Bel of the Brawl--A Belfast McGrath Mystery

by Maggie McConnon

  Lieutenant D’Amato, Kevin’s boss and, with any luck for Mary Ann D’Amato, his future father-in-law, looked at me sadly. “There must be something else, Bel,” he said. “Anything.” He rubbed his hands over his five-o’clock-shadowed cheeks. “Maybe you remember something else?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t.” I studied my hands, the scars from the little nicks that I had sustained over the years, the faded burns dotting my knuckles, the price paid for doing what I loved. Inside, there were scars, too, of the emotional variety, but I didn’t let anyone see those. “What’s next?”

  Kevin spoke for the first time since we had entered the office. “We’ll send people out there to see if they can find something else. Canvass the area again. Ask more questions.”

  It all made sense. But it wouldn’t help. “She’s dead” I wanted to say but didn’t. “You’ll never find her” I wanted to add. Instead, I asked, “Are we done here?” When neither of them answered, I added, “I don’t have anything else to say.”

  Lieutenant D’Amato stood and looked at me, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. “Okay, Belfast,” he said. “We may need a statement. You may want to bring your brother.”

  I laughed. “Which one?” Did he mean Derry, who was still angry over Cargan doing a quick segue into a reel instead of a jig during the wedding, or Feeney, who was dating a manager at Old Navy who wrote songs called “My Love Is Deeper than a Bad Paper Cut”? Surely he didn’t mean Cargan, who up until a few months prior I had assumed was a professional musician, not an undercover cop. Using my powers of deduction, I finally figured it out. “You mean Arney? The divorce attorney?” I didn’t add that he wasn’t a very good one at that.

  “Well, yes,” the lieutenant said, dead serious. “You know, just for support.”

  “No, thank you.” I started for the back door, holding it open. “I don’t need support.”

  But that night, when they were gone, and I was all alone in my apartment next to Shamrock Manor, I realized I did need support, the walls closing in, the thoughts of my best friend and her whereabouts only one of the things I could think of when I closed my eyes, the other being the sight of a newly married man, happier than he had ever been it seemed, the life in him draining out on the floor, falling onto my feet.

  CHAPTER Five

  Ah, Sundays. The Day of Our Lord. A day of rest. A day for a drive up the river to a quaint little town where brunch is on the menu, Bloody Marys flowing. In my family, though, it was a day that was different, a day in which none of the things I would like to do with my Sunday were done. It was a day for the weekly McGrath family dinner, which was neither a day of rest nor reminiscent of our Lord; it was when my entire family got together to talk about the wedding the day before and ruminate on past hurts, recriminations coming to the fore of every conversation.

  Over Mom’s lamb, everyone was subdued, tired of hearing of death at the Manor, wearied of seeing Kevin Hanson in his sport coat, writing little notes in a notepad that he probably hashed over when he was back at the station house.

  My mother’s sister, Aunt Helen, was there, as was her daughter and my first cousin, Caleigh, a bride herself only a few months before, a guest having been accidentally murdered by Aunt Helen’s boyfriend, Frank, during the reception. It was still a bit uncomfortable for all of us, particularly me. As I watched Dad assess Caleigh’s growing belly, a mosquito bite of a bump really, a “honeymoon baby” gestating inside, all I could think about was Caleigh having slept with the murdered guest two nights before the wedding and wondering just what the little tyke would look like when it emerged from her womb.

  We sat around the table, everyone picking disconsolately at their lamb and roasted potatoes. Aunt Helen, in her inimitable way, broke the tension with a question.

  “So, Oona, another death at the Manor,” she said, delicately patting the sides of her mouth with her napkin. “How will you continue booking events?”

  “Give them away for free, obviously,” Feeney said, looking at my father. Dad was the king of the discount and that usually meant that the band, first and foremost, got stiffed. They were family after all and Dad felt as if they could be the first to take the financial hit.

  “Now, Feeney, that is not true,” Mom said, putting her own napkin atop her plate of unfinished food, her appetite gone. “We only cut the Casey wedding by ten percent.”

