Jack looked at his wife. He had no proof that his wife was servicing Blaise Micelli, the founder of Orbit Marketing, but the thought had occurred to him quite regularly ever since that incident at Orbit’s office Christmas party last year, when Micelli had spilled a drink on his lap and mopped it up with a napkin, which picked up traces of bright red lipstick—Elley’s shade—from his zipper area.
“You’ll have no trouble taking care of Robynn while I’m gone, I presume?” Elley was saying.
“Why would I have trouble?”
Elley examined the five dead Sams by the sink, then gathered them all up, walked to the trashcan, and loudly dropped them in. “I can’t imagine.”
“All right, all right.”
“No, it’s not all right, Jack. I come home from a grueling day at the office followed by a miserable drive from Santa Monica to find you alone with our daughter, having consumed the better part of a six-pack. What proof can you give me that it won’t be a six-pack and a half tomorrow night, and even more while I’m gone? And where the hell is Nola, anyway? She’s supposed to be here.”
“Daniel’s in trouble again, so she had to go. And I’m sorry, really. I had a grueling day, too, and I just lost count. I’ll be good while you’re gone, promise. Is my word good anymore?”
Elley couldn’t hide her surprise at his rolling over so quickly and easily. “I’d like it to be,” she said, then: “Yeah, it’s good.”
He approached her and took her in his arms. “You know I’d never deliberately to anything that would hurt Robynn, or you.”
“I know that,” she said, hugging back. “It’s the accidental things I worry about.”
That makes two of us, he thought.
“Mommeeee,” Robynn called from the other room, “can I come back in yet?”
“Of course, sweetie,” Elley called back, pulling away from Jack as the girl rushed in to excitedly tell her that she had learned a new word from Nola today: basura.
“Basura, doesn’t that mean ‘trash?’”
“Mm hmmm. She was taking out the garbage when she said it. What’s for dinner?”
“Robynn, Mommy just got home. I was sort of hoping maybe Daddy would have fixed something, because Mommy’s got to pack tonight to go away tomorrow.”
“Why do you have to go away?” the girl whimpered.
“It’s Mommy’s work, sweetie. Sometimes I have to go.”
“Sounds like a take-out night to me,” Jack said, feeling a rush of guilt over sitting and drinking and pretending to work and not even thinking about providing dinner. “What’ll it be? Pizza? Chinese? Frog salad?”
“Yuuuuck!” Robynn cried, giggling.
“I’m not in the mood for Chinese and I don’t want the calories of pizza,” Elley said. “There’s a new fish place down on San Vicente. I drive by it nearly every day. I think the sign says they do take-out.”
“Do you remember the name?”
“Seafood something. Seafood Hut, Seafood Crate, I don’t know.”
“I’ll find out,” Jack said, scurrying back to his laptop, linking onto the web and putting in a search for Seafood West. L.A. San Vicente. Three choices popped up (including, for some reason, Amazon.com), but only one seemed like the candidate. “Could it be Seafood Shanty?”
“Yes, that’s it,” Elley said. Using the number he found online, Jack called in an order for the three of them: fish and chips for Robynn, salmon for Elley and sea bass for himself.
“Do they deliver?” Elley asked
“Yeah, but I’ll go pick it up,” Jack replied. “It will get here quicker that way.” The truth was, he wanted to get away and on his own, if even for a few minutes.
“Why don’t you take Robynn with you? I have to start packing, and she’d only get in the way.”
Jack sighed. She’s your child, too, for Christ’s sake, he wanted to shout back, but didn’t. Instead he turned to Robynn and said, “Hey, punkin, want to go catch some fish?”
Her face lit up? “Really? Like on a lake?”
“No, from a restaurant. But I’ll bet they have a lobster tank there.” Wouldn’t it be fine if the place had a bar, too? He could grab a quick one. Just one more would be okay.
“Okay!” Robynn cried.
