worth of chipping, this time using his keys, he uncovered a portion of another face.
“I’ll be damned,” he whispered. The style of the artwork was the kind he had seen in Depression-era public works projects. Into the tape recorder he said: “The back wall of the city hall building is decorated with what appears to be an old WPA mural, which at some point in time was painted over. From what I can see of it, this mural appears to be in good enough condition to warrant restoration. Note...be sure to bring this up with Emac since this definitely adds a few new wrinkles to things. Get the preservation people involved and maybe they’ll pay for the restoration.”
Who knew? Maybe there was some potential life in Lost Pines Resort after all. Maybe once word got out about the discovery of the mural artwork, if it’s really something special, Resort Partners could obtain grant or foundation money to build the resort from scratch, with minimal out-of-pocket expense. Wouldn’t they love that! Suddenly Jack was no longer dreading having to confront Emac McMenamin.
Clicking the machine off, he slipped it back into his pocket and picked the camera back up, taking several additional shots of the revealed mural. Maybe he should get his marketing whiz of a wife involved to get her take on how to hype this thing. An historic, lost icon of California’s progressive past; a masterpiece newly discovered and brought to you by Resort Partners, LLC! And now you can own two weeks of this miraculous discovery every year—
“Who am I kidding,” Jack said, laughing. Even though Elley had the marketing ability to sell abstinence brochures to sailors on shore leave, Resort Partners would never pay for her.
Surprisingly, it had not been a bad day’s work. The buildings were still rubble, but at least he now had an angle, and Jack knew from experience that angles were also acceptable in lieu of reality, particularly if Marcus Broarty was involved. Not bad at all, and he was already tasting the cold beer waiting for him at the hotel.
As he was making his way out of the city hall building, Jack Hayden also realized that he was hungry, too. The trek back to his truck made him even more so, despite the fact that it was much easier to walk downhill out of the woods than it had been to fight his way in. The fog had lifted, too, warming the day considerably, and even the thicket across the road seemed less of a problem to get through. His only discomfort came when slid behind the wheel and realized how much his tailbone still hurt from his pratfall back at the city hall.
Turning the truck around in the woods was a challenge, but once he had managed, Jack made it back to the highway in no time. From there it was only six miles to his motel, a comfortable, if slightly sterile, place called the Tide Pool Inn, which was on the beachside tourist strip of San Simeon, a couple of miles from the original tiny village that had once serviced William Randolph Hearst and the creation of his legendary palace of opulence high above the ocean.
After bolting down a burger and a few beers in the motel restaurant, Jack returned to his room and set up his laptop on top of the bed. After powering it up, he plugged in his camera in order to download the photos. While waiting for the two digital devices to do their thing, he phoned Elley at her work number.
“How’s the patient?”
“Impatient is more like it,” she replied. “It was hives, just as I suspected, but we had to wait forever before we saw the doctor. Half the day was shot.”
“Well, she probably enjoyed having a surprise morning with her mom.”
“Look, I have to go into a meeting. Is there anything else?”
“I guess not.”
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye,” Jack said to the disconnected phone line. Turning back to his computer, he saw that the download had been completed. Setting it for a slide show, he watched one picture after another, still somewhat amazed that the lighting was so good, only through flash illumination. When he came to the first picture of the back wall, he laughed all over again at how frightened the sight of the painted face had made him, and gave thanks that Broarty, or anyone else for that matter, had not been there to hear him scream like a girl and fall on his ass. But when the closer pictures of the mural figure’s face came up, he paused the slide show, stopping it to study them carefully. Jack frowned. The face in the photos did not look quite the same as it had when he looked at it in the building. It was still a woman’s face, but the expression now appeared slightly different. The figure’s eyes now seemed to bore into his. It had to be a trick of the light flash, but it was a damned weird one. Even weirder was the fact that even the feature seemed to have subtly changed. They looked a little more refined, a little sharper; certainly different than before.
The picture now changed to the next sequential image in the slide show, and Jack leapt backward off of the bed.
It was a painting of Elley, his wife, staring back at him from his laptop, her eyes wide and insane, her mouth twisted into an evil grin.
“My god!” he panted, covering his eyes, groping his way backward until he collided with the wall. A moment later he felt like a fool. This is stupid, Jack though. There had to be a photo of her already on the memory stick and it just popped up.
Then why did she look so thoroughly evil?
My mind; or else fatigue; or maybe too many beers; or maybe not enough; I don’t know.
Slowly Jack cracked open one eye, then the other, and forced himself to look at the laptop. The woman’s face remained on the screen, but it was not Elley. It was the face in the mural, altered, if at all, only by the combination of the flashlight and the camera flash, being used simultaneously. “God,” Jack muttered. He was a pussy. For the second time that day, he was glad to have been alone in his moment of supreme cowardice.
Going back to the bed, Jack closed the slide show, put the pictures in a file, and as quickly as he could, emailed them to Broarty. Then he powered off the machine and vowed to leave it off for the rest of the night.
It was not even six o’clock yet. Jack had already eaten, and nothing on the television appealed to him. He decided to go down to the motel shop and see if they had a pair of swim trunks in his size (they would probably be exorbitant, but he’d find a way to expense them), and then check out the pool area. Maybe what he needed most right now was to soak his aching butt in some warm water. Maybe it would relax him enough so that he could get a good night’s sleep.
Maybe the vision of his wife as some kind of horror movie creature that his mind had generated, for whatever perverse reason of its own, would not come back.
CHAPTER TWO
The pool area seemed like it was the furthest point possible from his room, forcing Jack to traipse in his swim trunks through every hallway of the motel’s first floor, but the welcoming, warm chlorine smell that greeted him as soon as he passed through the double glass doors leading to the recreation area brushed that concern aside. The Jacuzzi was empty, a situation he quickly remedied. Lowering himself into the hot, steaming, initially stinging water, Jack leaned back, closed his eyes and let it lap up around him. He was getting thirsty again, but was trying to ignore that for fear that more alcohol would bring back the frightening vision of Elley, not drive it away.
He concentrated on other thoughts. This was only Monday (though it seemed like the week should be over already): he could leave first thing tomorrow morning and be back in L.A. by the early afternoon, or he could return to Wood City in the morning, now that he knew exactly where it was, and make a second inspection, just to ensure that there were no structures he had missed. By doing that, he could be on his way by lunchtime and back in town by late afternoon—not soon enough
