Bel of the Brawl--A Belfast McGrath Mystery

by Maggie McConnon

  Donnie grimaced. “Sorry, Bel. Some old business that needs attending to,” Donnie said. He went to work in my bedroom while I sat with Mugsy Calhoun, going through every inch of the room, the sound of drawers opening and closing, clothes and shoes being flung around willy-nilly.

  “Hey!” I called in to him. “That’s my stuff!” I thought back to discovering the open kitchen drawers. “You were already in here,” I said to Donnie who had finished in the bedroom and was now in the kitchen. “God, I was so stupid. I wanted to help you.”

  “Sorry again, Bel,” Donnie said while tossing a colander into the sink.

  I looked at Mugsy. “And what kind of mother names their kid ‘Mugsy’?” I said.

  For the first time since he’d arrived in my apartment, I saw Mugsy Calhoun have a flash of anger, real and terrifying. “A proper Irish ma, not that it’s any of your business,” he said.

  Great. Now I had insulted the mother. Good going, Bel.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s short for Martin.” He looked away as he gifted me with that little tidbit.

  I trained my eyes on the back door, hearing footsteps on the outside stairs. Mom and Dad appeared, one looking sleepier than the next, Mom in a silk bathrobe with kitten heels—her preferred nighttime look, I had come to find out over the summer—and Dad in boxer shorts and a long T-shirt. Dad pounded on the back door. “Jaysus, Bel! What’s going on? We heard a car alarm and then someone took off in the Vanagon.”

  I tried to give them a look to tell them to hit the road and head back to the Manor but Donnie Kinneally left the kitchen and opened the back door, greeting them as if they were long-lost friends. “Mr. and Mrs. McGrath! How nice to see you.”

  Mom and Dad spoke at the same time.

  “Donnie,” Mom said. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  While Dad asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be in the hospital?”

  “Feeling much better,” he said, and motioned toward the living room. “Why don’t you join Bel and my friend Mr. Calhoun in the parlor?”

  Mom and Dad walked in. Mom crossed her arms. “I didn’t realize you were entertaining, Belfast. I would have dressed accordingly.” Mom looked at the broken glass on the floor and then back at me.

  “I’m not entertaining, Mom,” I said. “Mr. Calhoun here has a gun in his pocket and Mr. Kinneally is looking for something that Pauline had in her possession that is”—I leaned in toward the bedroom and yelled—“definitely not here!”

  Calhoun stood up and offered a hand to Dad, who refused it, putting his hands behind his back. “Mr. McGrath, it’s a pleasure.”

  Mom narrowed her eyes. “You were at the Casey wedding,” she said.

  “For a moment,” Calhoun said. “I wanted to pay my respects to the bride and groom but business intervened.”

  I hooked a thumb in his direction. “He’s a mobster.”

  Mom gasped while Calhoun refuted that notion. “I’m in the import/export business.”

  “Oh, just like Mr. Casey,” Dad said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, two guys just happening to be in the “import/export” business.

  “And what does this have to do with us?” Mom asked.

  Calhoun decided how much he would tell us. “I’m looking for the girl. She has something that belongs to me.”

  “And what is that?” Mom asked, trying desperately to maintain a steely posture but wilting a little bit at the thought of the gun in the guy’s pocket, her eyes trained on his hands.

  “Just a key. Nothing more.”

  Kinneally came out of the bedroom, his work there complete. He went back to his work in the kitchen, tossing pots and pans onto the floor, a stick of Irish butter into the sink on top of the colander. Seriously, I was going to kill this guy the first chance I got. That was expensive butter.

  Dad looked at me just before he fell to the floor, managing to find a place that wasn’t covered in broken glass, his body convulsing on my could-have-been-cleaner area rug. He clutched his chest. “Help me!” he screamed, his voice high-pitched and strangled.

  I jumped up and went to his side, bending over to see if I should perform CPR. I didn’t care if Mugsy Calhoun shot me; my only concern was my stricken father. Back in my restaurant days, I had taken a course on first aid and a variety of lifesaving techniques, never in my wildest dreams imagining that I would have to perform one of them on my father. I ripped open the neck of his T-shirt, thinking that the neck looked a little tight, and studied his face, only to be shocked at what he did, what I saw.

