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

  “I had a Canadian girlfriend once,” he said. “A gem.”

  “I prefer the Irish lads myself,” I said.

  “I had an Irish girlfriend once,” he said.

  Well, that was easy.

  “Gorgeous gal, I bet,” I said. “Fair with blue eyes? A true Irish rose?”

  He shook his head. “Dark as night,” he said. “Black hair. Like the devil, that one,” he said, shuddering. “But you. You’re attached, are you?” he asked. “Or does your mute brother scare everyone off?” He looked pointedly at Cargan who, for all intents and purposes, really was a mute. He said little and contributed almost nothing to most conversations.

  “Not everyone,” I said. Who was the eejit now? “So tell me about this Irish gal. What broke you up?” Next to me, Cargan was noisily slurping up potato soup, playing the role of my mute brother very well. I didn’t want to hear from him in a few hours when food poisoning set in.

  He waved a hand. “I don’t want to talk about her. She broke my heart, that one,” he said. A waitress who bore more than a passing resemblance to Pauline sidled up next to Angus and whispered in his ear. His hand lingered on her shoulder as he instructed her to give table five a round of drinks on the house. She gave me a sidelong glance as if to say “hands off.” No worries, my friend. There would be no hands of mine anywhere near Angus Connolly.

  “What did she do?”

  “Dropped a soup in someone’s lap,” he said.

  Stay with me, Angus. “Not the waitress,” I said. “This Irish gal.”

  “Cheated on me,” he said, motioning to the bartender for a drink, his usual, it would seem as no words were exchanged before a short glass of amber-colored liquid showed up on the bar in front of Angus. He downed it in one swallow. “With a cop, no less.”

  “A cop, huh?” I said, not following why that was a problem specifically.

  “Yeah, a cop. He turned me in to the Health Department.”

  I looked over at Cargan. “How’s your soup, brother?”

  He gave me a thumbs-up with a grimace.

  “How did that happen? The Health Department stuff?” I asked.

  “She worked here. Told the other chap that she thought that maybe the kitchen wasn’t sanitary and should be shut down.” He grimaced. “You see one mouse and all of a sudden they want to throw you into Sing Sing. Show me a restaurant that doesn’t have stray vermin and I’ll show you a restaurant that’s paying off the Health Department.”

  “Ah, I get it. So she betrayed you, this dame,” I said. I don’t know why I was starting to talk like a character in a forties noir movie; it must have had something to do with the beers I had been consuming. I resisted the urge to belch out loud, belching loudly being one of the many talents I had learned over the years from my four older brothers.

  “She did,” he said. “And I’ll never forgive her.”

  I arched an eyebrow in response.

  “I loved that girl. Would have married her,” he said.

  If she hadn’t already been married, I thought.

  He straightened up, pulled his vest flat against his protruding stomach. “But why are we talking about that? You never answered me. Are you attached to anyone?”

  With my family, I was attached to everyone but that wasn’t a suitable response. “Oh, I get around,” I said, the wrong answer because it piqued Angus’s already heightened interest. “But there is one fellow I spend most of my time with.”

  “Back in Canada?” he asked.

  “Back in Canada,” I said. “A lovely lad. Very talkative. Not like this one here.”

  My brother lifted a hand in greeting.

  “That’s not a nice thing to say about a mute,” Angus said.

  He was right, if a true mute had been in our presence. “So have you seen your old girlfriend?” I asked. “Ever hear from her again? Or too much bad blood?”

  “Funny you should ask,” he said. Around us, the dining room was filling up and I knew I wouldn’t have Angus for much longer. That and the fact that I had a fictitious Canadian boyfriend was sure to make him lose interest in our conversation. I waited for him to tell me more but something had caught his eye across the room.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why is it funny that I asked?”

  “She was here two days ago. Looking for money. Said she needed to leave town in a hurry.”

  CHAPTER Fourteen

  The next day, a pounding headache reminding me why I had stopped drinking beer a long time ago, I went into the kitchen at the Manor where a note had been left for me, taped to the refrigerator.

