Bel, Book, and Scandal: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) Read online

  Cargan’s timing was impeccable, letting me off the conversational hook. He pulled up in the old Vanagon and motioned for me to get in. “Thanks, again, Mary Ann,” I said, giving her a quick hug. “This was fun.” I don’t know why I said it, but she had been kind enough to invite me, so it seemed only reasonable. My mother hadn’t raised a rude daughter and I hoped she knew that.

  In the car, Cargan stared straight ahead at the road. “Did you have fun?”

  My silence was enough of an answer for him.

  CHAPTER Twenty-four

  Saturday afternoon rolled around and Alison pulled up in her car, looking as if she had just been sprung from a penitentiary. “You really didn’t want to go to that trampoline park,” I said, getting into her car.

  “Have you ever been to a trampoline park?” she asked. “It’s the seventh ring of hell. There’s screaming, jumping, more screaming, some tears, myriad injuries, and then at the end crappy pizza. And worst of all: no booze.”

  “Your husband must be thrilled to be going,” I said as I directed her out of the Manor and toward the highway.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said. “We’re old for having a kindergartner. We know that. He’s older than I am. So, he wants to enjoy every minute.” She pulled onto the access road. “Now if I could just get him to retire, we’d be good.”

  “Is he ready?”

  “Not quite,” she said. “Almost but not there yet. Tried it once and it was a disaster. Guy’s a cop. It’s hard to go from that to…” She waved a hand around in the air. “Nothing.”

  I thought of Cargan, whiling away his days in the Manor, managing bookings and doing some general upkeep of the old place, at loose ends. He needed to go back to work but wasn’t ready; that was clear. If Alison’s husband was anything like my brother, he’d be hard-pressed to find purpose outside of the police department and its blue world.

  “So how did the dinner with Tweed go?” Alison asked. “Get any juicy details?”

  “That didn’t go exactly as planned.”

  “How so?”

  I filled her in on the evening. “Now my brother is on the run from the Foster’s Landing Police Department, my ex thinks that my family is crazier than he thought … and he’d be right … and I am no closer to finding out anything about Amy or Tweed or anything else, for that matter.” I looked out the window, noting a little traffic ahead, unusual for a winter weekend. The traffic came to a complete stop. “I e-mailed that reporter again because he hasn’t written me back, either.”

  “You’ve been busy,” she said.

  “Yeah, and I went for beers last night with Mary Ann D’Amato—”

  “Remind me who she is?”

  “Wife of my high-school boyfriend?” I said. “Remember?”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, there were two other women there and we got a little drunk. One of them told me that people think I know where Amy is. What happened. Still. After all these years.”

  “Hey, some people think I’m a murder magnet. It’s hard to shake these things,” she said. “And whoever said that to you may be right. She just doesn’t know it yet.” She looked at her phone, accessing her GPS. She pulled off the highway at the next exit. “One thing I’ve picked up from my husband is an inability to sit in traffic. We’ll go the back way.”

  We wound through parts of the county that I had never seen, but it was scenic. At least there was that. I knew that it would take far longer to get where we were going, but we wouldn’t be sitting on the highway, where, according to the report on the news radio channel playing in the car, there was a four-car accident blocking the road. A sign on the two-lane road that we were traveling indicated that it was Route 54, practically a backwoods trail that snaked through some pretty villages.

  We pulled up to a stoplight and Alison pointed to a building on my side of the road. “Well, lookie here,” she said.

  I tried to follow where she was pointing, but all I saw was a chain drugstore, a gas station, and a discount clothing retailer.

  “Isn’t that the name of the newspaper that I was carrying when Crawford and I stopped by that day?” she asked, and I followed her finger to the building to which she was pointing: the Hudson Courier.

  “It is,” I said. “Pull in.”

  She was way ahead of me, putting the turn signal on with such force that I was sure it almost came out of the console. “What are the odds?” she asked, her face flush with excitement.

