5. JDLR
FIVE
JDLR
JUST DON’T LOOK RIGHT; EXPRESSION USED BY POLICE OFFICERS WHILE VIEWING A SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCE ON A HUNCH
Trent followed the trio of trespassers as they trudged down the walkway to where his patrol car hugged the curb. He tried to keep his gaze anywhere but on Maggie Michaels, as her abundant, distracting curves were hugged by skintight black leggings and a t-shirt that could’ve been painted on. Beneath the nearly full moon, she stood out like a siren against the hotel’s crumbling fa?ade. Her fiery hair seemed to capture the moonlight, a beacon of rebellion that Trent found both infuriating and intoxicating.
He allowed his gaze to linger for a moment before remembering he was on duty.
And she was on his shit list.
Myrtle, on the other hand, was making a spectacle, fluttering around like a deaf bat who’d just discovered caffeine, while Gabe leaned casually against the patrol car, his tattoos telling stories Trent wasn’t sure he wanted to read.
“Hey, McGarvey,” Myrtle chirped, dramatically slamming herself against his vehicle and assuming “the position.” “There’s only so much frisking you can do in public, so—and I know this is usually your line to say— keep your hands where I can see ’em and no one gets hurt.”
Gabe snorted out an unhelpful chuckle. “You’ll have to commit police brutality to get me to bend over for you like that.”
Trent very carefully did not look toward Maggie, or his brain would produce an image he wouldn’t ever be able to let go of.
“Come on, Myrtle,” he said. “I’m not trying to frisk an old lady who broke into a construction site. What would you steal, drywall nails? What I need to know is what you three were doing there in the middle of the night.”
Gabe’s mouth tightened.
Maggie’s dropped open as if to reply.
Myrtle beat her to it. “ Old lady ?” she screeched. “Do I smell old to you?” Reaching up, she peeled her top off and threw it at Trent, who caught it with his astonished face.
It smelled like peppermint and pralines.
Snatching it away, he blinked over at the woman in pure shock, relieved to find she’d dressed in layers on a freezing February evening, and still had a skintight thermal on.
“Ms. Le Grand, I really?—”
“I smell like the taut, teenaged clavicles on those sparkly models in the perfume ads. Eat your heart out, Dior!”
“Who watches ads anymore?” Trent blurted before berating himself for being drawn into this ridiculous conversation.
Myrtle’s sharp chin jutted out, disturbing her impressive wattle. “I don’t know, Five-Oh, but I’m feeling a little less guilty when I think about what my generation has done to yours and the climate. I hope you die in a wildfire.”
“Myrtle! You don’t mean that,” Maggie said.
“She doesn’t,” Trent replied. “Last week she threatened to melt me with holy water when she was caught stealing some from the Catholics.”
“It was for science!”
“She turns Our Lady of Sorrows into Our Lady of Sassy Pants.” Gabe’s mouth remained unhelpful.
“You couldn’t make it stick to me then, and you won’t now, po-po!” Myrtle adopted a stance that Jet Li would have approved of.
“ Deputy McGarvey?” Maggie cut in, one auburn brown raised. “I didn’t realize you moonlighted as hotel security.”
“I don’t. This is what we call a bust.”
“Oh, come on now, McGarvey.” Myrtle turned to face him, fists planted on her tiny—and probably brand-new—hips. “We were just doing a little historical research.”
“At midnight? Without permission?” Trent raised an eyebrow. “That’s called trespassing at best, and possibly breaking and entering.”
“Look, I’m really sorry about this.” Maggie brushed back a lock of red hair, her green eyes earnest. “This was all my idea. I’ll confess to you that I’m here in Townsend Harbor on business.”
“What business is predicated on B&E?” Trent challenged.
“Investigative reporting on historical cold cases. Ever heard of Madame Katz?”
“Now you’re just making up names.”
Her brow pinched in an adorable scowl. “She’s a local legend who died under incredibly mysterious circumstances. The story goes that she was involved in shanghaiing sailors from this old brothel-turned-hotel. I’ve been all over the records, and the original blueprints of the building don’t show it, but there’s a hidden passage I wanted to explore to help prove it for my…investigation.”