  D’Amato/Hanson wedding planning, 9:00!

  The left-slanting handwriting and exclamation point let me know that Dad had written the note as did the admonishment “Don’t be late!” as if a professional, like me, would be late to a meeting.

  Yes, when I was growing up, punctuality was a problem. Now, as an adult, I was punctual to a fault. Working in a kitchen, I couldn’t afford to be late and needed to time everything to the second. But Dad couldn’t know that; in his mind, I was still a little girl who needed reminding. That said, it did me no favors when I skidded into the dining room, ten minutes late for the meeting with Kevin and Mary Ann, my chef’s coat unbuttoned and billowing around me, a deep dive into a new recipe having thrown my timing off. My parents looked at me in reproachful unison, my hangover telegraphed by the bags under my eyes and my sallow complexion. And was I technically late for a meeting I hadn’t even known about?

  I was coming in momentarily anyway to take stock after yesterday’s event and to put together a carbonara; Mom had requested pasta for dinner tonight, Sunday dinner, something she rarely did. Helen didn’t like pasta but it seemed that Helen wasn’t coming to dinner. So, pasta was on the menu and I, for one, couldn’t have been happier. Nothing better to soothe a raging hangover than a big bowl of carbs.

  “Hi!” I said breathlessly as I skidded into the room. “How are you?”

  Mary Ann smiled warmly at me, always the lady to my disheveled broad. “Belfast,” she said, leaning in and giving me a hug. “Can you believe it?” She pulled away and presented her left hand, the ring finger holding the largest diamond I had ever seen.

  “What are they paying you, Hanson?” I asked, an indelicate response that was out of my mouth before I could think; I was turning into Dad. “I mean, wow. It’s gorgeous. Great job, Kevin.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbled, looking around the dining room. I guess he had a hard time imagining it as a wedding venue, since the last two times he had been here in a professional capacity.

  My father clapped his hands together, hands that were splattered with paint, just like the rest of his outfit. “Let’s talk wedding!”

  “Working on a new piece, Dad?” I asked as we made our way to a table that Mom and Dad had set as they would for an event. I hadn’t known about this meeting prior to this morning so I hadn’t prepared any of my cocktail-hour offerings, but I geared up to give Mary Ann and Kevin a vocal tour of what they could expect at their reception.

  “I am, Belfast. I’m calling it Love.”

  “Just Love?”

  “Love is all you need,” he said, winking at me.

  I sat between Mom and Dad, an expectant Mary Ann sitting across from me, Kevin beside her. “So, what were you thinking?” I asked.

  “Thinking?” Mary Ann said, looking at Kevin. After all these years, she still looked at him as if he were the smartest, most handsome, loyal guy on the planet. And rather than feel any snark about it, anything approaching jealousy or envy, I admired it. I had once felt the same way about Kevin, a long time ago when we were much younger and a heck of a lot more innocent.

  “Yes, thinking,” I said. “Let’s start with the cocktail hour.” I outlined some of the things I had brought to the cocktail menu since coming back, things that went way beyond the pigs in a blanket and frozen canapés that Mom and Dad used to consider standard cocktail-hour bites. “And I’m going to do a mini roast-beef san
dwich with homemade horseradish sauce on toasted baguette slices.” It wasn’t unique and it wasn’t new but I was determined to figure out how to make melt-in-your-mouth beef just like they served at Barack Obama Plaza in Ireland.

  “All of those items sound wonderful, Belfast,” Mary Ann said. “Kevin? What do you think?”

  Kevin was looking out the window at the river that ran along the south side of the property, the same river where, a few weeks prior, he had unearthed the remnants of Amy Mitchell’s life. The backpack, the key chain, the sneakers. Amy’s sneakers. “Huh?” he asked. “What?”

  “Must be love, son, if you’re that preoccupied,” Dad said. “I remember meeting this one here,” he said, hooking a thumb in Mom’s direction, “and not being able to form a complete thought for a year!”

