Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) (16 page)

“The Monkey’s Paw?” I asked. “How much do you know?”

“Just what was in the paper. You were the head chef. President Moreland was there. You left.”

“I was fired.”

Brendan dipped his head so that he didn’t have to look at me. “Okay. You were fired.”

I leaned on the counter. “It was a Tuesday night. Pretty quiet. A nice couple, a cop and his professor wife, were celebrating his fiftieth birthday with his partner and his wife. I knew the partner’s wife because she’s a cable bigwig and had been talking to me about doing my own reality show.”

Brendan’s eyebrows went up.

“I said no,” I said, putting to rest any thoughts he might have had of me being a cable star. “It was just them and the reporter from the
Times.
” I grimaced. “Unfortunately.”

“I’ll say.”

“Anyway, the president was a late reservation, but being as it was a Tuesday, we had plenty of room to spare. Secret Service came in and swept the place. All clear.” I dipped my fingers into the eggs and extricated the fork. “He ordered the snapper.”

“Ah, the snapper,” Brendan said, his own memory of the story jogged.

“It had a bone in it.”

“Yep. I read that.”

“That’s basically it,” I said.

He smiled. “But it’s not really, is it?”

I thought about how much to tell him, how much to reveal. “You want the true story?” I said. “You want to know what really happened?”

“I do.”

“Are you trying to decide whether to cast your lot with a crazy chef?”

“No,” he said. “I already think that I want to. But I have a feeling there’s more to this story because I’ve known you, what?” he said, counting on his fingers. “Twenty-two years with a long hiatus thrown in there? So, seventy-two hours at most? I don’t see crazy. I see passionate. I see smart. I see kind.” He looked at me, the fork in my hand dripping egg onto the counter. “I see beautiful.”

I didn’t want to blush, but I couldn’t help it. “I was engaged to my sous chef, Ben. He’s what my parents would call a wanker.”

“I thought wankers were British.”

“They are, but my parents love the word, particularly when it applies to my former boyfriends. And he is. British, that is. But that doesn’t matter. That’s what they call Kevin Hanson, too.”

“Detective Hanson?” Brendan asked. His sunny demeanor clouded for a moment, leading me to believe that he and Detective Hanson—Detective
Wanker
—had a history of which I wasn’t aware.

“One and the same.” I put the fork in the sink and got a new one out of the drawer. Only two remaining. Just right for our breakfast a deux. “Anyway, Ben was in charge of deboning the fish, making sure it was ready to go from the grill to the plate and to the president’s table.”

“So, not you?”

“Not me.”

The realization dawned on his sweet, concerned face. “You took the fall.”

“And Ben never said a word,” I said, choking back a sob with a little, rueful laugh. “Francesco didn’t like that I was becoming bigger than the restaurant, that my star was rising. He had been looking for a way to get rid of me for months because I didn’t want to do the show. People loved my food, so he didn’t just want to out and out fire me. This was his out. This was his way to get rid of me, promote Ben, and bring the spotlight back to him and his ownership rather than a celebrity chef who could have had her own television show but who chose not to.” Brendan looked at me, his expression a combination of pity and pride. “It was all about the food with me. It always has been. I didn’t need some television crew following me around, watching my every move. I am not in this business for the fame or the glory.”

“Well, that’s good, because now you’re the head chef at Shamrock Manor,” he said, and the sound of his laughter was welcome after going back in time to The Monkey’s Paw and Ben the wanker and Francesco Francatelli. “The broken wine bottle?” Brendan asked. “Saw something about you threatening Francesco with a broken wine bottle?”

“When Francesco came into the kitchen to tell me about the president’s snapper, he picked up my chef’s knife and was going to throw it at the wall behind me, so I picked up the closest thing I could find and made it into a weapon.” I shrugged. “You don’t grow up with four older brothers and not figure out ways to defend yourself.”

“He was going to throw the knife? This story is just ridiculous,” he said.

“I wouldn’t believe it myself if it hadn’t happened to me. Maybe he would have thrown it, maybe not. But my line cook was coming out of the walk-in and if Francesco missed his target, well, that would have been the end of Lucio.” I looked at the bowl of eggs. “Remember. Francesco was nominated for an Oscar for
The Thrill of the Sierra Madre
and supposedly learned knife throwing. But that was in the seventies, so I didn’t trust his skills.”

Brendan rubbed his hands over his face. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

I began to beat the eggs again. “No. You can’t.” I got a skillet out from the drawer under the stove and lit the burner. “So there it is. The unvarnished truth. Did I lose my temper? Yes. Did I threaten my former boss with a wine bottle? Indeed. Did I serve the president red snapper with a bone in it? No, I did not. Was it my responsibility to check? You betcha.”

Brendan spoke softly. “Do you love Ben?”

I answered quickly and without reservation, “Not anymore.” Thinking about it, I wasn’t sure I ever had, and that troubled me even more than the fact that I had fallen for his lines, his charm. If everything had stayed the same, I’d be engaged still to a wanker who had no second thoughts about betraying me to save his own hide or make his own star rise.

“When were you supposed to get married?” Brendan asked.

