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

  On his best days, Cargan looks sad, but today, he looked sadder than I had ever seen him look. He stepped into the apartment and stood in the back hallway. “I don’t know. I thought there was a chance…”

  “That she’d be alive?” I asked. Whatever I knew, he had known way before me. That’s the way it always was and always would be.

  He shrugged sadly. “Maybe? I knew it couldn’t be but I always hoped.”

  “Me, too,” I said, and it was with my brother, my closest ally, that I knew I could let my guard down. The moisturizer that I had applied to my face and that I hadn’t rubbed in properly mixed with the salty tears that ran down my face, almost twenty years of pent-up hope and regret coming out in one sob-filled explosion.

  “Ah, Bel,” he said, letting me cry, something that just wasn’t done in my family. Criers were “emotional” and “too sensitive” and we were taught to be tough. There were fisticuffs and brawls and rows but I never cried, not even that one time when Derry had sat on my stomach until I had nearly passed out. I hadn’t cried then but he had when I punched him square in the nose upon rising, bloodying it and letting him know that his nine-year-old sister was tougher than any boy he knew. It was only later, when I was older, that I realized the ability to cry—something Dad did every time he heard “Danny Boy”—was a sign of strength and not something to be ridiculed. It wasn’t weakness. It was strength.

  I pulled away and grabbed a paper towel from the roll on the counter, blowing my nose loudly. Cargan sniffed the air. “You have a date?” he asked. “Smells like the cosmetics counter at Bloomingdale’s in here.”

  I laughed, in spite of everything. “I do.”

  “With the Joyce kid?”

  “Yes, the Joyce kid,” I said. “All six feet five inches of him.”

  “He get his braces off?” Cargan asked, even though he had seen Brendan and knew that he had two straight lines of teeth.

  “You know he did,” I said.

  “Does he wear his retainer when he sleeps over?”

  “How did you—”

  “Know that he sleeps over?” Cargan asked. He put a finger to his head. “I know everything,” he said. “You should know that.” He picked up a magazine on the coffee table, Food and Wine. “So, the retainer?”

  “Get out of here,” I said, pushing Cargan toward the door. “He’ll be here any minute,” I said.

  Cargan stopped by the hooks that Dad had hung by the back door and on which the only thing hanging was my chef’s coat, the one that Mom had bought me and on which she had had my name embroidered. All of it, even my confirmation name: Belfast Jane Mary Magdalene McGrath. It was a mouthful but thankfully I have an ample rack and could wear my name proudly and without a crease to obscure it. Cargan laid a hand on one of the hooks.

  “You know, Bel, you need to let it go. Move on.”

  “I have moved on,” I said, a little stridently and too quickly for it to be true. I would never let it go, that part of my brain, the one that remembered that night in vivid detail, the part that would always be eighteen years old, stunted and immature. “I have moved on,” I whispered.

  “For real. For good,” he said. He touched my chef’s coat. “We worry about you, sister.”

  “No need, brother.”

  “And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘me,’” he said but it was unnecessary. The other boys were so wrapped up in their own lives that it was possible that until I had returned a few months previous, they had forgotten they even had a sister.

  I could hear Brendan Joyce ascending the stairs to the apartment so I wiped a finger under each eye to catch any errant moisture. “How do I look?” I asked my brother.

  “Rode hard and put up wet,” he said, our old banter back. “Is that the look you were going for?” he asked. You can’t have four older brothers and be too “emotional,” “too sensitive.” Or even too confident; they would make sure that I felt a little off-kilter, not very sure of myself. But not Cargan. His jokes were really jokes and nothing ever went too far, not like with the other boys. He reached out and touched my shoulder and I thought, If he gets serious or emotional, I’m going to lose it.

  But instead, he poked my shoulder and said, “Got you last!,” darting out the door and scrambling down the stairs before I could “get” him, too, leaving Brendan Joyce with a bewildered look on his face.

  “‘Got you last’?” Brendan asked. “Do I even want to know?”