Trent tapped his fingers against his bicep, wishing he didn’t want to trust her when it was charmingly obvious she was feeding him the kind of bullshit Myrtle slung for a living. “Investigating what, an A&E special or a New Yorker article or something like that?”
“Something exactly like that,” Maggie said with a coy smile.
Trent’s gaze lingered a moment too long on the confident tilt of her chin, the playful defiance in her stance. And as the cool night pressed against them, he felt the warmth of curiosity blooming in his chest—not just about Madame Katz, but about the woman who planned to bring her story to life.
Did he trust her?
Did he trust anyone?
Gathering each of their IDs, he shook his head at the absurdity of what his job had become. “Am I going to find any warrants when I run these?” he asked, only half joking.
“None from this millennium, bucko!” Myrtle mouthed off. “But I’ve caught charges older than your tight little butt.”
Gabe only lifted his shoulder and ran a surprisingly steady hand through his close-cropped dark hair.
Maggie adopted a faux-innocent look that fooled exactly no one.
Trent ducked into the driver’s seat and squinted at the glowing laptop screen, his fingers flying over the keys as he ran background checks on his midnight marauders.
Gabe’s record popped up first: a mosaic of car theft and youthful defiance splattered with Boston’s grit. “No surprises there,” Trent muttered, eyeing the mechanic whose tattoos told stories darker than the night sky.
Myrtle shocked him with a rap sheet that unfurled like a scroll of ancient parchment. “Myrtle… You were quite the uh, green thumb in your day.”
“Reefer madness! Wait until you get to my civil disobedience decades!” the woman crowed proudly. “In the sixties and seventies, I looped all the holes, stuck it to the man—and a few women if they wanted it—fought for civil rights and women’s rights, and for it all I’ve spent eighty-one total days in the pokey and am banned from the St. Louis airport, most of Russia, Texas, Florida, and all the Offices Depot.” She turned to Gabe. “Don’t ask now, but I’ll show you a cool trick with a hole punch and a rolling chair later.”
“Fuck yeah, Myrtle.” She and Gabe shared a gentle fist bump that made Trent’s eye twitch.
But it was Maggie’s file that had him genuinely taken aback—a blot on an otherwise spotless record. “Breaking and entering, South Temple, Mass?” he said, disbelief shading his tone as he glanced at her. “Resisting arrest? Obstruction of justice? You’re a repeat offender.”
“Only when history calls for it,” Maggie fired back, her shoulders squared. “That arrest was for a similar investigation of mine, and the officer was like the Count of Assholvania, and because I’d broken into a federal building, he reported me to the FB- fucking- I and it was a whole-ass thing.” She threw her arms up as if she couldn’t believe the gall. “I almost caught federal charges. What a crock.”
“Yeah, you snuck into a federal building.”
“It was a library, not the Pentagon.” She rolled her eyes.
Trent felt like a Karen when he muttered, “Still. it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the honorable thing to do.”
“Honorable? What is this, Feudal Japan?” She snorted.
“No, but we’re a civilization with laws, and one of those laws is people stay off your property.”
Instead of rolling her eyes, she tossed her entire neck in a circle of tantrum. “God, you sound like one of those septuagenarian retirees that just want everyone to get off their lawn.”
“Paradoxically, you’re trespassing in the middle of the night like a teenaged hoodlum.”
“ You’re acting like a teenaged hoodlum, ” she replied, mimicking him.
To his surprise, his temper flared. “Now you’re just being childish.”
“And you’re being a prick.” She stuck out her tongue to punctuate her point.
Trent’s radio chirped in his ear, startling everyone. It was Judy, the dispatcher, following up on the call. “All’s well, Judy,” he said. “Just some trespassers.”
“Mayor Stewart owns the hotel building and isn’t answering his phone,” Judy replied. “We’ve sent someone to wake him up, but you’ll need to bring the perps in for now.”
“Ten-four, we’re en route to booking.” He glanced back to the unlikely trio, whose faces had become comically grave.
