Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3) (14 page)

She
was plenty young enough, as far as he was concerned. But then, he was the guy
smitten with her now. One of these days, he’d get her to marry him. He’d
proposed a few times, but she always shrugged and said she saw no need for the
piece of paper. It wasn’t as if they were going to be having any kids together,
and merging their finances would only complicate matters for their families
after they died.

He
spotted her behind the bar as soon as he entered the tavern. She was as tall as
a high-fashion model, and just as appealing to him, although she always laughed
and shook her head when he complimented her appearance. “I’m going gray,” she’d
remind him, but he liked the threads of silver glittering in her short, tawny
hair. He liked the angles of her face, the faint lines crinkling the corners of
her eyes. He liked what she had under her clothes, too, but she got embarrassed
whenever he mentioned that. Not embarrassed enough to deprive him of the
pleasures of her body, but embarrassed enough to blush and shove him away and
tell him he was embarrassing her.

She
was reading something on a computer tablet as he strode across the room, but
glanced up as he neared the bar and shot him a smile. “Coffee?”

“You
know me too well,” he said, grinning and settling onto a stool.

She
filled a mug with steaming coffee and slid it across the bar’s polished
surface. Hot, black, and unsweetened, the way he liked it. Then she glanced at
her tablet, tapped a button, and gave her full attention to him. “My wine
distributor’s offering some serious discounts,” she said, gesturing toward the
device. “I’m stocking up.”

Ed
nodded.

Gus
filled a second mug with coffee, blew lightly on the surface and took a
delicate sip. The information about her wine distributor’s sale was more than
she usually volunteered. She was a listener, not a talker, and a patient
listener than that. If someone wanted to chat with her, she’d wait until he
launched into a conversation. Silence didn’t bother her. She had the perfect
temperament to be a bartender.

“I’m
heading down to North Cove Marina in a few,” he told her. “I’m supposed to meet
with that kid and his lawyer. The kid thinks he knows where the drugs might be
stashed on the boat.”

Gus
took another sip. “If he smuggled the drugs, it makes sense he’d know where
they were.”

“Exactly.”

She
gave him a canny smile. “But he didn’t smuggle the drugs, so he only
thinks
he knows where they are.”

“That’s
his story.” Ed took a slug of coffee. “If he shows me the drugs, what do I do?
Arrest him or thank him? Or both?”

“He
didn’t smuggle the drugs,” she said with surprising certainty.

“Don’t
be swayed by that mellow beachcomber attitude. The boy is trouble.”

“You’re
sure of that, are you?”

“Yeah,
I’m sure of that. He’s roaring around town on a motorcycle and hitting on Monica
Reinhart. A nice, sweet girl like her—he can’t give her what she wants. He’s
only passing through town, unless he winds up passing through the criminal
justice system. What’s he messing with her for?”

Gus
said nothing for a moment, then: “Maybe
she’s
messing with
him.
”

Ed’s
eyebrows shot up so fast his forehead ached. “What?”

“Maybe
she’s the wild one.”

“Oh,
come on. Monica Reinhart? Probably the only member of her generation who’s
never gotten a speeding ticket or a warning for underage drinking. Hometown
girl. The sweetheart of Brogan’s Point High. The daughter of the Reinharts of
Ocean Bluff Inn.”

“All
of the above,” Gus agreed. “But…she’s got a wild streak.”

Ed
snorted. Gus was pretty talented when it came to reading people, but so was he.
He had to be. That skill was a necessary part of his job, just as it was part
of hers. “I just hope the Cronin kid doesn’t break her heart,” he said.

“If
you arrest him, maybe you’ll be the one breaking her heart.”

“Or
saving her from a really big mistake.” He checked his watch, drained his cup
and stood. He shot a glance down the bar to Stanton, then leaned across the bar
and murmured, “Take his keys.”

Gus
patted the pocket of her apron. Ed heard the jingle of keys and smiled. “I’ve
got his wife’s number on speed-dial.”

“He
ought to get into treatment.”

“I’ve
recommended it a few times.” She eyed Stanton and sighed. “His next refill is
coffee, straight up.”