  “It is true and it’s not good,” Feeney said. “Do you know how hard we work?”

  It was an old, familiar rant. The boys had worked hard but at this point in their long collective career, they were kind of mailing it in, Cargan’s reinvention of old classics taking predictable turns, the other brothers reluctant to learn anything new.

  “And didn’t we get a huge tip?” Derry asked.

  “Yes. Ten grand,” Dad said, the only family member unaffected, at least appetitewise, by the previous day’s tragedy. He shoveled a forkful of food into his mouth and we waited while he chewed and swallowed. “We’ll settle that up this week.”

  “That’s the biggest tip we’ve ever gotten, Dad,” I said. “Mr. Casey is that wealthy?”

  “He is,” Dad said, helping himself to another glass of Malbec, this one brought by Caleigh, who smiled demurely when Dad said how much he was enjoying it. “Import/export.”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked. “What does he import?”

  “Yeah, and even more, what does he export?” Derry asked, fancying himself the business brain in the group.

  “I don’t know,” Dad said, already tiring of the conversation. “And I don’t care. All I know is that up until that poor lad had a heart attack or whatever it was, the family was happy with everything at the Manor. And that’s what’s most important to me.”

  Cargan pulled a phone from his pocket and started poking at it. “No phones at the table, Cargan,” Mom said as if she were talking to a teenager and not an adult male.

  Cargan held the phone in front of my face and there it was: Casey Import/Export. A very unoriginal name for what was apparently a very unoriginal business. They imported Irish food—tea, butter, blood pudding and the like—and exported New York City trinkets, the I LOVE NEW YORK T-shirt being most popular, it would seem. Pegeen Casey and her brother James Casey were featured prominently on their Web site, the toothsome pair standing beside a large ship on the water in an East Coast port, looking tanned and responsible.

  “Well, I would definitely import or export with them,” I said, making my serious brother break out into a smile. “They look very capable of importing and exporting.”

  “Cargan. Phone,” Mom said, motioning with her hand. “Put it away.”

  “Casey?” Caleigh asked. “Import/Export?”

  We all turned and looked at her. “Yes,” I said. “Did they import something for you?”

  “No,” she said. “I know Pegeen Casey. We are in the same chapter of the Junior League.”

  “Of course you are,” Feeney said. “And did you fund-raise for the same animal shelter?” he asked, sarcastic as usual.

  “As a matter of fact, we did!” Caleigh said, brightening at the thought of her well-heeled friend. “She’s lovely. But I haven’t seen her in ages. She’s missed several meetings.”

  “And the husband?” I asked. “Gerry? Did you ever meet him?”

  “I did,” Caleigh said. “Lovely man. Gerard? He’s the one who died?”

  “God rest his soul,” Dad said.

  “Afraid so,” I said.

  “Oh, I feel so bad,” Caleigh said. “He adored Pegeen. As he should. Should have, I mean. She’s wonderful.” She looked down at her belly as if to confirm Pegeen’s wonderfulness. “She’ll be snatched up in a second,” she said.

  “As if that’s what she’s thinking about, Caleigh,” Feeney said. “Getting married right after losing her own husband at her wedding.”

  He rarely makes a good point, but I had to give him that.

  While the family talked a
mong themselves about Gerard Mason and his unfortunate demise, I turned to Cargan, whispering in his ear. “The girls mentioned something to me yesterday about Mr. Casey being Irish mafia.” There had been a lot of whispering during Kevin’s visit.

  Cargan turned toward me. “Really?” He went back to his food. “That’s interesting,” he said, forking some lamb into his mouth. “But probably not true.”

  We went back to eating in silence for a few minutes until Mom spoke again. “So, Caleigh. The subway tile in the guest bathroom. How is that coming along?”

  Caleigh was thrilled that someone was asking about her suburban home renovation. “It’s fabulous, Aunt Oona. Just like you would see in a 1920s home.”

  “You always have had such wonderful style, Caleigh,” Mom said, giving me a pointed glance. I lived in an apartment over my dad’s art studio that was in serious need of renovation but I didn’t know how that was my fault.