He glanced at Gabe first. The guy was a little taller and a little leaner, but his knuckles and nose told tales of a past where they’d have been enemies. But since the Southie ex-con opened a body shop and moved in with his girlfriend, Gemma, he’d been a model citizen in Townsend Harbor.
Mostly.
Until now.
To his surprise, Gabe turned around and tucked his knuckles behind his back like a man who’d been cuffed one too many times. “It’s procedure.” The Bostonian sighed. “I know.”
Trent clicked them on without tightening them too much and helped Gabe into the back of the car. “You want to ride shotgun, Myrtle?” he asked.
“Aren’t you arresting me, too?” she groused.
“I don’t think we need to just yet,” Trent said. “I’m detaining you on suspicion of trespassing?—”
“Then why is Gabe in cuffs?” she demanded.
Trent squeezed at a headache blooming behind his eyes. “It’s protocol, Myrtle—it’s for both our safety.”
“Don’t try to shovel shit at me and call it mud. Shit is my stock in trade, kiddo! You don’t think I’m dangerous?” Myrtle put up her dukes like a Victorian pugilist.
“I think you’re a seventy-year-old woman.”
“Ha! You say ‘tomato,’ I say you’re an ageist jackhole. I could take you out.” She threw a few practice jabs into the air between them. “When women go bad, they go all the way. They won’t just go to war with ya, they’ll take away your birthday and your will to live. They’ll ruin you and your namesake before they allow you the sweet, sweet release of the abyss and?—”
With a beleaguered sigh, Trent reached for his second pair of handcuffs and dangled them in front of Myrtle.
“That’s more like it!” she crowed, shoving her excruciatingly tiny wrists at him.
Trent slapped on the cuffs and even made a show of protecting her head while gently “pushing” her into the back seat with a grinning Gabe.
Despite himself, Trent chuckled before he addressed Maggie. “I’m out of handcuffs—are you gonna be good, or should I call for backup?”
It shouldn’t have frightened him that she didn’t answer, but he found himself taking a stabilizing breath.
She slid into the front seat of the patrol car and Trent settled in beside her, catching a whiff of her perfume—something exotic and spicy.
“Listen, Deputy McGarvey ,” Maggie started, her voice urgent, “we weren’t just fooling around in there. We found something.”
“Found something?” Trent repeated as he started the engine, its purr a stark contrast to the tension inside the vehicle.
“A passageway,” Maggie said quickly, “hidden chutes and all. Not on any updated blueprints, but they were in the original ones—ones that never got filed with the city.”
“Hidden chutes?” Trent raised an eyebrow, trying to keep his professional composure despite the nonsense of it all. “What is this, Clue?”
“Look, I know how it sounds, but hear me out,” Maggie insisted, leaning forward as if to bridge the gap between disbelief and possibility. “Madame Katz, she had this reputation, right? And if my hunch is correct, she shanghaied at least thirty-three sailors back in the late 1800s. Smuggled them right out of her brothel through these secret passages and sold them to ship captains. Poor men just fell asleep after paying for a little sex and woke up on a ship halfway to Shanghai.”
“Right…” Trent drawled, the corners of his mouth twitching. He found himself intrigued despite his best efforts to remain detached. “And you uncovered all this playing Nancy Drew at midnight?”
“Need I remind you,” she replied, the ghost of a smile touching her lips, “it’s investigative journalism.”
“The press,” Trent muttered, half impressed, half exasperated. “When I moved to Townsend Harbor, I didn’t think I’d be policing journalist sleuths with a penchant for trespassing.”
“Technically, we’re not sure if it’s trespassing yet,” Maggie shot back, her eyes gleaming with a mix of defiance and excitement.
“Technically, you have the right to remain silent…” The three occupants of the car bitched and booed as he recited the Miranda rights for the body camera…okay, and a little bit just to kick the hornet’s nest.
“Come on, McGarvey,” Maggie pleaded, her gaze locked on his. “Can’t you see this is bigger than a slap-on-the-wrist midnight escapade? We’re talking about history here. About justice too long denied!”