“Then
he’s a lucky man. You make the best coffee in town.” Ed brushed a kiss against
Gus’s cheek, turned, and sauntered toward the bar, wondering if Cronin was
going to convince him of his innocence, the way he’d apparently convinced Gus.

Caleb
Solomon was already at the marina when Ty motored into the parking lot and shut
off the bike’s engine. A few vehicles were parked in the lot above the docks,
one of them the glossy black Beemer he’d seen his lawyer climb into the evening
he’d rescued Ty from Detective Nolan’s interrogation at the police station. He
saw no police cars in the marina lot, though.

He
took comfort in the fact that Solomon was prompt. Clearly, Solomon thought
following up on Ty’s hunch about where the drugs were hidden on the Freedom was
a good idea. Or else he’d wanted to get to the marina early to keep an eye on
Ty, to make sure he didn’t say or do the wrong thing.

Ty
was paying the guy by the hour—by the minute, probably. If he showed up at the
marina early, those extra minutes would appear on the bill he presented to Ty
once this shit was over. But if he cleared Ty’s name, every penny would be
worth it.

Solomon
emerged from his car as Ty walked toward it. Once again, the lawyer had on a
suit—and a tie, this time, although the knot was loosened and his shirt’s
collar button unfastened. Even so, Ty felt grungy in his old jeans and a gray
T-shirt. He’d managed to slap the first coat of paint on the parlor wall he’d
repaired, but as it dried, he’d acknowledged that he’d need to add a second
coat to cover the patch adequately. The other three walls of the cottage parlor
would require a coat of paint, too, to match the repaired wall. He could get
the rest of the painting done in the evening, if this meeting didn’t take too
long, and it if didn’t end with him in handcuffs.

He’d
rather spend the evening with Monica than painting a room in the resort
cottage. But getting the cottage back into shape before the first guests
arrived was more important than his own pleasure. The second-floor bathroom
needed some touching-up, too. The plumbers had reinstalled the vanity under the
sink, but the walls had a few dings.

If
Ty
did
wind up arrested by the end of the afternoon, Monica’s regular
maintenance staffers could finish fixing the cottage walls. But Ty wanted to do
it. He believed in completing what he’d begun. More important, restoring the
cottage meant a lot to Monica. He wanted to be her hero.

He
shook the lawyer’s hand. “You know the drill,” Solomon said. “Don’t touch
anything unless I tell you it’s okay. Don’t say anything without my
permission.”

Ty
nodded.

“I’m
not sure how this is going to play,” Solomon said, “and when you’re a lawyer,
that’s a problem. We like to know our destination before we take the first
step.”

Ty
nodded again. “I’m
not
a lawyer,” he said. “I just—if I’m right about
this, I want the drugs gone. I like this boat. I lived on it for a week. I got
to know it inside and out. And I don’t want drugs on it. It was my home, you
know?” At least it had felt like a home to him back when he defined home as
wherever he happened to be sleeping that night.

“What
if you’re wrong?” Solomon asked him. “What if we don’t find the drugs?”

“Then
there are no drugs on the boat,” Ty said. He meant it, too. As he’d said, he
knew the boat. There was no other place drugs could have been stashed on it
without his having stumbled upon them.

“All
right. Let’s see how it goes. At the very least, you’re winning points with the
cops for being helpful. There’ s Detective Nolan now.” He motioned toward the
police cruiser turning off the road and into the parking lot.

Within
a minute, the three of them were down on the dock, approaching the slip where
the Freedom was tethered. Before Solomon could request it—before Ty could even
think of it—Nolan handed Ty a pair of latex gloves and snapped a second pair
onto his own hands. “You’re not going to be touching anything, are you?” Nolan
asked Solomon.

The
lawyer smiled and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “I’ll try not to.”

Ty
considered pointing out that every surface of the boat was likely already
covered with his fingerprints—except, of course, for the space behind the
toilet in the head, where he believed MacArthur would have hidden the drugs if
there were, in fact, drugs on board. Ty knew that the absence of his
fingerprints in that space wouldn’t exonerate him. MacArthur could have stashed
the drugs there and Ty could still be convicted of transporting them. But he
appreciated that Nolan didn’t want him adding his fingerprints to anything
incriminating they might find behind the crapper.

