Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3)

by Judith Arnold

  He studied her face, his hands tightening around hers, his thumbs brushing her wrists. The caress sent shivers of longing up her arms and into her heart. She wanted to climb over the table, settle in his lap, wrap her arms around him and kiss him until they were both gasping with pleasure.

  But Detective Nolan and Caleb Solomon were watching them through the one-way mirror. So she only gave his hands a squeeze in response and said, “Trust me.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. It was that he didn’t trust MacArthur, or Nolan, or some guy from the Drug Enforcement Administration, or anyone else who could place Monica in danger if he made the slightest mistake.

  And Ty could do nothing to protect her. He was stuck in this ugly holding cell. Not exactly luxury accommodations like what he’d had at the Ocean Bluff Inn—a room he’d used ridiculously little, since he’d spent most nights in her apartment. He should have brought her to his room for a night. He wondered if she’d ever experienced a night as a guest in her family’s establishment. He wondered if sex with her would be different in a different bed. It sure as hell had been different on those wooden steps leading down to the beach.

  His groin twinged with arousal. Not much he could do about that. He leaned back against the chilly wall behind the bench in the holding cell where he was seated, and where he would have to sleep. Did Nolan and his law-enforcement buddies honestly think Ty would flee the jurisdiction if they released him? If he’d intended to split, he could have been gone days ago. Why would he have first helped them find the drug stash if he planned to do a disappearing act?

  Whatever. Caleb had told Ty the police could legally hold him without charging him. So here he was, being held.

  He and the lawyer had reached the first-name stage. Caleb had even stopped back at the cell after he, Monica, and Nolan conferred with the guy from the DEA, and when Caleb had reappeared, he’d been carrying a large waxed-cardboard container of clam chowder from Riley’s and a plastic spoon. This chowder wasn’t as good as the stuff he’d had with Monica at the Lobster Shack, but it was a shitload better than the sandwich of bland meats and limp lettuce a uniformed officer had brought him. What had she called it? A grinder. Stupid name. In Florida, they’d call it a Cuban sandwich, and it would taste much better.

  Not that he cared. He didn’t have much appetite, anyway.

  He heard the faint buzz of the fluorescent light fixture illuminating the corridor outside his cell, and the low din of voices yakking in the precinct room down the hall. Were they talking about him? Talking about Monica? Filing the paperwork that would allow her to wear a wire and walk into the lion’s den?

  How could he let her do that?

  How could he stop her?

  Why was she willing to take such a huge risk for him? Was it all a game to her? An extension of her high school theater experience? A big adventure?

  Damn. He was her adventure. He’d taken her for a spin on a motorbike, and now she was getting to go undercover on a drug bust. File under: Big excitement for a small-town girl. Why else would she do this risky thing for him, when she knew he wasn’t going to stay in Brogan’s Point? He was her fling, her brief vacation from her sane, sober life.

  In the distance, he heard a telephone ring. The sound triggered another memory, a song suddenly blasting through his skull: Wild Thing. He didn’t believe in magic, let alone that a song or a jukebox could be magic. Yet that song… As the lyrics said, it made Monica’s heart sing. Maybe Ty’s, too.

  He just hoped that, if she got the okay and wore the wire and had her walk on the wild side, her heart would still be singing when it was all over.

  ***

  She’d wanted to call her best friend, Emma, and share this with her—but she couldn’t. If she’d wanted to tell her parents—which she definitely did not want—she couldn’t. She couldn’t discuss what she was about to do with anyone other than Detective Nolan and the man from the Drug Enforcement Agency office in Boston.

  They had drilled her on everything she needed to know: Danny Watson had been Wayne MacArthur’s local dealer until his arrest a few weeks ago. He’d been the one to tell the police that there would be drugs on the boat Ty had sailed up from Florida, only he thought the boat belonged to someone named Smith. Wayne MacArthur had taken a flight from Miami to Logan Airport that morning, and had landed shortly after noon. Both Ty and Danny Watson had provided the police with MacArthur’s cell phone number. Monica sat with Detective Nolan and the DEA agent in a small, quiet office in the police station, and she phoned MacArthur, setting her cell to speaker-phone.

