Bel, Book, and Scandal: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) Page 22

  “Why now?” Cargan was saying. “Why this time?” He helped me to my feet, careful to avoid the chocolate cake. In the next room, the band was playing without him, as they often did when he took an unplanned-for break.

  Amy looked around the kitchen. “This is the last place I thought I’d ever see you, Bel. And that’s saying a lot, being as you spent most of your life here.”

  “I’ve been looking for you,” I said, my voice sounding unlike my own, thin and reedy. “I went to your house. I left you a letter.”

  She pulled the letter from the pocket of her leather coat. “I got it. And that’s why I am here.”

  “That is your house?” I asked. “I met a lady who said it wasn’t. That you had never lived there.”

  She smiled. “That’s Roberta. I have lived below her for the last five years, but I told her to never answer any questions about me. She’s got a secret of her own that I keep, though it’s not on a level with my secret.”

  I assumed that meant that Roberta’s secret was on a par with not recycling, or putting her garbage out before pickup day. No one’s secrets could rival Amy’s.

  She continued. “I knew you’d try to find me. I knew you’d probably actually do it one day.” She paused. “And I didn’t want to be found.”

  “So why now?” I asked, repeating my brother’s question. “You were here the other night. Across the river. You could have talked to me then, but all you did was warn me.”

  Confusion passed across her face. I still couldn’t believe that I was looking at her, that she was standing in front of me, but Cargan was there and he saw her, too. She wasn’t an apparition; she was real.

  And for that, I wanted to kill her.

  “That wasn’t me, Bel.” She frowned. “That might not have been anyone,” she said, my obsession with finding her something I couldn’t hide. After all these years, she could see what I couldn’t.

  “Do you know what this has been like? How your family has felt? Your friends?” I asked, my throat choked with unshed tears. “Me?”

  “I’ll tell you everything, Bel,” she said, “but that wasn’t me across the river.” She was more self-possessed now than as a teen and that was a pretty hard feat to pull off because she had been the most confident teen I had ever seen. An old soul, as Mom would say.

  “Did you murder that girl, Amy? Or is it Bess?” I asked. “The girl they found in your car?”

  The weight of so many years flashed in her eyes, the time on the run. “I didn’t hurt that girl, Bel. You know me better than that.”

  “But things happen!” I said. “And you left. What am I supposed to believe?”

  We ignored the banging on the door from the dining room, someone pulling at the handles on the other side, only to find that they were locked out. The only door whose entry Cargan had failed to bar was the one that led from the office into the kitchen, and after the banging on the other door had died down someone came through the office and into the kitchen, Mary Ann D’Amato-Hanson looking as serene as she always did, standing at the far end of the counter. “Bel, it’s getting a little crazy in there. Close the bar maybe? At least for a little while?” She either was oblivious to Amy’s presence or didn’t recognize the other woman in the room. It took her a minute, looking back and forth between the two of us, before the realization of Amy’s identity dawned on her. “Oh my God,” she said, her hand going to her mouth to cover a gasp. “Is it you? You’re back?”

  “It’s me,” Amy said, a trace of fear crossing her face. “I came back, Mary Ann.”

  “Why? When?” Mary Ann asked, the questions that were in my mind but that I was too addled to ask.

  “Because I don’t want to run anymore. I want to tell the truth.”

  The party was really getting going in the dining room, whooping laughter and a cacophony of inebriated male voices blending together into one raucous racket.

  Mary Ann didn’t seem to feel the same joy that I did over Amy’s appearance. “But nobody wants to know the truth, Amy. I thought we agreed on that.” Mary Ann’s face turned hard and a little menacing. “You weren’t supposed to come back,” she said, her hands hidden beneath the counter. “We made a deal.”

  “I’m done running, Mary Ann,” Amy said, the calm in her voice belying the tenseness of the situation. “You can kill me now if that’s what you want, but I’m done running. It’s over, one way or another.”

  Without my even noticing, Cargan had cut the distance between himself and Mary Ann in half.

  “Kill you?” I said. “Why would she want to kill you?” That’s Mary Ann D’Amato, I wanted to add, not some killer. That’s the girl who fostered more animals than I could recall, the girl who had taken the science teacher’s boa constrictor for an entire summer, feeding it rodents and keeping it healthy when none of us wanted anything to do with it, even Feeney, who everyone thought was the best suited to the task, an oddball with strange tendencies. The girl who had befriended me after I returned to Foster’s Landing, making sure I went to at least one girls night out.

  “Kill me, Mary Ann,” Amy said. “It’s been a long time coming.” Her shoulders slumped slightly, but her tone was resolute.

  I looked from Amy to Mary Ann. “It was you,” I said. “The other night. At the river, warning me away from trying to find her.”

  “Bel, you are such a sweet soul,” Mary Ann said, the saccharine in her voice something I had missed all these years, the patronizing lilt that suggested I was less than her and always had been. “Bless your heart. Such a doll.” She looked at Cargan. “And we always thought you were the one who needed protecting. You were the one that surprised us all.”

  “What is she talking about, Cargan?” Amy asked.