Once
he’d maneuvered his hands into the tight elastic gloves, he followed Nolan onto
the boat, ducking under the yellow police tape. “I’ve got to get some tools,”
he said, climbing down into the cabin and lifting one of the benches. Beneath
it was the storage bin where he’d stashed a small tool chest, in case he’d had
to perform repairs on the boat while he’d been sailing it north. He knew where
every storage bin on the boat was, and what was inside each one. Flares over
here. Spare life vests in that compartment. Oatmeal and saltines in the galley
cabinet. Canvas for patching sails folded neatly in that container. None of
them contained any illegal drugs.

“What
makes you think you know where the drugs are?” Nolan asked as Ty unlatched the
tool chest and pulled out a couple of screwdrivers.

Ty
obediently turned to Solomon, who nodded his permission to answer. “
If
there are drugs on board, this is the only place I can think of where they’d
be,” he told the cop. “It’s the only place Wayne could have hidden them where I
wouldn’t find them. When Wayne hired me to make this run for him, I told him I
could handle any sort of repair on the boat except a plumbing problem. I don’t
do plumbing. It’s beyond me. So there’s no way I’d open the panel behind the
toilet.”

“What
would you have done if there
was
a plumbing problem while you were out
at sea?” Nolan asked.

“I’d
bring the boat into dock,” Ty said.

“And
then some plumber would come to repair the plumbing problem, and he’d find the
drugs. Assuming they’re where you think they are.”

“Wayne
told me he’d had the plumbing serviced a week before I was scheduled to sail.
He’s got a top of the line commode, the kind that treats raw sewage so it can
be emptied at sea. That kind of toilet demands regular servicing, so I guess
he’d taken care of that. He said if I had a plumbing problem, I should phone
him from wherever I was moored and he would deal with it. But he swore to me
there wouldn’t be a problem.”

“And
there wasn’t?”

“Lousy
water pressure for the shower, but I expected that. It’s a boat.” Satisfied
that he had the right size screwdrivers, he crossed to the cramped head. He’d
forgotten how small it was. A few nights at the Ocean Bluff Inn—either in his
own guest room or in Monica’s apartment—had completely erased his memory of the
inconveniences of living on a sailboat. He loved sailing, and when you were
doing something you loved, you could ignore the fact that the bed you were
sleeping on was really just a thick cushion on top of a hard bench, and the
doorway into the cabin was low enough that if you didn’t duck, you could knock
yourself unconscious on the door frame. And that the bathroom was the size of a
coffin and carried a faint whiff of mildew.

Ignoring
the stale odor, he hunkered down in front of the toilet. The access panel
behind the seat was stained the same color as the surrounding wall,
camouflaging it so it was barely noticeable. The screws holding it in place
were Philips-head, and Ty got to work with one of the screwdrivers. He could
feel the cop and his lawyer behind him, even though he couldn’t see them. The
cop was close enough that Ty could practically sense the inch of air between
their bodies pressing on his back. Did Nolan think he was going to do something
stupid, like swallow the drugs if he found them? Or unearth a gun stashed
inside the wall and blow the cop away?

Back
off
, he wanted
to shout.
I’m doing you a favor here. Your idiot crime scene guys should
have pulled off this panel.
But he knew he had to remain polite. He was
doing Nolan this favor in the hope that Nolan would do him an even bigger
favor: cross him off the suspect list.

As
each screw came loose, he slid it into the chest pocket of his T-shirt so it
wouldn’t get lost. After removing the final screw, he eased the panel off the
wall. Then he pulled out his cell phone, clicked on the flashlight app, just as
he’d done at the cottage earlier that day, and took a peek inside.

Below
the pipes that snaked out the back of the bowl, he saw two white bricks wrapped
heavily in plastic. He sighed, edged back, and handed Nolan his phone. “Have a
look.”

Nolan
squatted down beside him—hard to do in the confined space—and peeked into the
opening. “Shit,” he muttered.

