Bel of the Brawl--A Belfast McGrath Mystery Page 13

  “That Joyce boy is certainly sweet on you,” she said.

  “I hope he is,” I said. “We’ve been dating for a few months now. You know that.”

  “Is it serious?” Mom asked, her gaze falling to the caviar. She kept her mouth shut and surveyed the rest of the kitchen, knowing resistance was futile when it came to the menu.

  I thought about that. Was it? I thought so, our relationship righting itself after that bump in the road, the day Amy’s things were discovered. “Ah, we’re just having fun, Mom,” I said.

  “Tick, tick,” Mom said, tapping an imaginary watch on her wrist. “You’re not getting any younger, Belfast. The time for fun is over.”

  Did this woman ever hear herself? “Tick, tick”? That veiled reference to my gradually hardening ovaries was about as subtle as the crucifix she had hung over my bed when I first moved back home along with an admonition to always do as “Jesus did.” “Great advice, Mom. Thanks.” I turned and set the timer on the counter, hoping that when I turned back around, she had disappeared, taking her opinions on relationships and unborn grandchildren along with her.

  But no such luck. She was still standing there when I was done, staring at me with concern. “I’m worried about Pauline, Bel. So is your father. We were very close. Loved that girl like a daughter.”

  “Pauline?” I asked. I wondered why they were so close, why Mom considered her family. I didn’t think Dad could have picked her out of a line up based on his inability to tell the girls apart.

  “We feel that way about all of our girls, Belfast. You should know that.” She bit her lip. “I’m very, very worried.”

  “You and me both, Mom.” I pulled the tray of pigs in a blanket out of the oven and set them on the counter to cool. “Any idea where she might have gone?”

  “Back home?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t sound like it was the place for her,” I said. And she thinks Gerry Mason was poisoned but I’ll never tell you that. We’ll leave that to the police.”

  “Then I don’t know.” She tucked an errant blond strand behind her ears. “And I hesitate going to the police…”

  I held up a hand to stop her from saying the one thing I knew she knew. “I know. We all are. It could be bad for the other girls.” I looked her in the eye. “For you. For Dad.”

  She dropped her voice to an angry whisper. “Don’t you think I know that?” She leaned on the counter, coming closer to me. “These girls have limited options over there, Belfast. We give them a well-paying job, a roof over their heads.”

  “And turn a blind eye to the fact that not one of them has legally made her presence known in the United States.”

  Mom sighed, the fight gone out of her. “It was easier for your father and me, back then. It was easier to become a citizen, live here legally. It’s harder now and I feel for them. Everyone needs a chance.”

  “But is it really doing them any good, Mom? What about in ten years when they are pushing forty and are still hoisting trays of entrées into the dining room? And ten years past that?” I asked, a mental picture of me, my graying hair pulled up into my head scarf, my joints a bit achier, orthotic insoles in my clogs. I shook my head to dispel the image. Not everyone aged like Mom, which is to say, not at all.

  Mom’s face indicated that she hadn’t thought about the future, only the present and where the girls fit into it.

  “Plus, she probably stole our tip,” I said. “Forgive me if I don’t feel that compassionate toward her.”

  “If someone steals, it’s because they need it more than we do,” Mom said, channeling her inner saint.

  “Or they are just a lousy person,” I said.

  Mom stood up straighter, smoothed down the front of her black sheath dress, one of several that she kept in her closet for her hostess duties as queen of the Manor. “Remind me what’s on the menu.” Clearly, we weren’t going to talk about this any longer.

  She knew. She always knew. It was an awkward tactic to steer us away from the topic at hand and her role in it. “We’ll find her, Mom. Cargan and I have been doing some digging.”

