Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries)

by Maggie McConnon

  Mom surprised me by doing nothing, standing like a statue, willing her mouth not to move. I looked at Kevin.

  “I know it all,” he said, not the least bit apologetic that he hadn’t told me that Declan Morrison was my cousin, not Caleigh’s.

  “Well, that was a whole heck of a lot of nothing,” Dad said, standing. “Can we return to what we were doing, Kevin? Go back to normal here?” Based on Mom’s getup and his florid complexion, I had a feeling that we had interrupted a long-planned tryst with my emergence from the basement, the calling of the cops.

  “What’s normal here exactly?” Kevin asked, the words out of his mouth before he knew it. “I mean, as soon as we look through Bel’s apartment we’ll get out of your hair.” He pulled something from his pocket. “But there is just one more thing I need to discuss with you.”

  Guy was becoming like Columbo, dropping little tidbits in the midst of meaningless conversation. He pulled a long piece of wire out of his pocket, on the end of which dangled what looked like a tiny microphone. He screwed up his face, confused. It was the same look he got when puzzling over a piece of band music from back when we were in high school.

  “It looks like the Manor is bugged.”

  “Bugged?” Mom repeated.

  “Yes. Bugged. Miked. Being listened to,” Kevin said when it was clear that Mom had other thoughts on her mind. Roaches. Mice. Something worse on the vermin scale.

  Mom didn’t say anything. Dad let out a great gust of air that flooded the room with a garlic-tinged odor and Cargan went deep into himself to a place I wasn’t sure we would get him back from.

  Officer Penner came back from wherever he had been. “Searched all of the rooms, Detective. Every one is miked.”

  Mom looked as if she were about to faint. “Every one? Even the bedroom? I mean bedrooms? Like where Cargan sleeps?” she asked, making it immediately clear that she and Dad had been involved in something the likes of which none of us wanted to know about. Or it was just a standard night of lovemaking, but because we’re Irish and prone to hang-ups about that sort of thing she was still embarrassed.

  Officer Penner confirmed her suspicions. “All of the rooms, Mrs. McGrath.”

  I flashed on the length of wire in the bridal suite, something I had forgotten about until now.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “Someone has bugged the Manor and is living in the basement listening to us.”

  “That pretty much sums it up,” Kevin said.

  “And that person was able to dismantle their living situation but not the bugs between the time I ran up here and called you and when you started to investigate.”

  Kevin was impressed by my deductive skills. “Yes. That’s how I would describe it.” He asked my parents if he and Penner could look through the studios, my apartment, the rest of the Manor, one more time.

  “Of course, Detective,” Mom said, laying it on thick. I knew how she felt about Kevin, but in this situation her lack of respect for him lay hidden under the layer of humiliation she felt at standing in front of him in a gauzy kimono and high heels.

  Kevin and Penner left and it was just the four of us in the office. I looked at Cargan.

  “So, do you want to tell us what’s going on?”

  CHAPTER Thirty-two

  Cargan wasn’t talking, but there was no doubt in my mind that the setup in the basement belonged to him. He had appeared too quickly after hearing me shouting from down below and then disappeared for a time, ostensibly looking for an intruder. But like Mom he had a tell, and his was a deep rosiness that started at the collar of his Arsenal jersey and ended at the tips of his ears, something that had made him give away the locations of his ships in Stratego, even though he managed to beat me every time.

  There were no bugs in the studios, nor in my apartment, not that having one in my apartment would have been cause for alarm on my part. Unless the person bugging the place had an affinity for listening to me sing the sound track of The Sound of Music, which I did to chase away the blues every now and again, they weren’t hearing anything they hadn’t already heard. A can opening. The refrigerator door slamming shut when I spied lentil crap. The flush of a toilet. It seemed to me that what they might hear coming from Mom and Dad’s bedroom was much more scintillating, exciting in a way I didn’t want to think about.

  I stared Cargan down for a while, but he wasn’t budging. It was late. We were all tired. And I, for one, had had enough of this craziness, so I said good night and started back for the apartment. The cops had left. There were reports to be written, details to be noted and saved for additional work on the investigation. Nothing to see here, as they said; show’s over.

