Bel of the Brawl--A Belfast McGrath Mystery

by Maggie McConnon

  I awoke to knocking at the back door, the sound of it mixing with the dream that I was having. In it, I was down by the river’s edge, the day lovely and quiet. The river was full, water lapping up over the edge of my toes, and a blue heron ducked in and out of the dappled, sunlit waves, pulling up a fish here, a pile of leaves there. In the dream, I was tapping my foot to an unheard tune and realized, as I dug out of the deep slumber that I had been in, that someone was at the back door.

  I struggled to my feet, my head foggy and my limbs reluctant to move, but I made it to the back door to find a person I had hoped never to see again.

  Duffy Dreyer asked if she could come in, and while the last thing I wanted was to talk to a reporter again, my ingrained polite side intervened and I held open the door for her. “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said, the two of us standing in my narrow hallway. I pulled the bathroom door closed, the sight of it, messy and in need of a good cleaning, distracting me from the woman standing in front of me looking somber and sad.

  “What can I do for you, Duffy?” I asked.

  “Have you talked to Detective Hanson?” she asked. “Lieutenant D’Amato?”

  “Yes, I just saw Kevin. Not the lieutenant, though. Why?” I asked.

  Behind her, I saw Brendan Joyce appear in the screen, and as she spoke, I held his gaze, looking for a sign from him that told me that what she was saying wasn’t true, that the mystery of Amy, part of my story and a thread in the fabric of the Foster’s Landing tapestry, wasn’t still a mystery that had to be solved.

  He looked at me and I at him and I wanted to ask him here, in front of this reporter, why he had never told me he had been there that night, but all I could do was stand there and try to process the words that were coming out of her mouth.

  “It’s not her that they found.”

  Brendan’s face crumbled.

  “It’s not Amy.”

  CHAPTER Forty-three

  After it sank in, after I fully understood what she was trying to tell me, I told Duffy Dreyer, who had a mole in the medical examiner’s office, to please leave me alone. Brendan wanted to stay and help me deal with this news, but I wanted to be by myself. The hurt showed on his face, but there was nothing he could do or say—something I said to him outright, causing more hurt—that could help me. I needed to be alone to think about what this discovery actually meant and how it would change the way I looked at that part of my life, if at all. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it would keep things exactly as they were, with everyone wondering just what had happened to Amy Mitchell and me feeling the continued sting of our last moments together, me telling her she’d be sorry for betraying me.

  I never felt that way, really, that she’d be sorry. I knew we would make up and spend our last summer together before college doing the things we’d always done. We’d kayak and hang out with my brother and all of our friends, party at Eden Island. We’d eat the crappy hot dogs that her father served at his crappy bar and laugh and dream and talk about what we would do when we grew up.

  I was grown up now and had followed my dream. I wondered what she would have done, had she lived. Because in my heart of hearts, she was dead and always had been from that last moment on.

  I called Kevin. “Who is it?” I asked. “If it’s not Amy, who is it?”

  He sighed. “Who told you? I wanted to tell you myself.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Who is it?”

  “We don’t know,” he said. “We’re searching missing-persons files from years back and hoping to hit on something. So far, nothing.” His shoulders, tense before, relaxed. He was defeated. “We may never know.”

  “So how do you know it’s not Amy?” I asked.

  “DNA. Things her father gave us when she disappeared.”

  I let that sink in. If it wasn’t Amy, it was someone else, someone whose family had been searching and wondering for all this time. Or maybe not. Maybe it was a person who had slipped through the cracks, hadn’t had the love that Amy had had growing up, the love that made people keep searching for her even after it was clear that we would never find her.

  I had had no comment for Duffy Dreyer before she left, closing the door behind her and Brendan after they exited, locking it and leaning against it for a long, long time, finally sinking to the floor and sitting there, thinking about what would have been, had Amy still been here. Finally, after about fifteen minutes, I got up and went into the bathroom to inspect it, wondering if Pauline had truly taken everything that belonged to her, the thought of her in there, taping money to the back of my toilet and the stash going unnoticed by me, making me see red. I had come back home to wipe the slate clean, not get involved in anything else. I straddled the toilet and looked over to the backside of the commode, seeing wilted tape hanging down, the sight of something else, something that didn’t belong there, catching my eye. I bent over awkwardly, not able to gain purchase on what appeared to be a tiny manila envelope, sealed shut and affixed with tape to the back of the tank.