  “And your ‘digging.’ What have you found out?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. I turned and looked at the pot of potatoes on the stove, the water bubbling away. Beyond what I had found out two days prior, that she thought she had seen something sinister at the Manor, I had to think about why I cared so much about her and where she went. I thought back to a talk Cargan and I had had a few months earlier, about how his life hadn’t really gone the way he had hoped, how he wanted to meet someone, have a family, maybe distance himself from the Manor. He was attracted to her, that was for sure. Did he love her? I thought maybe he did. That alone made me want to find her, to see if maybe Cargan, unlike the other men with whom she seemed to be involved, could have a life with the mercurial Pauline. Did I want that? I didn’t know. But I also knew that he loved her and she was out there, terrified. “Maybe I should talk to Kevin?”

  “Let me talk to your father about that first.”

  Dad wouldn’t know what to say, what the right thing to do was. He would bluster and wonder and think and perseverate, but in the end no decision would be made. So I made the decision for him, right then and there, that I would talk to Kevin when the time was right. We had a long history and we were back to being friends, the duck ballotine notwithstanding. He would help me; I was sure of that.

  Mom surveyed the kitchen one last time. “Well done, Belfast. Let’s have a flawless event,” she said.

  That was my plan. That was always my plan. But here at Shamrock Manor, things had a habit of going awry and without warning. Alone in my kitchen once again, my preferred state of being, I continued prepping for the guests who would arrive in the next several hours, the plan for a “flawless event” at least a little bit in my control.

  After Mom left the kitchen, Feeney came in. “Ah, another county heard from,” I said. “Who’s the chick in the mom jeans, Feen?” I asked, referencing the lady from O’Halligan’s.

  “You mean Patricia?” he asked, opening the refrigerator and taking out a gallon of juice. He poured himself a glass and drank most of it before answering. “She’s a talent manager.”

  “Of whose talent?” I asked.

  “Mine,” he said. “She heard me play at a wedding here and thought I was the most talented person in the band.”

  “She did, did she?” It was an age-old argument among my brothers but at the very least Feeney was the one who wanted the musical career the most. Arney had his law practice, Cargan did his management work here while on leave from the police department, and Derry was a stay-at-home dad whose wife was the breadwinner. No one was interested in making music their full-time job except for Feeney who had never really found a career outside of it to satisfy him. Right now, he was working construction for a local company and I could see that it was taking its toll with its long days and manual labor. He looked exhausted and, most of all, unhappy.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Bel.”

  “You do?”

  “You think that she’s just interested in me sexually…”

  I put my fingers in my ears and started singing to drown him out. “Please don’t ever say anything remotely like that again,” I said. “First, I didn’t think that, and second, it is gross.” I didn’t tell him that that’s the first thing I thought. She had looked at him like he was a gallon of ice cream at a Weight Watchers’ meeting.

  “You never believed in me,” he said.

  “Oh, jeez, Feeney. Do we have to go there right this minute?” I looked at the clock. “With less than an hour to go until the cocktail hour starts?” I went around the counter and gave him a hug. “I’ve always believed in you,” I said. “I think you’re terrific. You’re a better singer than—”

  He cut me off before I could come up with a name. “Justin Timberlake?”

  “Well, maybe not him, but definitely Justin Bieber.”

  “Thanks, Bel,” h
e said. He finished his juice. “Showtime.”

  Brendan Joyce returned a half hour later, looking spiffy in his black pants and white shirt. “So I’m really going to be a waiter?” he said.

  “Yes. A waiter,” I said. “Is that beneath you?”

  “No, not at all,” he said. “Though I’d much rather be in the kitchen with you,” he said, coming up behind me and wrapping his long arms around my torso. He burrowed into my neck, pulling away suddenly and knocking into a hanging pot over the counter when Cargan appeared in the kitchen.

  “Get a room,” my brother said. His violin was in his hand and he was dressed in the standard McGrath Brothers getup: black tuxedo, green cummerbund, and green bow tie. I had recommended they go with a traditional tux—black and white—but had been summarily dismissed.

  “We’re the McGrath Brothers,” Arney had said, as if I had besmirched the good name of Bono and the other boys in U2. “People expect a touch of the old country in our songs, our dress.”

  Do they expect you to have a near knock-down, drag-out fight after almost every set? I had wanted to ask, but one thing I had learned in the early going here was to keep my mouth shut when I had what seemed like a reasonable question to a crazy statement.

