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

  James and I stood by the Bobby Sands bust, looking around uncomfortably. While Dad comforted Pegeen, James turned to me. “The waitress, Pauline. I didn’t see her at the end of the wedding. Did she leave early?”

  Now that was an interesting question. I looked at him to see what his intention was with regard to our wayward server. “Yes, she wasn’t feeling well,” I lied. Why?”

  “I never did get a chance to tell her how much her service meant to our guests.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that, James,” I said. “She’s no longer in our employ.” And she’s run off with the tip money your father gave us so save it.

  When Pegeen had stopped crying, she broke the embrace with my father. “Mr. McGrath, I’m afraid I left my purse here the day of the wedding. Did you find it?”

  “A purse?” Dad said. “What bride carries a purse the day of the wedding?” he said, asking a question that only someone who had seen a lot of brides would ask. It was out of his mouth before he realized he had even said it, a hallmark of Dad’s conversational style. “Oh, excuse me, Pegeen. It’s just that…”

  “I had some personal items in there,” she said.

  “Ah, yes, personal items,” he said, his face flushing as if he were having a hot flash. “Uh, no, we didn’t find anything. So sorry. We’ll keep looking. I’ll get Cargan and the other lads on the case.”

  James reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “Here. My business number is on the front and my home number is on the back. In case you have any additional questions,” he said.

  I took the card and stuck it in my pocket. “We’ll do everything we can to find your purse, Pegeen.”

  Dad hugged the forlorn newlywed again. “Saying a prayer for the lad,” he said. “A terrible, terrible thing.”

  We watched them leave. Dad threw an arm around my shoulders and I hugged him around the waist. “I’m getting a whole new view of you from working here, Dad. You done good,” I said. “Nice recovery on the whole ‘brides don’t carry purses’ thing.”

  “Now what kind of language is that? ‘Done good?”’ he asked. “You’re smarter than that, Belfast. I know you are.”

  “It’s an expression, Dad. Never mind,” I said, when I saw his confusion. “Let me know if you find that purse.”

  He shook his head. “No purse here. Didn’t have the heart to tell her.” He patted my head. “Found a tie, though. And a weird necklace that looks like a finger on a string.”

  I grimaced. “That’s a weird fashion choice,” I said, not really giving it much thought. Dad sees the world in a different way than most people. It was probably a gemstone set in a long oval for all I knew. “Where were you, Dad?” I asked.

  “Having a full physical,” he said. “Can’t take any chances. Seeing that young guy have a heart attack or something really put the fear of God into me.”

  “Good for you, Dad,” I said. “Taking charge of your health is a good thing.”

  “Well, if I didn’t,” he said, a twinkle in his eye, “your mother would kill me.”

  “And the tip, Dad?” I asked. “Will you go to the police?” I prayed that he wouldn’t but I had to ask.

  “One thing I hate more than getting a full physical is having police in the Manor, Bel,” he said. “We’ll handle it our way.”

  Like we always do, I thought.

  CHAPTER Twelve

  I had only been in the basement of the Manor once since returning home and that visit hadn’t turned out well. I had discovered that Cargan had a secret hiding place down there, one where he lay on an old mattress, read fine literature, and listened in on everything going on in the Manor. But thinking about Pauline, how she might be on the run from an abusive husband who may have discovered her whereabouts, if the girls were to be believed, brought me down there early the next morning to go through the gym lockers that Dad had installed when I was in high school. They stood up against a back wall, next to the door that led to the great lawn of Shamrock Manor and afforded the employees a safe place to stow their belongings during their shifts. I opened them, one by one, trying to ascertain each locker’s owner, which wasn’t terribly hard to do. Fernando’s had a photo of his car, which I had seen parked in the lot behind the Manor; Eileen’s had a photo of Gerard Butler with her initials and his surrounded by a heart; and Colleen’s had a photo of her and a very hot guy standing on a beach somewhere. I went down the line and finally arrived at what could only be Pauline’s locker, pulling open the door.