  “It’s a game. That we played as kids,” I said, leaning out the door and watching my grown brother running across the lawn of Shamrock Manor under a very full moon, the sight of him bringing me back to a much simpler time, a time when everyone was happy, and I had Amy and she had me. I reached up and dug my fingers into Brendan’s curly mop, pulling his head closer so that we could kiss.

  I looked at Brendan before planting a wet one on him. “Did you bring your retainer? I would love for you to sleep over.”

  CHAPTER Sixteen

  The next day, Brendan left early, before my parents or brother could see him, and I spent the day trying out some new things—much to my mother’s chagrin—in the kitchen. Things with weird ingredients like walnuts and cheeses that weren’t American and pastas with names she couldn’t pronounce. I delighted in it all, wondering just what she would think about the new hors d’oeuvres, imagining that her head might actually explode at the thought of another caviar-based bite leaving the kitchen.

  Around sunset. I found Dad on the lawn looking out at the Foster’s Landing River, his hands on his hips. Although we weren’t supposed to touch each other, or tell each other how much we loved one another, I came up behind him and put my arms around him from behind, something I had done as a little girl, and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  He didn’t turn around. “That Joyce boy good to you, Belfast?” he asked, his eyes still trained on the river below.

  “He is, Dad,” I said.

  “Don’t rush it,” he said.

  “I won’t.”

  He continued, his back to me. “I don’t want to see you get hurt again,” he said, a little hitch in his voice, which he cleared with a throaty cough.

  I laid my head on his back. “I won’t, Dad. I promise.”

  But was that a promise I could keep? Would Brendan be the guy that would erase the years thinking about Kevin, the time with Ben? I didn’t know.

  Later that night, my feet up on my coffee table, a pad and pencil in my hand as I sketched out a new recipe—this one for a pâté—my phone pinged on the end table.

  Colleen.

  “Someone’s been here and they’ve taken all of her stuff.”

  I didn’t involve Cargan in this newest development because I wanted to handle it myself. The last thing I needed was him tailing me and putting in his two cents.

  Being the youngest sibling, a girl no less with four older brothers, puts you at a disadvantage in the family. Although I had been a rough-and-tumble tomboy as a child, my brothers expected nothing from me in terms of brains or brawn. They thought I needed protection and help, even in spite of my bloodying Derry’s nose and being able to take care of myself. That event, to them, was an aberration. Cargan, in particular, was protective, even though I was the one protecting him when we were small, my cousin Caleigh being a particularly imaginative tormentor of my poor, wee brother.

  Cargan wanted his hand in this entire thing, Pauline’s disappearance, the story of what had happened to her; I could tell. I also knew that if he got wind of my going this alone, he wouldn’t be happy, but so be it. I didn’t know where he was even though he was usually only at one or two places: home or soccer. It was too late for soccer so my guess was home. And God help him if Mom and Dad knew because he’d end up watching another episode of season three of Downton Abbey, which Dad still referred to as Downtown Abbey despite everyone screaming at him for several weeks running that that was not what the show was called.

  When I got to the girls’ apartment, Colleen was at the top of the long sta
ircase, wringing her hands. “Oh, Bel,” she said. “Come on up.”

  I started asking questions before I reached the landing. “Who has a key to this apartment, Colleen? What time did you get home? Did the downstairs neighbors see anything?”

  “Only the landlord, five o’clock, and they don’t speak English, only Spanish.”

  I ran back down the stairs. My Spanish was passable after having worked in kitchens for most of my adult life. I ran through some vocabulary in my head while I waited for someone to answer the door. A young woman with a baby on her hip answered, giving me a tentative smile that grew wider when I launched into my questions in Spanish.

  “I speak English,” she said, without a trace of an accent. “I’m from Foster’s Landing.”

  “So sorry,” I said. “Colleen said you didn’t speak English.”

  The woman lowered her voice. “We can’t understand a word she says. She talks funny. But we don’t want her to know that so we just smile when she talks to us.”