  At the other end of the table, Derry groaned. Caleigh’s status as best family member ever was a bone of contention and the one thing that bound my brothers and me together.

  “Well, thank you, Aunt Oona,” Caleigh said. “Your opinion means so much to me.” She looked around the table. “I can’t wait to have you all down for dinner.”

  “Yes, Oona,” Helen said. “We were thinking…”

  “Uh-oh,” Derry said around a mouthful of potatoes.

  Helen shot him a look. “Yes, we were thinking that maybe we would shake things up? Move Sunday dinner around the family? Have it at different homes?”

  My brothers and I turned to stone, Arney’s fork halfway to his mouth when he became paralyzed. Move Sunday dinner? That was sacrilege. We sat in terrified silence as we waited for Mom’s answer.

  “Well, Helen, you know…” Mom started, losing steam and falling silent. She wasn’t going to do this in front of everyone, but if I were Aunt Helen, and thank the Lord Jesus that I’m not, I’d be scared. Mom was simmering, her blood slowly coming to a boil. She was the grande dame, not Helen. And Helen had best not forget that.

  Helen continued. “It’s just that Frank…”

  Frank. The guy who had shoved one of Caleigh’s wedding guests over the balcony at the Manor a few months earlier. It always came back to “poor Frank” and “everything he had been through.” I liked Frank well enough but I really wasn’t jonesing to spend any more time with him than necessary. He had killed a guy in a ham-fisted attempt at chivalry but, ultimately, in cold blood. I really didn’t think we needed to spend more time together than absolutely necessary.

  Mom put her fork down. “Yes, Helen, I understand. He’s under house arrest, he wears an ankle monitor, he can’t leave. I get all of that.” Frank had had a great attorney, one not named Arney McGrath. Mom looked at her sister; the case was closed. “Sunday dinner will remain here. We’ll see Frank when he is no longer incarcerated.”

  “He’s not incarcerated,” Helen said.

  “Well, he kind of is,” Derry said. “And he kind of killed someone.”

  Helen threw her napkin down on her plate and stood. “Well, I’ll let him know how terribly concerned you all are about his well-being. Caleigh, let’s go.” She started for the door.

  Caleigh looked at all of us, an apology almost making its way from her brain to her lips before her mother shut her down. “Caleigh. Now.”

  Dad stood, the soft touch among the more hard-hearted. “Helen, please. Don’t leave like this.”

  “Mal, this is between my sister and I,” Helen said.

  Together, my brothers and I shouted, “Me!”, all having been taught by nuns who believed that diagramming sentences was the only way to learn good grammar. Mom shot us daggers as she stood, going into the foyer of our family home to talk to her sister, try to smooth things over. It was only moments later that we heard the front door slam.

  Feeney looked across the table at me. “Import/export. We import family and export hard feelings.”

  CHAPTER Six

  Brendan Joyce finally surfaced and I had mixed emotions. I hadn’t seen him since the day at the river, a little over a week ago now. My heart fluttered still at the sight of him but, at the same time, his physical absence had me perplexed. Sure, there had been texts but it wasn’t the same. He had been my boyfriend. Or so I thought at the time.

  Monday morning, while I prepped in the kitchen, the one place that had not been designated a “crime scene” (it was a heart attack, I wanted to scream … or something) and open for my use, he made an appearance, his curly hair wet and plastered against his head. His navy oxford brought out the blue in his eyes and his tie looked as if it had been hastily done, the narrow part sticking out from under the fatter top piece.

  I didn’t look up from the pasta I was hand rolling. “Shouldn’t you be at school?” I asked. His texts to me indicated that he was spending so much time at the high school, getting ready for the Fall Art Show, that he was “knee-deep in alligators,” an expression he had picked up from me.

  “I should,” he said, his voice still tinged with a hint of the old country, the place he had lived until he was a teen and had landed in Foster’s Landing. It was one of the things that had first attracted me to him; that and that he wasn’t my ex-fiancé. He was quiet and kind and small-town, all of the things that Ben Dykstra hadn’t been; that appealed to me after my life in the city and its downward spiral. “I wanted to see you.”