Was
Nolan disappointed? Sorry that Ty had found what his own officers couldn’t?
Disappointed? Ty peered up at Solomon, who shrugged, evidently as bewildered by
the detective’s curse as Ty was.

If
anyone should be cursing, it was Ty. He’d just provided Nolan with the evidence
the guy needed to slap those handcuffs on Ty’s wrists.

Nolan
reached his gloved hand into the opening and pulled out first one brick and
then the other. He produced a plastic bag from his back pocket, slid the bricks
carefully into it, folded down the edge and pressed an adhesive strip to seal
it. Then he pulled out a pen and scribbled his name and the date and time
across the seal. “These will have to go down to the state crime lab for
testing,” he said as he stood. His knees announced his age with a few clicks;
he winced as he slowly straightened his legs.

“Yeah,”
Ty said. “It could be baking soda or something.” Actually, it looked a little
like the plaster powder he’d stirred into mud for the cottage wall earlier that
day.

“But
let’s assume the obvious for now,” Nolan said, his craggy face etched into a
pensive frown. “I’ve got to take you in, Mr. Cronin. Sorry, but I have to.”

Solomon
clicked into high gear. “He’s just handed you your case, detective. Without
him, you had nothing. Now you can nail MacArthur to the wall. You should be
thanking Tyler.”

“Thank
you,” Nolan said, sounding surprisingly genuine. “I’ve still got to bring you
in.”

Ty
knew he’d run the risk of arrest when he removed the panel. But if MacArthur
was shipping illegal drugs—and using Ty as his unwitting delivery boy—Ty wanted
the son of a bitch hung out to dry. He wanted him caught, convicted, and locked
up for good.

“Look,”
he said. “I was in the middle of a repair job at the Ocean Bluff Inn. The room
needs a coat of paint. Can I go back and finish that, at least?” Starting work
on the bathroom upstairs was probably out of the question, but maybe the cop
would let him get the parlor back into pristine shape, with no water stains or
visible patching. “One hour, two tops. Then you can arrest me.”

“I
wish I could say yes.” Nolan again sounded as if he really meant it. “And I’m not
going to arrest you yet. First we have to find out whether this—” he lifted the
evidence bag “—is baking soda. Then we’ll see where we stand.”

“My
client is innocent,” Solomon insisted. “Regardless of what the lab says.”

“I
hope so. But you know I can’t let him go free while we get this stuff tested.
If it’s heroin, he could be long gone by the time the lab is done with it. For
all I know, he could be setting MacArthur up by leading me to the evidence.
Then he’ll do a vanishing act and leave MacArthur to take the fall.”

“I’m
not that smart,” Ty protested.

“Yes,
you are,” Nolan said. “So. I’m going to bring you down to the station and hold
you without charging. We can hold you for seventy-two hours, by which time Mr.
MacArthur will be in town. In the meantime, we’ll get the lab to expedite the
testing on this. I’ll talk to the DA and the DEA guy down in Boston, and we’ll
see what we can do.”

What
they could do was keep Ty from finishing his work at the inn. What they could
do was keep him from spending the night with Monica.

They
could also keep him from returning to Florida. But that didn’t bother him
nearly as much.

“DEA?”
he asked.

“Drug
Enforcement Administration,” Nolan explained. “In a case like this, they get
involved.”

Wonderful.
A federal agency was now “involved,” to use Nolan’s euphemism. It seemed as if
everything Ty did—even being helpful and finding the drugs for the cops—only
pushed him deeper and deeper into a hole. Now he was going to have to cool his
heels at the police station. For seventy-two freaking hours. While Rose Cottage
still needed work. While Monica…

Hell.
Once he returned to the police station, once he got locked up inside a holding
cell, once the DA and some drug enforcement guy in Boston piled on, Monica
wouldn’t want anything to do with him. He knew he was just a fling for her, an
experiment, a rebound dude after she’d ended things with her longtime
boyfriend. But a second spell in the police station was probably more than she
could tolerate.

Nolan
thought Ty was smart. But Ty knew Monica was the smart one—smart enough to wash
her hands of someone just passing through town. Someone who couldn’t finish a
repair job he’d promised her. Someone who couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble.