Bel of the Brawl--A Belfast McGrath Mystery Read online

  “No need for the nastiness again, Bel. It was just an observation.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked at the bottom of the hill. “Left or right?”

  “To the river. The place where people put in their boats.”

  “The kayak put-in?” I asked.

  “She said to meet her by the picnic table. Is there more than one picnic table down there?” she asked as we sped through town. School was in session so the village was scantily populated, just a few people going in and out of the few stores that remained open after a recession had nearly decimated the place. It was starting to come back, though, and that made me happy.

  We made it to the meeting spot in less than ten minutes, my old car groaning and protesting as we drove over the gravel that led to what used to be the water’s edge, now so far out because of the drought that we could have driven halfway to Grand Mill. I pulled as close as I could to the picnic table and, not seeing any other car, got out and looked around, seeing if Pauline was in the vicinity. She was, parked near the kayak racks and a bank of lockers that Foster’s Landing’s municipal department rented to people in town for the year. You could stow your boat and any gear you had without taking up room in your own garage. If I still had a kayak, I would probably put my name on the list to rent the space, but alas, my kayaking days were over for the time being.

  Pauline was still in her car, the likes of which it would have taken me close to a hundred years to save for. Francesco Francatelli, my former boss and a movie star in his own right, had had a similar car and I had ridden in it more than a few times; he was such a braggart that I knew how much a car like that cost. Pauline got out of the car and it was clear that she was there to collect her check and nothing more. No chitchat, no explanation for where she had been or why she had so unceremoniously left the employ of Shamrock Manor.

  “Hey, can I see your car?” I asked. “Sweet ride.” I ran my hands over the hood.

  She looked at me. “Sure.” She looked at Colleen. “But I’m in a rush. Do you have my check?”

  “Yeah,” I said, waving the envelope in the air. “Do you have my parents’ tip from the Casey wedding?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. That was her story and she was sticking to it.

  “Yes you do,” I said as I got into the car and found the ignitionless key fob. Gone were the days of putting a key into a slot and turning it for power; Pauline’s car, like so many others now, required just the push of a button. I turned off the car, put the fob in my pants pocket and got out. “Do you have my parents’ money?”

  She put her hands on the roof of the car and screamed. When she had calmed down, she turned to me. “What money?”

  “You know what money, Pauline,” I said. When she didn’t reply, I continued. “Okay. So now that you’re not going anywhere,” I said, “tell us what’s happening.”

  She looked around. “Nothing going on. I’m going home. Want to be with my family again.”

  “I don’t think that’s true, Pauline,” I said. “I think it’s a little more complicated than that. Seems like you’re leaving a trail of broken hearts behind you. Maybe that has something to do with it?” I asked.

  “A girl can date, Bel. No law against that.” She looked around nervously. “Now, can I get my keys back?”

  “And there is something about Angus Connolly and the Health Department?”

  The blare of a train horn, the train farther down the tracks, didn’t spook anyone but Pauline, who jumped higher and moved faster than I had ever seen her jump or move during dinner service at the Manor. “Give me my check,” she said. “And my keys.”

  We stood in a tense standoff for a few minutes, Colleen begging me to hand over the check and the keys when Pauline finally broke. “Bel, please. Just give me the check and the keys and I’ll tell you where I’m going. And why.”

  I considered the options but, in the end, decided that there was no harm in giving her what she wanted. If it told me why she looked so scared, it would help solve at least part of the mystery. I handed them to her. “Now, what gives? Where are you going? And why are you going?” I asked.

  * * *

  She got into the car and I was afraid that I had trusted her only to be conned. But she rolled down the window and looked at me. “I’m going anywhere but here because I have to.”

  “Why?” I asked again. In the distance, a lone car made its way toward us. Pauline saw it too, her eyes going to the rearview mirror.

  “I’m sorry, Bel, but I have to go.” She started to roll up the window but I stuck my hand in it hoping she would stop before my fingers were crushed. “I saw the whole thing. Gerry Mason didn’t have a heart attack. That groom was poisoned.”

