“So you got a ticket for driving in the carpool lane in L.A., and this is your way of getting even?”
“Well, like I said, my deputy probably wouldn’t see the value of my system of justice, but I’ve found it to work.”
“What’s that money really going to be used for?”
“Well, ol’ Carl’s birthday is coming up, so maybe I’ll buy him one those fancy cakes they sell down at Luntz’s Bakery.”
“Get a good one.”
“You can count on it. So long, Mr. Hayden, and remember what I said about calling first.”
While Jack had been inside the police station, dusk had begun to filter down over the village. Back in his truck, heading out of the village he passed a small liquor store, but he fought off the urge to pull in and get something to take back to the motel. As much as he wanted a drink, the memory of his hallucination, or whatever it was, was just too disturbing to actually crack open a bottle.
All things considered, he had gotten of easy. If Creeley had really wanted to stick it to him, he could have, but he chose not to. In fact, Jack was finding it very hard to try and work up a dislike for the young officer. Under different circumstances, spending time with Creeley would probably turn out to be a lot more pleasant than spending time with Marcus Broarty. Or at times even with Elley.
He arrived back at the Tide Pool much later than he had planned, and hoped Althea was not upset by his prolonged absence. Before he chanced finding out, though, Jack stopped at the front desk. “Has Ms. Lindstrom from room 207 come back yet?”
“I don’t know,” the chubby young clerk answered, “let me try her room.” He dialed and stood there long enough for seven or eight rings, then hung up. “No one answers.”
“Okay, thanks,” before heading back for his room.
As he walked in, Robynn cried out, “Hi Daddy! Noni is reading the funnies to me.” The two of them were on the bed—Robynn sprawled, and Althea sitting—with the comics page of the local newspaper spread out between them.
“Great, punkin,” Jack said. “Here, I got something for you when I while I was out.” He held out the plush otter.
With a gasp and a squeal, Robynn ran for it and grabbed it, hugging it tightly. “I love him! What’s his name?”
“I thought you could name him.”
“How about Oyster Cracker?”
Jack laughed. “Sounds perfect.”
Happily lost in her own world, Robynn then took Oyster Cracker on a tour of the room, showing him every drawer and corner, even under the bed, where she admonished the toy not to hide.
Jack smiled, watching her, and then turned to Althea. “No problems, I take it,” he said.
“Oh, heavens, no,” the woman answered, but the slightly worried expression on her face belied her words. “She was good as gold. Did you get everything you needed to get done?”
“Yeah, yeah, but I guess I’d better start thinking about dinner, huh? How about the motel coffee shop for tonight?”
“Fine with me,” Althea said.
Jack was examining the old woman, who seemed to be working hard to put on a cheerful façade. “Althea, are you sure everything is all right?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, why?”
“I don’t know, you look a little distracted is all.”
“Oh, well, to be honest I think I might have nodded off for a few minutes while you were gone,” she said. “I know that’s not a good thing to do when you have a small child, but I’m not used to this much activity. I had a dream. Or, if I wasn’t really asleep, then it was some kind of vision.”
“Howard?” Jack asked.
“Only partly,” Althea replied. “I was back at that party at Hearst’s castle, the one I mentioned. Remember I told you that there was some kind of commotion involving one of the artist’s paintings? Well, it all came back to me. One of the guests was an actress, I can’t even remember her name, but she was a nice looking girl who suddenly became hysterical and screamed that her painting changed when she looked at it.”
Like the painting of the woman in the Saddleback Inn, Jack thought. His body temperature felt like it instantly dropped several degrees.
“And in the midst of all this was a strange man,” Althea went on. “There was something about him that was very unpleasant. Well, having had that memory come back so suddenly and vividly after all these years troubled my mind a little bit. But I’ll get over it. What is it they used to say? Press on, regardless?”
Whatever was happening around them, Jack only hoped he had the strength to.
Robynn, having finished showing her new toy around, came running back up to him. “Daddy, I’m hungry.” She held up Oyster Cracker in front of her and in a low voice added: “Me hungry too. Me want soup.”
Jack laughed. “All right, Oyster Cracker, we’ll get you some soup. You too, punkin. Let me just clean up a little, then we’ll go.”
Jack went into the bathroom and washed his hands, splashing a little of the water on his face. He did not close the door because he did not have to go. He had obviously taken care of that in downtown Glenowen. Grabbing one of the undersized towels, he dried his face and then checked his hair in the mirror.
And then Jack Hayden nearly cried out.
Hanging on the wall behind him, reflected in the mirror, was a framed antique photograph. He spun around to look at it and felt his heart rate triple. It was an example of the kind of decoration one usually finds in motel rooms, though not always in motel room bathrooms. The photograph was clearly old; it was sepia toned and depicted a building front with a horse tether rail to the side. A woman in an old fashioned dress was standing by the door of the building.
Jack inched closer to the photo, feeling his gooseflesh rise as he examined it.
There was no question; no mistake. It was a photo of The Saddleback Inn. And the woman in front was the one he had screwed in the men’s room.
The woman from the mural.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“You’re white as a sheet,” Althea said as Jack staggered out of the bathroom. “What’s wrong?”
