Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3)

by Judith Arnold

  “That still doesn’t mean he deals drugs. Maybe he inherited his money or something. Maybe he’s got a rich wife.” Maybe his family had been wiped out by the spoiled, doped-up son of a movie-industry honcho who’d bought his silence with a trust fund.

  A much bigger trust fund than Ty’s. He couldn’t afford four million dollars’ worth of real estate and an ocean-worthy sailboat that clocked in at more than fifty thousand.

  Heather Chase clicked uncapped her pen. “Where did you meet Mr. MacArthur?” she asked.

  Ty named the Florida marina where MacArthur docked his boat in the winter.

  “You work there?” she asked.

  “I’m an independent contractor,” Ty said. “When a luxury yacht needs work, they call me.” At her questioning look, he elaborated. “Interior repairs. Woodwork. These yachts usually have fancy paneling, elegant dashboards, that kind of thing. Big-mother steering wheels, oak trimmed with brass. The wood gets dinged, cracked—you’re on a boat in a storm, sometimes stuff shifts around and bangs up the paneling. Or the weather does a number on it. Or whatever. I work on houses, too. Carved banisters and newels. Inlays. Moldings. Built-ins. I do ordinary carpentry, too. But the custom jobs pay a lot more.”

  “So Mr. MacArthur knew about your work?”

  “Jeff—the marina manager—put him in touch with me. Jeff knew I could handle a run up the coast. I’ve done a lot of sailing.”

  “You’re a jack-of-all-trades,” Solomon remarked.

  “Just a few trades.”

  “You don’t do windows?” Solomon joked. Ty drank some coffee. At Heather Chase’s request, he provided Jeff’s last name and contact information, as well as the names of some of the clients for whom he’d worked down in the Miami area.

  “Have you ever heard Mr. MacArthur referred to as Mr. Smith?” Solomon asked.

  “No.”

  “Anyone at the marina down there called Smith?”

  “I don’t know. There could be some boat owners.” Ty shrugged.

  “MacArthur never mentioned someone named Smith to you?”

  Ty shrugged again. “If he did, I don’t remember. I mean…Smith? It doesn’t exactly leave an impression.”

  Solomon and his colleague exchanged a look. “All right,” she said, pushing to her feet. “Let me see what I can dig up.”

  Ty and Solomon stood as well, waiting until she left the conference room before they resumed their seats. He might have despised living with his maternal grandparents in St. Mary’s, Kansas, but they’d hammered good manners into his head. If his father’s father had gotten custody of him after the accident, Ty would never have known he was supposed to stand when a woman entered or exited a room. He probably wouldn’t have known the importance of tucking in his shirt and keeping his fingernails short and clean, either. His grandpa in California had never managed to master either of those skills.

  “I’ve gotten some information from the police,” Solomon told Ty as Annie the paralegal typed away. “Does the name Danny Watson mean anything to you?”

  Ty frowned. Unable to think of anyone he knew by that name, he shook his head. “Should it?”

  “He’s the police informant. He was arrested a couple of weeks ago and charged with dealing. He’d been working on a fishing boat out of Brogan’s Point, but apparently he had a nice little side business going. He told the police a major shipment of heroin would be arriving by boat from Key Biscayne, and then you sailed MacArthur’s boat into port from Key Biscayne.”

  “That’s all the cops have on me? Maybe another boat’s heading up here from the Keys.”

  “Maybe. Everything the police have is circumstantial—although it was enough to get a search warrant.”

  “But they didn’t find any drugs on the Freedom, did they.”

  “Not yet.” Solomon dug around in his briefcase and pulled out a folder, which he opened. “Okay. This fellow, Danny Watson, said his supplier was named Smith, and the heroin was going to be arriving on a sailboat out of Key Biscayne sometime this week. Now, here’s our problem. If the police go after MacArthur, he’s going to say he knows nothing about any drugs and you must have smuggled the heroin without his knowledge. You’re saying you know nothing about any heroin, and he must be smuggling it without your knowledge. It’s a ‘he said, he said’ situation.”

  “Is there some way to trace the heroin? Like, to whoever MacArthur got it from?”