  CHAPTER Twenty-one

  Pauline sped away, the big tires on her car spraying me and Colleen with pebbles and dirt. By the time we had rid ourselves of the dust and rock in our eyes and mouths, she was a half mile away. My old Volvo is good for a lot of things but a car chase isn’t one of them. Colleen and I jumped into the car anyway, hoping that we could catch a glimpse of where she was headed. As we got closer, the car that had started toward us did a quick U-turn and started following her as well, putting a car length between us.

  “Well, that solves one mystery,” Colleen said.

  “And what mystery is that?” I asked, driving as if I had been taught to be a Hollywood stunt driver.

  “What happened to that poor groom,” she said.

  That seemed to raise more questions than it answered. For one? “Why didn’t she call the police then?” I asked as I made a hard right down a small street that I knew only had one side street before it ended in a dead end.

  “Bel, sometimes I think you’re an eejit,” Colleen said, holding on to the door handle as Pauline and the car behind her made the turn that I had anticipated.

  “Thank you?” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that as smart as you think you are, you really don’t think things through. She can’t call the police. You know that.”

  “Have you ever heard of an anonymous tip?” I asked. “She could have called and left the tip anonymously.”

  “And they could have traced her phone or kept the recording or traced the call to her location even.”

  “You watch too much TV, Colleen. This is Kevin Hanson and Lieutenant D’Amato of the FLPD not Crockett and Tubbs on Miami Vice,” I said.

  “What’s a Crockett and Tubbs?”

  “Never mind.” We headed up the street that appeared right before the dead end and my old car made a chugging noise, not used to going so fast up a hill. I could sympathize. I couldn’t run up this hill if you paid me. In front of me, the distance between the Volvo and the cars I was following grew wider and I knew it was a matter of time before I lost them both.

  “You don’t understand, Bel, you with your American citizenship, your safety of living in this country legally. You don’t know what it’s like for us,” she said, looking out the passenger-side window. “It’s dangerous. Shamrock Manor keeps us safe from all of that.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “So now she’s on the run.” And we have another major problem at Shamrock Manor. Great. Dad was going to take to his bed for a week after he got that news. If Pauline was telling the truth, that is. And where was our money?

  We finally hit the highway and that’s when the distance became so great between me and the two cars that it was clear that the chase was over. I gave the gas one last push and got the Volvo up to seventy miles an hour but it wasn’t enough for good, old German engineering and the BMW and the car in front of me, which I finally ascertained was a Mercedes and a fast one at that. I watched both cars speed down the left lane and into the encroaching sunset and took my foot off the gas just in time to see flashing lights behind me, the source of their consternation me and my Swedish behemoth of a car.

  “Oh, great,” Colleen said, sinking down in her seat.

  �
�Just stay quiet,” I said. “Chances are I know whoever this is, and while I’ll probably still wind up with a ticket, you’ll be fine.” I rolled down the window and looked at the cop, trying to place his adult face into that of a child’s. “Is that you, Davie Egan?” I said to the stern-looking cop staring at me. “Well, I’ll be.”

  “You’ll be what, Belfast? A speeder?” he said. “Do you know how fast you were going?”

  “Seventy?” I asked.

  He put his thumb in the air and indicated that I should adjust my answer accordingly.

  “Seventy-two?” I asked.

  “Seventy-eight,” he said.

  “Wow,” I said. “I didn’t know the old girl had it in her. Good job, Phoebe!” Just that morning, I had wondered how long I would be able to drive the car.

  “Your car has a name?”

  It does now, I thought. Anything to let him know that I was possibly the least threatening person he had ever pulled over and for that reason, and that reason alone, didn’t deserve the ticket I truly did deserve.

  “License and registration, Bel.” He leaned in and looked at Colleen who was trying to make herself invisible.