  Ah, a great cultural divide at work. “Did you see anyone take anything from the upstairs apartment?” I asked.

  “I didn’t,” she said. “My husband and I both leave the house by seven and I drop the baby off at day care in town. This house is empty most of the day.”

  As I stood there, a smell wafted out to me. “Sofrito?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Yes. You like sofrito?”

  “I do,” I said, “but I’ve never been able to master it.”

  “Come on in,” she said. “I’ll teach you.” The baby smiled at me before sticking a fat thumb into his mouth.

  Colleen, still at the top of the stairs, cleared her throat.

  “I’ll come back if you don’t mind,” I said. “My name is Bel McGrath.”

  “I know who you are,” the woman said, not unkindly. “I’m sorry. I followed your story closely when it was in the paper.”

  Well, then, she was the only one in Foster’s Landing, most of its residents acting as if the world began and ended within its borders.

  “I’m a bit of a foodie,” she said. “I’ve been thinking of opening my own restaurant here in town.”

  I wanted to scream “Don’t do it!” because of my experience in many a kitchen, but I could tell that her love of food was driving her, and one thing I knew well was that a culinary passion was a driving one.

  “My name is May Sanchez,” she said. “My husband is Efraim Martinez, which is why it says ‘Martinez’ on the mailbox.” She smiled. “Old-school Puerto Rico.”

  “Nice to meet you. Listen,” I said, leaning in close so Colleen couldn’t hear us, “what goes on up there? What do you know about Pauline?”

  “Nice girl,” she said. “Loves Matthew here.” She pulled the baby closer. “Even babysat for us a few times.”

  “Have you seen her? Spoken to her?”

  She shook her head. “No. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her in a few days. Is something wrong?”

  “We don’t know,” I said. “But she hasn’t come to work and we’re getting concerned.”

  “Did you go to the cops?”

  My look told her everything.

  “Got it,” she said. “That’s a problem I understand all too well.”

  I had a bent Shamrock Manor business card in my pants pocket which I handed to her. “If you hear anything or remember anything, anything at all, would you call me?” I asked.

  “I will,” she said. And as I started up the stairs, she stuck her head out of the apartment door. “And Bel, if you need help at Shamrock Manor, please call me. I would love to work under a chef like you. I’m currently at a restaurant in Morrisville and the commute is killing me.” She smiled. “Really, I’d love to work with you.”

  I thought about Cargan, the waitresses, the busboys, the one sous I had hired who clearly found me annoying and bossy. “Well, you’d be the only one,” I said, taking the stairs two at a time.

  At the top of the stairs, Colleen was fuming. “We don’t have time for you to make new friends, Bel,” she said. “I’m getting really worried here.”

  I looked at the door and could see that whoever had entered either had a key or was a professional. It was either Pauline who had come back when she knew no one would be around, or someone else, someone who had decided that cleaning out Pauline’s room was a good idea. I thought back to my last visit here and Cargan slipping into Pauline’s room with ease; the front door to the apartment didn’t look any harder to break into using a paper clip or a credit card. Inside the tidy apartment, the door to Pauline’s bedroom was open and, indeed, it was empty. The furniture was still there, as was the picture of President Obama, but everything else was gone: clothes, shoes, personal items.

  I looked around a bit before turning to Colleen; to me, it looked pretty clear. “I think you’re going to need to find a new roommate. Seems like Pauline has moved out for good.”

  “She would never do that, Bel. Never,” Colleen said. “We weren’t super close but she wouldn’t leave without telling me.”

  It was clear that she had. “She wouldn’t? She’s been missing for days,” I reminded her. “What makes you think that she wouldn’t leave without telling you?”

  “She wouldn’t leave for good without telling me,” she repeated. “Not unless she had to.”

  CHAPTER Seventeen

  “If I have to watch one more episode of ‘Downtown Abbey’ with Mom and Dad, I think I’m going to go crazy,” Cargan said.