  The old guy winked at me.

  “Oh, Dad,” I said, continuing the drama. “Hang on!” I thumped his chest and counted out loud, turning around to see that Kinneally and Calhoun were standing together in deep conversation, deciding whether or not to let my father die, talking about whether or not he had anything to do with anything. I poured on the drama for effect, hoping I wasn’t overdoing it. “Don’t you die on me!”

  Kinneally was talking of my parents’ hospitality in a bid to get us true, professional medical attention, but Calhoun was a viper, and didn’t care. Neither noticed that while they decided the fate of my father, who they didn’t realize was quicker and smarter and more clever than they would ever be, Mom, ever vigilant, held a massive Lenox vase over her head that I didn’t even know I had, her arms cut and muscled from years of doing and teaching Pilates. She brought the vase crashing down on Calhoun’s head, much to the surprise of Kinneally, who started for the door. Shards of porcelain flew around the apartment as did a bunch of bills, fifties and hundreds mostly, the currency landing on every surface of the room. Donnie looked at me, wide-eyed, and started to run after the bills in the air, but seeing that I had other ideas, that I was about to take flight and bring him down, he changed his mind.

  Gazelle, my ass.

  I got up and started after him, remembering the tackles that my brother Derry had taught me what seemed like a thousand years ago. I lunged at the guy’s back and wrapped my arms around his knees, bringing him down like a sack of potatoes, my heft covering his thin frame and trapping him on the hallway floor.

  Dad pulled me off and grabbed Kinneally by the hair, bringing him up and throwing him against the wall. “We took you in. And this is how you repay us?”

  Mom was on the phone to the Foster’s Landing Police Department by the time Dad returned Donnie to the couch. Calhoun was making noise on the floor, still not completely cogent, as Dad searched his pockets, coming up with a very scary-looking knife and a very tiny gun that I knew could have killed me with one shot despite its toylike size. Dad hauled him to his feet as well, tossing him onto the couch beside Donnie, the two of them looking not quite as scary as before, bruised and battered from a manhandling from my father.

  Dad held the gun like a pro and I didn’t want to think why that might be. I think Dad had a few secrets of his own, secrets that I hoped never to learn. He pulled up a kitchen chair, straight-backed, and sat there, the gun pointed at the two louses on the couch, and asked them the question that I had been thinking but would never have gotten an answer to had my parents not arrived when they did. Gone was my dad the overreactor, the blusterer, the one everyone tried to keep things from because he was so emotional. In his place was a confident, wily guy who looked a lot imposing, sitting there in his boxer shorts and ripped T-shirt, a gun in his meaty paws.

  He studied Donnie and Calhoun intently. “So, tell us. What the hell is going on here?”

  CHAPTER Forty-two

  I was starting to consider the Foster’s Landing Police Department’s station house my second home. For the second time in a week, I sat in a chair in the waiting area hoping that I could find out what was going on firsthand from someone whose only thought was to tell lie after lie after lie. It was the next morning and I knew Kevin had pulled a long night dealing with Donnie and Mugsy, but he looked as handsome as ever when he exited the conference room and strode across the room toward me, a smile on his face
. He pulled me into the hallway, away from the prying eyes of Francie McGee and the rest of the people who had arrived for the eight-to-four shift. I had told Kevin and Lieutenant D’Amato that the money wasn’t mine, that I didn’t even know I had a vase in the apartment, never mind a vase filled with what turned out to be twenty-five hundred dollars.

  He dropped his voice to an excited whisper. “That guy is a genuine gangster!” he said.

  He was a little more enthusiastic about that than I would have liked or thought. “You like that?”

  “Well, I never thought I’d have a gangster to question here in the Landing. It’s kind of strange,” he said, “but good strange!”

  It was then that I noticed that he was overcaffeinated and under-rested. The events of the last few weeks, coupled with the all-nighter, had made him a little cuckoo. “I think you need some rest, Kevin,” I said, putting a hand on his arm.

