Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3) Read online

  “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.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Where was he?

  Monica entered the Rose Cottage parlor and gazed around. The wall that had had a gaping hole in it that morning was now intact, smooth, and painted. But the room’s other three walls were a slightly darker hue, and a ladder, tools, and a drop cloth cluttered the floor. The furniture huddled at one end of the room as if the chairs, sofas and tables were conferring on a football play.

  Ty clearly wasn’t done with the repair. But he was gone.

  He’d said he would call her that afternoon, and like a lovesick teenager harboring a crush on the cutest senior in the school, she’d checked her cell phone dozens of times throughout the day. Maybe he’d left a message. Maybe he’d sent a text. Maybe she’d turned her phone off by accident, and that was why it hadn’t rung. But no, the phone was on and it was working—and she had no missed calls, no messages. So, when she’d finally finished her other work, she’d abandoned her office and strolled past the pool and across the lawn to the cottage.

  Which was empty. No plumbers. No workmen. No Ty.

  Trying to ignore the knot of anxiety in her gut, she exited the cottage and circled around the main building to the guest lot. No motorcycle.

  She took a deep breath and willed her eyes not to fill with tears. If he’d left, he’d left. He had never promised he would stay. He’d told her he was rootless and restless, not the kind of man who settled down. He was a wild thing, after all. She had never imagined that she could tame him. She’d never let herself dream that far into the future.

  Why wouldn’t he leave? It wasn’t as if he’d been arrested. No bail money would be sacrificed if he took off. And good-byes could be so awkward, so painful. Why not just go while the going was good, turn in his rented motorcycle, cab down to Boston and fly back to Florida, where he could live until he decided it was time to move on again, to find some other town, some other woman, some other ocean to sail.

  It would have been nice of him to finish his work on Rose Cottage, though.

  Her phone abruptly trilled inside her purse, and like the lovesick schoolgirl she’d feared turning into, she felt the dark weight of hurt and anger lift off her heart and the sky open up, as bright as heaven. He’s calling! He’s calling! Pulling the phone out, she checked the caller-ID on the screen and saw his name. It’s him! He called!

  She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Aware of how devastated she’d been when she’d thought he was gone, she cautioned herself not to be too thrilled that he wasn’t gone. Sooner or later, he would be gone. She couldn’t let herself want him so much.

  But for now, just for this evening, she could let herself experience a moment of giddy joy. She pressed the connect button and lifted the phone to her ear. “Ty?”

  “This is his attorney,” came an unfamiliar male voice. “Caleb Solomon. He asked me to call you.”

  So much for giddy joy. The weight returned, heavy with foreboding. “What happened? Is he all right?”

  “Things have gotten complicated,” the lawyer said. “Drugs were found on the sailboat.”

  “Oh.” What did that mean? What did it imply? Had Ty smuggled the drugs to Brogan’s Point, after all? Was he as guilty as the police seemed to think?

  What was the opposite of giddy joy? Whatever it was, that was what she was feeling now.

  “He’s being held at the police station for the time being, while the DA decides whether to charge him.”

  One sliver of her brain took a step back and assessed the lawyer’s words. It seemed bizarre that Monica Reinhart, a well-behaved, by-the-book woman should be having a conversation about drugs and criminal charges with the attorney of a man with whom she’d recently enjoyed torrid sex, a man with whom she was this close to falling in love.

  The rest of her brain clamored with panic, curses, a crazed blend of fear and hope. “So…he hasn’t been arrested?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m coming down to the police station,” she said. “I need to see Ty.”

  The lawyer said nothing for a minute, and then, “Okay. I’ll be here, too.”

  He hadn’t told her not to come. He hadn’t told her to give up, to accept that her hot blond lover was heading to the big house, the pen, up the river—whatever people called prison these days. What did she know about prison, anyway? Just what she’d viewed in old movies. The Shawshank Redemption. The Green Mile. The Rock. Dead Man Walking.

  The infatuated-schoolgirl swooniness rose up inside her again. No matter that Ty was in trouble. No matter that Ty was trouble. He would have told his lawyer if he didn’t want to see Monica. The lawyer would have urged her not to come—or he wouldn’t have even called her. But he’d called, and when she’d said she would come to the police station, he’d said okay. She was going to see Ty. Even if he was a criminal. Even if he was the most dangerous man she’d ever known. Even if he could break her heart—because he had a hold on her heart in a way Jimmy never had.