  I finally pulled it off and opened it up, dumping a tiny key into my palm.

  I held it up to the light and saw that it had “FLM” stamped on the front; I had no idea what that meant besides the fact that FL for Foster’s Landing was a likely guess. What the key couldn’t tell me was how long it had been there, what it opened, why it was taped to the back of my toilet. I put the toilet seat down and sat, turning the key over in my hand and thinking about what secret it held, what door it opened.

  I thought about the events of the last few weeks and decided to start at the beginning, wandering over to the Manor, thankfully quiet, and heading down to the basement, where I attempted to insert the key into every locker and coming up empty. I stood in the basement for a few more minutes and went through every day since the Casey wedding, since Pauline had disappeared, thinking that having two things taped to the back of my toilet by two different people was probably unlikely. Or at least I hoped it was—when it hit me.

  The kayak racks, the lockers down at the put-in.

  I raced upstairs and, not seeing Mom and Dad, lent myself the keys to the Vanagon and headed down toward the water, a two-mile trek that would have taken far too long on foot.

  I parked the Vanagon and gave thanks for the drought that had rendered the river unable to host kayakers. It dawned on me as I was walking toward the kayak holders and lockers: Foster’s Landing Municipal. I prayed that I was at the right spot, otherwise I would be tracking down every Landing-issued key and its appropriate lock for the near future.

  There were three dozen kayak holders and as many lockers. Fortunately, I was alone and only a few of the slots available were empty. Most held kayaks and, even better, the numbers on the kayak holders matched those on the lockers. I picked the ten lockers that didn’t have occupied kayak holders and got to work.

  It was on my eighth try that the key slid into the lock and turned, opening up the locker and exposing its contents.

  It was an envelope, this one larger than the one that had been taped to the back of my toilet. And on it were written two words in bold, black marker:

  INSURANCE POLICY

  CHAPTER Forty-four

  I read the contents of the envelope in the Vanagon and did a quick search to get an address for Casey Import/Export. Pauline wasn’t the most honest woman on the planet, but she was shrewd and had prepared well, given what I read in the documents that were in the envelope. She explained in the first document that what I was reading was a photocopy of the original she had kept for herself, that she had stolen Pegeen’s purse and its nefarious contents—mushrooms—from the wedding just because she liked the bag and knew it held a lot of money. How she didn’t tell anyone she had proof because she thought she could score big on this one but had underestimated just how deep this all went.

  I called Kevin’s cell but it went straight to voice mail so I left a brief but accurate message about what I had found and what my plans were. My family had been dragged into this and before this
went any further with law enforcement, I was going to make sure they were dragged out of it.

  Casey Import/Export was not far from O’Halligan’s, and although that didn’t really matter, it made some kind of sense as to why James Casey had suggested the place when we met to talk about my fake soda bread idea. The company was housed in a one-story building that also had offices for a pediatrician and an orthodontist. I walked down the hallway and found the office easily, thinking that it was awfully small for a business that seemed to do exceptionally well, if what I learned through my online digging was true. There was a well-dressed receptionist sitting at the front desk. “May I help you?” she asked.

  “Hi, sorry to drop in like this but I’m here to see James Casey,” I said. He had chased Pauline that day and now I knew why.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked, clearly not knowing what “drop in” meant.

  “I do not,” I said.

  From behind me, a man’s voice said “Bel?” and I turned to see James striding toward me looking as delicious as ever. I had to remind myself that his endeavors weren’t on the up and up and that he had had a hand in his brother-in-law’s death, if Pauline was to be believed.

  “Hi, James,” I said. “Is there somewhere we could talk?”