“Could you do me a favor?” Jack said, and when she nodded, looking concerned, he asked her to go into the bathroom and look at the picture. Althea did, returning a moment later, a frown on her lined face. “Of all the framed photographs to put in a motel suite, that has to be the strangest,” she said. “Why would anyone think a guest would like a picture of a hearse?”
“A what?”
“That’s what that horse-drawn cart in the photograph is, an old-time hearse. It’s in poor taste, if you ask me.”
Forcing himself to go back into the bathroom, Jack looked at the picture and saw that Althea was right: it was a hearse, parked in front of the Saddleback Inn. There was no sign of the woman.
Had he simply imagined her? Was he imagining everything?
Taking one of the neatly folded towels from the metal rack over the toilet, Jack draped it over the frame, covering the picture up, then went back out into the room. “You know what, Althea? I’m really not very hungry. Could you take Robynn down to the restaurant while I stay here and rest?”
“Oh, sure, that’s no problem, is it, punkin?” she asked Robynn. Then to Jack she added: “I hope you feel better.” Her expression, however, virtually shouted: You’re experiencing something too, aren’t you?
Jack did not answer. Instead he handed over two twenties and hoped there would be change back, and then watched as they left the room. “Bye-bye, Daddy,” Robynn called from the hallway, clutching Oyster Cracker tightly to her, right before the door swung shut.
Jack sat on the bed and massaged his head. “What in god’s name is happening to me?” He stretched out on the bed and pulled out his cell phone. He tried Dani again but once more he got the flat, dead-air, searching signal that mean her phone was not receiving service. Maybe he should tell her about his service the next time he saw her, whenever that would be.
He turned on the room TV and found an old Ed
die Murphy movie, but did not really watch it. It was simply noise.
* * * * * * *
When Jack heard the key card lock on the door clicked and the door opened, Jack wondered why Robynn and Althea were back so soon. Could the restaurant be closed? But then he glanced at the clock and saw with surprise that nearly an hour had passed since they left. There was now a violent crime drama on the television. Had must have fallen asleep and not realized it.
Robynn leaped into the room and blurted, “Hi-daddy-guess-what?”
Jack switched off the television. “What, punkin?”
“They have popcorn chicken at the restaurant and it’s really good. But how do they pop it? Is it in a bag like regular popcorn and they put it in the nuke?”
The smile on Althea’s face told him that his daughter had already asked her, and the shrug that followed told him that she had not been able to come up with an answer.
“Gosh, Robynn, I don’t know,” Jack replied, sitting up in the bed. “Those chefs can really be tricky.”
“Like in Ratatouille?” Ratatouille was one of her favorite films.
“I guess.”
“Can we go back tomorrow?” Robynn asked. “I want you to go, too.”
“Sure, punkin, we’ll go there tomorrow. Turning to Althea, he asked: “Was your dinner good, too?”
“Oh, yes, though not quite so exciting. Are you feeling any better?”
“Yeah, some, thanks.”
“If you want to go get something, go ahead, we’ll be fine.”
“No, I’m still not very hungry, but thanks.”
“I have to go,” Robynn said, rushing into the bathroom.
“Close the door,” both Jack and Althea called out, then they laughed.
Once Robynn was out of earshot, Althea said, “She’s such a sweetie.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed.
“Look, Jack,” she said, lowering her voice, “we both know that something unusual is going on here. I don’t presume to know what it is, but the fact that I somehow knew I had to go to that town and wait for someone to come along, it was like...well, I can’t say what it as like. And if you don’t mind my saying so, you’ve been a little spooky since you came back from getting gas, even before the business with the picture in the bathroom. So I have to assume something along the same lines as Howard’s coming to me has happened to you.”
Jack sighed and nodded.
“I won’t ask what,” Althea went on. “I figure if you want to tell me about it you will. But if you need to be alone some more, I’ll understand. Robynn and I will be fine.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, next to him, which made Jack surprisingly uncomfortable. “I’ve pretty much been alone myself over the last decade, so I tend to take it for granted. But for people with responsibilities, like you, some alone time can’t hurt.”
“What are my responsibilities?”
“Well, Robynn, for one.”
“I have a wife, you know.”
“Yes, but she’s not here.”
Jack leaned back on the pillow. “I wish I could put it into words, but I feel like...I don’t know...like something is coming that I have to be a part of. Almost like...well, this will sound strange.”
“Like you’re being called by a force,” Althea finished for him.
Jack stared at the older woman. “Yes.”
“I know. I feel it, too.”
“What is it?”
“I have no idea, but I trust Howard.”
“He must have been a very special person.”
She smiled. “Everybody should have someone like Howard in their lives, at least once. Oh, I guess what I’m trying to say, not terribly successfully, is that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to believe that everything means something, things don’t just happen randomly. I usually don’t know what they mean at the time, but I often find out. And I think we’re going to find out what all of the strangeness we’ve each been encountering means at some point. I just hope I’m up to it.” She smiled again, and for the first time Jack realized that Althea must have been a beautiful young woman. He almost wished he had been around then.
The toilet flushed in the bathroom and soon Robynn came bounding out. “Why is there a towel stuck up on the wall?” she asked.