  Outside, I saw a shadow in the distance, standing by the stairs to my home, and recognized that it was Kevin. He waited until I was close, only the moon overhead illuminating us, to ask the question that had been on his mind for many years, I suspected.

  “Just how did your family become so weird?”

  Rather than become offended, I laughed. He was right; they were weird. And loud and judgmental and neurotic. It was a veritable treasure trove of dysfunction, all wrapped up in what should have been a pretty package: the gorgeous mother, the artistic—well, the jury was still out on that one—father; the fairly successful and independent brothers. And me, wherever I fit in. “I don’t know, Kevin.”

  “Is it my imagination, or are they getting stranger?” With the moon as a backdrop, he looked just as we did as teenagers, his hair hanging over his forehead, not a line on his face to indicate that we had aged.

  “Yep. Getting stranger. By the day.” I had the benefit of distance on my side, so I could compare the people I had grown up with the ones I knew now. Every idiosyncrasy had become magnified with age. It was probably the same for me, if I were prone to introspection. “Do you want to ask me anything else, Kevin?” I assumed he must have some other order of business; why else would he still be here? I started up the stairs. “I guess it’s good that there aren’t any bugs in my apartment, right?”

  “Yes, that’s great news.”

  “And you knew that Declan Morrison was really Declan McGrath.”

  He nodded.

  “And the texts? You know everything then.”

  “None of that really changes anything,” he said. “There’s still a dead guy and we still don’t know why. Or who did it.”

  I assumed he was behind me, but when I turned he was still at the bottom of the stairs. “This drought,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

  I stopped midway up and turned. “Yeah. I wanted to go swimming at the village pool and there’s not a drop of water in the place.” I laughed again. “All the better to see my mother’s face at the bottom.”

  “Is it your mother’s face? Everyone always thought so,” Kevin said. “I don’t think it really looks like her.”

  “When have you seen anything my father has done look like it’s supposed to?” I started back down the stairs. “That’s the hallmark of a Mal McGrath original.” I made my way down to the bottom step so that Kevin and I were the same height. “It’s my mom, all right, down to the freckle on her chin.”

  “She’s not quite so terrifying as a mermaid.”

  “That’s because you can outrun a mermaid, Kevin,” I said, ruffling his hair, an old, familiar gesture that didn’t seem completely out of place here. We had fallen into an old conversational pattern, new to the moment but completely part of our history, and something happened right then, a letting go that I wasn’t expecting.

  He leaned forward and put his hand at the back of my head, pulling me close. The kiss was sweet, like that first time in tenth grade, and, again, familiar. It was the only way I could describe it, words failing me as I drifted back to a time of kayaking in the summer, swim practice, band rehearsals, SATs. Eden Island and beer purloined from our parents’ “extra fridge,” usually in a basement or garage, stocked to the brim with barley, wheat, and hops. Of me and Kevin, Kevin and me, Amy a
long for the ride, the happy, self-anointed “third wheel,” or so I thought, not knowing that that third wheel wanted to move up in the ranks.

  I let it happen, when I thought about it afterward. It’s not as if I had wanted it or expected it, but I let it happen when it did, allowing myself to be swept along in a wave of nostalgia that made my heart ache at the thought of it. I didn’t know when it started and I wasn’t sure when it was going to end, if it was going to end, but the decision was made for us.

  “I guess I should have expected this,” a voice said, somewhere in the darkness, a voice with a lilting brogue that I recognized as Brendan Joyce’s. “I just thought it would take longer to happen.”

  I pulled away from Kevin so quickly that I nearly fell off the step, the sweet kiss tainted by the discovery of someone I cared about more deeply than I had cared to admit. Or forgotten to remember.

  “Brendan,” I said, coming off the step and seeing only his outline in the darkness. In his arms was the cat that he said he was coming back to find later that evening. I guessed that time was now. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I just repeated his name.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend, Hanson?” Brendan asked, the cat looking small in his big hands. “What would she think of this?” Although I couldn’t see his face, his voice was remarkably calm, given the situation. I wondered if he looked as calm as he sounded.