  “Who needs rest?” he said, looking more than a little crazy. “I’ve got work to do!”

  “Did you find out anything?” I asked. Cargan had come back empty-handed shortly after our run-in with Mugsy and Donnie, Pauline once again in the wind.

  “Oh, not too much but we’re going to keep them here until we find out something.” He looked at me. “Did you know Calhoun was at the Casey wedding?”

  “Yes, I remembered,” I said. “Do you think that’s significant?”

  “It’s gotta be, right?” he said. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”

  “Are you still thinking that Gerry Mason was poisoned?” I asked. Pauline had told him what she had told me; I made sure of that by repeating her assertions about poisonous mushrooms.

  “Yeah, she told us that, Bel,” he said. “I don’t know that we’ll ever know. That ship has sailed, medically.”

  As I walked back to the Manor, I thought about everything I had seen and been told over the last few weeks. Pauline hadn’t told me one true thing about herself; why would I believe that she was right about Gerry Mason having been poisoned? We were back at square one. A poisoned groom, a girl who was going to get my parents into a heap of trouble if she surfaced and if the real authorities—not Kevin—found out about my parents’ hiring practices at the Manor. Gangsters and guys with gambling debts and pneumonia. Lots of stories, lots of situations. Every detail led to a dead end. What a waste of a couple of weeks. As I walked along, I decided that I didn’t care where Pauline had gone. I would help Colleen and Eileen get legal, keep my parents out of trouble, and right the ship that was Shamrock Manor. We were almost there, Calhoun and Kinneally in police custody; the rest would fall into place eventually.

  I trudged up the hill to the Manor, wondering how I would pull together a down payment for a new car. It was time to start acting like an adult, get a proper savings account and start putting money away for my future. I couldn’t stay here forever. The situation was fine for right now but long-term? That wasn’t going to work. I had to think of a plan. Life outside of the Manor should be my goal, as hurt and wounded as I felt when I had returned home, feelings that were definitely abating but that would take some time to go away for good.

  My phone pinged in my pocket and I saw that Brendan had texted. “A drink later?” he asked.

  “Most definitely,” I texted back, thinking that getting our relationship on the right track would be the first thing I would do to start my new life here once again. He had apologized and explained what had happened that day and I had no reason not to believe him. I would ask him why he had never told me he had been on the island that night with me, Amy, Kevin—everyone—and get a truthful answer, I was sure. We would clear the slate and pick up where we had left off, moving forward instead of looking backward.

  It all made perfect sense, the world I had constructed in my ambulatory daydreams. I was so lost in thought, thinking of all the answers I could get and the questions I would never know the answers to that I almost didn’t see the black BMW speeding toward me, coming from the Manor and going down the steep hill at a speed that Dad wouldn’t consider safe, the driver ignoring the signs the man had posted saying TAKE IT SLOW! painted in his scrawl.

  It was Pauline. She slowed down and finally stopped when she saw me, rolling down the window. “Can’t thank you enough, Bel!” she said, a smile on her face.

  “For what?” I asked. Cargan’s phrase “criminals are stupid” floated through my brain. She had been smart enough to elude my brother the night before.

  “For getting those two eejits out of the way,” she said, holding her arm stiffly out of the window. “Don’t come any closer.”

  I stopped in the middle of the road and looked at her, her face full of glee. “Donnie and Calhoun?” I asked.

  I thought back to the night before. “They came to my home. They wanted to hurt me. Said they were looking for something. Know anything about that, Pauline?” I asked.

  “Oh, I know all about it, Bel.” She warned me again to stay where I was, noticing that I was drifting closer to the car.

  “And what was it?” I asked. “Please, God, tell me that you didn’t put drugs in my apartment.”

  She laughed, throwing her head back, her graceful neck white and smooth. It was a neck I wanted to choke at that very moment. “No, not drugs. It was the money, Bel. I needed a safe place to keep it and your place seemed as good a place as any.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “When what?” she asked.

  The low hum of the car’s engine was the only sound out on the road. “When did you put it there?” I asked.

  “Been putting it there for weeks,” she said. “In that old cookie jar on top of the cabinets. The vase, too.”

