Free The Price of Malice by Archer Mayor Page A

had to get my head around it. I’m still half asleep. Let me come down.”
    “You don’t have to.”
    She laughed, albeit less with delight than at the stupidity of the comment. “Of course I do. Hang on.”
    It didn’t take two minutes for her to appear, dressed in jeans and a light sweatshirt, and dart across the street to slide into his passenger seat. They hugged awkwardly across the center console, making him regret that he hadn’t waited for her on the sidewalk.
    “You really are crazy, you know that?” she told him, settling back in the corner and shaking her head. “This is pure high school.”
    “I know,” he conceded. “It was just getting under my skin. I feel so guilty about all this.”
    “That you stumbled across the
Maria
?” she asked. “How’s that work?”
    He gazed out the windshield, appreciative of the way even stationary cars allowed for conversation without eye contact. “I was worried I was being held to blame a little.”
    She didn’t answer directly, but joined him for a few seconds, studying the dark street ahead. “Maybe you were.”
    “What do I do about that?” he asked slowly.
    “Maybe you just did it.”
    He wasn’t sure what to say.
    She crossed her arms and tucked her chin in slightly. Now it was her turn to avoid eye contact. “Look,” she said, “I know this has been weird. You probably had no idea you were hooking up with such a psycho.”
    “That’s not what I’m seeing.”
    “Because you only see what I show you.”
    He couldn’t say much to that.
    “Joe,” she said in a stronger voice, shifting in her seat and looking straight at him. “When you first told me you’d found the
Maria
, I didn’t give you a chance to explain. I mean, you told me it was way up north and in some bad guy’s boathouse, but then I shut you down. Can you give me all of it now? I promise I won’t get weird again.”
    Joe nodded, happy to talk about something concrete. “It was your brother, Steve, funnily enough. He was telling us how your dad would take the whole family up the coast of Maine, pretending to be on vacation but actually picking up tips on the lobster trade.”
    “I remember that,” she said.
    “Well, he mentioned how, when you were in Jonesport, you and your mother went off shopping or something, while he, José, and your dad went to the docks to talk shop with a boat captain.”
    “Okay,” she said, her excitement building. “I didn’t know what he was talking about. Yeah. It’s coming back.”
    “Well, both things stuck in my mind at the time,” Joe continued. “That the captain did some smuggling on the side, and that his name was Wellman Beale.”
    “
He’s
the one who had the
Maria
?” she asked, astonished.
    Joe nodded. “And the smuggling involved prescription drugs from Canada. Beale was up to his neck in that case in Maine, with theCustoms task force and all the drug cops. He wasn’t a major player, but he was part of the overall scheme to use fishing boats to import the goods.”
    Her expression saddened and her gaze shifted to her lap. “And Dad was involved, too,” she stated listlessly.
    “I didn’t say that,” he emphasized. “According to Steve, your father didn’t even know Beale back then, much less about his smuggling. The way he told it, your dad and brother just happened to meet him on the dock and they talked shop while Steve climbed all over Beale’s boat.”
    Lyn looked at him sourly. “Joe, he was a kid, and he loved them. What do you think he was going to say?”
    “What are
you
saying?” Joe asked.
    She hesitated before avoiding the question. “Did Beale explain how he got the boat?”
    “That part I told you in full, since there wasn’t much to it—he said he found the
Maria
floating abandoned at sea and brought it home. Since ‘home’ in this case is an island he shares with nobody else, no one was the wiser. It just sat there from then on, collecting barnacles and seaweed. You got it back, didn’t