Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3) (13 page)

It
didn’t take long before he was gone, pulsing into her, his fingers fisting in
her hair. Feeling his climax and hearing him groan again turned her on as much
as his caresses had.

God,
yes, she liked these stairs.

And
she liked being wild.

The
next day he worked on the wall in Rose Cottage.

He
would have preferred to spend the whole day in bed with Monica. After that
crazy, amazing interlude on the beach, they’d raced back to her apartment, as
wet as shipwreck victims by the time they’d reached her door at the end of the
back hallway. Wet was fine with Ty, though. What else could you do when your
clothing was soaked but strip that clothing off? No more than fifteen seconds
after Monica had turned the bolt to lock them inside her apartment, they’d been
naked, toweling each other off before they tumbled onto the bed and went at it
for real.

He
wouldn’t mind being shipwrecked with her. Stranded on a remote island, living
on coconuts, bananas, fish, and sex. Yeah, he could enjoy that.

But
he also enjoyed the comfort of her bed, the cozy thickness of the comforter,
the plush down pillows. He could imagine spending every night in Monica’s bed
and waking up every morning with her in his arms, her velvety skin pressed
against his, her silky hair tickling his chin. He could imagine doing this for
a long time.

That
wasn’t like him. He never did
anything
for a long time. He’d known
women—known them longer than he’d known Monica—and had fun with them, and then
parted ways with them, always amicably, always with good wishes and pleasant
memories. The women he’d been with always knew going in that he wasn’t a
forever kind of guy, or even a long-time kind of guy. The women he’d been with
didn’t have parents who’d invited him for dinner.

That
was another weird thing. He’d liked Monica’s parents. He’d liked having dinner
with them.

Imagine
growing up in a spacious, elegant apartment in the resort where your family
worked. Imagine returning to that resort as an adult and living in another,
smaller apartment in the same building. Imagine having roots as deep as a pine
tree’s, anchoring you to a place you loved. And knowing your parents were
there, eager to meet your friends, to make sure those friends were good enough
for their daughter.

A
gut-deep pang of longing seized Ty. He’d known something like that as a child,
known his parents adored him, known a feeling of permanence, a sense of home.
But it had all been snatched away from him. He’d eventually come to believe
that surviving the accident was all the compensation he was going to get in
exchange for having lost his parents—and since it was all he was going to get,
he made sure it was all he needed.

But
a home, a real home, a soul-deep knowledge that you belonged somewhere… Man,
that would be sweet.

He
gave his head a shake to clear it and surveyed the equipment he’d gathered from
the maintenance building on the premises. Monica had brought him there and told
him to help himself. Surveying the shelves, he’d felt like a kid in a toy
store. So much gear, so many tools, all of them well maintained and neatly
stored.

Back
in Florida, he’d strap his tool box to the back of his Rebel and motor over to
a job, and hope that everything he’d ordered for the job showed up by the time
he needed it. At the Ocean Bluff Inn, everything was already at hand: sacks of
plaster; trowels; a bucket to stir the mud, as construction guys called wet
plaster; a ladder; a drop cloth; paint; brushes; rollers; stirrers.

Imagine
living in a place that had everything you needed—and every
one
you
needed. Imagine knowing that place was
your
place, feeling it in your
marrow. Never wanting to leave.

Another
sharp shake of his head, and he set about to work, unfolding the drop cloth to
protect the hardwood floor beneath the hole the plumbers had cut into the wall.
They’d finally located and repaired the leak in a pipe that extended from the
second-floor bathroom sink down to the cellar of the cottage. It had warped the
bathroom floor slightly upstairs, but Ty assumed the floor would settle back
down once it had dried thoroughly, and the vanity would cover any water stains
left behind.

The
plumbers had done a neat job when they’d opened up the parlor wall, cleanly
slicing the drywall and setting the piece they removed aside to be reused. He’d
be able to cheat a bit, smoothing the mud into the drywall so he wouldn’t have
to extend the patch too far beyond the perimeter of the cut. He’d need to paint
the entire wall, though. Possibly the entire room. He’d have to see how the
paint dried, whether it matched up with the other three walls, how many coats
it would take to cover the patch.