  It was empty.

  I stood there and pondered that. She had fled but had taken the time to empty her locker so the move wasn’t entirely unpremeditated. I couldn’t imagine what she might have kept in there that was so important to take with her; most everyone else had a change of shoes or an extra apron or pair of pants, things you wouldn’t think you’d need if you were trying to go missing.

  People were strange, I decided. The only proof I needed were the individuals who were toiling above me, my mother, father, and brother, all head cases in their own right.

  I had told Cargan what Colleen had said about Pauline and I saw the wheels turning in his head. How would the husband know if she returned to Ireland? How would he find her? Colleen didn’t have a lot of answers but we did get a name out of her—Domnall Kinneally, a man with a plethora of ls in his name—and Cargan was going to poke around to find out what he could about a guy who sounded like he needed a swift kick in the arse. Or three.

  Before we parted, I asked Cargan if he knew Gerry Mason from the PD but he had shaken his head. “I was undercover so long, Bel, that if the guy wasn’t undercover with me, I wouldn’t know him.”

  Later that afternoon, I wanted to get off the grounds of Shamrock Manor desperately, so when Brendan Joyce showed up at the end of the day looking less contrite but just contrite enough, I told him that we were going to my new favorite restaurant, an expensive place a few miles up the Taconic. I thought I deserved a little pampering after his disappearing act, and just to remind him how hurt I was, while I went to change my clothes, I left him in the Manor with Mom and Dad, who peppered him with questions about what he did, where he did it, and how he did it, even though they knew all of the answers. They were special that way. They liked to see if the story had changed at all, if this man who was courting their only daughter could be trusted.

  “But I thought you said you taught art and painting?” I heard Dad saying as I headed to my apartment. I couldn’t think of a more suitable punishment. “Not art and drawing. Which is it, lad? There’s a big difference!”

  That’ll learn you, I thought, as I closed the big double door behind me. When I came back down ten minutes later, Mom was doing something that no one’s mother should be doing to their daughter’s boyfriend.

  “Mom, two questions,” I said after taking a deep breath. “Why do you have a scale in your office and why are you weighing Brendan?”

  Mom looked up. “Two-oh-five. On a strapping boy like yourself. You could be a good two-ten and look the same by turning some of that flab into muscle,” she said, grabbing a hold of a little piece of flesh above Brendan’s right hip. He jumped off the scale, knocking into a photo of the five of us kids that had been taken outside the Manor a long time ago, the trees in the front of the building much smaller than they were now.

  “Thank you, Mrs. McGrath,” Brendan said, deftly catching the large framed photo before it fell to the ground. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “I’m running a special this month at the Pilates studio,” she said. “Ten percent off your first visit and a bigger discount for five sessions. We can do private or in a group.” She looked at Brendan expectantly, and it was all there on his face: the thought of my mother in a leotard, him surrounded by a cadre of yoga-panted, middle-aged women, everyone commenting on his physique, which up until now, he probably thought was just fine. It was. I knew from experience. His face made a few approximations of an appropriate response until he finally fell upon the one that was
the least acceptable.

  He started laughing.

  Mom turned to Dad who stood in rapt attention in the corner. “Well, I guess I have your answer,” she said, turning on her heel and exiting the office while Brendan laughed uproariously at the thought of taking one of Oona McGrath’s Pilates classes, clad in a giant, leggy leotard himself, my mother touching his “core” and expounding on the length and tone of his muscles. At least that’s what it looked like in my own fertile imagination.

  Dad looked at Brendan first and then at me. “That might not have been the best response, son,” he said, and shaking his head sadly, followed Mom, no doubt getting into her leotard to let off some stress in the studio. I didn’t want to think about what that entailed.

  When we were alone in the office, I gently smacked Brendan in the head. “What is wrong with you?” I asked.

  But that just made him laugh harder, so hard that he could barely breathe. Tears streamed from his eyes and down his cheeks and I wondered if those tears were real. Or if they were born of giddiness or sadness.