  “Bad timing.” I cut the pasta into gnocchi pillows. “Another bad stretch here at the Manor.”

  “I heard something about that. What happened?”

  “Groom didn’t make it to the end.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yep,” I said. “He was carried out by the EMTs on a stretcher. If he was having second thoughts about getting married, that was a pretty dramatic way to handle it.”

  The blood drained from his face. “That’s awful. Where did it happen? Not in the middle of the reception, I hope.”

  “No, ladies’ room. I found him,” I said. “Not sure why he was there.”

  “What happened?”

  “Heart attack, they think.”

  He chewed on that for a minute. “Nice guy, the groom?”

  I thought back to my few interactions with Gerry Mason and decided that yes, he was. I thought, too, of Pegeen’s face when Cargan shepherded her to the ambulance, still in her wedding gown and climbing up with my brother’s help into the back of the vehicle. “Yes, he was,” I said. “Where’ve you been, Joyce?”

  “I told you, Bel. School.” He ran a hand through his wet hair. “Start of school is busy.”

  “Where’d you go? That day?” I asked. “You left me…” What? Alone? Hanging? Without a friend? There was no end to that sentence that didn’t sound pathetic so I let it go. The last time we had been together had been that day Amy’s things had been found, me walking into the river to see what the police had found beneath its now-shallow depths and him leaving without letting me know he was gone. I didn’t know, for the past days, whether he was gone for good or gone for just a little while, but it didn’t matter: he had left and taken with him any trust that we had built up over the course of our short, but intense, relationship. Whereas we had been spending nearly part of every day together in the summer and leading up to the new school year, we hadn’t seen each other in what for me—for us—was a long time.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was wrong of me.”

  “It was,” I said. “I thought that maybe we were done.”

  He looked stricken at the thought. “Done? You and me?”

  “What else would I have thought?”

  He chewed on that for a minute, decided I was right. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. I was scared.”

  “Scared?”

  He looked as if he were choosing his words carefully, wondering how to put it. He finally decided just to blurt it out. “I didn’t like it, Bel. I didn’t like it one bit,” he said.

  “What? Didn’t like what?” I asked.<
br />
  “The river. The stuff they found. What it made me remember.”

  I put down my knife and looked up. “What did you remember?”

  He shook his head. I noticed that the water from his freshly shampooed head had soaked the collar of his ironed oxford. I grabbed a clean dish towel from the rack by the sink and put it around his neck, soaking up as much wet as I could. I resisted the urge to wrap my arms around his waist, lay my head against his back, and feel the warmth coming from him. To drink in the scent of a guy I had fallen for, hard.

  “Remember what?” I asked again.

  “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head again. “Everything.”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked, wringing the towel out in the sink. “Nothing? Everything?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand, Bel,” he said. “I know you were there. I know you saw her last.”

  “Did you also know that I woke up on that island alone that day and that all of my friends had left me? If you knew that, you never would have left me there last week. You never would have left and not called me to let me know you were okay.” I thought of the text messages and the voice mails I had left him and wondered why I had only heard about school, the Fall Art Show. “Or what you were thinking.”

  He was silent. Contrite even. He looked down at his shoes, nice tie-up shoes for work, shined to a high gloss. “You don’t know because you left here when it happened. It changed everything. It changed this town.”

  “I was here long enough to know that, Brendan. I know how everything changed. I know how everyone was sad and nervous and wondering just where she had gone. That wasn’t lost on me before I left.” I started cutting up some carrots, leaving the pasta to the side of the prep table. Lots to do before the following Saturday’s wedding and not a lot of time. I was doing a carrot soup as an appetizer, little shooters in Shamrock Manor shot glasses, and for at least a hundred and fifty guests, that was a lot of carrots. “I also remember how everyone treated me and sometimes it wasn’t nice. So, you can forgive me if I’m not sympathetic to how you felt after everything that happened.”