Arrow's Rest, Joel Scott [best book club books TXT] 📗

“Easiest thing in the world. Raina goes in at six this morning to clean up and run the glasses through the dishwasher; she’s by herself for the first couple of hours before the regular staff checks in. Turns out the manager runs a hidden cam behind the bar panning the crowd during open hours. Nothing sinister about it, just insurance if someone gets naughty and accuses the bouncers of being overzealous, or the wrong ass gets pinched and the word sue is mentioned. Plus it also helps to keep the bartenders and waitresses honest. The club keeps the files for thirty days and then deletes them.”

Cat said, “Not the sort of thing you want your patrons hearing about, I should imagine. Nobody likes to learn there’s a record out there of them being overserved, so to speak.”

Danny nodded in agreement. “When Raina went in this morning the first thing she did was copy the files and phone me, and I dropped by and picked them up. Easy peasy.”

“I’ve got a shoot downtown in an hour, I’ll have to take a rain check,” Cat said.

“Fifteen minutes,” Jared said, grabbing his coffee and heading for the shower.

When he emerged a few minutes later, Danny was sprawled on the couch watching the news. He switched off the TV as Jared sat down beside him and plugged the flash drive into the laptop. They watched in silence as the evening unfolded before them.

“I’m glad Cat isn’t here,” Jared said a few minutes later. “This would have been tough for her to see.”

“Yes.”

It had been surprisingly easy to find. Each night was in a separate file organized by date. Fast-forwarding in one hour on the night in question, there she was in high definition and colour. She was unmistakeable, both for her beauty and the rage that consumed her. It was eerie; you’d see her for a few seconds and then the camera would pan away across the room before it swung back across. You saw the hand drawn back for the slap, and then the boyfriend leaning across the table snarling at her, and then the thrown drink. And then a steady series of drinks and men coming and going in jerky frames. Self-pity merging into self-hatred in abbreviated three-second vignettes. After a couple of hours she was drunk, pirouetting around the dance floor, bumping into people, rubbing herself against other dancers. And then back to the table for more drinks and more men. They were coarser and bolder now. Assholes she wouldn’t have let within twenty feet of her sober were cozying up and trying their luck.

“Hard to watch, all right,” Danny said. “Whoa. Right there.”

Two men, middle-aged, dressed in windbreakers and slacks. One holding her hands and talking while the other one reached into his pocket.

“There. Something put into her drink for sure. You can see him tear the packet and then it’s back in his pocket.” They backed it up and played it again in slow motion.

Jared said, “You notice anything unusual about those guys? Apart from their clothes?”

“They don’t have any drinks on the table. Guys always bring their drinks with them when they’re hustling. It’s like they just came in and haven’t ordered yet.”

“You’re right, but apart from that. They’re out of place, a little too old, not dressed for the club scene. And look at those haircuts. They were out of style twenty years ago. I’ll put it up on the TV, get a better look.”

Jared pointed at the big screen. “See those tan lines? They look like the farm kids I grew up with in Abbotsford. White forehead and back of the neck, forearms brown as leather. The town kids called it farmer’s tan when they were joshing the hicks. It comes from being out in the sun all the time with a wide-brimmed hat. With ball caps, the back of the neck gets tanned.”

“Could be that. Could be a lot of other things, Sherlock,” Danny said. “Loggers, fishermen, there’s a dozen different trades that fit.”

“The thing is their foreheads and the back of their necks were so white because they all wore fedoras. Usually grey or brown. Brims all the way around. You know, Frank Sinatra hats.”

“I know what a fedora is,” Danny said.

“Damnedest thing you ever saw, all those churchgoers coming down the steps in their fedoras and brown and black suits. Probably ball caps were too homeboy for them, now that I think about it. Cowboy hats might have been too racy.”

They watched the cam for another few minutes, and Jared winced as Lauren’s head began to sag and she was clearly on the verge of passing out. The two men bent towards her and grabbed her under the arms and moved off, threading their way through the crowded dance floor, disappearing and reappearing in three-second fragments.

“Okay, one fifteen,” Jared said. “Put on the canopy tape.”

They ran the second tape forward and stopped.

“There.”

Two men supporting a woman with a flowered kerchief over her hair moving out from under the canopy towards the curb. They were clearly aware of the overhead surveillance camera, their heads under the hats bowed right down.

Danny said, “You might be right about the hats, Jared. Could also be Stetsons, though, it’s hard to tell from this angle. But there was nothing cowboy about the windbreakers, so I’m going to grant you the fedoras. And then there are the clunky black boots they’re wearing. If you wear the cowboy hat, you wear the cowboy boots, guaranteed. One hundred percent. The shirts with the little arrows stitched over the pockets are more optional, in my opinion. And that would be your babushka covering Lauren’s head.”

“Yes. Not something Lauren would ever wear. By all accounts she’s a high-fashion lady. So we can assume the men brought it with them to get cover from the outdoor cam on their way back out with a woman.”

“Probably not your spur-of-the-moment psychos then.”

“No. That would make them more