  When he took me in his arms and buried his head in my hair, I had my answer. “I am so, so sorry, Belfast McGrath.” He pulled away, his hands on either side of my face. “Can you forgive me?”

  I wasn’t sure for what, but seeing his face, the pure penance that he surely had done, I knew that I could. So I let him kiss me to see if it was still there, that electricity that existed between us, and I was happy to find that it did.

  And later that night, as we crept up the stairs as quietly as we could to my apartment after a delicious dinner where we reconnected fully—two adults who should have been able to freely come and go—and he told me he was sorry again and again and again, I forgot it all: the day at the river, his leaving, the void he had left when he stayed away.

  His cowardice.

  CHAPTER Thirteen

  “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  Cargan and I had hit every gin joint in Foster’s Landing and its surrounding environs the next evening, hoping to catch a glimpse of at least one of the Connolly brothers. Cargan was looking into Domnall Kinneally and his whereabouts but nothing had come through yet. We had had an early-afternoon wedding, a brunch really, and while we were tired after working all afternoon, we were more interested in what had happened to Pauline and even more concerned with her affiliation with the men on the list the girls had given me.

  Oh, and there was the not insignificant fact that she had taken our tip, most likely, and I, for one, wanted that money back. The Volvo was on its last legs, and if that went, I would have to find a new car, or a Vespa, if that was all I could afford.

  “We should start a private investigation agency,” I said to my brother as we drove along the darkening streets of Foster’s Landing, streetlights starting to light in the oncoming gloom. “We could be called the ‘Accidental Sleuths.’”

  He wasn’t impressed. “Now why we would do that? We have jobs,” he said. “Plus, we didn’t do such a great job of finding out which Connolly owned which bar in the area. I don’t know why that was so hard to do. And I don’t want to be an accidental sleuth. I want to be a prepared, on-his-game sleuth.”

  “Just a flight of fancy, Car,” I said, pulling into our third bar. “It’s exciting, this mystery stuff.”

  “It’s really not,” he said. “You know what we say in the PD? Being a cop, or even an ‘accidental sleuth,’ is ninety percent being bored and ten percent being terrified. Remember that,” he said, holding the door open for me at the Grand Mill, the first place I had ever gone with Brendan Joyce and the place, if I was being completely honest with myself, where I had fallen hopelessly in love with him, far sooner than I should have, given my recent broken engagement.

  Cargan and I sat at the bar and ordered some beers. “Now, why are we doing this again? Why are we looking for the Connollys?” I said, dropping my voice to a whisper while looking over my shoulder. The crowd tonight was mostly women, the Grand Mill running its weekly “Ladies Night” where drinks for the female clientele were half price. If I had any female friends, this would be the place we would meet up, a warm, woody, cozy place that served decent food. The bar was alive with young-to-middle-aged women, toasting each other and getting progressively louder with each round.

  “Making our way through our list of guys,” he said, as if that were a perfectly reasonable response. “Remember?”

  “Well, Jed Mitchell would probably be the easiest to find,” I said. “He works right in town.”

  “We’ll get to him,” he said. “I have to figure out a way to handle that one.”

  I didn’t, I thought. “If I see him, I’m going to ask him why he’s cheating on his wife and if he knows where Pauline is.”

  “That’s a terrible idea, Bel.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think I have time to run you through an entire course on interrogation, so let’s just leave the sleuthing to me, okay?” he said.

  I didn’t answer him but I definitely was not going to leave the sleuthing to him. He was slow and deliberate and a girl was out there, running possibly from any number of problems and with a pocket full of our cash. I was going to find her. I was sure of that.

  Later that evening, after drinking one too many crappy beers and after giving the keys to a sober Cargan, we hit O’Halligan’s, a bar in the next town that Cargan discovered Angus Connolly owned after calling in a favor and getting the word from an old colleague. Cargan’s friend added, just so we would know, that the Health Department was no friend to Angus and his establishment.