“Plenty of historians aren’t charged with high crimes and misdemeanors,” Trent countered, though the edges of his resolve were starting to fray like well-worn denim.
“Hardly crime .” Maggie waved him off, dismissing his concerns with a flick of her wrist. “Think of it as…an educational field trip that was just a little less…authorized than others.”
“Field trip or not,” Trent grumbled, pulling out of the parking spot, “you can’t break into a building that isn’t yours.”
Maggie scoffed, rolling her eyes. “You’re such a cop.”
“And you’re such a…what, a renegade historian? Indiana Jones or Lara Croft?” Trent quipped, feeling the strange pull of her enthusiasm and the heat of her proximity.
“I mean… I don’t hate it,” Maggie said, a smirk playing on her lips. “It’s a sexy job, and someone’s gotta do it.”
“Sexy doesn’t get you out of consequences,” Trent pointed out, but even he had to admit, there was something about this whole night that felt less like routine police work and more like the opening scene of a rom-com he’d accidentally stumbled into.
Sexy heroine included.
“The hell it doesn’t!” Myrtle said. “How do you think I escaped prison time after clocking those mounted police at Columbia University? Fascist pigs didn’t seem to mind that I’d burned my bra that night!”
Trent swallowed a laugh and did the safest thing, which was ignoring Myrtle altogether.
“Did you find anything in this alleged secret passageway?” he asked, putting the car in drive.
“Alleged?” Maggie grimaced at him. “ Someone dragged us out of there before we could explore the whole thing. The original blueprints show it leading from Madame Katz’s bedroom down to the basement, with an exit to the alley. But it’s not on the new plans.”
“And you think Katz used it to, what, smuggle sailors out of her brothel?” Trent glanced at her skeptically.
“Exactly! It explains how she could abduct them without anyone seeing. The harbor was just a block away.” Maggie’s green eyes shone with enthusiasm.
Trent frowned. “Seems like a stretch.”
“I know it sounds crazy. But I’m telling you, something sinister was happening there. Katz had a lot of blood on her hands.”
Despite his reservations, Trent felt his curiosity stir. A hidden passage and a killer madame from the 1800s? It was quite a story. An investigation that had every one of his senses keyed up.
And Maggie herself was proving even more fascinating.
Trent snuck a look at her animated face and cascade of red hair. She was a troublemaker for sure…but he was having trouble remembering why that was a bad thing.
Maggie’s phone buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out, her expression shifting from playful to worried as she read the message. “You can’t take me in. I haven’t made it home to give Roxie her medications.”
“Roxie?” Trent raised an eyebrow, momentarily distracted from their standoff.
“My Peekapoo.”
“Please tell me that’s not a Pokémon or something.”
“My dog is old as balls and has special needs,” Maggie explained, the worry lines around her eyes deepening. “Narcolepsy, partial blindness, deafness… Without her medication, she could have seizures.”
“McGarvey will feed her, wontcha?” Myrtle volunteered for him. “Since it’s your fault the poor thing will be alone all night.”
“ My fault? How is it my fault when you’re the one who broke the law?” he asked.
“Because you should know the difference between what is legal and what is right, young man, or have I mistaken you?” For the first time in a while, maybe ever, the woman looked dead serious.
Goddammit.
Driving up to the jail booking annex, he handed his suspects off to Deputy Edna Dancewater, a Salish grandma with thirty years on the force and the best aim in three counties.
“Okay.” Trent sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. The thought of the helpless dog waiting anxiously for its owner tugged at something inside him. “Hand over the key. I’ll make sure your pooch gets what she needs.”
Trent found himself pausing at the doorway to Maggie’s apartment to once again read the litany of care instructions Maggie had jotted down in the jail booking area while rapid-firing the info at him like her brain was on fully automatic. For someone who struggled with drink recipes, she sure could remember a complex dog food regimen.
“Fluff her food,” he grumbled, wondering how his night had gone from patrolling the sleepy streets of Townsend Harbor to drug dealing to a disabled designer dog.