  I hoped I had at least the registration. I had left the Manor so quickly that I hadn’t had time to grab my purse in which my license resided. I opened the glove box and came up with the registration, handing it to Davie with a smile. “One out of two isn’t bad, right?”

  “Oh, no, it’s bad, Bel. One out of two in this case is bad. Wait here,” he said, walking away from my car and going to his.

  I banged my head on the steering wheel. Colleen opened the car door. “I’ll be going now, Bel. Thank you for this incredibly exciting afternoon,” she said.

  I reached over and grabbed her arm. “Stay here, Colleen. If you get out of the car and start walking away, you’ll make him suspicious.”

  “More suspicious than he already is?”

  “I don’t think he’s suspicious. I think he is wondering why I’m driving without a license and how I got the car to get above fifty. But I don’t think he’s suspicious.”

  He was back in five minutes with my registration and a ticket. “Sorry, Bel. Driving without a license requires that I give you a summons but I put you only ten miles over the speeding limit on that infraction. All of the information is on the summons here. You’ll probably pay a fine and—”

  “Jail time?” I asked.

  He looked at me quizzically. “Well, I don’t think so…”

  “I was kidding, Davie. I hope to God that there’s no jail time for a suspended license and a speed.”

  “Oh. Ha,” he said, not amused. “You’ll probably have points on your license so take it easy, okay? No more Daytona 500 for you on local roads.”

  “Got it,” I said. “See you in court?”

  He shook his head as he walked away, the humor in the situation lost on him.

  As his car passed mine on the highway, Colleen breathed a sigh of relief. “Just bring me home, Bel. I think I’ve had enough for today.”

  I pulled up in front of her house a few minutes later and stopped the car; she had walked to the Manor that morning. “Does Pauline have a flair for the dramatic?” I asked Colleen. “I mean, this contention that Gerry was poisoned is a bit of a tall tale. I saw him myself. He had all of the hallmarks of a man having a heart attack.”

  “And you’d know that how, Bel? Now you’re a doctor?” Colleen asked before getting out.

  I thought about busting out the old joke about playing one on TV, but she didn’t seem in the mood for humor. “You didn’t answer my question, Colleen. Pauline. Dramatic. Prone to flights of fancy?”

  Colleen looked at me. “Does that really matter, Bel? That Pauline was dramatic? Excitable? I don’t think it does.” She opened the door. “All I know now is that this is going to get more complicated and I’m going to end up in a heap of trouble. That’s what I’m focused on now.”

  I watched her as she climbed the steps to the front door. I had felt trapped when I had first arrived home, but knowing what I knew now about these girls and their situation, I knew that I was as free as a bird.

  CHAPTER Twenty-two

  I had gotten a plate number on the car that had been following Pauline and committed it to memory, using mnemonics to help me. I wrote it down when I got home, knowing now that in order to figure at least part of this mystery out, I would need my brother’s help. He had connections and if anyone was going to be able to tell us who the car belonged to, it was one of his guys or gals in the PD or DMV.

  He was kicking a soccer ball around on the lawn when I arrived home, heading one into Mom’s azaleas. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to use your head?” I asked. “It’s not like you have a ton of brain cells left. I remember what you were like in the nineties.”

  “Hilarious, Bel,” he said. He pointed to the summons in my hand. “What now? Public indecency? Resisting arrest?”

  I walked across the lawn and picked up the soccer ball, throwing it back to him. He headed it again. “Speeding. No license.”

  “You don’t have a license?” he asked.

  “Well, I have a license, I just didn’t have it on me when I got pulled over by Davie Egan.”

  “He still a tool?” Cargan reminded me that it had been Davie Egan who had gotten us busted by our parents for toilet-papering the principal’s house one Halloween night, an offense that was punishable by death in my house. Fortunately we were granted a stay of execution when the principal decided that we would join the janitorial staff at the high school for two weeks, our only chore to clean the toilets in the school bathrooms.

  “Kind of. He wouldn’t let me go on the missing license.”

  “Not sure I would have either, Bel. It’s not a good idea to be driving around without a license.”