  Solomon shook his head. “I don’t know how MacArthur got his illegal cargo, and I’m not sure we need to know that. All we need to do is get your name cleared. We don’t have to do the police’s work for them.”

  Ty took some comfort in the understanding that his lawyer actually believed he was innocent. At least his words implied that he did.

  “Are there people in Florida who can vouch for your character?” Solomon asked.

  Ty provided a list of names: his neighbors, his landlady, clients, Jeff at the marina. Annie dutifully typed the names into the computer, her fingers fluttering, the keys tapping in a gentle tempo.

  “How about up here in Massachusetts?” Solomon asked.

  The only person who knew him here was Monica. And how well did she know him? They’d slept together—before they’d even known each other’s names. Hardly a strong character reference: He picked me up in a bar, we reconnected at my parents’ inn, and we screwed our heads off.

  She’d found him this lawyer. Surely that meant something.

  It didn’t mean much. Just that she’d heard the desperation in his voice when he’d left that voice-mail message. That she’d come through for him because they’d had a good time in bed.

  Solomon was staring across the table at him, his eyes as hard as polished black granite. “I haven’t been here long enough to make a lot of friends,” Ty said.

  “Monica Reinhart contacted me on your behalf. I take it she knows you?”

  Ty didn’t want to drag her into his mess. “She did me a favor,” he allowed. “A huge favor. I can’t ask anything more of her than what she’s already done.” And if he did decide to ask more of her, it wouldn’t be that she attest to what a fine, upstanding citizen he was. What he wanted to ask of her was that she open herself to him one more time. That she climb onto a bike behind him, wrap her arms around his waist, lean into his back, and ride away with him. He’d ask her to spend days with him, nights with him.

  He’d ask her to trust him, to believe in him.

  Hell. He wasn’t a fine, upstanding citizen. He was a guy who roamed around the country and sailed the ocean, who traveled because if he ever stopped, he’d have to call wherever he was home, and he had no idea what home was anymore. He was a guy who knew how to fix things, how to build things, how to craft things, a guy who knew how to make a woman like Monica moan with passion.

  But he couldn’t force her to swear to Caleb Solomon, or to Ed Nolan of the Brogan’s Point police department, or to anyone else, that Ty was a clean-living, law-abiding gentleman. As far as she knew, he was just… A wild thing.

  If it weren’t for that song, blasting out of an antique jukebox in a working-class bar, she wouldn’t even know that.

  ***

  Monica pressed her cell phone to her ear and stepped outside Rose Cottage. Inside was a disaster: a gaping hole in the parlor wall, a displaced vanity in the second-floor bathroom above, plaster dust everywhere, and the plumber still hadn’t found the source of the leak. Hovering over the workmen and wringing her hands wasn’t doing anyone any good. Nor was wondering where Ty was, what he was doing, what was being done to him.

  She needed a break. She needed sleep, thanks to the restless night she’d endured, a night smelling Ty’s clean ocean scent on her pillow and remembering the heat and strength of his body, wanting that heat and strength and knowing she shouldn’t want it. She needed perspective, sanity, a friend. “Emma?” she spoke into the phone as she stood on the cottage’s front porch and sucked in the fresh, mild afternoon air—air that wasn’t choked with white dust.
“Are you busy?”

  “I’m at the community center,” her best friend said. “Getting things organized for the summer art program.”

  “Can you take a break? I’m going crazy.”

  Emma laughed. “I’m the head-case in our friendship. You’re not allowed to go crazy. That’s a rule.”

  “Then I guess I broke the rule,” Monica said unapologetically. “Can you spare a half hour?”

  “Sure. Wanna meet at the Faulk Street Tavern?”

  Much as Monica would love to sip a glass of wine—or, more accurately, guzzle a bottle or two of something far more potent—she knew she couldn’t do that while one of the inn’s guest cottages was being dismantled in search of an elusive leak. But she could get a soft drink at the pub. “I’ll be there in two minutes,” she told Emma.

  “I’ll be there in ten,” Emma responded before disconnecting the call.

  Monica stepped back inside Rose Cottage, alerted one of the workmen that she’d be gone for a while but reachable via cell phone, and exited the building once more. At one time she’d loved Rose Cottage, hadn’t she? At one time, water stains hadn’t appeared on the cottage’s pretty walls. At one time, the cottage had pretty walls—before the guys from Parnelli’s had removed a large chunk of one of them.