  He led me to a conference room at the end of the hall, one that had floor-to-ceiling windows; it wasn’t a place to talk in private, even though no one would be able to hear what we were saying. He took a spot at the head of the long table, obviously accustomed to sitting there. “What can I do for you?” he asked, smiling. “This isn’t about soda bread, is it?”

  “No,” I said, holding the envelope out in front of me. “It’s about what you import. What you export. And how none of it is legal.”

  He pursed his lips, folded his hands in his lap. “Legal? All of what we do is legal.”

  “You’re in cahoots with Mugsy Calhoun. You launder money for him. He and your father grew up together in South Boston.”

  “Mugsy Calhoun?” James asked, and if I didn’t consider him such a good actor, I would have thought he had never heard of the guy. “Who is he?”

  “Just a gangster out of South Boston. An old friend of your dad’s. He was at the wedding. Danced with your sister.” I put the envelope under my arm. “It’s all here. Documents that link Casey Import/Export to the Calhoun trafficking. Gerry found out, right? Is that why he was poisoned?”

  James continued to look at me as if I had told him the most preposterous story he had ever heard. He stood up. “I think this conversation is over, Bel. I found your quaint story about exporting soda breads sort of humorous, but this flight of fancy is just a little too over the top for my tastes.”

  From the other end of the hallway, I saw Pegeen. Our eyes met and she held my gaze for a few seconds; I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. I looked back at James. “How could you? Gerry seemed like a really nice guy.”

  “He was a nice guy. I loved him like a brother,” James said.

  “But?” I asked.

  “But nothing,” James said. “I was devastated by his death. At his own wedding, no less.”

  Pegeen headed down the hallway toward us, nimble in her four-inch designer pumps, her Chanel suit something that I didn’t think came in my size. She entered the conference room and closed the door. I noticed a thin sheen of sweat on her upper lip.

  “Bel? What can we do for you? I can assure you that despite the events of that day, we have settled the bill with your father for the wedding.” She dabbed her eyes with a wadded-up tissue that she held in her hand. “My husband is dead, thanks to you.”

  “That’s not why I’m here, Pegeen,” I said. “Pauline Darvey has left our employ but she has also left me some pretty damning documents, documents to suggest that what you import might not be of the legal sort.”

  James sighed. “I’m sorry, Pegeen. I’ve tried to disabuse Ms. McGrath of this notion but she seems pretty convinced.”

  “And what documents would those be?” she asked. “May I see them?”

  I held the envelope under my arm. “No, you can’t see them. But suffice it to say that Pauline Darvey’s relationship with Mugsy Calhoun has yielded some interesting information. Your money. Where it went. Offshore account numbers. It’s all here.” I looked from James to Pegeen. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “We don’t know what you’re talking about, Bel,” James said.

  “I saw you, James. I was the one following you that day when you chased Pauline.”

  Now it was his turn to look confused. “Followed Pauline? Is she the pretty waitress from the wedding?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There is also damning information about you, Pegeen. How you may have poisoned your own husband? Ring a bell?”

  He looked at Pegeen. “I think you should go, Bel. These documents that you claim to have can’t implicate Casey Import/Export in anything. We are a very legal, by-the-book company. There must be some mistake.” His face registered disappointment. “After all I’ve done for you, Bel.”

  “Done for me?” I asked.

  “Yes. That night at O’Halligans. I stepped in and saved you from being manhandled by that brute.” He held up his hand, one knuckle still swollen. “Now, please leave. I can see that I was wrong about you and your intentions.” He shook his head sadly. “Fake soda bread…”

  Next to me, Pegeen let out a little sound not unlike the one her husband had made before he died, and when I turned toward her, I saw the cause of her distress as Kevin and Jed Mitchell, paired together for this investigation, striding down the carpeted hallway toward the conference room. At that moment, it all became clear.

  “It was you,” I said, looking at her in disbelief. “You were following Pauline. It was you all along.”