  “It’s a long story,” my brother said, as enigmatic as usual. It was a long story, and if I hadn’t heard it myself I would have found it totally unbelievable. Finally, he looked at Amy, a girl he once loved. “I’m a cop.”

  “And knowing what we know,” Mary Ann said, keeping an eye on him, knowing he was capable of leaping into action at a moment’s notice, “let’s just pretend that we’re four old friends, that one of us isn’t a cop, and one of us didn’t kill someone by accident a long time ago. And that one of us,” she said, looking directly at me, “couldn’t leave well enough alone, so filled with guilt and angst that she had to go further than anyone else had up until this point to find a girl that, really, no one ever cared about.” She raised her hands, a gun hanging limply in one of them. She waved it in the air. “I guess you’re wondering why I have this.” She placed her purse on top of the counter.

  “The thought crossed my mind,” Cargan said.

  “You’re a leftie,” I said. Larry Bernard had made a strange proclamation about how the person who had hit me had been a leftie.

  “How’s your head, honey?” she asked, the nurse in her making its presence known. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “And stabbing Tweed?” I asked. “That was?” I was confused and it had nothing to do with the bump on the back of my head, now a distant memory. “How did you know about Tweed?” I asked.

  “Remember when Hallie said that people always thought you knew more than you did?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “I was one of those people. I know what you told Kevin and did some digging myself. You made a mess of things, Bel.”

  I didn’t know how that was true, but I let her continue.

  “I was going to get in and get out,” she said. “I really had no choice. He could have seen me. Could have identified me if that old detective had started digging around.”

  “And how would they have linked this to you?” Cargan asked. “That’s a bit of a long shot, even for the best detective.”

  “Is that the old guy who has been following me around?” Amy asked. “The one who looks like a Jewish Columbo?”

  “That would be the one,” I said.

  “I wish you had just left the past behind, Bel,” Mary Ann said, her disappointment
in me on display. “I don’t know why it was so important to you to find…” Her words left her. “Her,” she finally said, pointing the gun at Amy.

  “Put the gun down, Mary Ann,” Cargan said, his arms straight out in front of him, his hands still a good ten feet from her, too far to do any good or avoid the inevitable.

  “Or what, Cargan?” she asked. “You’ll ask me again? I have a gun. You have nothing.”

  A room full of cops right outside while this happened in the kitchen, the sound of my brothers playing on, this time a jazzy samba, everyone oblivious to what was happening in the kitchen.

  Kevin appeared behind his wife, his body language suggesting he had spent time at the bar, his face displaying confusion at the scene before him. “Honey?” he asked. “What’s happening?”

  “Not now, Kevin,” she said without turning around. “Go back to the party.”

  “Amy?” Kevin said, the presence of our friend finally registering in his alcohol-soaked brain.

  “Get Daddy,” Mary Ann said to Kevin. “Tell him that Amy is back and she is going to confess to murdering that girl.”

  I looked from Mary Ann to Amy. “Is that true, Amy? Did you kill that girl?”

  “No,” she said. “But someone in this room did.”

  CHAPTER Forty-nine

  A lifetime ago on a muggy summer night, our kayaks cruised along, the water getting deeper as the tide came in, the excitement palpable as we raced out to Eden Island, our days here numbered, all of us leaving for school in a few months, our carefree summer days soon to be replaced with summer jobs that would help with tuition and keep us in beer for another semester or two. Amy floated next to me, her mind on something.

  “What gives?” I asked.

  “Just taking it in,” she said, the Manor on our left as we skimmed the surface of the placid river, the current pushing us along, our paddles almost unnecessary. It would be hell getting out if we didn’t leave before the tide went out, a natural, regular event that would require us to carry our kayaks to higher ground. Unless we wanted to carry them the whole way, we knew we had to time our partying carefully.

  “I can’t believe we’re leaving soon.” I had mixed emotions. On the one hand, I couldn’t wait to get out of Foster’s Landing and away from my family. Strike out on my own. Live my own life. On the other hand, and according to the voice in my head, I wasn’t sure I was ready, if I could really do it. I would be leaving Amy and Kevin behind, too, and the thought of that was almost more than I could bear, Amy being my steady rock in every storm, academic, personal, and emotional, and Kevin being the love of my life, someone who would be mine, always. We had promised each other, vowed to stick together even when separated, him heading one way and me another before, I hoped, transferring to a culinary school. We would be true blue, and when it was all over we would come back together and live the life we were meant to, one couple who had loved each other for a long time.

  We reached the island and saw that our usual party planners were already there: Mickey McGee, Francie’s cousin—of legal age with slippery morals—the guy who bought all of our booze, holding his hand out for our monetary contribution upon arrival; Kevin; a group of kids from the high school five miles north of us, some football players and their cheerleader girlfriends; a few unfamiliar faces; and a host of other kids from our high school, all ages, all classes. We had all come together for an epic evening of partying, our kayaks, numbering about fifty, strewn about on the narrow shoreline, the water creeping up, settling under them, lifting them with each little wave that crested.

  I grabbed a beer and mingled with the kids who had assembled, avoiding Francie’s cousin, a guy who got a little handsy as the night wore on and who Amy had warned me was a “perv.” There was no warning necessary where Mickey McGee was concerned; I had witnessed and experienced his perviness myself, so after slapping a twenty into his hand, certainly more than the cost of a six-pack, I gave him wide berth.