  “I e-mailed the guy who wrote the article, but he didn’t write me back,” I said. As we got closer, I got a little nervous. “We don’t know what we’re going to get from him, if anything.…”

  “If he’s even there,” she said. “Maybe he’s out doing a hot investigation on rigged scales at the local apple orchard or something like that.” She pulled into the parking lot. “So, what’s our game?”

  “Our game?” I asked.

  “Yeah, the plan. What are we going in with?”

  “The truth?” I said.

  She looked surprised and then accepting. “Yep. That’ll work,” she said, getting out of the car and trudging across the parking lot, her clogs making her slip and slide on the little patches of snow that dotted the path to the front door.

  “You should have worn boots,” I said, pointing at my own duck boots with a heavy tread.

  “Wrong shoes. Bad weather. The story of my life,” she said. “It’s kind of my trademark.”

  We entered the office, which was comprised of two desks, one on the left, the other on the right, with a big opening between them that led to a table, a copy machine, and a paper cutter. The whole operation was very low-tech, down to the old-fashioned coffeepot, a percolator, that was bubbling away, and the presence of a beehive-wearing woman in polyester pantsuit separates that dated back to the Johnson administration.

  “Help you?” she asked, her cats’-eye glasses dangling from a sparkly rhinestone chain.

  “Hi,” I said. “We’re looking for Dave Southerland. Is he available?”

  The woman turned her head slightly and called out to a back room, “Dave! Ladies here to see you.”

  Based on the woman’s sartorial homage to the sixties and the vintage feel of the office, I was expecting a guy with similar style, but the guy who came out of the back room was young, hip, and not to mention handsome. Alison gave me a quick chuck to the ribs with her elbow and let out a little snort. She had noticed, too. It was hard not to.

  “Yes, I’m looking for advertisers, but it has to be the right kind of product for the Hudson Courier,” he said as he walked toward us, talking about something that had nothing to do with our visit. Alison had gone into a semi-trance state, staring at the body that rippled beneath a crisp blue dress shirt and a pair of pressed khakis. His light brown hair was cut short and stylishly, and his blue eyes were highlighted by the color of his shirt. “No Web start-ups, no fly-by-night farmers’ markets that open for one weekend a year and then disappear. Definitely no gym franchises. They come and go.” He stopped in front of us. “Sorry,” he said, putting out his hand. “Dave Southerland. I should have started with that.”

  I took his hand. “Belfast McGrath. And this is my friend Alison Bergeron.”

  He gestured toward two seats in front of the desk on the left; he took a place behind it. He gestured toward the woman at the desk on the right. “And this is my mother, Barb Southerland, founder and editor in chief of the Hudson Courier.”

  Barb waved from her desk, her head bent over a magnifying glass and a large piece of paper.

  “So, what can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Do,” Alison said, still a little mesmerized by his looks. “Do.”

  “Yes. Do for you? Your company? Product?”

  “That’s not why we’re here.” I leaned forward in my chair. “You ran a story a few weeks back about…”

  “Love Canyon,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “How did you know I was going to ask about that?”


  “Lots of interest in that story. I thought it would be a one-off, but it’s turning out to have legs,” he said. “What’s your connection?” He put his hands behind his head. “Belfast McGrath. You wrote me about this.”

  “I did,” I said. “You never responded.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. It’s been a little crazy since the story ran.”

  Based on the lack of activity in the office, I had a hard time believing that that was the reason he hadn’t responded.

  Alison came back to life. “How so?”

  He gave her a quizzical look.

  “How has it been crazy since the story ran? What’s been happening?” she asked.

  “And you are?” he asked.

  “Alison Bergeron,” she said. “Friend of Belfast.”

  He paused, looking at a spot over our heads, out the picture window to the parking lot. Try as he might, there was no way anyone else was going to drop by unexpectedly to this little hole-in-the-wall tabloid office. “There has been some local interest in the story. People wondering why we chose now as the time to run it.”