  “This is all my fault,” Kevin said, backing away from the steps. “I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go.” He walked toward his car and was out of the driveway, the gravel spraying like it always did, as he peeled out of Shamrock Manor and down the road toward the village.

  I was happy that it was so dark and that I couldn’t see Brendan’s disappointed face. I wasn’t sure what to say; luckily, he spoke first.

  “It’s okay, Bel,” he said. Off in the distance I heard a bird let out a loud caw somewhere along the river, probably looking for a safe place to land. I had had that, once, a safe place to land, but with my giving in to Kevin’s advance had lost it. I hoped it wasn’t for good. “I should have known that you two still had a thing for each other. I just feel bad for Mary Ann. I’m new to this. To you. But she…,” he started, trailing off.

  “But we don’t,” I said, the protest not sounding quite as vehement as I would have liked. “We don’t. Have a thing for each other, that is.”

  His sigh was a mix of disappointment and exasperation. “You should sort this out,” he said right before the cat jumped out of his arms and ran back to the woods. “Jaysus, Felix!” he said, the cat’s departure the final straw, the last indignity.

  I watched him walk away, wondering where his car was, why he was on foot. While I thought he would head to the woods, it seemed he wanted off the property of Shamrock Manor as quickly as possible.

  What a difference a couple of weeks makes, I had thought earlier. With me feeling the way I did now, it didn’t feel that different at all.

  CHAPTER Thirty-three

  I thought that throwing myself into my work would be a good counterpoint to the previous day’s unpleasantness, all of it. I went to a local farmer’s market and was perusing the tomato selection—still young in the season but not bad—when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  This just keeps getting better and better, I thought as I took in Mary Ann D’Amato’s angelic face, her spotless scrubs, these with playful kittens on them. She was holding a zucchini in one hand, her purse in the other. My hand tightened around the tomato I was holding and seeds spilled out into my palm.

  “Hey, lady,” the kid behind the tomato table said, “that’s not a stress ball. It’s a tomato.”

  I put it down. “Got it. I’ll take that one,” I said, picking out a five from another bushel, “and these. Sorry for the mess,” I said, noticing tomato juice on the twenty I handed the kid. I turned back to Mary Ann. “Hi, Mary Ann.” My voice sounded stilted and unnatural and I had to listen carefully to myself to make sure I hadn’t said, Yes, I kissed Kevin. And I liked it!

  Mary Ann’s placid expression told me that I had said what I intended. “Bel, I had such a great time that night you came over. Can we do it again?”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  “And Kevin said you’re dating Brendan Joyce, so we could have a double date instead? What do you think?”

  My mouth was open, but no words came out.

  “I have been working so much and I really need to get some kind of social life,” she said. “Kevin has been begging me to cut back on my hours and I should think about that. When he told me you were dating Brendan, I thought that it would be perfect for the four of us to get together.”

  Her face was so earnest that I really didn’t have the heart to tell her that there was no more Bel and Brendan, that we were back to just Bel. So I lied. “That would be great,” I said, figuring that this conversation about getting together would be like the ones I had in New York: always promised, never executed. This double-date idea would fall by the wayside like so many other plans that materialized at bars, on subway platforms, and in Whole Foods.

  “How about tomorrow?” she asked. “I just finished my thirty-six-hour shift, so I have three days off in a row.”

  That’s what she looked like after a thirty-six-hour shift? That was just not fair. I smoothed down my T-shirt and ran a hand through my unruly red locks. “You know what?” I said. “I’ll call you. After I speak to Brendan,” I said, not mentioning that I might not ever speak to Brendan again.

  “Great.” She leaned in and gave me a kiss. “It’s so great to see you again, Bel. So great to have you back in town.”

  “Really?” I said. “We’ve been keeping Kevin mighty busy over at the Manor.” And now in more ways than one, I thought.