  “Hello?” His voice was gruff and gravelly. A smoker, she guessed.

  “Mr. Smith?” she asked. Having Mr. Nolan and the DEA agent seated so close to her made her self-conscious. Seeing them distracted her. She closed her eyes.

  “Who’s calling?”

  She didn’t want to give her name—or a false name—so she ignored his question. “I got your number from Danny Watson. I used to, like, get my stuff from him? But I guess he’s not available or something?” She wanted to sound vague, young, different from who she really was.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Brogan’s Point. And…like, I’d really like to get some stuff.” She added a slight tremor to her voice, the desperation of a drug addict, or so she hoped. “Danny said you could help me?”

  He muttered a curse that she sensed was directed at Danny Watson, not at her. “Yeah, sure. It’ll have to be later, though. I’m not even at my house yet.”

  “Do you want me to come to your house?” she asked, opening her eyes and exchanging a glance with the men huddling around the desk where she sat.

  “No. Not my house. Meet me—” he paused for a moment, apparently thinking “—in the parking lot of the North Cove Marina. Nine o’clock tonight. If you’re not there at nine, I’m leaving.”

  “Nine o’clock. Okay. Thank you.” She again tried to infuse her voice with desperation, tempered with abundant gratitude that this wonderful drug dealer was going to save her from the agony of heroin withdrawal.

  She heard a click, and then the DEA agent leaned across the desk and pressed the disconnect button on her cell. “Very good,” he said.

  A man on the far side of middle age, he looked oddly formal in a pressed gray suit and burgundy tie. Detective Nolan was dressed for a Saturday, in a polo shirt and khakis. Monica had already figured out what she’d wear that night: old jeans, sneakers, and her hoodie. She doubted MacArthur would recognize her—surely he hadn’t attended the high school’s production of You Can’t Take It With You a decade ago, and he’d never been a guest at the inn—but with her hair flopping in her face and the hood of her sweatshirt covering her head, she’d be practically anonymous.

  The DEA agent was still holding her cell phone. “You understand, there’s no wire involved,” Mr. Nolan explained. “We have to add an app to your phone, and it will record everything. You’ll have it in your pocket, you’ll turn on the speaker, and we’ll hear and record everything. Much safer than wiring you.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll be parked about a block away in an unmarked van. We’ll hear everything you have to say. If you feel you’re in danger, say the word ‘crazy.’ Say, ‘You’re crazy,’ or ‘This is crazy,’ or ‘I must be crazy.’ We hear that word, and we’ll swoop in and extricate you from the situation. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Crazy,” he emphasized.

  Monica nodded. She got it. She wasn’t stupid. Maybe these officers of the law thought her eagerness to do this was proof that she was stupid. Or else they just thought she was crazy.

  She wasn’t, though. She was determined. Motivated. Tired of being demure and doing what was expected of her. Just wild enough to believe she could save Ty.

  ***

  She arrived at the parking lot of the North Cove Marina at ten minutes to nine. Even though it was a relatively short walk from the inn,
she drove there, slowing a block away from the marina’s entry when she spotted a nondescript van parked on a side street. In the nighttime gloom, she couldn’t tell the van’s color—some dark hue, maybe burgundy or brown—but the headlights flashed twice, the signal Ed Nolan had told her to watch for. She flashed her headlights twice in response, then continued to the marina.

  Only a few cars were parked in the lot, scattered across the otherwise vacant asphalt. She didn’t know if any of them belonged to Wayne MacArthur, but she assumed he would come in a car. She wanted to be in a car, too. She wanted to have a way to escape quickly if she needed to—she doubted she could outrun the average man, but her Subaru could get her back to the van in a matter of seconds, if need be. She also liked the protection her car offered—steel and shatter-proof windows. Standing all alone in the dark lot would make her too vulnerable.

  Near the ramp down to the dock, she spotted Ty’s rented motorcycle, its abundance of chrome trim glinting in the silver glow of a bright lamp attached to the building, just beneath an eave. The building’s windows were dark. The bike looked forlorn, abandoned. She was definitely all alone.