Monica
had told him not to knock himself out. She had a maintenance staff who could do
the painting. But they were busy overseeing other tasks in the run-up to the
resort’s big summer season. Besides, Ty wanted to do this—not just for her, but
because… Because this was her home, and he wanted to leave his mark on it.

Before
patching the hole, he reached inside and smoothed out the insulation, which had
been shoved aside when the plumbers had been searching for the leak. The fleecy
strips of pink fiber felt dry to him, and they settled back into place around
the pipes. He used the flashlight app on his phone to inspect the floor in the
space between the inner and outer walls, to make sure no one had dropped
anything there. Workmen sometimes left tools behind, or pocket change, or rags.
Once the wall was sealed, any junk left behind would be trapped inside the wall
forever—or until the next leak, when the wall got cut open again.

No
junk. No treasures, either. No wads of cash, no jewelry, no stolen artwork.

No
drugs.

As
he troweled the mud onto the wall, smearing and smoothing, smearing and
smoothing, his mind revved into high gear. If someone wanted to stash heroin
somewhere, they could do worse than to hide it in the hollow behind a
wallboard. If someone wanted to stash heroin on a boat, to have the drugs
transported north without the boat’s captain-crew-passenger knowing it was
there…

The
Freedom didn’t have a lot of empty space behind its walls. Its design was
streamlined and efficient. Every cubic inch that wasn’t filled with gear was
accessible for storage. The outer seats lifted up on hinges, and beneath them
were storage bins. The space under the sleeping bench in the cabin provided
more storage space. The galley was equipped with a mini-fridge and a microwave
running off a small generator, and a few cramped cabinets in which Ty had
stored utensils and food. The only area that didn’t open up for storage, as far
as Ty knew, was the panel behind the toilet in the head. The only purpose of
that panel was to allow a plumber access if something went wrong with the
pipes.

No
one would be stupid enough to secrete a shipment of drugs where there were
pipes, right? As Monica had learned the hard way, pipes developed leaks. A leak
could destroy that illicit cargo, unless the drugs were wrapped up really well,
in waterproof layers of plastic or canvas.

Last
he’d heard, the cops hadn’t discovered any heroin on the Freedom. Some clown
had sworn to them that heroin had been carried to Brogan’s Point on the boat,
but as far as Ty knew, Nolan and his fellow officers of the law hadn’t found
it. If they had, Ty wouldn’t be plastering a wall right now, and he wouldn’t
have spent last night doing sweaty, X-rated things in bed with Monica. He’d be
behind bars, charged with drug smuggling.

But
what if there
was
heroin? It might be behind the toilet, in the one
region of the boat Ty hadn’t become intimately acquainted with during his
week-long sail, the one place no one would think to look. The one place no one
could
look if he didn’t pry the panel off.

Ty
finished spreading the mud on the wall, then stepped back and inspected his
work from several angles to make sure it was perfectly smooth. Fortunately,
last night’s rain had ended and the air was dry. The plaster would dry in less
than a half hour.

He
wiped his hands on a rag, then carried his tools into the kitchenette off the
parlor, washed and dried them. Returning to the parlor, he studied his work,
and imagined the space behind the wall. He pulled his cell phone from the
pocket of his old jeans and punched in the number of Caleb Solomon’s law
office.

The
receptionist put him through. “No news,” Solomon informed him, then
contradicted himself. “I take that back. Detective Nolan told me the police
down in Key Biscayne have been monitoring your buddy, Wayne MacArthur. He’s
bought a plane ticket to Boston, arriving Saturday afternoon.”

“Is
that good or bad?” Ty asked.

“Good.
He’s coming up here. Nolan can turn his attention to him. Maybe he’ll retrieve
his heroin, assuming it even exists, and the police will catch him red-handed,
and he’ll confess. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Sure,
it would be nice. It wasn’t going to happen, though. “I had this thought,” Ty
said, then hesitated. Was he nuts even to mention it? “If there’s heroin on the
boat, I think I know where it might be hidden.”