  I was tired; the late night with Brendan followed by a long day in the kitchen had sapped my energy and now, despite being someone who could hold her liquor usually, I was half in the bag. But this was the most fun I had had in a long time, the night before notwithstanding.

  “How perfect is that, Bel?” Cargan asked, and by the way he breathlessly recited the address, I could see a little life coming back to my brother, a guy who had spent the better part of the last year hanging out at Shamrock Manor and, even worse, with my parents.

  “Can I go with?” I asked, putting my hands together in prayer. “Please? Pretty please?” I slurred.

  “I think I should bring you home before I go,” he said. “Besides, what are you going to do? You haven’t been a heck of a lot of help up until this point and your instincts are for shite,” he said as we traversed the parking lot to our car, me tripping over an invisible curb. He considered his options. “But Mom is going to kill me if I bring you home like this.”

  “What am I going to do, you ask? Just sit there. Look pretty,” I said, batting my eyes at him to show him just how pretty I could look.

  “You look like an eejit,” he said, mimicking our father and his heavy brogue. He had thought it over and decided it wasn’t a terrible idea, the wrath of Mom a far more daunting prospect than dragging my butt around the Hudson Valley. “No more drinks. And don’t blow our cover.”

  “What’s our cover?” I asked, but it was clear he hadn’t gotten that far in his thinking so he stayed silent, staring straight ahead at the road.

  At the bar, a glass of club soda in front of me, Angus Connolly sidled up to me and held out his hand. “I’m Angus,” he said.

  It was all coming back to me: the stocky build, the long eyeteeth that made him look vaguely wolflike, the slicked-back hair. He was the spitting image of his younger brother, Jamie, the kid that had been in my class and who didn’t utter a word hardly until he got his diploma and said “thank God,” making the entire audience at the FLHS graduation burst out laughing. Angus hadn’t changed a bit since I was a kid when he worked at McGillicuddy’s Pub in town and Dad used to take me there for a hamburger every now and again. Our town is full of Irish but not too many guys named Angus so seeing this one jogged my memory.

  He threw out an arm, proud of his accomplishments. “I own this place.”

  “And what a place it is,” I gush
ed. In reality, my opinion of the place was changing as I really took it in; it was a caricature of an authentic Irish pub, all green and dark wood with leprechaun “art,” if you could call it that, adorning the walls. It also featured some terrible musicians—a fiddler, a button accordionist, and a mandolin player—playing in the corner. When they launched into a jig that was beyond their musical capabilities, I saw Cargan cringe. There was a lot he could tolerate but badly played Irish music wasn’t one of those things.

  We were at the bar and a waitress delivered Cargan’s order, a pasty-looking potato soup and a roll that he picked up and bounced off the bar, its staleness making it a weapon as well as a side dish. Why he was eating at a time like this was beyond me, but he had a cast-iron stomach and didn’t let much stop him from filling it up. Any wedding leftovers at the Manor mysteriously disappeared not long after going into the refrigerator.

  “I haven’t seen you around here,” Angus said, leaning up against the bar.

  “New in town,” I said.

  Beside me, Cargan coughed loudly. In addition to not blowing our nonexistent cover, I wasn’t supposed to “engage with the subject,” something I had been advised of before we had gotten out of the car. This was supposed to be “reconnaissance,” but I wasn’t the type to sit idly by while a man, clearly interested, wanted to talk to me. This guy may have been one of Pauline’s paramours, even if he was fifty if he was a day, but if he could provide any information as to her whereabouts, I would play along.

  “New from where?” he asked.

  I figured I’d go for broke. “Canada.”

  “Ah, I thought I detected an accent,” he said. “And your boyfriend there?” he asked, pointing at Cargan. “Is he Canadian, too?”

  “Him?” I said. “Yes. Canadian. But my brother, not my boyfriend. And unfortunately, a mute.” I smiled at Cargan. “Actually, he would make the perfect boyfriend, the muteness and all.” That’ll teach him to boss me around, I thought. I was getting farther with Angus Connolly than my brother ever would have on his own.