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

“Gerald. I’ve seen your work, it’s very good. That little New Zealand model you shot for the Sun? She looked positively angelic. Like there should have been some white clouds and a halo around her. Outstanding. Well, time for me to go to work. Have fun.”

The couples were beginning to trickle through the lobby, and the manager went and stood immobile by the doors with his hands clasped behind his back in the time-honoured tradition. Off to the side and out of the way, but immediately available should anything be required of him. The flashes began popping outside, and Cat went to her marks and started shooting. She recognized most of the people but took shots of them all, even the ones she couldn’t identify. Nothing would be worse than to miss one that Reese wanted. She suspected the little rat wasn’t above asking for one he didn’t want just to show her up and keep her in her place. A slender man with glasses being pushed in a wheelchair by a very large man came through the lobby doors, and Cat thought that he was someone she should know but couldn’t recall his name. She took a couple of quick shots of the unusual pair just in case.

The lobby was beginning to get crowded now; no one was going through to the banquet room. People were dropping off their coats and hats with the cloakroom attendants and then circling back and forming small groups. Drinks were being served and a crackling expectant buzz filled the room. Some cheers, a sudden light storm of flashes outside, and then the doors opened and Albright stepped through. His mild gaze swept the room and conversation all but stopped.

An awkward, hesitant moment of silence, and then someone started clapping and applause broke out. He grinned and gave a slight mocking bow as he moved forward, greeting people right and left as the crowd parted for him, pausing to shake hands and exchange a few words every few feet. Cat had moved up to the doors as he approached, and now she stood off to one side, moving backwards in step as he moved forward, shooting steadily all the time. Cat clicked off another half-dozen shots; thought, Screw it, that’s enough for now; and faded back into the crowd to observe.

The throng was thick around him and he was constantly stopped in his progress towards the hall. Many of his admirers were women and that didn’t surprise Cat. With his swept back hair and deep uniform tan, he had a sleek complacent look of sated appetite about him that vaguely reminded her of some actor in the old black-and-white movies she loved to watch. Victor Mature? His dark navy suit had been cut to show off his athletic physique and he wore it well. Good-looking, probably attractive to a certain type of woman, Cat concluded with some disdain, and then he looked up and his eyes caught and held hers and she felt the impact and she thought, Whoa! He stared at her for perhaps three seconds and the mild hazel eyes glowed and Cat knew she was blushing, but she wouldn’t look away. And then he turned and moved past her and the moment was gone. Cat stared after him in mild shock.

“Well, what did you think?” the manager asked, moving up beside her.

“I almost took my panties off and threw them at him,” Cat said, “and he never uttered a single syllable.”

“I know what you mean,” Gerald said. “He has that effect on people.”

A few feet ahead of them, James Albright leaned down and murmured into the ear of one of his aides. “The photographer. The one with the red hair. I want to know who she is.”

The man nodded and slipped back into the crowd. James Albright turned his attention back to his acolytes and smiled and shook the offered hands and continued his stately procession towards the dining room.

Chapter 18

“It feels like we’re not making any progress. Doing nothing useful, just sitting around waiting for something bad to happen. And if past is prologue, it will,” Danny said.

He finished his beer, absent-mindedly crushed the can and set it carefully down on top of the small but growing pile in Arrow’s cockpit. It was late afternoon and the shadows were just beginning to creep across the foredeck. The mainsheet swayed back and forth as a seiner rocked Arrow in passing, its crew sitting bare-backed on the hatch cover in the warm sun, fids in hand, as they worked on the nets and gossiped.

“I agree, but I don’t see that there’s anything else we can do right now except wait around for something to break,” Jared said. “Clarke cross-referenced all the dates on the computer against the attacks on the women and hasn’t found any other links apart from that one stolen gate card which connects to all of them. No other cards used around the time of the attacks that connects to more than one of them. Those were all checked out and eliminated as suspects.”

Danny said, “How about the house up in the Properties where the guy from the Lamplight led us?”

Jared shook his head. “No joy there either. It’s owned by an offshore shell company, and the name of the real owner is untraceable without the warrants that Clarke says there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of obtaining. We can forget about the private investigator who took off for Mexico, if the locals haven’t located him by now they’re not going to. Besides which, he wouldn’t say anything before he took off, so why would he now?”

Danny shrugged. “Well, maybe sometimes there really is nothing you can do. You just have to sit back and wait for developments.”

“To hell with it. Let’s go sailing.”

Fifteen minutes later Arrow was on her way out of the marina, Jared at the tiller, Danny folding back the mainsail cover