  She headed straight for her Subaru, cranked the engine and steered down the winding driveway to Atlantic Avenue. She didn’t notice the ocean to her left, the waves curling onto the shore as the tide came in. She didn’t notice the ocean’s perfume, the scent of home. She didn’t notice the puffy clouds rolling across the late-day blue of the sky, the steady stream of cars carrying workers home from their jobs, the pedestrians ambling down the sidewalk along the sea wall and savoring the view. She kept her eyes on the road ahead of her and her mind on her destination: Ty. In trouble.

  Brogan Point’s police station was a squat brick building down the street from the community center. The local police depart
ment had no need for anything huge or state-of-the-art. Most crime in town was petty: shoplifting, vandalism, underage drinking, the occasional scuffle. The closest the town had ever come to a murder in her lifetime was when Nick Fiore was convicted of attempted murder of his father. Nick had been a couple of years ahead of Monica in high school, and she’d never believed he was capable of such a crime. But his father had somehow gotten critically injured—the rumor in school was that Nick had beaten up his father because his father had been beating up Nick’s mother—and he’d been diverted into the juvenile justice system, and everyone had been deeply shaken.

  But Nick was still in town—according to Monica’s mother, he was considering having his wedding at the Ocean Bluff Inn—and one of his closest friends in town was Ed Nolan, the police detective. Mr. Nolan was a fair man. Monica hoped he’d be fair with Ty.

  More than that, she hoped Ty was innocent. She yearned to believed he was. But…she didn’t really know.

  She parked and entered the building. Behind a counter in the front room, a plump middle-aged woman in a uniform held a hand up to halt Monica, as if the officer was on a street corner directing traffic. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see…” What was Ty’s attorney’s name? Monica had hired the guy for Ty. She sifted through her memory until she recalled it. “Caleb Solomon. He’s a lawyer—”

  “Monica, yes,” Caleb Solomon called out as he entered the room, his stride brisk and determined. His suit was slightly wrinkled, his tie loosened, his jaw shadowed by a day’s growth of beard. He sent the uniformed officer behind the counter a mildly flirtatious smile that caused her to grin girlishly, and then joined Monica. “Let’s talk,” he said, taking her elbow and ushering her to a scratched wooden bench that stood against a pale green cinderblock wall. Once they were seated, he leaned toward her, speaking in a low voice. “Tyler came up with a good guess about where the drugs might have been hidden on the boat. A very good guess, as it turned out. He, Detective Nolan and I boarded the boat and found the drugs.”

  “Then he did a good thing. Why is he being arrested?”

  “He hasn’t been arrested. The police have the right to hold him without charging him for seventy-two hours. They’re expediting a test on what Tyler found to make sure it really is heroin. Then I think they’re planning to plant a decoy package—something that looks just like the drugs—in the same place on the boat. The boat’s owner is flying into Boston Saturday—that’s tomorrow, I guess,” he added, checking the date on his watch. “The police will monitor him and see if he goes to the boat to retrieve the drugs. Then they’ll arrest him.”

  “And they’ll let Ty go?” she asked hopefully.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. That the boat owner would retrieve the drugs doesn’t necessarily exonerate Tyler.”

  “But he showed the police where the drugs were,” she said.

  “Which could indicate that he knew all along where they were. It doesn’t clear him, Monica.”

  She sighed. Tears stung her eyes and she batted them to keep from sobbing. “What would clear him?”

  “The boat’s owner could. A Mr. Wayne MacArthur. He has a house here in Brogan’s Point. Are you familiar with him?”

  The name meant nothing to her. She shook her head. “If he has a house here, he doesn’t stay at the inn. Is there any chance he’d clear Ty?”

  Caleb Solomon shrugged. “We could hope he’d blurt out that Tyler had no knowledge of the drugs. But that’s not likely. Drug dealers are rarely that honest and accommodating.”

  “What if Ty could get him to say something? Could the police put a wire on him?” If what she knew about prisons came from old movies, what she knew about police investigations came from TV cop shows. On those programs, the police often wired someone and then sat in a van, eavesdropping on the chatter until someone said something incriminating.

  The lawyer smiled. “Ty suggested that himself. The police said no. They want to keep him under lock and key for now.”

  “Then I’ll wear a wire,” Monica said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll do it. They can wire me. I can…” She thought for a moment. “I can pretend I want to buy some of his drugs. What kind of drug are we talking about?”

  “We believe its heroin. The crime lab will ascertain that. But you wearing a wire?” He considered the idea, winced, and shook his head.

  “Why not? I could talk to the guy. I could get him to admit Ty knew nothing about the drugs.” If she could ride on the back of a motorcycle, if she could go down on Ty on a beach in a rain storm, she could wear a wire.

  “I don’t know. It could be dangerous,” the lawyer warned.