  There was a reason Dad had kept this place running for all these years, despite the bad food: he, like Mom, was the consummate host. He could turn any situation into a party, any negative into a positive. Although their culinary experience was limited, I bet that no one had ever left Shamrock Manor hungry or not having had a good time.

  Kevin looked away from the river and at Mary Ann. “Yes, beef,” he said.

  “That’s all you have to say?” she said, not unkindly, the rapport between them evident. “Just beef?”

  Kevin straightened in his chair and focused his attention on his fiancée. “Yes. Beef. And whatever else Bel thinks would be good for a crowd of hungry guests.”

  “My grandmother is coming from Italy,” Mary Ann said. “So, do you have any Italian recipes in your repertoire, Bel?”

  “I do,” I said. “I can make mini meatballs. I did a summer in Rome and got the recipe from a chef’s great-grandmother. I think they’ll pass muster with your grandmother.”

  Mary Ann smiled, a woman who was as beautiful inside as out. “That would be wonderful.”

  “How about a caprese salad, too?” I asked. “I’ll only do it if I can find good tomatoes. It will be late in the season for tomatoes but I’ll try. If not, I’ll do something else.”

  We went through the menu and settled on three choices: salmon, chicken, and beef. It would be a sit-down dinner for one hundred and I would do a wine pairing with each course and then each individual entrée. There would be a specialty cocktail that I would devise and show Seamus how to make. The boys would not be playing the entire event, something that raised Dad’s hackles a bit, but the McGrath Brothers and their brand of crazy were being minimized in favor of a jazz trio who, in between sets, would allow my brothers to perform. But even Mary Ann realized that a jazz trio playing her and Kevin’s song—the Righteous Brothers’ version of “Unchained Melody”—would be a mistake, given that Feeney had an incomparable tenor and could hit the high notes with ease. He wasn’t on good terms with Kevin, though, so I wondered how he would sing “I hunger for your touch” without completely losing it.

  Mary Ann perused the menu and then looked up. “I have to admit, Bel, I feel somewhat guilty asking you to cook at our wedding.”

  “You do?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Well, you should be a guest. An honored guest. We go way back and you would have been invited, obviously. Making you cook that day seems inappropriate but there is nowhere else we’d rather have our wedding than here at Shamrock Manor.”

  “Oh, Mary Ann, that’s so nice,” I said. “But cooking for you that day is my gift.”

  Mom and Dad looked at Mary Ann as if she were the reincarnation of the Blessed Mother and I guess that wasn’t too far off.

  “It’s settled,” I said, and rattled off the rest of the items on which we had decided.

  When we were done, we pushed away from the table. “May I see the bridal suite, Mrs. McGrath?” Mary Ann asked. “I’m wearing two dresses, one for the ceremony and then something a little more fun for the reception. I’d love to be able to change here. Would that be possible?”

  The bridal suite wasn’t really used for newly married couples anymore, most newlyweds preferring something off the grounds of the place where they had had their receptions, so Mom rented it out for photos and for brides to take some time off between photos. With its sweeping views of the river and a three-season panorama—winter was kind of a bust unless there was snow—a lot of brides used it for their “before” photos, the ones they took while getting dressed or having their makeup done, their own homes not quite as grand or luxurious. My cousin Caleigh had used it the day she married and it hadn’t been used since.

  “Of course, dear,” Mom said as she spirited Mary Ann away, asking if her dress for the ceremony would “cover her shoulders,” shoulder covering being one of Mom’s prerequisites for a church wedding. Mary Ann was discussing her first dress in hushed tones as the two of them made their way across the foyer.

  Dad looked at Kevin. “Anything else, lad?” he asked. “Anything we here at the Manor can do to help you have a wonderful day?”

  “I don’t think so,” Kevin said. “Thank you. I think it’s going to be really nice.”

  “‘Really nice’?” Dad exclaimed. “Amazing! Gorgeous! It is a Manor wedding after all.” Dad straightened a painting on the stairs. “So start praying to Saint Medard, son.”