Solomon
didn’t say anything for a moment. “All right. This could go one of two ways.
One way, the police decide you’re so helpful and cooperative, they stop
suspecting you. The other way, the police say, ‘Of course you know where the
heroin is hidden. You transported it here.’”

“The
thing is, I never saw drugs on the boat. I never had a clue there were drugs on
the boat. But if Wayne was moving them up to Brogan’s Point, he wouldn’t have
had to tell me about them. All he needed me to do was sail the boat—and hide
them someplace where I wouldn’t find them. I think I’ve figured out where that
place might be.”

“Okay.”
Solomon thought some more. “Don’t do anything. Let me talk to Nolan and get
back to you.”

Ty
thanked the lawyer, then thumbed the disconnect icon and stuffed his phone back
into his pocket. Restless, he stepped outside the cottage. From its front porch
spread a vista of soft, green grass, well-tended flower beds bright with
azaleas, tulips and crocuses, and trees lush with new spring leaves. The
swimming pool spread across the flagstone patio, its bright blue practically a
mirror of the cloudless sky. Comfortable-looking lounge chairs and tables
furnished the patio, and beyond that the inn’s main building sprawled like a
New England palace—white clapboard, black shutters, sloping slate roof.

Squinting,
he could guess which window belonged to Monica’s apartment. His own apartment
down in Florida wasn’t much bigger, but he didn’t spend that much time in it,
anyway. There were always parties, bars, people hanging out on the beach, women
issuing invitations. That apartment didn’t feel like home. He’d never expected
it to.

Why
did Monica’s apartment feel like home to him? Why did he want to stay there?

Why
did the thought of clearing his name, turning in his rented motorcycle, and
flying back to Miami depress him?

He
turned and reentered the cottage. The plaster already felt dry. He planted a
can of paint on the drop cloth, used a screwdriver to pry off the lid, and
reached for a stirrer. When his cell phone rang, he pressed the lid back onto
the can, straightened and answered. “Nolan wants to meet with us at the marina,”
Solomon said.

***

Ed
had told Caleb Solomon to have his client down at the North Cove Marina at four
o’clock. The boat had been sitting there since the day Cronin had sailed it
into the slip, impounded but not exactly under lock and key. The Brogan’s Point
police force didn’t have the manpower to keep a guard stationed beside the boat
twenty-four-seven.

If
Cronin knew where the drugs were on it, he could have slipped past the police
tape under cover of darkness, sneaked on board, removed the stash and tossed it
into the sea. Losing a few hundred thousand dollars of smack would hurt, but
not as much as a conviction.

If
Cronin was just the courier, of course, he wouldn’t be losing a few hundred
grand. He’d already gotten his payoff from MacArthur. So dumping the smack
would have been the smart move—if he wanted to avoid prosecution.

But
he’d sworn he was innocent. And volunteering to help the police wasn’t the sort
of thing a guilty guy would do. At least not unless he was truly Machiavellian.
Cronin seemed smart, but he didn’t strike Ed as a shrewd schemer.

In
any case, it was only three-thirty, which gave Ed a half-hour to kill before he
met Cronin and his lawyer. Well, twenty minutes. It would take him some time to
get from the Faulk Street Tavern to the marina.

The
tavern was nearly empty, as it usually was at this time of day. At night, you
had to elbow your way through a mob to reach the bar. But mid-afternoon, the
only patron in the room was Carl Stanton, slumped on a stool at the far end of
the bar, staring blankly into a glass of something alcoholic. Carl started his
drinking early and ended it early—because Gus made sure to end it for him.

Ed
once asked Gus why she even bothered to open as early as she did. She said she
usually made a few bucks around noon—some folks were determined to drink their
lunches—and she liked the quiet afternoons. They gave her and Manny a chance to
check inventory, set up, prep the snacks she served in the evenings, and wait
the occasional table. When Gus had begun her career at the Faulk Street Tavern,
she’d been a waitress. Within a few weeks, the owner of the place had become
smitten with her; within a few months, they’d been married. She’d learned the
business when she wasn’t raising her sons, and when her husband died, she’d
slid smoothly into the role of proprietor and boss. But she still knew how to
take an order and wield a tray. Waiting tables brought her back, she told Ed,
made her feel young again.