  “What cookie jar?” I asked. “I didn’t even know I had a cookie jar. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know I had a vase until last night.”

  “I put that there,” Pauline said. “It was my mum’s. Saw that it was broken. What happened?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” I asked. “You already know that Donnie and Calhoun are in jail so you probably can figure out the rest.

  “And incidentally, how did you smuggle a giant vase into my apartment?” I asked. “Without me noticing?”

  “Ah, Bel. Poor sweet Bel. You hardly notice anything,” she said.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “I notice a lot.” Maybe she was right. Maybe everything that had happened right under my nose was my own fault for not noticing.

  “Heck, I’m only down twenty-five hundred. That was just the money I couldn’t fit behind your toilet.”

  “My toilet?” I asked. “You hid money behind my toilet? Mugsy Calhoun’s money?”

  “It was all my money,” she said. “I earned that money. It was all mine.”

  “Earned” wasn’t really the right word. “Donnie’s gambling debts?”

  “Well, yes, there were those. Eejit was blackmailing me. Told me he’d call the cops and tell them I was illegal, get me deported, unless I coughed up the money he owed Mugsy. But I knew if he found me, they’d kill me.”

  “Kill you?” I asked. None of this was making sense, not one single, solitary detail of her ridiculous story.

  “Mugsy told him he’d let him off the hook if he found me and brought me back. And we both knew what would happen.” She turned and looked out the front window of the car. “He told me that later.” Clearly, she was disappointed in Donnie’s behavior if not his lack of intellectual prowess.

  Criminals are stupid. Cargan was right. Again.

  “And why is Mugsy after you? Why does he want you back so badly?”

  “Ah, Bel. There’s the story right there. I broke his heart. And he wants it fixed.”

  I didn’t even know what that meant but having had a broken heart myself at different points in my life, I thought about how I had wanted it fixed, how I had gone about fixing it. Eating too much, sometimes drinking too much. Finally, coming back to my family, to my childhood home. “That’s why you needed to leave. Why you wanted to ‘get gone
,’ as you say,” I said. I looked around. Still no one in sight. “So you blackmailed everyone around you to get a little nest egg so you could start a new life somewhere. Correct?” I asked. The sun was beating down on my head and I was tired but I think I was starting to put the pieces together.

  Pauline shrugged.

  “He said you have a key,” I said.

  “I do,” she said. “And it’s in a safe place. You’ve got one, too.”

  “I do? Where is it? What’s it to?” I asked.

  “Enough, Bel.” She looked straight ahead. “It’s insurance. It lets you know that I trusted you and that you’ll protect me if anything happens to me.”

  I started to move closer to the car.

  “Close enough. And now,” she said, putting the car into drive, “I am going to ‘get gone.’”

  “Wait,” I said, putting my hands on the car door. “Did you take our tip? The ten grand?”

  “Bel, I’m sorry. Your parents were wonderful to me. Your family has been terrific as well. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

  So there it was. “I knew it,” I said. “Listen, you’ll never outrun Mugsy Calhoun, Pauline,” I said. “Guys like that have their tentacles reaching out everywhere.” I had seen The Godfather, Parts I, II, and III. Mobsters were wily. And well connected.

  She gunned the engine. “Wanna bet?” she asked, rolling up the window and speeding down the hill, leaving me standing on the side of the road wondering how much of her story I could believe. Where she would go. If I would ever see her again.

  Later, in my apartment, I started to clean up the mess from the night before. Glass had reached every corner of the apartment, leaving scary shards on almost every surface. The cookie jar where Pauline had hidden her largesse, the cookie jar I never knew I had, sat on the counter, the top off, the googly eyes of the cat on the front of the jar focused on me as I cleaned the apartment up as best I could, dumping glass into the trash can, wiping down every surface, spraying air freshener to get the smell of Mugsy Calhoun, an imaginary smell no doubt, out of my apartment. When I was done, I collapsed on the couch, thoughts of looking into documenting the girls, getting them the necessary paperwork to stay in the country, the only thing on my mind. But I was too tired to get up and get my computer, preferring to put my feet up on the coffee table and close my eyes for a moment’s rest.