Unlocking the door, he stepped inside.
“Jesus Hoarding Christ,” he muttered, surveying the piles of clothes strewn across the floor, dishes piled high in the sink, and shoes. So. Many. Shoes. In a pile by the door. Kicked off at the foot of the couch. Discarded by the fireplace. The bathroom counter was an explosion of makeup and hair accessories, with blush dusting the surface like a light snow dusting over fallen comrades.
This place was his actual nightmare.
The coffee pot sat half-full, a bitter aroma clinging to the air, a testament to a hasty exit or an indulgent morning.
The place looked like the aftermath of a Fashion Week tornado, yet amongst this whirlwind, designer brands gleamed and winked at him with silent luxury, seemingly abandoned by their owner who didn’t care enough to cherish them properly.
The shoes were Gucci. Armani. Manolo Blahnik, the bags Kate Spade, Prada, Valentino.
And she just tossed them around like they’d come off a clearance rack at Payless.
“Roxie?” he called, hoping the dog didn’t do something unspeakable to all this luxury and good taste. He suddenly felt like an idiot, remembering the dog was deaf. And mostly blind. And easily spooked.
The combination was a recipe for disaster.
Trent found a bundle of off-white fluff curled on a tiny velvet bed next to the fireplace heater. He approached with the care he’d have shown the raptors in Jurassic Park , reaching two fingers out to nudge the warm little body out of torpor.
The tiny thing came up teeth first, and luckily missed his hand with her first chomp and decided to scream about it.
Not bark. Not whimper.
Scream.
The creature emitted a sound so unholy Trent shrank away and crossed himself like the lapsed Episcopalian his granddad had been, then made another older sign against demons taught to him by his Dominican Grandma.
A tiny furball of a dog came yapping fiercely at Trent’s feet, but the old spell must have worked, because the little shit promptly keeled over on the carpet mid-yap.
Wait. That was bad.
“Fuck!” Trent rushed to scoop up the collapsed canine and exhaled in relief as the little body came to before long and began to squirm. Though, instead of needing an exorcist, the pup startled him by sniffing the hands that held her and greeting him with two swipes of her little warm tongue.
“Friends already? That was fast.” He tried to sound gruff but couldn’t suppress a hint of affection. Carefully setting down the five pounds of deaf dervish, he fetched her meds and pill pockets from the kitchen, his eyes trailing over the ridiculous gourmet dog food that needed “fluffing.”
“All right, Roxie girl, let’s see what haute cuisine you’ve got here.” Pulling the bowl from the fridge, Trent eyed the contents with skepticism before attacking it with a fork, fluffing as instructed. “Your mom’s a piece of work, you know that?”
No, he wasn’t talking to a deaf dog with one milky eye… He was not doing that.
“What your mom doesn’t know is that by giving me a key, she gave me permission to search the premises.” A devious smile lifted his mouth as he took in the chaos that surrounded Townsend Harbor’s newest addition.
For a moment, he stood there, contemplating the woman who could unravel sailors’ secrets from centuries past and yet couldn’t keep her laundry off the floor.
As if compelled by a force outside of himself, Trent lined her shoes up by the door and straightened a collage of periodicals with titles like Serial Killers—A Psychological Model and Murder Manual . He was about to meticulously search through Maggie’s mess and see if he could come up with anything he could use.
“An investigative mind, a cluttered place, an ass that won’t quit, and a dog that faints more often than a Southern belle?” He shook his head, chuckling despite himself. Trent McGarvey, deputy of Townsend Harbor, was knee-deep in something far more perplexing than any cold case file—he was wading through the layers of Maggie Michaels, and the waters were getting deep.
They became the fucking Mariana Trench when he found her living room.
Here was an oasis of organization in the chaos. Files stacked and consolidated and labeled alphabetically. Recording equipment gleaming and carefully maintained.
It unclenched the knot of disquiet building in his gut at the disorder.
Trent’s hand hovered over an accordion file folder next to a box full of papers, his lawman’s instincts warring with the personal intrigue that gnawed at his brain.