Jack scooped up his daughter and carried her out to the driveway. “Let’s take Mom’s car,” he said, opening the back door of Elley’s silver Lexus to let Robynn in, and carefully buckling her in the car seat that lived there. Only when he was behind the wheel and sticking his key in the ignition did Jack Hayden begin to feel something of the five beers. He was not buzzed, exactly; rather it was a sensation he usually enjoyed that he could only describe as comfy. While he felt perfectly aware and in control—it took more than five for him to start to wobble—he wondered if he might be over the legal limit. Then again, who would know as long as he gave them no reason to suspect? “I’ll drive carefully,” he muttered aloud, starting to back out of the driveway.
“What, Daddy?”
“I said, ‘Here we go.’”
“Didn’t sound like it.”
“I was speaking another language, punkin, the language of Dad.”
“Oh. I don’t know that one ’cause I’m a girl.”
Jack smiled. “You’re the best girl,” he said, wondering if there wasn’t some way he could wrap up all the basura in his life, take it out and dump it in a can, where it would be picked up and taken away.
They had gone only two blocks before Jack’s confidence suffered a serious challenge: a black-and-white police cruiser was coming toward him. He slowed down, giving the policemen no reason to watch him or follow him, and he made certain that the Lexus came to a complete stop at the stop sign. He even counted to five before starting through the intersection. The police cruiser passed through as well without slowing. But once it was behind Jack, he heard the siren blare on and saw in his rearview mirror the flashing lights as the cop car made a fast U-turn and charged up behind him.
“Shit!”
“Hmm?”
“Nothing, punkin.” Jack’s stomach dropping as he pulled over to the curb. Just fucking swell, he thought, bitterly, pulled over, probable DUI made worse by the fact that there’s a child in the car. If he had to call Elley from the police station, she would probably come down to retrieve Robynn and then leave him there to die. But to Jack’s tangible relief, the police car did not pull up behind him. It did not stop at all, or even slow. Instead it sped past him, apparently responding to a call that had nothing to do with him or his good buddy Sam Adams. He was guilty of nothing more than being a good citizen and pulling over to let the cop car zoom past on its way to an emergency. “Fuck me,” Jack exhaled.
“What, Daddy?”
“Nothing, Robynn.”
“You’re talking a lot of Dad stuff tonight.”
“Sorry. I’ll try to talk punkin from now on.”
“Where was that policeman going?”
“Off to catch a criminal, I guess. We just had to get out of his way so he could go.” Jack pulled the Lexus away from the curb knowing he had been spared by whatever cosmic court bothered to look down his way, but not knowing whether he deserved the pass. But having been spared, he would not temp fate further by having another one at the restaurant while waiting for the food.
That became moot since the Seafood Shanty—a dreadful name for a fairly upscale fish market and grill—did not have a bar. It was, however, packed with customers. As he had figured, Robynn was captivated by the lobsters in the slightly scummy water tank, their claws bound with rubber bands so that they would not fight. It was not a consideration for the safety of the animals, which were, after all, about to become dinner, but so that they did not mar or damage any of their succulent meat. Jack had never quite gotten used to the idea of popping a living thing, even one so ugly, into a vat of boiling water and letting it scald to death in the name of fine dining.
While waiting for his order, drinking in the enticing aromas circling around him, Jack tuned in and ou
t of various conversations in the waiting area. Most of it was static, but one thing cut through the buzz: the word split-face. Turning around into the direction of the word, Jack spotted an older couple sitting on a bench and waiting for a table. The woman was at least seventy, badly made up, and speaking with the kind of clarion voice that indicated she was partially deaf. The man sitting with her was of equal age and appeared bored to tears. “I said, she’d be such a cute little thing if not for that hideous scar on her mouth,” the woman was shouting to him. “Looks like someone took a tomahawk to her.” Jack quickly glanced over at Robynn, who was still studying the lobsters, and he was relieved to see that she had apparently not heard the comment.
He looked back at the couple. Blood pulsed and pounded in his ears. He had taken a step toward her to confront her callousness head on when he heard his name being called. His order was ready. Collecting Robynn, Jack went to the register and paid, then picked up the bag of hot food and started to leave. But at the door he stopped. “Hang on a second, punkin, there’s something I’ve got to do,” he told Robynn. “I’ll be right back.” He walked to the table with the old couple and interrupted the woman mid-sentence. “Excuse me, lady,” Jack began, “but I heard what you said about my beautiful daughter.”
