan my very best love.”

She went down the wooden porch, heels clacking. He saw her again after she went down the steps, walking toward the parking lot, her hair pale against the shadows of dusk.

He left the two empty glasses there on the table and walked slowly out to his car. He’d had no idea things were that bad with Dil and Lenora. But they wouldn’t get away with pulling anything that raw. Not in Flamingo.

To an outsider it might seem that Dr. Paul Tomlin was beyond the elusive borderline of sanity. Those who knew him knew that he was merely proud, independent, stubborn. He had come to Flamingo to practice in 1900, when the town was young. After he had established himself, his wife and young son had died of undulant fever. The loss had soured him, set him apart from other people. His niece and her husband, Dil’s parents, had come down to keep house for him. Dil’s father, Wes Parks, had established himself in the real estate business. Dr. Tomlin had worked long dogged hours. He had believed in the eventual growth of Florida’s west coast. Whenever he had a little money ahead, he put it into gulf front land, often accepting Wes Parks’ advice and just as often ignoring it.

When the bank had closed he had not lost much money, but he had lost enough to disabuse him of banks. By working harder he managed to retain all the land he had purchased, and even buy more. When, in 1934, the causeway to Flamingo Key had been built, Dr. Tomlin owned over three thousand yards of gulf-to-bay frontage. He had bought some of it for as little as ten dollars an acre. That land in the hands of the present owners was worth nearly two hundred dollars a front foot.

Dr. Tomlin had not begun to sell off his land in any quantity until 1940, the year he retired. With the proceeds of the first ninety thousand dollar sale he had built Rocklands, the fortress house, on a knoll two miles inland from the center of Flamingo. It was built of native stone and surrounded by a high wall. A safe was brought down from Birmingham by technicians and built into the house during construction. He lived there alone with a Negro named Arnold Addams, who, as a young man, had driven the doctor’s car during the last few years of his practice, and was now a husky graying man who ran errands and drove the doctor to town on his rare business dealings.

Most of the property had been sold. The last big pieces were sold in 1950 and 1951. In 1951 the Flamingo Bank and Trust Company had had to arrange through Tampa for the
money necessary to cash the check Dr. Tomlin had presented.