  “What’s on the musical menu today, Cargan?” Brendan asked. I reached up and undid the hastily done tie that Brendan had knotted around his neck, retying it and drinking in his scent: shaving cream coupled with some kind of shampoo that only a middle-schooler should use. The smell of it made my eyes water. I had seen it in his shower and had recommended he buy something that wasn’t called “Jungle Prince.” People might get the wrong idea as the odor preceded him and assume a fourteen-year-old was making his way into the room.

  “Ah, the usual,” Cargan said, plucking a few notes on his violin that sounded like an old Clash song. “A few jigs, a few reels…” he said, trailing off. “Hey! You used to step dance, didn’t you?”

  Brendan blushed a deep red. “I did,” he said. “Just a little bit.”

  “That’s not what I remember,” Cargan said. “I remember you being an All-Ireland champ.”

  Brendan blushed a deeper red.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Cargan said. “When we do our reel set, you should dance. The guests will love it.” He lifted his face, sniffing the air in the kitchen. “Food smells good but what’s that other smell?”

  Brendan smiled, proud of himself. “It’s my shampoo,” he said, looking at me as if he had won some important argument, one in which the outcome really mattered. “Jungle Prince.”

  Cargan looked at him quizzically. “One of your students give that to you? It’s not really a grown-man smell,” he said before leaving the kitchen.

  “Your family hates me,” Brendan said. He straightened his tie, using the stainless countertop as a reflective surface.

  “They don’t hate you,” I said. “They are an unusually tough crowd.” In the foyer, I could hear the guests arriving. “Hey, you’d better get going. We have a wedding to serve.”

  Before he left, he kissed me, leaving me in the kitchen with a little flutter in my stomach and looking forward to the day’s end.

  I turned my full attention to my one, true love: food. I dove into prepping the entrée for the guests, focusing on the little things that made me happy: the proper cut of the meat, the presentation of the vegetables, the dollop of creamy potatoes on which the beef rested. Brendan whistled appreciatively when he came back into the kitchen and saw the plates in the warmer, asking the girls to help him get the requisite six onto his tray so he could hoist it onto his shoulder and move it out to the dining room where, just moments earlier, I had observed him dancing like no one was watching, as the saying goes, smiling as his tie whipped around furiously as he moved across the floor to the delight of the guests. Part-time server and part-time entertainer. Full-time boyfriend. He was fitting right in with the McGrath clan. He was wrong: my family didn’t hate him. Rather, he fit right in, which in and of itself was a scary thought.

  I looked out into the dining room and the guests appeared happy, everyone tucking into their beautiful dinners. I turned back around, preparing to start my work on the dessert, and came face-to-face with a handsome, but clearly angry, guy who looked like he had just stepped out of a music video from the nineties, a flannel shirt, jeans, and boots completing the look of a Seattle-area grunge rocker. “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “I’m Domnall Kinneally. Have you seen my wife?”

  CHAPTER Twenty-five

  “Sit down, lad,” Dad said.

  Domnall Kinneally had been mollified by a plate of beef and mashed potatoes, and while he was angry when he arrived, he seemed a bit more composed now, seated in Dad’s office, a glass of Guinness in front of him. It was a half hour after the wedding had ended and I had bid Brendan adieu with the promise of an evening rendezvous. “Thank you, Mr. McGrath.”

  Dad sat on the desk, one foot planted on the ground, his hands clasped together, his serious pose. “Tell me, son. What is this all about?” He looked at me. “Did you know that the lass was married, Bel?”

  “No!” I lied, a little too vociferously. Dad looked at me, unconvinced, but I knew that if Dad knew that she had been married, had been fleeing a bad marriage, he wouldn’t have been happy. “No,” I said again, taking a little bit of the mustard off my response. Cargan stood behind Dad studying his own shoes with an intensity they didn’t require. I finally gave it up, told the truth. “Yes, but only recently. We heard through the grapevine that Pauline might have been married.”

  “We didn’t know, Domnall,” Dad said. “Is there a reason you’ve come all this way?”