The woman looked startled. “What?” she said.
“Now you can listen to what I say. I read somewhere that three-thousand people each year die from choking on fish bones. I’m hoping that you’ll make it three-thousand-and-one, you miserable dried-up cunt.”
Even as it came out of his mouth, Jack could not believe what he had said.
The woman’s face dropped in total shock. “You...why...Harold!” she screamed at her husband. “Are you going to sit there and let this animal talk to me like that?”
Jack looked over at Harold and thought the old man was trying to stifle a grin.
“Where’s the manager?” she hollered, and Jack took that as an opportunity to head for the door. He had delivered his message, quite more forcefully than he had really intended to. Rushing back to Robynn, he took her hand and ran out to the car.
Driving back, Jack felt a rush of conflicting emotions: exhilaration at having actually taken a stand and shut the old cow up, but guilt at having done it so rudely. Mingling with those was something else: a touch of fear. His level of vituperation had shocked even him; where had it come from? Residual anger at Marcus Broarty? Or could he excuse it away by claiming that while it had been Jack Hayden speaking, the lines had been written by Sam Adams?
Ten minutes later Jack pulled the Lexus into the driveway, and then reached back and unbuckled Robynn, letting her slide out of the seat herself like a big girl. Grabbing the bag of food, he marched into the house, calling “Dinner!” upon entering. He set the bag down on the dining room table, which sat at the center of the pristine, white-walled dining room. Elley was on the other end of the table, standing like a statue. “Got your salmon,” Jack said.
“There was a phone call for you while you were gone,” she replied, frostily.
“Not Marc Broarty, I hope.”
“It was someone named Danica Lindstrom.”
“Oh...um, what did she say?”
Elley stared at him for a moment. “Not as much as the expression on your face.”
“Look, Elley—”
“I have to go pack. I’ll eat later.” She spun around and headed up the staircase, disappearing into their bedroom, whose door closed with a resounding slam.
Jack sighed.
“I’m hungry, Daddy.”
Turning, he looked at his daughter, whose warm brown eyes were opened wide like those of a cartoon character. “I’m hungry too. Let’s eat.”
Getting plates from the kitchen, he set them down on the table and started unpacking the food bag, setting out the Styrofoam container holding Robynn’s fish and chips in front of her, and putting his containing the grilled sea bass next to it, holding it carefully so as not to let any of the dark juice drip onto the snowy tablecloth.
“Isn’t Mommy coming?” Robynn asked.
“Mommy’s busy right now, she’ll be down later. But let’s you and I eat.”
“Mommy’s busy a lot.”
“I know.”
Jack scooped the fish and rice onto his plate and took a bite. It was excellent, but he was not really able to enjoy it. He had given Dani his cell and home numbers before leaving San Simeon, and gave her permission to call him if she discovered anything about the mural, but he had not expected her to do it so soon. If he hadn’t been so anxious to get out of the house, he might have intercepted the call, and pretended it was Yolanda. If he hadn’t been so intent on taking the time to insult the old bag at the restaurant he might have even made it back in time to catch it before Elley did. Earlier, if he hadn’t been so involved in making his notes and drinking his beers, he might have given some thought to dinner ahead of time. If he had only given Dani his cell number, this would not have happened at all.
If, if, if, if, if, if.
Well, he would talk to Elley. He’d have to. The noose he had managed to tie around his neck could not be totally undone, but maybe it was possible to slacken it up a little, just enough to breathe.
He got up and went to the fridge and pulled out the one remaining Sam Adams from the six-pack. Fucking bitch! he thought furiously, walking back to the table, no longer certain at whom he was directing his rage.
CHAPTER SIX
God, what an idiot she had been for not simply hanging up when Jack didn’t answer himself. His wife had not said anything overtly accusatory to her, but the frost level in her voice fully communicated that she did not believe for a nanosecond Dani was innocently helping Jack out with a work project. While there was no denying that his wife would be justified in feeling so had she known that Dani had climaxed more times with Jack in one day than she had with Perry in the last six months of their marriage, Dani had said nothing to indicate what they had done.