  “And why now?” I asked. “Why did you pick this time to run it? Because of the anniversary?”

  Barb spoke up from the next desk without taking her eyes off of her magnified copy. “Yep. And circulation. Lack thereof. We’re barely staying afloat. I thought now might be a good time to do a story like this. Clearly, the apple crops and local DUI reports aren’t getting us new subscribers.”

  “Your paper is free,” I said.

  “Yeah, that, too,” she said. “We’re trying to keep this rag alive after fifty years, but it seems like time is running short.”

  “So you did a story about Love Canyon. Thinking that it might give your son a good byline, an interesting story to garner interest.”

  “Bingo,” she said.

  “Seems like you should be taking any advertisers you can get, then,” Alison said.

  “We get burned a lot,” Barb said. “People wanting ads backing out.” She looked up. “Not paying.”

  I didn’t really care about the ins and outs of running a small newspaper, so I tried to steer the conversation back to our reason for being there. “Let me cut to the chase. One of the photos you ran in the story had a young woman in it. A blond woman. She’s next to a horse?”

  He pulled open a drawer and took out a fat file folder; it was stuffed with photographs, all old, all black and white. He dug through the stack and pulled one out, placing it on the desk. “Is this the one?”

  In person, up close, it was clear, not blurry like it was in the newspaper. It took my breath away, seeing the young woman, Amy for sure, standing next to the horse, her head turned slightly, a little smile playing on her lips. She looked happy.

  And alive.

  I pointed to her—to Amy—with a shaking finger. “That’s my friend. My friend who disappeared a long time ago. Her name was Amy Mitchell.”

  Alison reached over and put a hand on my shoulder.

  Dave sat up a little straighter. “Huh,” he said. “Well, that’s funny.”

  “Funny?” I said.

  “Yeah. Funny. Not ha-ha funny but funny. Odd. Weird.” He leaned across the desk. “And probably not true.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be true?” I asked, the words trapped in a thick cluster of emotion in my throat. I cleared the feeling. “Why wouldn’t it be true?” I repeated.

  “Because that’s my wife, but her name’s not Amy.”

  CHAPTER Twenty-five

  Not a wife, per se.

  Ex-wife.

  Her name wasn’t Amy.

  But she was Amy.

  I was sure of that.

  My heart raced at the thought that I had found her, but Dave was quick to let us know that she was gone and that he didn’t know where she was.

  “What was her name?” I asked. “If it wasn’t Amy?”

  “Bess,” he said. “Bess Marvin.”

  Alison let out a sound that was part guffaw, part snort.

  “Why is that so funny?” he asked.

  “Bess Marvin was Nancy Drew’s sidekick,” she said. “Did she have a family member named Ned Nickerson?”

  “Um, no,” he said, his face going red. “That was her name. It was on her license and everything.”

  It was my turn to ask some questions. “Did she show you a birth certificate?”

  “Why would she do that?” he asked. “Has your husband seen your birth certificate?”

  Alison laughed again. “I’m sure mine has it reduced to card size and laminated. Probably carries it around in his wallet just in case I go missing.” She took in Dave’s and Barb’s incredulous looks and explained further. “He’s a cop. As far as he’s concerned, we’re all in danger all the time.”

  “So, Bess Marvin,” I said. “What else?”

  “She left me,” he said. “Wasn’t interested in being married to a local newspaper magnate.” He had a sense of humor about it. She must have been gone a long time for that to come to the fore.

  Barb let out a derisive laugh.

  “When? When did she leave?” I asked when I got my voice back.

  “Five years ago.” he said. “Let’s just say that she was leaving long before that.”

  “Told you not to marry her,” Barb said, going back to her print copy.

  “And you have no idea where she went?” I asked. “None at all?”

  “Not a clue,” he said.

  I looked at the photograph again. “Tell me about her. What was she like? As an adult?”

  He smiled, the memories good ones. “She was gorgeous and funny and smart as a whip.”

  That was Amy.