He should walk away, maintain that professional distance. Instead, his fingers betrayed him, flipping through the file marked “important personal paperwork.”
He knew he shouldn’t snoop, but the temptation was too great.
“Birth certificate, social security card…business paperwork for ‘Murderous Madams with Maggie Michaels,’” he read under his breath. Nothing too surprising so far.
But then he found it—the official document on that special linen paper used only for such certifications.
Certifications such as the marriage of one Margaret Michaels to Charles B. Wiggins.
“Shit,” he whispered, reeling from the implications. According to her driver’s license and birth certificate, she was still a Michaels. Was she married and hadn’t taken her husband’s name? Were they separated?
Shit. Did he just kiss a married woman?
Trent’s thoughts spiraled as he aimlessly tidied up around the apartment. He replayed their flirtatious encounters, the passionate kiss they had shared. Was he merely a flirtation while she was away from home on business?
Galvanized by his discovery, he began pawing through the place, starting in the kitchen and finally ending up in her bedroom.
He very carefully did not start at the cluttered nightstand made a beeline for the dresser beneath the picture window looking out over Water Street.
All the drawers on the right were empty. And why wouldn’t they be? She had one of the most expensive floor drobes he’d ever been privileged to see. And was that a?—
“Oh no she did not .” With more care than he ever showed the dog, he rescued a Chanel camisole from where it was wadded on top of the dresser and folded it, enjoying the play of the violet silk against the whorls of his fingertips.
Soft Maggie dripping in silk?
He adjusted what was going on in his pants and opened the top left drawer, finding an explosion of silk and lace that immediately overflowed whatever lady magic she’d used to shove it all into the one drawer.
Trent couldn’t resist.
Was it an invasion of privacy?
Yes.
Was it illegal?
Not yet.
Was there any official reason for him to be color-coding thongs that would grace the glorious globes of her ass?
Only psychopaths did shit like that.
A soft sound escaped his lips as he held up a particularly daring pair of lacy panties, contemplating the woman who wore them with such unabashed confidence.
“Having fun there, deputy?”
The sound of Maggie’s voice made him jump, and he hastily dropped the underwear as if it were on fire and whirled around. Vee, Myrtle, and Maggie stood in the doorway, grinning like Cheshire cats at Trent’s obvious discomfort.
When was the last time someone snuck up on him?
Trent couldn’t remember, it’d been so long.
“Mayor Stewart didn’t press charges,” Myrtle announced triumphantly. “He just gave us a warning to leave his building alone, so my wife came to collect us.” She squeezed the Helen Mirren-esque lady next to her and kissed her shoulder.
“Great,” Trent mumbled, flushing. He scrambled for a way to explain his presence in Maggie’s apartment—and more importantly, in her underwear drawer. “I was just… Uh…”
“Doing my dishes?” Maggie raised an eyebrow, gesturing to the now-spotless kitchen counter.
The room fell silent, the tension thick enough to slice through like one of Myrtle’s prized organic tomatoes. Maggie’s eyes narrowed, scrutinizing Trent as if she were peering through the lens of a microscope, dissecting his intentions layer by layer.
“Deputy! Caught with your hand in the cookie jar.” Myrtle cackled.
“Or should I say the panty drawer,” her wife, Vee, added with a smirk.
Straightening up to full height and attempting to salvage his dignity, Trent reached for whatever his brain spit up as an excuse. “You granted me access to the premises. I was searching for probable cause.”
“PSA, Deputy Pervy Pants,” Myrtle replied, “but you don’t usually find probable cause during a panty raid. I take one photo of you with my smart phone and you’ll be canceled faster than an Armie Hammer dinner reservation.”
Maggie went to the fireplace and scooped up her dog, who nestled into her warm neck with a sigh that made Trent unnervingly jealous. “Just what evidence are you looking for, Deputy Trent McGarvey?”
“I’ll tell you what I found,” he said, gritting his teeth against the defensiveness in his tone. “Why don’t we have a chat, Miss Michaels… Or should I say, Mrs. Charles Wiggins.”