  Domnall sipped his Guinness. “There is.”

  We waited. “Well, are you going to tell us?” Dad asked after close to a full minute of silence.

  “It’s her ma,” he said. “She’s not well.”

  Dad gasped. “Oh, goodness,” he said, making the sign of the cross on his chest. “God bless. It is the cancer?”

  Domnall looked flustered. “No, not the cancer.” He looked at Dad quizzically. “She had cancer?”

  “Not that I know of,” Dad said. “What is it then?”

  Domnall clutched his chest. “The heart. It’s her heart. It’s not working.”

  “A blockage?” Dad asked.

  “Yes, that. A blockage,” he said. “No one knows how long she can go on like this.” He looked at all of us, his eyes darting around from one to another of my family members. “Blocked.”

  “So why didn’t you call her? E-mail her? Text her? Send a Western Union letter?” Cargan asked, his arms crossed over his chest in a defensive stance. So there it was. He loved her more than just a little bit. He loved her a lot. I could tell and he could tell that I could tell, the flush starting at his collar and going up to his ears. “Why not, then?”

  “Done all that,” Domnall said.

  “Even the Western Union?” Cargan asked.

  “Well, not that, obviously, but everything else. Haven’t heard a word from her.”

  “Did you ever think that maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to you?” Cargan asked.

  “When it’s about her ma?” Domnall asked. “She has to talk to me about that.”

  Dad held up a hand, sensing the mounting tension in the room. He picked up a stapler and turned it over in his hands. “We haven’t seen her, son, and we assume that she has ended her employment here.”

  “There’s more than that, Dad,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him what I had heard, that maybe Domnall wasn’t the poor sap he was pretending to be, sitting here and looking bereft.

  “Yes, I know, Belfast,” Dad said, cutting me off. “But if this young man here,” he said, gesturing toward Domnall with the stapler, “hasn’t heard from her and neither have we, then it’s clear that we have to do what we have to do.” He looked down at the floor. “Whatever the consequences.”

  I kept my mouth shut, not wan
ting Dad to know I had seen her. If the girls were to be believed and this guy was an abuser, I wasn’t letting anyone know that Pauline was still in the country.

  Cargan, surprisingly, was the first one to speak. “I’ll call Hanson,” he said, leaving the room but not before giving Domnall a sinister glance, one that told the poor guy all he needed to know about what Cargan thought of him and his unannounced arrival.

  “Another beer, son?” Dad asked, motioning toward the empty glass in the guy’s hand.

  “No, sir. No, thank you,” he said, standing. “You’ll let me know if you find her?”

  “Where are you staying?” Dad asked, and in my mind, I sent the strongest telepathic message that I could, letting Dad know that under no circumstances should he let this guy stay at the Manor.

  And after the telepathic message, I prayed to God that Domnall had a place to stay. This was getting complicated and the last thing we needed was a houseguest who was looking for his estranged wife, someone who had overstayed her welcome in the great old U.S. of A.

  “I’m staying with a friend, Mr. McGrath,” Domnall said. “It’s all good.”

  It wasn’t all good but I kept my mouth shut. Mom wasn’t around and I wasn’t sure where she was but once she got wind of this situation, she wasn’t going to be happy. I asked him who he knew in Foster’s Landing and its environs being as he had told us that this was only his second time in the States, the only other time being a class trip to New York City to see the Statue of Liberty and a bunch of other landmarks.

  He pulled at the front of his shirt. “Um, just a lad. A bloke. No one you would know.”

  “Try me,” I said, smiling. “I grew up here and, with the exception of about ten people, everyone I knew then is still here.”

  “Henry Miller,” he said.

  “Like the author?” I asked.

  “Don’t know about that, but that’s his name.”

  I smiled again. “You’re right, then. I don’t know him,” I said. “Must be one of the recent transplants from Brooklyn.” Or a nonexistent person that you made up on the spot, the name “Henry” displayed on an envelope on the desk, “Miller” being an easy, American-sounding name that could be plucked out of the rarefied air that lived inside Domnall’s obviously dusty brain.