  Monica smiled. “I can do it,” she said.

  ***

  Ten minutes later, Monica, Caleb Solomon, Detective Nolan and Ty sat around a table in a gray, windowless interrogation room. “No,” Ty said emphatically.

  “I’m telling you, I can do this,” she insisted, trying hard to ignore her ghostly reflection in the mirror attached to the wall across from her. “I know how to act. I starred in a play in high school.”

  They all stared at her.

  “You Can’t Take It With You. I played Alice.”

  “I know that play,” the lawyer said. “Isn’t Alice the sweet young daughter? The only sane person in the family?”

  Monica conceded that her portrayal of the only character in the play who wasn’t wild had been a bit of type-casting on the director’s part. But she’d proven in that production that she could act. And she’d acted patient with and tolerant of Jimmy all those years when he’d treated her like reliable old car, able to get him where he was going and easy to forget once it was parked in the garage.

  Maybe all the years she’d been such a good girl were an act, too. Maybe she’d always been a little wild at heart, and she’d been performing a role all along. Closing her eyes, she heard the crashing guitar chords that opened the song she’d heard on the Faulk Street Tavern’s juke box barely a week ago, chords and a gravelly, growly voice. Wild Thing.

  “Let me do this. I’ll tell the guy I want to buy some drugs from him.”

  “Does he sell directly?” Caleb Solomon asked. “It seems to me he hires other people to handle the grunt work. Sometimes in ignorance.” He gave Ty a meaningful look.

  “He had a local guy selling for him,” Detective Nolan said. “A kid named Danny Watson. He worked on one of the trawlers out of port, and he sold drugs on the side. He’s under arrest, though. He was the one who tipped us off about MacArthur’s drugs. Only he said the guy’s name was Smith.” He, too, sent Ty a meaningful look. “Unless you’re Smith.”

  Ty issued a long-suffering sigh. “I’m not Smith. I don’t know who the hell Smith is. I don’t know who the hell Danny Watson is, either.” He turned to Monica, addressing her as if no one else was in the room. “I don’t want you to do this,” he said. “I’ve already told the cops I’ll wear a wire and talk to him. There’s no reason for you to get involved.”

  “I already am involved,” she said.

  His gaze tightened on her, his dazzling blue eyes so intense she could practically feel the heat of them on her cheeks as he searched her face. He must have figured out what she’d meant when she said she was involved: not involved with his legal issues. Involved with him.

  Involved.

  In love.

  And she would help to clear his name, and then he’d leave.

  Yet she couldn’t not help. “It could go the other way, too,” she pointed out to Detective Nolan and Caleb Solomon. “This Mr. MacArthur—or Mr. Smith—might wind up saying something that would prove Ty was guilty.”

  That possibility seemed to please Detective Nolan. He clearly believed Ty was complicit in the drug dealing. If there was a chance Monica could help to prove that, he would want her on his team. “All right,” he said. “Let me talk to the DA and start the paperwork. As soon as we hear back from the crime lab, we can get this process rolling.” He pus
hed back his chair, the wooden legs squeaking against the linoleum floor, and stood.

  “Can I have a few minutes alone with Monica?” Ty asked, glancing from Detective Nolan to Caleb Solomon.

  The lawyer turned to Detective Nolan. “He hasn’t been charged,” he reminded the policeman. “Give them a few minutes.”

  Detective Nolan pressed his lips together in disapproval, but started toward the door. He waved in the direction of the mirror and said, “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  Ty waited until the men left the room, shot an annoyed glance at the mirror, and then reached across the table and gathered Monica’s hands in his. His touch turned her on, but more than that, it moved her. There was something sweet and gentle and protective about it.

  “I don’t want you to do this,” he murmured.

  “Why? Don’t you want to nail that bastard?”

  “Of course I do. But not if it puts you in danger.”

  “You’d rather rot in jail?”

  “Than put you in danger? Yes.”

  His answer was so forthright, she fell deeper in love with him. Miles deeper. Light-years deeper.

  She reminded herself once more that he was going to leave. If she was successful at getting the boat’s owner to admit that Ty had nothing to do with the drugs, Ty would be released, free to go. Free to travel to wherever he wanted to live today, or tomorrow, or a week from now.

  It didn’t matter. She loved him. She would do what she could to exonerate him.

  More than that… “I want to do this, Ty,” she said. “Not just for you. For me.”

  “Why? Jeopardizing your safety—how is that good for you?”

  “I heard the song,” she said, struggling to find the words to explain. “At the bar. ‘Wild Thing.’ It—I don’t know. It made me wild. It set me free. You set me free. And now I can set you free.”