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

finally come. Don’t even have my blazer and patch yet. Pleasure to meet you.” He grabbed the man’s hand and shook it fervently.

The man jerked his hand away.

“Likewise,” he muttered. “John Newcombe.”

“I’ll just give the old weed a shake, John,” Jared said. “Be back in no time, and we can have a nice little chat.” He headed off into the restroom. When he returned the man was gone.

“You must have scared him,” Danny said. “He’s on the move.”

“I introduced myself and said I was a fellow member. Suggested we shoot the breeze. He could just be a guilty husband out for a night on the town.”

“Maybe. Kind of dumb in that case to wear a blazer with your club’s logo on it. Why not just print out your phone number and attach it to your collar? Pretty much the same thing as far as tracking you goes these days. The blazer and logo might make you seem safer though. Less of a threat.” Danny shrugged.

“That’s awfully damned thin,” Jared said.

“True. But then what else do we have?” Danny threw money down on the table, and they followed out the door in the man’s wake. When they arrived at the curb, he was heading off down Powell Street in a taxi. The three of them climbed into the next one in the queue.

Danny turned to Jared.

“Be my guest,” Jared said.

Danny smiled. “Follow that cab,” he said to the driver.

The cab turned onto Hastings Street, then out and over the Second Narrows Bridge before climbing up into the lower reaches of the North Shore. Just as it seemed they were going all the way out to the Vancouver Island ferry, the cab veered off and up into the high-rent area of the British Properties. With the recent surge in property values, the average home here was now in the two- to three-million-dollar range. Many were worth more.

The taxi pulled into a private driveway and stopped in front of a high steel gate with a keypad lock. The man who called himself Newcombe got out and paid the driver and the taxi drove off. He went over to the gate and pressed an intercom button and spoke briefly. After a moment the gate slid silently open on greased tracks and he walked through. It closed behind him and he disappeared from view.

“That was really helpful,” Jared said.

“Well, we learned that he doesn’t live here anyway,” Danny said. “If he did, he would have known the gate combination.”

“And that helps us how?”

“Just saying. You didn’t scare him home. Maybe to someone further up the chain.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the only sound the ticking over of the meter.

“Well, we’ve got the address and the name of the guy in the Lamplight for what that’s worth. Likely an alias if he’s connected to the women. Merlynn can check out the name in her computer records and the club yearbooks. I think it might be time to head out to the next place on the list.” Danny glanced at his watch. “The night is still young.”

“Hang on,” Jared said.

The gate opened and a black Cadillac limo with tinted windows peeled out and headed back in towards the city.

“Follow that Cad,” Jared said to their driver.

Chapter 14

The limo led them back along the upper Narrows, then swung over the Lions Gate Bridge and into the West End. It paused by the Queens Own Yacht Club gate and a man got out and the limo pulled away. It had begun to rain heavily and it was impossible to tell if it was the same man they had followed from the nightclub. He was wearing a dark green rain jacket with the hood pulled up and could have been anybody. He held his wallet up to the reader, and the gate opened. The man passed through and headed up the main finger and disappeared in the gusty rain.

“We’ll have to stay with the Caddy,” Jared said. “I don’t have a gate card yet.” He glanced at his watch. “Eight forty-one. We’ll tell Clarke, and he can pull the log from the club computer and find out whose card was used at that time. This could all be just a coincidence and perfectly innocent. If the Caddy heads back to the Properties, we’ll leave it.”

But after dropping the man off, the limo did an illegal U-turn and drove back past them towards the city. With the rain and the tinted windows, it was impossible to see anything inside. They gave it a couple of hundred yards’ head start and then followed.

“Are you guys cops?” the cabbie inquired.

“Yeah,” Danny said. “We’re undercover. Him especially.” He pointed to Joseph who regarded the man gravely and nodded.

“Sorry I asked,” the driver said.

They followed the limo for another twenty blocks before it pulled up in front of the club they’d been at the night before. Two men got out and entered the Sergeant at Arms. Neither of them was the man from the Lamplight who had given his name as John Newcombe.

“The coincidences are beginning to stack up,” Danny said. He reached for his wallet and Jared brushed him aside and paid the driver.

“It could still be just that though. Coincidence. This isn’t the pair that grabbed Lauren.”

The men might have been a little older than most of the club goers but not by very much. With their casual sport coats and upscale blue jeans, they fit right in with the crowd. They seemed to be known to the bouncers who spoke to them briefly as they passed by.

“Maybe we should wait a couple of minutes,” Jared said. “We don’t want to be too obvious.” Joseph looked at him without expression, gazed up at the falling rain, and then headed off across the street towards the club.

“Or not,” Danny said, and the two of them hurried after him.

The Sergeant at Arms was twice as busy and three times as loud as the Lamplight. Most of the tables