  Kevin looked at me.

  “Patron saint of weather,” I said.

  Dad stood on the stairs, halfway up to the second floor, and turned, a pensive look on his face. “Saint Medard,” he said.

  I knew exactly what that meant. In weeks, or even days, we would have an installation of Saint Medard or, at the very least, a painting depicting him as a child, an eagle hovering over him, protecting him from the rain. Whatever it was, it would keep Dad busy and that was always a blessing.

  Thanks, Saint Medard.

  Once we were alone in the foyer, the light streaming in from the windows at the front of the mansion, I took a good look at Kevin. He looked terrible, like he, too, had a hangover. He had always looked vaguely like the boy I had fallen in love with a long time ago but now he looked like a beleaguered man. “Kevin, what is it?” I asked, trying to keep it light. “Wedding plans keeping you up at night? I would say that you should have been engaged for a year or more but we’re not getting any younger, am I right?” I said, giving him a little chuck to the shoulder.

  He ran both hands over his face and I could see the calluses on the tips of his fingers he still had from playing the standing bass. He composed himself, straightening his tie, touching his belt, the gun on his hip. “Bel, there’s something you need to know.”

  There was nothing I needed to know, particularly if it was coming from this person, clearly tortured by something. Is this where he told me it was all a mistake, that after all these years, he still had a thing for me? That the deep, passionate love we had for each other as teenagers had been a real, true thing? If so, his timing couldn’t have been worse. I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach, both excited and sick at the same time. It was something I had always wanted, if I were being completely honest with myself, and also the one thing I thought I didn’t want to hear.

  Turns out I was wrong about one thing: what he said was something else, and it was the one thing I didn’t want to hear.

  “We found something else. That day,” he said.

  He didn’t need to elaborate; I knew which day it was. Right now, there was only that one day, a day I didn’t want to revisit. But I couldn’t help myself. “What? What did you find?”

  He blurted it out, having held it in for far too long. “Remains. Amy’s remains.”

  CHAPTER Fifteen

  After all these years, all that water, it couldn’t be a body. I knew that but I didn’t want to know what it was that they found, how Kevin could be so sure that it was Amy.

  Later that night in my apartment, preparing for a date with Brendan Joyce that I didn’t really want to go on, I thought back to my conversation with Kevin and the look on his ashen face when he told me what they had found.

  Not a body, really.

&nbs
p; More like bones. And the remnants of clothes that I remember too well. Cutoff shorts, they thought. Rubber flips-flops. A bracelet that bore the initials AM, worn down over time and from the surging water. All of the things I remember about Amy, the physical reminders of my long-lost, long-dead, if anyone was really telling the truth, best friend.

  “Where is she … where are they…” I had started to say to Kevin but couldn’t continue, the air having come out of me like a balloon that had become unknotted. Mentally, I started to fold in on myself, the walls in my brain where I kept memories of her closing, one after another, like dominoes.

  “Medical examiner,” he said, his words clipped and professional. “Don’t know what they’ll find. If they’ll find anything at all.” He looked at me, his face contorted in a way that made me fear he would start crying. But he didn’t, which was just as well, because if he had, I would have started and never stopped.

  I looked in my bathroom mirror, playing the conversation over in my brain. I pulled my hair back into a messy ponytail and washed my face, dotting a little moisturizer around my eyes, under my chin, the way I had seen Mom do it. I put on some lip gloss. And I tried to smile at myself, knowing that what lay behind that smile was the knowledge that I had been right all along.

  Amy was gone and my last words to her had been “You’ll be sorry.”

  I would have to live with that and at that moment, I didn’t know if I could.

  A knock on the door forced me to put the closest facsimile to a real smile on my face. I went to the door at the back of the apartment, the only place to gain entrance, and saw Cargan standing on the elevated porch. “Hiya, Car,” I said, opening the door and letting my brother in. “What brings you here?” I asked, affecting a breezy nonchalance that I didn’t feel. “Did you like the carbonara?”