  Could they actually find the leak, fix it, and restore the building to its usual tidy state before Memorial Day? If they couldn’t, what would Monica do with the bridal party scheduled to spend the holiday weekend in the cottage?

  With that pending disaster swaying above her like the pendulum in the Edgar Allan Poe story, its lethally sharp blade descending closer and closer to her with each passing minute, why was she wasting an instant of her mental energy on Ty Cronin?

  Because she was crazy, that was why.

  Stuffing her phone into her purse, she strolled down the entry drive to Atlantic Avenue and south to Faulk Street. At two-thirty in the afternoon—she belatedly realized she’d forgotten to eat lunch—the tavern was practically empty. It was open for business, though. That was all Monica cared about.

  She surveyed the room. Gus Naukonen stood at her usual station behind the bar, talking to Manny, her burly, good-natured second-in-command. They both turned to see who’d entered. “Hey,” Gus greeted Monica, then indicated the unoccupied tables with a sweep of her hand. “Take your pick.”

  “Thanks.” Monica crossed to the table she’d been sitting at the day she’d seen Ty, the day “Wild Thing” had blared out of the jukebox. She wasn’t sure if the table was bad luck or good. She and Ty had had a spectacular night, after all. But nothing had gone right since then.

  She’d barely taken her seat when Emma swept in, her red hair flying as if her scalp was on fire. When Boston University had assigned Emma Glendon as Monica’s freshman-year roommate, Monica had wondered why. She’d had nothing in common with Emma, who had grown up the daughter of back-to-the-land hippies in northern Vermont and planned to major in fine arts. Yet they’d become instant friends. Monica had envied Emma’s enormous talent, her energy, her lack of pretense. Emma had always said she admired Monica’s stability and drive. Monica had known, even before she’d unpacked her boxes in their cramped Back-Bay dorm room, that she would be returning to Brogan’s Point after college to help run her family’s inn. Emma had known only that she wanted to paint. How she would support herself as she pursued her art had been a mystery.

  She’d stumbled along, though, creating what she called “Dream Portraits” and scrambling for commissions and art students. Then, after she’d moved to Brogan’s Point, she’d talked Nick Fiore at the community center into hiring her to teach art classes. And she’d met Max Tarloff, her high-tech gajillionaire, and they’d fallen deeply in love. Now she lived happily with him in his gorgeous glass-walled house overlooking the ocean, the two of them planning their wedding.

  They’d fallen in love because of the jukebox. When Emma had insisted that a song the jukebox played had brought them together, Monica had been skeptical, even though she’d spent her whole life hearing Brogan’s Point residents talking about the jukebox’s magical powers.

  Now here she was—the friend who was supposed to be sane, but who had been enchanted by a song from that same jukebox. Not enchanted—brainwashed. Hexed. Jinxed.

  “Wow,” Emma said, sliding into the booth facing Monica. “Either you’ve been emptying vacuum cleaner bags over your head, or you’ve got the worst case of dandruff I’ve ever seen.”

  Monica brushed her hands over her hair. A flurry of plaster dust swirled into the air around her. “The plumber is dismantling Rose Cottage in search of a leak,” she explained. “It’s a mess. My entire life is a mess.”

  “That can’t be,” Emma argued cheerfully. “Let me get you something to drink.” She leaped back to her feet and headed toward the bar.

  “An iced tea,” Monica called to her.

  Emma nodded, conferred with Gus for a minute, and returned carrying a beer for herself and a glass of chardonnay for Monica. Emma knew her friend’s taste well.

  “I can’t drink this,” Monica said as Emma set the wine glass down on the table. “I’m working.”

  “Not right now, you aren’t. Come on, girl. One glass of wine isn’t going to make you drunk.”

  On an empty stomach, one glass of wine might knock Monica out cold. As if Emma could read her mind, she returned to the bar and came back carrying a bowl of mixed nuts. “Okay,” she said as she slid onto the banquette across from Monica and took a sip of Sam Adams. “What’s wrong? And if you tell me you’ve gotten back together with Jimmy, I might have to beat you senseless with this bottle.”