  A storm was coming; how soon it would arrive was anyone’s guess. It was brewing outside around us and inside all of us, tumult of the exterior, natural variety and also of the interior, a tuning of nerve endings, nervous and anxious and excited all at once for what was to come, what we would leave behind, what would happen to us after we were washed clean of this place and the history and memories we carried.

  Many years later, I remembered Brendan Joyce. He arrived in his bright green kayak, a kid from across the pond, someone whom I never really got to know. He wasn’t exactly an outsider, but he definitely wasn’t an insider, either, a guy who hung around the periphery of the group that I helmed, an amiable sort whose presence didn’t register on anyone’s radar. He was like that giant, lumbering dog in the pack, the Saint Bernard or the big retriever, the one that the little dogs dominated, his size not lending him any presence in a large group. He was quiet and a bit shy, never saying much, drinking his beer in silence, laughing at everyone’s jokes. When he was there I saw him, but when he was out of my sight it was like he had never existed at all. He blended in and was completely forgettable, all at once.

  In the distance, I saw Cargan gazing out at the water, testing the tide with his hands. At some point, he would try to get me to leave but wouldn’t be successful, doing something for which Mom would never forgive him, or for which he would not forgive himself: He would leave me there, sick of arguing with a sister with whom he had a special bond but who could be immature and intractable and just generally annoying in her stubbornness.

  Mickey McGee had bought a lot of beer and I, not one to temper my imbibing on a night like this, partook of the stash, determined on this night that I would drink my twenty dollars’ worth. The night grew hazy, and I started to find the people around me either hilarious in their recounting of some ridiculous story or tiresome; the mood changed with the level of my intoxication. I was getting drunk and I knew it but was powerless to stop it. We only had two more months, a few more weeks. This would all come to an end and, with it, everything I knew, the familiar being erased by every new experience and every new acquaintance. I knew I would never make friends like these; there couldn’t be people out there who were as special as Amy and Kevin, and even Cargan, my silent brother who didn’t say a lot but when he did made it count. There was no one else in the world like these people; that I knew for sure.

  Amy and Kevin were parked by a tree, Kevin leaning up against it casually, Amy close to him, her hand placed beside his head, a stance that suggested more than friendship. They were oblivious to my presence, Kevin smiling broadly at something Amy said, clearly drinking in her attention, hanging on her every word.

  It was hard to tell whose head went in first, whose lips touched the other’s in a gesture sensual and romantic, but it happened, right in front of me, my mind going from fuzzy and jumbled to crystal clear and sharp in a matter of seconds. It was only a brief kiss, nothing more, but to me, at that precise moment, it represented the worst thing that could happen. And now, on this night, the one that we had all looked forward to with such excitement. It was ruined.

  Amy turned and before her face turned contrite it wasn’t lost on me that there was a small smile there, a look of victory. She had something that I had once called my own.

  Before I walked away, deeper into the copse of dense trees in the center of the island, I turned back and with a venom I had never heard in my voice before uttered the last words I would ever say to her.

  “You’ll be sorry.”

  CHAPTER Fifty

  In the kitchen at the Manor, the memories flooding my brain like the rain did the island that night so long ago, I stared at her while she finished the story. Mary Ann D’Amato implored her to stop talking but was not at the point where she was ready to shoot. The gun was still pointed at Amy, shaking in her small hand, the weight of it weakening her. I could see it and so could Cargan; she propped her left hand up with her right to steady it. Kevin was the only one still unsure of the proceedings, wondering what he had drunkenly wand
ered into. His wife was unpredictable, though, having turned into someone none of us recognized, and that was a concern. She could turn again.

  “I left and went to the center of town after that,” Amy said. “I left my kayak at home and walked for hours, not sure why I had done what I had done.” She couldn’t look at me and I didn’t want her to. “Why I kissed him.”

  “It was my fault,” Kevin said, his words sure but slurred. “It was me. I did it.”

  “You did it to hurt me,” I said.

  “I did it to hurt you,” Kevin said, nodding, accepting the blame. “It was all too much. We were way too serious. I wanted it to end but couldn’t tell you.”

  Cargan stared at the ceiling, embarrassed for me. Even after all this time, it was hard to hear that I had misread the situation, that what I thought wasn’t even close to the truth. I thought that Kevin was in it for the long haul until he wasn’t. It was still a blow, me thinking that the relationship had died a natural death.

  “I finally walked home and got my car, driving it to the edge of town where I knew there was another party.” She pointed at Mary Ann. “You were there.”

  The story was taking a turn; we could all feel it, but behind Mary Ann’s eyes was the thought of whether she would stop Amy or not, whether she had the guts to actually shoot her in front of all of these people, a group that now included her father, looming in the doorway of the office, knowing what was happening without saying a word.

  “That girl … Kelly … she was drunk. And high. As was everyone else.” Amy put her hands together, as if in prayer. “Even you, Mary Ann. The most perfect girl in Foster’s Landing.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but it held the accusation. The truth. “Even you.”