  When I arrived home from Colleen’s, he was sitting on my couch, his feet up on my coffee table drinking a glass of some luscious Cabernet that I had been saving for me and Brendan. “Make yourself at home,” I said, flinging my purse onto the kitchen counter. “How’s the wine?”

  “A little dry for my taste,” he said.

  I held the bottle up. He had consumed more than a glass so I guess he had choked it down, martyr that he was.

  “Where you been, Bel?”

  I poured myself a glass and settled into the chair next to the couch. “Pauline’s room is cleaned out. Colleen was freaking out so I went over there.”

  “Pauline clean it out? Or someone else?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Hard to tell. My guess would be yes, but stranger things have happened.” I put my feet up on the coffee table and stretched out. “Colleen seems to think foul play.”

  “We need to go to the police.”

  “Aren’t you the police?” I asked. “We’ve already gone to you.”

  “The real police. Not the semiretired police,” he said, tugging at the neckline of his soccer jersey. “Well, as real as the Foster’s Landing police are.”

  “If we do that, the girls will all be deported,” I said. “They haven’t said it outright but that seems to be the major concern here.” I uttered the words that had been floating around in my brain like a gnat on the loose. “Mom and Dad. They will be in huge trouble if it gets out that they hire undocumented workers.”

  He mulled that over, sipping his wine like a real connoisseur. “I get that. That doesn’t show great judgment on his part, hiring illegals.”

  “So you see why I don’t want to go to the police just yet, as you suggest.”

  He knew I was right but was too stubborn to admit it. “So what do we do?”

  “Well, short of getting the girls legal and fast, we need to find Pauline.” I recounted my conversation with James Casey when he and Pegeen had stopped by, looking for the missing purse. I wondered just what had been in that purse if Pauline had absconded with that as well. “He seemed to have taken notice of her as well. Don’t know if there is more to that. He said something about tipping her. Maybe that’s all it was.” I shook my head. “She was a pretty gorgeous girl, now that I think of it. I guess I’m not surprised that she was noticed.”

  By the deep flush in Cargan’s cheeks, I knew he had noticed as well. He didn’t acknowledge my comment, focusing on a spot over my head, a neutral zone.

  “Car, I alread
y know. You were sweet on her. There’s no shame in that,” I said.

  “I’m not ashamed,” he said.

  “Embarrassed?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Because she was younger?” I asked.

  “Because I wasn’t the only one,” he said, admitting something that I hadn’t banked on.

  I decided to focus on the business at hand. “What’s our next step?” I asked. “Where do we take this?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, draining his wineglass. “Why don’t you let me think about this for a while? Figure out where we go from here?”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I looked at my brother, an enigma wrapped in a conundrum but my best friend. “Car, when will we find out?”

  “Find out what, Bel?”

  “Who it is,” I said. “About Amy. Whether it was her or not.”

  He pulled his lips together in a sad frown. “I think we know who it is, Bel.” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “You think so?” I asked. “For all these years, I was sure she was dead, but now I don’t know.”

  “And why’s that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “It’s Amy, Bel. I’m pretty sure,” he said.

  “But what if it’s not?” I asked, my gut the only thing that I had at that moment. Sure, it had to be her; I don’t know why I was full of doubt suddenly. “But what if it’s not?” I repeated, as if saying it again would make it true.

  “I’ll tell you as soon as I know something,” he said. “Kevin promised me he’d let me know.”

  And implicit in that was that Cargan would be the one to tell me because Kevin wouldn’t want to, whatever it happened to be. Good news or bad news, if the news could even be categorized that way. It was all bad news, whatever way you looked at it.

  I walked him to the back door and watched him run down the stairs, back to the Manor, back to where we felt safe. Back to before any of this. And in my little apartment, by myself, I envied him just a bit, my brother the semiretired cop, the guy who got to come home and recharge his batteries before setting out on a new adventure at some point. That was what I was supposed to be doing, but now, with things moving at the speed of a runaway train, I had a feeling that I wouldn’t leave. Or couldn’t.