  She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s his job and he loves it.” She moved her purse from one hand to the other and put back the zucchini. “Call me when you know if you’re free,” she said, and gave me one last beatific smile before heading down another aisle of the market.

  I put the tomatoes in my eco-friendly bag and picked up a couple of loaves of fresh bread figuring I would drown my sorrows in some bruschetta, a bottle of red a part of my anticipated feast as well. On the way home, I wondered how I would finesse all of this with Brendan while keeping my distance from Kevin, trying desperately to sort out my feelings for both men as I navigated the road on my way back to Foster’s Landing.

  I stopped by The Dugout and dropped off a couple of tomatoes.

  “So, Oogie,” I said, grabbing a knife out of the block on the counter in the kitchen. “This is how you cut a tomato for the BLT we talked about.” I demonstrated with the less-than-effective knife how thin the slices should be.

  “I think they should be thicker,” he said, standing behind me, looking over my shoulder.

  Who was I to argue? It was his restaurant. “Just a suggestion,” I said, fanning out the slices.

  He grabbed a loaf of bread from the refrigerator. “So, how’s it going here, Bel? You starting to fit in again? Adopt the Landing state of mind?”

  Had he asked me that a few days ago, I would have said it was going great. Now half of my family weren’t speaking to me, I had kissed Kevin Hanson and lost Brendan Joyce, and I wasn’t sure any of this, the coming home, had been a particularly good idea. I smiled, but my heart felt heavy. “Great, Oogie. I’m loving it here.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Really. It’s fine. How are people liking the new menu items?” I asked.

  “BLTs are a hit. Everything else…”

  “Not great?”

  “Ah, it’s fine.”

  “No, we’ll work on it,” I said. “Let me come up with some other bar-friendly options for you.” I put the knife back in the block.

  “Where do you think she went, Bel?” he asked. “Amy,” he added, as if I wouldn’t know to whom he was referring.

  I couldn’t look at him. We had been over this. “I don’t know, Oogie.”

&nb
sp; He waited, as if there would be more.

  “I really don’t,” I said, before pushing through the swinging doors into the bar, where I felt several sets of eyes on me before I burst out onto the street. She was dead. Why couldn’t he see that? Girls like Amy don’t disappear like that, never to be seen again.

  Back at the apartment, I was still a little unhinged but I brought my purchases inside and started chopping tomatoes as soon as everything was unpacked, not being able to shake the feeling that my time at The Dugout, the idea that I could help, was a mistake. Maybe Jed had been right and I did feel guilty. It would be only natural, though I had suppressed the feeling for the years in between when I had originally left and now, when I had come back.

  In between the slapping on the wood cutting board and the staccato thoughts running through my head, I heard the sound of footsteps coming up the rickety wooden steps and then the click-clack of high heels on the deck outside.

  “I’m back!”

  Caleigh. Good God. She was the last person I wanted to see right now, tan and rested and sensually fulfilled from her time in Bermuda, the likely recipient of many a massage, back rub, and fruity drink served ocean side. I had made the mistake of looking up the resort at which she was staying; it was all pastel cottages, personal valets, and five-star dining. Jealousy isn’t a good look on me, but there you have it: I was jealous, particularly after the last couple of weeks I had had with my family and the Manor and the local police. With a man in uniform and one who just wore a camp director shirt. I gave in to my envy just a bit, taking in her relaxed face, her tanned calves coming out of a pair of Tory Burch Bermuda shorts, her outfit topped off with a pair of Jimmy Choo sandals.

  Wow. It hadn’t taken her long to fall into the role of rich Westchester wife.

  She came into the apartment and, as always, sniffed disapprovingly in the direction of the Ikea sofa with the ketchup stain, my laminate kitchen cabinets, the rug with the hole in it at the foot of my bed. Even before she had come into the money and life that being Mark Chesterton’s wife afforded, she had found my apartment “drab” and “depressing.” She should have seen my fifth-floor walk-up on Avenue C. She would have loved that, but she didn’t go east of Broadway when she went below 14th Street and that had prevented her from seeing a pretty nice apartment that awaited me after hoofing it up the stairs.