  “She was the reason I did the story. Because after she left, I thought about what she had told me, how she had come here as a kid and gone to Love Canyon. I thought I would write something finally, something with a journalistic bent that would revive this rag.” He looked at beehived Barb. “No offense, Mom.”

  “You didn’t think to write this while she was still around?” Alison asking the question I was thinking.

  “I did. But she wouldn’t have any part of it. Would clam up when I asked too many questions.”

  “About her past?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Particularly about her past and the time before Love Canyon. She disappeared a lot. For a day. Maybe two. But not this long. This time, though, she’s gone for good.”

  Alison backed the conversation up. “Where did you meet?”

  He laughed out loud. “A bar, of all places.”

  “Not exactly what you’d call a ‘meet-cute,’” Barb said.

  “How long ago?” Alison asked.

  “Ten years ago.”

  “Married too young,” Barb said.

  She sounded like Alison’s husband. Dave and Amy would have been just a little bit older than Erin and Fez would be when they got married.

  “Do you have any wedding photos?” I asked.

  It was Barb’s turn to laugh. “Nothing. Not a one.” She hooked a thumb in her son’s direction. “Burned them all.”

  “Anything? One photo?” I asked.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Let’s just say that this didn’t end well for me, so I erased all evidence of what turned out to be a really tragic mistake.”

  “Where did she say she was from?” I asked.

  “Canada,” he said. “Said her family was in some rural area east of Quebec City and that they weren’t close.”

  “And none of this seemed suspicious to you?” Alison asked.

  “Love, sister. It was love.”

  Barb chimed in. “And maybe a little lust?”

  I wanted to know more, but my head was so flooded with thoughts and emotions that I wasn’t sure I could adequately voice everything that was left unsaid. “She was my best friend. She disappeared a lot of summers ago and I need to find her,” I said, my voice small with the idea that they had seen her, that she had had a life. “All these years, I w
as sure she was dead.”

  Barb, hearing my emotion, got up from her desk and came over to me. “Oh, honey. She is very much alive. And if you find her, tell her her ex-mother-in-law has a bone to pick with her.”

  “And what’s that?” Alison asked.

  “She broke my boy’s heart,” Barb said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  CHAPTER Twenty-six

  Sitting in the stacks of the Foster’s Landing library, Amy and I pored over every new Nancy Drew mystery that the library procured, hoping one day that we would find ourselves embroiled in a mystery, with our own sporty blue coupes and Ned Nickersons to help us along the way.

  I had my mystery now, but without the cute car or the cute boyfriend. My sidekick was a bored middle-aged college professor, and although the mystery deepened with every step, the two of us were as in the dark as ever.

  We were back in the car, on our way to Shamrock Manor, the meeting with Dave Southerland not reaping what I was expecting, but much more.

  “She’s alive,” I said, watching the browns and taupes of the winter landscape whiz by. “Well, she was at least five years ago. I can’t believe it.”

  “Do we believe this guy?” Alison asked. “I’m starting to get the sense that everyone north of the Tappan Zee Bridge has a very tenuous hold on the truth.”

  “Like who?” I asked.

  “Like your friend Tweed. Like Archie Peterson.”

  “Technically, Archie didn’t lie.”

  “Okay, point taken. But I don’t know how much I trust this Dave Southerland guy. And that Barb is a piece of work, too. The narrative is a little too neat, a little too well constructed.” She scratched her head as if trying to solve the riddle of what we had just heard. “And Bess Marvin? Really?”

  I didn’t care about the riddle. All I could think of was that she hadn’t died that last night or any night after that. She was still alive, and if anyone could find her I could.

  What was I hoping to do? Reunite her with her family? Her father was in a mental-health facility after attacking me and Cargan, another person convinced I knew where Amy had gone all those years ago, and her brother was a local cop who wasn’t too happy with me, either. Would they welcome her back with open arms? Was I even on the right track with that or had she left a situation I knew nothing about and had no business getting involved in?