  “Don’t tell Dad, okay?” I asked, the words coming out of my mouth belonging to someone much younger, much more attached to her family and their opinion of her. It was just that I couldn’t take the old guy’s histrionics. He was the guy you wanted in a foxhole with you, for sure, if something truly dramatic was happening, but the little stuff? That sent him over the edge.

  “You’ve got it.” Cargan kicked the ball to me. “Need any help in the kitchen? I have a few hours free. I know tomorrow’s wedding is a small one. Got it covered?”

  “Now that you ask,” I said, giving him a quick-and-dirty summary of what had happened in the past hour. His eyes grew wide when I got to the part about Pauline’s contention that Gerard Mason was poisoned. I rattled off the license-plate number. “Can you call someone and find out who that car belongs to?” I asked.

  “What do you think I am, Bel?” he asked, but I could see that I had piqued his interest.

  “I think you’re someone with a ton of connections who can help me figure out why Pauline was running scared.” Sure, there was the abusive husband but it seemed as if he were still in Ireland, somewhere she didn’t want to go back to.

  “What was it again?” he asked. “The plate number?”

  I said it again and I could see he was doing his own mind tricks to remember it.

  “Give me a few hours,” he said, picking up the soccer ball and starting toward the Manor. Before he got up the hill, he turned to me. “And don’t tell Hanson yet.”

  “Understood,” I said. The last thing we needed was Kevin involved. Selfishly, and I wasn’t proud of this, I was worried about what we would do if we lost the girls. With a ton of weddings on the books, it would be hard to find and train people in time. If Brendan Joyce, a college graduate and contributing member of society, found it difficult to execute some of the tasks associated with being a banquet server at Shamrock Manor, I shuddered to think of what we might find if we had to start filling positions left open by Eileen and Colleen. We were already one down with Pauline’s disappearance; we didn’t need any more vacancies on the service staff. But truly, I was most worried for their well-being.

  I was deep in
thought when I entered the kitchen, not realizing that the two people I expressly didn’t want to see were deep in conversation at the far end of the stainless-steel prep area. If I didn’t know better, they were exchanging the nuclear codes, the tilt of their heads and their hushed tones suggesting something dangerous and dramatic was about to take place. Both Dad and Kevin looked up at the sound of my rubber-soled clogs squeaking on the tiled floor.

  “Well, then ask her, son!” Dad bellowed.

  “Ask me what?” I said, pulling an apron off the hook and pulling it over my head.

  Kevin looked up at the ceiling.

  “Spit it out, lad!” Dad said.

  “Mary Ann wants a change to the menu we discussed,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, suspicious. “What kind of change?” If she wanted me to make Swedish meatballs for the cocktail hour—something one of my brides had requested over the summer—I would tell her no. The batch that I had made for that previous wedding had sat in a gelatinous pool of liquid, untouched and uneaten, and I had tossed all but the one I tried into the garbage. If Mary Ann D’Amato wanted Swedish meatballs, she could go to Ikea and eat in their cafeteria.

  Kevin finally looked at me. “Duck ballotine.”

  “What?” I said. “Did I hear you say ‘duck ballotine’?”

  “Yes,” he said. “She saw it on Top Chef the other night and thought it looked delicious.”

  “It is delicious,” I said. “But it’s not something you make for over one hundred people.”

  “She wants it.”

  “Well, she can’t have it.”

  Dad looked back and forth at the two of us, wondering who would win this verbal tennis match.

  “But that’s what she wants.”

  “You know what I want, Kevin?” I asked. “I want a new pony. And maybe a unicorn. And one chin, not two. But I can’t have those things because they are completely impractical for the life I lead. And duck ballotine is just like that pony or unicorn. It’s completely impractical for a wedding, particularly one held at Shamrock Manor.” I continued unnecessarily with the details of making a very intricate dish while the two of them looked at me blankly. “So, you see why this is completely not in the cards for your wedding, as much as I would like to help you.”