  As she’d been instructed, she spoke in a normal voice. “I’m in the parking lot now. I don’t see anyone here.”

  Her backups in the van signaled that they’d heard her by sending a signal through her phone, which vibrated in the breast pocket of her shirt for a couple of seconds. She’d stashed it there so it would be closer to her mouth and better able to pick up her conversation with MacArthur.

  Her gaze drifted back to the motorcycle. What a shame that Ty was paying a daily rental on it when he couldn’t use it. She’d taken the liberty of packing his belongings in his room at the inn, moving them downstairs to her apartment, and checking him out. She hoped that wasn’t too presumptuous of her. Not that she expected him to move in with her when he was finally sprung, but she saw no reason for him to be paying the inn’s hefty nightly rate while he was living rent-free as a guest of Brogan’s Point’s finest. If he wanted a room at the inn once he was cleared and granted his freedom, she would find him one. The reservation crunch wouldn’t begin until Memorial Day weekend, six days from now.

  Beyond the motorcycle, beyond the building, she counted the boats and slips, trying to recall which was the one Ty had sailed to Brogan’s Point. The police had removed the yellow tape surrounding the impounded boat so as not to tip MacArthur off. All she could see in the uneven radiance from the spotlight on the building and a moon smeared with thin clouds was a forest of masts, silhouette-black, swaying gently as waves rocked the sailboats. All she could hear was the quiet whoosh of the wind and the clanking of hooks and rings against the masts. It was such a familiar sound to her, she hardly noticed it.

  She did notice a shadow moving along one of the docks. She checked her watch: nine o’clock. The shadow moved toward the building. Definitely a man. A tall, limber man carrying a small duffel bag. He strode up the sloping gangplank, heading for the parking lot. “I think this is him,” she said, and after a second, her phone vibrated against her chest.

  She raked her hand through her hair to tousle it, then pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head. She’d circled her eyes with gobs of black eyeliner, figuring she ought to look, if not skanky, at least not like the clean-cut, well-groomed woman she was. Once her hood was firmly in place, she eased open her car door and swung her legs out. She moved slowly, cautiously. She didn’t want to startle the guy. He might have a gun or something. He was a drug dealer, after all.

  He stepped into the wide oval of light shed by the lamp, and she suppressed a smile as she studied him. He was the clean-cut, well-groomed party at this rendezvous. He wore a tailored shirt, khakis, and deck shoes. The duffel he carried appeared to be leather. His hair was too short to blow in the breeze rising off the water. His face was square, his features symmetrical. He looked like the sort of man one might run into at a prep school reunion.

  “Mr. Smith?” she asked, remembering to speak in a slangy, jangly way, her voice as disheveled as her hair.

  He continued toward her, moving in determined strides. She dug her hands into her hoodie’s pockets and hoped she looked like a helpless junkie. The few roles she’d played in high school drama club productions didn’t qualify her for an Equity card, but she remembered how to create a character from the inside out. For the next few minutes, she had to believe she was a drug addict eager to buy dope. She had to live it.

  “You’re the girl I spoke to on the phone?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Thanks so much for meeting me. I would’ve taken care of this with Danny Watson? But I couldn’t. He was…” She shrugged.

  “Yes. He is,” MacArthur said, choosing to be as vague as she was about his local distributor’s fate. He moved out of the light, but her eyes had adjusted enough to the night’s gloom that she could make out his crisp, genteel features. She inched a few steps closer to him. The closer she stood to him, the more clearly her phone would pick up his voice. “I don’t believe you told me your name,” he said.

  “It’s Mary.”

  “Mary what?”

  “Mary Smith.”

  He hooted a laugh, one sharp syllable that quickly melted into the air. He didn’t seem amused, though. His eyes were dark and hard. “Don’t tell me we’re related.”

  “I don’t think so.” She fidgeted with the tie string of her hood. “So Danny gave me your number, but he also told me some other guy was bringing the stuff here on your boat?”

  “Danny told you that?”