  Monica shook her head and scooped a few nuts into her palm. “I will say my life was a lot saner when I was with him,” she admitted, staring at the array of cashews, almonds, and walnuts in her hand, not quite sure what to do with them. Eventually, she remembered and tossed the nuts one by one into her mouth. Her stomach gave a grateful growl.

  “Your life was stagnant when you were with Jimmy. It was stalled out. It was stale—”

  “Okay. You’ve made your point.” Monica sighed and washed down the nuts with a sip of wine. It tasted a hell of a lot better than iced tea would have. “No, I’m not back together with Jimmy. He still hasn’t apologized to me for blowing me off when I made him that fabulous anniversary dinner.”

  “He always took you for granted. He’s a jerk.”

  “Don’t worry. Even if he did apologize—and he probably will, in a few days, when he decides he misses me…” Another sigh. “I’m done with him.” Everything Emma had said was true: Monica’s relationship with Jimmy had been stagnant. They hadn’t been growing, moving forward, developing closer bonds. Jimmy was Jimmy. He was never going to change. And Monica had changed. “It’s that stupid jukebox,” she confessed.

  Emma’s eyes grew round. “What happened?”

  “‘Wild Thing’ happened.”

  Emma listened as Monica told her about her acquaintanceship with Ty. Not everything, of course. She couldn’t admit, even to her best friend, that she’d had sex with Ty before she’d even known his name. But she revealed that they’d spent some time together, and she was drawn to him, and he was the hottest guy she’d ever met. “But he’s rootless. He roams around the country, always moving on. He’s never been to college. He’s repairs boats.”

  “That’s cool,” Emma said, her eyes still wide but glowing with approval.

  “Look at me. I’m Ms. Straight-and-Narrow. What am I doing, mooning over some nomadic guy who repairs boats?”

  “You’re letting your hair down,” Emma said. “Even if it’s full of white crap.”

  Monica allowed herself a tiny smile, then grew solemn. “He’s in legal trouble. I found him a lawyer and I’m trying to keep my distance. But…” She fell silent and took another sip of wine.

  “But?”

  “I believe he’s innocent. I have no grounds to believe that. I hardly know him. But…I can’t believe he’s done
what Ed Nolan thinks he’s done.” More accurately, she couldn’t believe she could have made such rapturous love with a drug dealer.

  At Emma’s goading, Monica filled her in on the events of the past twenty-four hours. The boat Ty had sailed into the North Cove Marina, the police’s suspicion that heroin was hidden somewhere on the boat, their assumption that Ty was connected to the heroin. The message he’d left on her work phone. Her scaring up a lawyer for him.

  As if simply talking about him was enough to conjure him, the door swung open and in he walked. Although he was a good thirty feet away, she caught a whiff of his sea-breeze scent, and once again she felt bewitched. Even with no music pouring from the jukebox, she fell under its spell. Under his spell.

  Emma traced the direction of Monica’s gaze to the tall, broad-shouldered man standing just inside the entry, his jaw set, his sun-streaked hair windswept, his piercing blue eyes aimed at Monica. “Oh my god,” Emma murmured. “He is hot.”

  Chapter Nine

  He was hot, no question about it. Monica returned his stare, painfully aware of just how hot he was and wondering what he was doing at the tavern. Why wasn’t he with the lawyer she’d found for him, or fleeing the jurisdiction, or whatever one does when one is suspected of being a drug dealer?

  And why did she wish he’d race straight across the room to her table, sit down beside her, and wrap his arm around her shoulders, as if they were just any ordinary couple? Why did she yearn for something she didn’t even understand?

  Why did her imagination conjure the thrashing opening guitar chords of “Wild Thing,” making her feel wild? She’d never felt wild with Jimmy. He might have been an asshole, but at least he was safe.

  Was Ty safe? She didn’t know. In some deep, dark recess of her soul, she didn’t care. That scared the hell out of her.

  After a long moment, he started toward her. He didn’t race, but at least he walked in her direction. Some other part of her brain—not the part hearing a rock singer howl the song’s simple lyrics—nattered that he was nothing more than a one night stand and she ought to forget about him. Yet she shifted on the banquet, leaving space for him to sit beside her, just in case that was what he intended to do.