The Mural. Michael Mallory

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СКАЧАТЬ there to take more pictures. Maybe the lighting will be better this time. I’ll take two cameras, my digital and a camcorder, so that if anything goes wrong this time we’ve got a video backup.”

      “Great. Now tell me how I’m supposed to convince Emac to fund a return trip, because I’m not paying for it, Jack. This is not going to come out of our profit.”

      “I’ll pay for it myself.”

      “You will?”

      “I’m the one who screwed up here, so I’ll make good on it. I’ll leave as soon as I clear up a few things on my desk, and I can be up there by late afternoon. I’ll pay for the gas, the motel room, everything.”

      “Let me think about it.”

      “No time, Marc. If I’m going back I have to do it now. This is the only solution, as far as I can see. Even if you want to take me off the job, you’ve got to send someone up there, right? If you send someone else, it will cost you or Emac. If you take another chance on me, it’s at no cost to you. I’m on my own dime.”

      Marcus Broarty looked deep in thought, or as close as he could come, then said: “No, screw it.”

      Shit! “Marc, eventually we’ve got to show Resort Partners something, don’t we?”

      “Why offer proof the place is a wasteland? That is what you said, right? That there was nothing up there? By not having pictures we buy more time to figure out what to tell them later.”

      “Can I make a confession, Marc?” Jack asked. “I’ve been in kind of a bum mood lately.”

      “No shit.”

      “I don’t know whether you fall into bum moods or not, but sometimes you look at things and everything on the outside looks just as bad as they do on the inside. Maybe when I was looking around Wood City, I was seeing things through my bad mood, making everything look worse than it really was. Maybe I need to go back and look at the place again with fresh eyes. I think I owe it to the project to take a second look, don’t you?”

      “Frankly, Jack, it sounds to me like a waste of time.”

      Why was Broarty being so dismissive of the idea? It would not cost Crane Commercial Building Engineering a penny, and Jack’s time was not an issue, since Broarty had freed up his schedule so he could devote the entire week to Wood City. What difference could it possibly make to his boss if he went back up the coast? Surely Broarty could not detect the ulterior motive that Jack was harboring. He was not that insightful or clever. There had to be some other reason.

      Jack had one card left to play. “Okay, Marc, you’re in charge,” Jack said. “So I guess it’s up to you to call Emac and tell him that Crane is breaching its contract and that Resort Partners should find another firm.”

      “What the hell are you talking about?” Broarty shot back.

      “Well, look, what if Emac finds out that I was willing to bend over backwards to make up for an error in judgment and some slipshod follow-through, and you wouldn’t allow me to?”

      “You’re up to something.”

      Oh, if only you knew. “I just don’t like making mistakes, particularly big ones. It bothers me, so I try to do whatever I can to rectify the screw-ups. God’s honest truth.”

      After a moment of silence, Broarty said: “I’ll have to think about it. Now go away.”

      Jack left, his mind already made up. Broarty could think about it all he wanted. Jack would not be there to hear the decision. He would be home throwing some clothes into a suitcase, clothes for both him and Robynn. Then he’d call Nola and tell her that he would be taking Robynn on a trip and she would not be needed for several days—unexpected time off that she would likely find welcome—after which he would swing by Robynn’s kindergarten class and pick her up, telling the teacher that it was an emergency and they would have to be gone for the rest of the week. The teacher, who was very young and not terribly sure of herself, would of course agree and hope that there was nothing seriously wrong, and Jack would assure her that they would be back as soon as possible. Then he and Robynn would drive up the coast, stay in San Simeon, and rendezvous with Dani, and live like a happy family...until he got caught.

      And worrying about getting caught was tomorrow’s problem.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      Even when seated in first class, Elley Gorman Hayden hated flying. Over the years she had learned effective techniques for hiding her fear, but every time the plane banked to one side or took a sudden lurch or bounce, her heart leapt up into her throat and her hands broke out in a sweat. This trip had been particularly bad, with almost non-stop turbulence from the point they had reached cruising altitude. The turbulence wasn’t that violent, but it was constant and unnerving. She turned to Blaise Micelli, her boss, and said: “I feel like a martini.”

      Blaise Micelli looked up from his Adweek. “Easy enough,” he said. “I’ll signal the flight attendant.”

      “No, Blaise, I being metaphoric. I don’t want a martini, I feel like one. I feel like I’ve been shaken for the last two-and-a-half hours.”

      “What a coincidence,” he said, grinning. “I feel like an olive on a long swizzle stick that’s pretty eager to get dunked in a martini.”

      Elley grimaced back at him. Normally when he made juvenile comments, accompanied by that Tom Cruise smirk, she would raise an eyebrow and cock one side of her mouth upwards, and threaten to spank him. Today she could not even muster that. “I just want to rest a bit,” she said, leaning the seat further back and closing her eyes, and absently fingering the tiny silver charms on the bracelet Jack had given her representing characters from The Wizard of Oz, which was her favorite film, one she completely identified with as a girl, stuck in a home life from which she desperately wanted to escape, complete with her own personal Wicked Witch in the form of her mother. It was time for her to stop lying to herself. Her sick feeling had started even before airplane began bouncing. It had come on in the limo on the way to the airport, a tiny burning ache in her chest that would not go away. At first she feared that she was starting to come down with something, but the longer she had the dull ache, the more she realized that it was like nothing she had ever felt. Maybe it was worry. Maybe she was actually worried about her marriage.

      She knew Jack had been fucking up at work lately. That was easy to gauge: his increasingly vehement rants against Marcus Broarty implied that he had been incurring his boss’s displeasure more frequently than usual. She had little reason to doubt that Broarty was a horse’s ass, but he nevertheless represented authority at Jack’s office, and respect for authority was not on her husband’s asset sheet. Jack’s saving grace had always been how he dealt with Robynn, but the sight of all those empties on the counter last night had sent sirens through her brain. If he was drinking that much around the child, then something was deeply wrong.

      And then that phone call from a woman with a sexy voice.

      Sure, it could have been taken at face value. Sure, the relationship between Jack and this woman could be completely innocent. Elvis could still be alive, too, and space aliens might have shot JFK.

      But Elley knew bullshit, knew it by sight, sound, touch, smell, and, yes, taste. She sold it to thousands of idiots on silver plates every day of her life. That was her job. And with that phone call her bullshit detector hit the red zone.

      She СКАЧАТЬ