  Was she implying that Danny Watson—with whom she had never exchanged a single word—had told her things he wasn’t supposed to reveal, or couldn’t have known? Would MacArthur stop believing her because he knew Danny would never have said such a thing? She plunged ahead, ignoring her tap-dancing pulse. “Like, I didn’t want to have to bother you. And this guy brought your boat up a week ago, so I thought, like, maybe he could help. I’m trying to remember his name. It wasn’t Smith, I know that.”

  “Tyler Cronin,” MacArthur said. “Did you talk to him?”

  Had she—Mary Smith, the ditzy druggie—spoken to Ty? Would it be better if she had or if she hadn’t? She didn’t know. Saying the wrong thing would ruin everything. “Well, like, I tried,” she said, then trailed off.

  “So you didn’t talk to him?”

  Taking a chance, she shook her head.

  “Good,” MacArthur said.

  Her heart raced just a little less. She’d guessed right.

  “He couldn’t have helped you,” MacArthur said. “He’s just some kid I hired to sail my boat so I wouldn’t have to kill a week bringing it north myself. He doesn’t know anything about this.” He lifted the bag slightly.

  Was that good enough to clear Ty? She wasn’t sure. “This? You mean the smack? He didn’t know it was on your boat?”

  “How did you know it was on my boat?”

  Shit. She’d said the wrong thing. Just because MacArthur had told her to meet him at the marina didn’t mean he’d taken the heroin off his boat. She knew he had, thanks to the police—or at least, she knew he’d taken something that looked like the heroin from his boat, assuming they’d replaced the real stuff with something innocuous. But if she was just a junkie named Mary Smith, she couldn’t know for sure that he’d just stepped off his sailboat with his illegal merchandise in his bag.

  She had to extricate herself from this possible misstep. “I thought that was what Danny said? That you bring the stuff up on your boat?”

  “Danny’s an idiot,” MacArthur said. “But yes, this is how I start the season. Fill my boat with precious cargo and bring it north.”

  “And that dude who sailed it up here for you—Tyler Whatever, not Smith? He couldn’t have sold me some, huh?”

  “He knows boats, but he has nothing to do with this. How much do you want? I’m not used to small transactions.”

  “Small transactions are all I can afford,” she said, laboring n
ot to smile. Surely Detective Nolan and the man from the DEA got what they needed. He has nothing to do with this. “Two dime bags,” she said meekly, prying the twenty dollar bill the police had given her out of the hip pocket of her too-tight jeans. “That’s all I got.”

  MacArthur made a face. “Jesus. I’m dealing with kindergarten here.” He poked around in his bag, pulled out a block of something wrapped in plastic and a zip-lock bag. He settled these items on the hood of her car, eased open a corner of the plastic wrap and poured some powder into the bag. Was that the right amount? Monica had no idea how much heroin twenty dollars would buy.

  “Here,” he said, taking her money and handing her the bag. He regarded her for a moment, his expression softening. “How would you like to get your stuff for free?”

  She widened her eyes, hoping she was doing a credible enactment of delight. “Really?”

  “With Danny indisposed, I need someone to help with distribution. I’d give you a list of a few customers, you’d deal with this dime-bag shit, and I’d pay you with free dope.”

  He was asking her to deal for him. She hadn’t counted on that. The script she’d used to prepare for her performance didn’t include this scene. “I don’t know,” she hedged. “I mean, like, it’s against the law.”

  “Your standing right here with me now, handing me that twenty dollar bill in exchange for two dime bags, is against the law, sweetheart. This would just be a temporary thing, anyway, until Danny clears up his problems. And you look so sweet and innocent. No one would suspect you of anything.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Smith. I just—”

  “You needed me and I came through for you. Now I need you.”

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I just don’t think I could do that.” Like hell she couldn’t. Right now, she felt as if she could do anything. Buy heroin. Perform on Broadway. Rule the world. Save Ty.

  Abruptly, MacArthur clamped a hand around her arm. He was a lot stronger than she’d expected, his grip iron-tight despite his polished, gentlemanly appearance. “Listen, Mary—I can’t be standing in parking lots dealing out dime bags. That is just not going to happen. If you want to get stuff from me again, you’re going to have to help me out. This is not a negotiation, honey. This is me telling you.”