  She grabbed the envelope from under my arm and started out of the room, away from Kevin and Jed. I wondered why Jed, someone who was connected directly to Pauline, would be allowed to work on this case, but it was likely that no one knew of the connection but me, Pauline, and Jed’s wife. I didn’t know if he was invested in finding her like Pegeen obviously had been.

  James saw Kevin and stood up straighter. “What’s going on?”

  He didn’t know. He never had. I’m not sure now he couldn’t have known, but it was written all over his sad, handsome face. James had been as much of a pawn in this as Gerry had been, and why he had been standing outside of the men’s room door, as Pauline proclaimed, was a question that would go unanswered. I followed Pegeen into the hallway. “You didn’t have to kill him, you know,” I said. There was a bank of cubicles next to the hallway in which I stood and several faces popped up behind the half-walls.

  Pegeen turned and hissed at me. “I didn’t kill him. He was poisoned. By you,” she said pointing a manicured finger at me. “Your beets.”

  “Not my beets,” I said, walking right up to her and pulling the envelope out from her hands. “But your mushrooms.” Pauline had been right: Gerry had eaten chicken Marsala at O’Halligan’s but Angus Connolly’s chef hadn’t prepared it. It was chicken all right, but Pegeen had supplied the mushrooms, just as she had at the wedding. “It took a little longer to kill him than you thought, didn’t it?” I asked.

  She cracked but she didn’t mean to. “I didn’t even think there was going to be a goddamned wedding.”

  “Pegeen! Language!” James said.

  She clammed up until Kevin slapped a pair of heavy handcuffs on her wrist. “He was a nice guy,” she said, tears falling from her eyes. “But he just couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. She hadn’t confessed to anything but she wasn’t protesting her innocence, either.

  “It means that it never would have lasted,” she said as Jed Mitchell led her out of the office.

  CHAPTER Forty-five

  I was happy for Kevin and Mary Ann that the day of their wedding, Halloween, dawned as one of the nicest fall days we had had in a long while. I
t had rained all week, drought be damned, and the river now looked full and robust flowing behind the Manor with a great current, carrying away the bad memories of the last several weeks, at least for me.

  Mom, Dad, and I were getting into the Vanagon after the ceremony at the local church, my parents commenting on every aspect of the nuptial Mass we had just attended. In my hand, my phone vibrated, indicating that I had a text from an unfamiliar number. I opened the text and saw a photo. It was a woman, blond with a little spray of freckles across her pert, sunburned nose, holding a drink with an umbrella in it, a wide expanse of ocean behind her.

  It took me a minute to realize that it was Pauline.

  I guess she had gotten to where she wanted to go. I just hoped that now with Mugsy and Donnie in jail, Pegeen Casey on her way, she would be safe.

  Cargan suspected that there never was another witness to what had transpired at the wedding and Kevin had confirmed that. Kevin had pulled the oldest trick in the book by saying there was someone else when there really wasn’t. I wished Pauline, with the brains of a Mensa member, had used those smarts for good, not evil. She could have run the world.

  The other girls, Colleen and Eileen, were content to stay at the Manor. Arney, in a lull at work because divorces in Foster’s Landing had hit an all-time low, was working hard on their paperwork. With any luck, they would be legal soon and we could all exhale. I was proud of my brother; it was a side of the law he really didn’t know but out of loyalty to the girls—to his family—he was figuring it out.

  And as for Kevin? As promised, he never said a word.

  That afternoon, Mom was critiquing every aspect of the wedding, from the flowers to the bridesmaids’ dresses. She finally got to the bride herself. “I’m not a fan of the mermaid dress but, don’t you know, Mary Ann has made me a convert,” Mom said, getting into the front seat of the Vanagon, Dad at the wheel. In the kitchen back at the Manor, May Sanchez, Pauline’s old neighbor, was doing final prep so that I could just walk right in and get to work after returning from the nuptial Mass. I couldn’t do it all that day and I knew it. I had dropped by May’s house a week earlier to ask if she wanted a job at the Manor. I knew she could cook—I had tasted the dinner she had made that night and it was enough to convince me to hire her on the spot.