Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

“Mind you, those records are confidential and not available to the general membership. For a club officer such as myself, of course, there’s no problem.” Basil smiled genially and took a sip of his gin and tonic.

“I suppose a bribe is out of the question,” Danny said.

“I’m afraid so.”

So they told him. All of it from the beginning.

Basil sat quietly, sipping his drink and listening without comment. When they had finished, he stared into space for a long time.

“I would hate to think that anybody at the club had anything to do with something like that,” he said finally. “I’m going to the caretaker’s office to pull up the records for that night. I’ll be back in a few minutes and then we’ll decide what to do.”

They watched him walk away.

“Not a bad guy,” Danny said.

“He told me he owns a forty-two-foot Hunter sailboat,” Jared said.

“So I guess he’s in the clear then?”

“Well, the Hunter thing is a little suspect, but yeah, pretty much,” Jared said.

Basil was away for a good half hour, and when he returned he had another man with him.

“This is Arnie, our club caretaker. I think he might be able to help us. The card used at the time you referred to was reported missing a few months ago. March tenth to be precise. The chap who lost it is a friend of mine, an elderly retired investment banker. Not a likely candidate for any of this I would think. The thing is, he reported the loss to the office immediately, and the card was cancelled that very same day and shouldn’t have worked at the gate after that. Except it seems that somehow it did.”

“It was cancelled all right,” Arnie said. “I keep a daily log of my activities in an annual diary. I put all the important dates on it ahead of time: boat safety inspections, regattas, special events, things like that. I add or check off items from one day to the next. It helps keep me on track.”

He laid a beat-up journal on the table and pointed to an entry. “See, it’s right there in black and white. March tenth — cancelled nine-nine-two-six. Hubert Rainer. His card wouldn’t have worked after that. I issued him a new one.”

“Someone must have reinstated it,” Basil said.

“Yes. It looks like it.”

“How hard would that be?” Danny asked.

“Simple enough,” Basil said. “Just get onto the club computer and call up the file. Enter the password and the card number and there you are. Three options: suspend, cancel, reinstate. Check the box, confirm, bingo! It’s done.”

“How many people would know that password?”

“Probably every club officer for the last ten years give or take. Or maybe even longer. Not to mention all the secretaries, volunteers, committee heads, and who knows who else? I doubt anything has been changed in the program since it was installed a dozen or so years back. It never seemed necessary. Apart from that, any member can walk in and use the office computer at will, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the password was written down in the office somewhere for reference. We’re not exactly the secret service here.”

Basil paused and laid a printout on the table. “Here are the times that card was used since March tenth. Four dates, all of them late night or early morning. Spaced out from a month to six weeks apart.”

Jared glanced at the list. “Not a huge leap to think that they might correspond with the assaults on the women.”

“I hate to say this,” Basil began, “but I’ll have to get the police involved and it’s going to be an absolute straight-out nightmare for our club when word of this gets out. And you can bet your bottom dollar that it will leak out if our members are interviewed. I can almost hear the other yacht clubs licking their chops already.” Basil closed his eyes and took a long drink.

“About the guys in the hats Basil told me about,” Arnie said. “I think maybe I might have seen them once. It wasn’t much really. Two men in a nice old mahogany Chris-Craft Launch. It was windy and they had their hands raised up clamping their hats on their heads. Why I remember is it was kind of funny because they looked such lubbers. Who goes out in a blow wearing a hat like that on his head?”

“How were they dressed?” Jared asked.

“Street clothes. Not boaty, just jackets and pants. Not jeans I don’t think. Khaki pants and windbreakers maybe? I think they were both dressed the same. Not a hundred percent sure really. Just the hats were a little weird, stuck in my mind. They were so out of place.”

Danny said, “Do you have any idea where they might have been coming from?”

“It had to be from the main shed or one of the boathouses housing the bigger yachts. There’s nothing else down that channel. C dock blocks off the other end.”

“Well over a hundred yachts to choose from then,” Basil said. “Thanks, Arnie. Talk to you later. Keep this quiet for the time being, okay?”

“Under your fedora, so to speak,” Jared said.

Chapter 10

“So what do you think?” Danny asked.

“We don’t have enough. Basil is obliged to go to the police now that he knows what has been going on. I’m surprised he’s giving us any time at all.”

“Well, we did say we’d talk to Clarke,” Danny said. “And Basil doesn’t want the notoriety for the club, so there’s that. But you know he’ll do the right thing sooner rather than later. This might be one of those times where the police can do a better job. Do the interviews with club members, you never know, they might just get lucky. Someone could have seen something. They’ll go through the printouts and match the times the card was used with what they’ve got on the other assaults, see if any other cards correlate with those times,