Had Jack confessed? Dani doubted it. Had he done so, his wife would have gotten screaming hysterics from his wife instead of icy condescension. From now on she would avoid calling him at home.
What she had intended to tell Jack, had she gotten him on the phone, was information she had gleaned from spending the day in Glenowen, which proved to be a charming, historic village whose local industries were arts, crafts and antiques. In the course of rambling through the town’s century-old-or-better business district she had stopped into a tiny bookshop which featured locally written and published works. One of them was a book of ghost stories from the Central Coast area. The back cover had promised more in the way of local folklore than things bumping in the night, but Dani bought a copy anyway and took it back to the motel, where she started to read it while sipping a mimosa in the Pines bar.
Even though Dani had not been looking for anything in particular, she quickly found something pertinent: a section on Wood City. It failed to provide any sources for the information, which meant it was probably a combination of old folk tales with a few newspaper articles thrown in for the illusion of veracity, but actually having visited Wood City, accepting the conclusions made by the author of the book did not take a great stretch.
Cursed Ghost Town in the Pines
Deep in the forest at the base of the Santa Lucia Mountain Range in between Glenowen and San Simeon lies the deserted ghost town of Wood City. It was originally designed and built in the 1930s by industrialist Henry J. Breen as the place where the workers of his intended lumber mill, which was to be located nearby, would live. Newspapers of the time proclaimed that Wood City would be an idyllic village, but old timers who remember the town say it looked more like a work camp. Some claimed it was the concept of a company store taken to the extremes: an entire company village.
But that isn’t reason the Depression-era town has spawned a legend all its own. Even before it opened for business, Wood City was said to be cursed. Many thought it was because Breen himself collapsed and died right
in the center of town just before it was completed, and that his spirit remained to haunt the place. More rational people of course simply claim that Breen’s sudden death, combined with his unwise business decision to build the town before the mill that would support its residents, doomed the entire venture. Some have even said that the town was destined to fail from the very start, since Breen seems to have chosen the location for his mill more from a standpoint of nettling his neighbor, rival tycoon William Randolph Hearst, whom Breen hated, rather than the belief that the forests of the Central Coast were prime for such a venture. Ego wars among the rich are not recent inventions.
None of that, however, can explain the reports of disappearances amongst the citizens of Wood City. Entire families were said to have simply vanished. Many have argued that these disappearances were for perfectly sound reasons. There was, after all, little reason for anyone to stay in the town once it became clear that the lumber mill would never actually be constructed. But because of its strange history, over the years the story of Wood City has taken on a legendary aspect, similar to the mysteries of the disappearances of the Virginia colonists from Roanoke Island or the abandoned “ghost ship” the Mary Celeste.
Whatever the truth of the situation, within a few years of Breen’s death Wood City was nothing more than a memory. Ruins of the old town still exist, and over the decades there have been many reports from hikers and travelers through the area of having been overcome by strange, foreboding feelings.
That last part had caused Dani to shiver. Even now she could feel the uninviting aura of the place, the sense of grimness that permeated it like an old, bad memory, which could not be explained simply by way of its desolate location. It was something else, an aura that hung over the site like a cloud. And it had clung to her.
She had felt that sense of abandon, the sudden conviction that nothing else mattered except satisfying her basest urges, right before she had jumped on Jack Hayden in his truck and rode him like a mechanical bull. It was still lingering within her when they continued to make love at the motel. It did not abate until hours later, after she had actually considered picking up another man in the bar and taking him back to her room. When the feeling had finally gone away, she had reacted not so much with a feeling of guilt, but of shock. It was not like her to be a sexual predator, or even sexually aggressive, and hard as she had tried, Dani could not explain away the feeling of being driven by some outside force to act in a way that was not natural for her as either the acknowledgement of her newfound unmarried freedom or as some kind of oncoming middle-aged itch (and actuarial statistics aside, she did not think of herself as entering middle-age). It was literally like she had just awakened from a dark dream, one that was pleasurable, certainly, but one that was also disturbing.
The Mural Page 6