“Oh, that?” Jack began, groping for an explanation that would satisfy her probing five-year-old mind. “There’s a picture underneath it and, uh, the glass over it is cracked, and I couldn’t get it off the wall, so I put the towel over so than none of the glass would fall out onto the floor.”
“Oh,” the girl said, accepting it.
The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. Robynn wanted to go to the motel swimming pool, but it Jack decided it was too late, and she was tired enough to accept the decision. Once Robynn was tucked in, Althea went to her room, and Jack went into the bathroom, careful to keep the door closed so that the light did not bleed into the room. He sat on the toilet, pants on, for about a half-hour, trying to think. Every so often, he would glance up into the mirror and see the reflection of the covered picture on the wall behind him.
He had to know.
Jack rose slowly and turned, reaching out for the towel, feeling moisture spring from his upper lip. His hands stopped just as they were about to grab the towel and froze.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, but even so, it took another minute before he could summon the courage to rip away the white terry cloth.
Jack had tried to prepare himself for just about anything, but when he pulled the towel away and stared again and the photo, he found there was no change. He had actually been expecting one. It would have fit in with all the other strange shit that was going on around him. But the photo was exactly the same as it had been the last time he saw it: the Saddleback, the hearse, the sepia tint, all the same. But still different from the first time he had seen the picture.
Jack sat back down on the toilet and put his head in his hands. What has happening to him? What could he do about it? Not much, he decided. Maybe tomorrow in the daylight things would be clearer.
* * * * * * *
“Hey, babe?” Rob Creeley called from the bathroom, “do we still have that local history book lying around somewhere?” Maria Ruiz Creeley stepped into the room, wearing nothing but panties and a tee-shirt so white it made her skin look even darker.
“You’re not going to read in bed,” she said, staring him down. “Not tonight. I’ve turned off your cell phone, too.” She slid out of her panties and threw them in the corner, then disappeared through the door. The white tee came flying through a second later. “Don’t be long,” she called out from the other room.
Creeley looked in the mirror and, for the millionth time, thought: You are one lucky sonuvabitch. He and Maria had been married just under two years, were still technically newlyweds, and they acted like it. If anything, they acted more like it now then the first six months of their marriage. How had managed to land her was anybody’s guess. It’s not that he considered himself homely, but he sensed that in ten years his hairline was probably going to be halfway up the top of his head and his physique would start getting soft, while she was still going to look like the star of a hot Telenovela.
Why ask why? he decided (for the millionth time) stepping out of his boxers and tossing them on top of her panties, and then following her into the bedroom, switching off the lights on the way.
An hour later, Maria was asleep, softly snoring next to him. Creeley smiled. You don’t think of goddesses snoring. He, on the other hand, was wide awake. Satisfied as hell, but awake. As quietly as he could he got up and snuck back into the bathroom, grabbing his lightweight robe. Then he went out into the living room, gently closing the bedroom door behind him. Turning on one light, he began to inspect the underfed bookcase near the television.
There it was, lying on its side on a top shelf, with a small onyx bear sitting on top of it, as though holding it down: Central Coast California in the Pioneer Era. It was a big hardcover
book that he had only barely bothered to look at before this, having been given to them as a gift by someone. But now he wanted to check something out, something that was bugging him.
Carrying the book over to the chair near the light, he looked in the back, hoping to find an index. No such luck. So he began flipping through, page by page, scanning the text and the photos, which depicted the middle of the state over the last century or so. Halfway through, he found the first mention of Glenowen, but it was only in passing. It took one more chapter before anything of note about the village appeared.
Mining town...founded by Scottish immigrants...originally called ‘Quiraing’...tide pools...seals...blah blah blah.
Creeley skimmed, several more pages and began to wonder if he was being a bigger fool than usual for sitting out here in the semi-darkness boning up on history, when he could be in the other room doing a little more boning with his wife. Then, turning the page, he saw it.
Rob Creeley sat and stared in the darkened silence for a full two minutes, then shook his head and muttered: “Sonuvabitch.”
* * * * * * *
The house was completely dark when Elley got home.
Getting out of the Lexus, Elley realized just how exhausted she was. The flight back to L.A. had not left New York until nearly ten, East Coast time. By this point she was running on very little food but a lot of Sudafed, which she gulped for its value as an upper rather than to clear her sinuses. She had actually nodded a few times while driving back from LAX (where she annoyingly had been charged for an entire twenty-four-hour day in the long-term parking, even though the car had only been there since that morning), and more frighteningly, had had a few of those exhaustion-based hallucinations that she used to experience while driving along back and forth to college.
Stillness greeted her in the foyer. Dropping her suitcase, she switched on the lights and headed for the phone in the dining room to see if Jack had possibly left a message saying where he was. The light was flashing, which gave her a small sliver of hope. Hitting the playback button, she heard a woman’s voice say: Jack, are you there? This is Yolanda. I have to find you before MBA has a cow. Emac’s not too happy either. I tried your cell but it just rings. If you get this, please call me. It’s now 3:21 and I have a feeling I’ll be here late tonight. Call me, Jack.
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