“This Christmas,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” And I was starting to believe that.

The butter I put in the pan turned a lovely golden brown, and when the eggs hit it they smelled like a little piece of heaven. I shaved some sharp cheddar onto the eggs, lifting the edges when they were brown, and flipping one half over the other. I put some toast under the broiler and grabbed a couple of plates from the cupboard. I pulled the toast out just in time, slathering it with butter and putting it on a plate. “Oh, the pork belly!” I said, looking at the slab of meat on the counter. “I forgot to make it.”

Brendan waved his hand. “No worries. The eggs will be enough.” He leaned around the corner of the kitchen, looking down the hallway that ran the length of the apartment to the back door. “Someone at your door,” he said.

I wiped my hands on a rag and peered around the same corner, wondering who would be visiting me on a Sunday morning. By my accounting, the pancake breakfast hadn’t even started yet; if Father Pat was through the homily I’d be surprised. When I saw who was at the back door, though, I pulled myself back into the kitchen, hoping they hadn’t seen me.

It was like the Ghosts of Boyfriends Past, both Ben Dykstra and Kevin Hanson standing there, eyeing each other suspiciously.

I looked at Brendan Joyce, the nicest guy any girl could ever hope to meet, and said, “Jelly on your toast?”

CHAPTER
Twenty

They let themselves in, having seen me peering around the corner. Ben sauntered into the room as if no time had passed, nothing had ever happened.

“Hello, love,” he said, giving me a kiss on the cheek, taking a bit of toast off of Brendan’s plate, and shoving it into his mouth. Whereas Brendan’s Irish brogue made him adorable, Ben’s British accent made him sound pompous. Arrogant. And sort of like an extra in
Mary Poppins
. I shuddered to think that I had once found that attractive and wondered if it was even real.

He was in last night’s work clothes, his short-sleeved chef’s jacket—the kind that only wankers wore—a little dirty, a lot wrinkled, suggesting that maybe he had slept in it for a spell. Kevin stood at the edge of the kitchen, his hands shoved into the pockets of his dress pants, taking in the scene. The thought of him standing in the Foster’s Landing River the week before came back to me, his posture the same as it had been that night.

“Ben, what are you doing here?” I asked. I could smell the bourbon on him from a mile away. “You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“Took the train, gorgeous,” he said. “Great little town you have here. Hung out in a place called The Sandlot until it was time to visit.” He looked around the apartment. “Old guy who owns the place said you’re consulting on the menu?” He twirled a finger by his forehead. “A bit of the dementia?”

“The Dugout. It’s called The Dugout. And the owner is not suffering from dementia,” I said. Behind Ben, Kevin’s eyebrows shot up. I didn’t know what he was doing here, but being here with Ben was not something Kevin had bargained for.

Brendan stood. “I’d better get going,” he said. “Bel, thank you for breakfast.”

Now it was Ben’s turn to raise his eyebrows.

“No. Stay,” I said, but hearing the desperation in my voice, my reluctance at being left here with these two, I stopped myself. “Thank you for your help yesterday, Brendan. I really appreciate it.” I walked him to the back door, his shoes hanging from his hands, his feet bare. I guess he couldn’t wait to get out of here.

He looked down at me. “That guy
is
a wanker,” he said, smiling. “I’ll see you later.”

I watched him go, taking the rickety back steps at such a fast pace I was afraid he would slip and fall. I hoped that my former association with Ben—both personal and professional—didn’t color me in a way that Brendan found unattractive, but his haste in getting to his car certainly didn’t serve as a rebuttal.

Ben and Kevin were sitting at the counter when I came back in. “Francesco says ‘hi,’” Ben said, not a touch of sarcasm in his tone. Francesco had wished me dead the last time I had seen him. I doubt he had taken the time to say “hi.”

“How’s the restaurant, Ben?” I asked. “How are you enjoying your head chef status?”

“Oh, are you still sore about that?” he asked.

I turned off the broiler; no one else in this strange threesome was getting breakfast. “Yes. I’m still sore about that.”

Kevin looked from me to Ben and then back at Ben again.

“Hey, Kevin,” I said, “I don’t know why you’re here, but obviously Ben and I have some catching up to do. Can we reconnect later?”

“Afraid not, Bel,” Kevin said, standing and opening his jacket wide enough so that Ben could see the gun on his hip. He no longer carried the badge of his teenage masculinity—a football that was with him all the time when his standing bass was not—but a gun was better than that. Ben gave it a cursory glance and looked back at me. “I have some things to talk to you about with respect to the Morrison murder.”

That got Ben’s attention. “The Morrison murder? What in the hell is that?”

Kevin turned to him, officious. “It is the murder of one Declan Morrison who met his demise at Shamrock Manor last week.”

Kevin must have gotten a word-a-day calendar. His vocabulary had improved considerably since we were in high school and I had had to explain to him that “flatulence” meant the same thing as “fart.” I turned and looked at Ben. “In that case, you should go. This is something I need to discuss with Kevin. Alone,” I said as I rounded the counter and pushed Ben toward the door. Outside on the back deck, high above my father’s studio, where the sounds of banging and cursing had ceased while Dad contemplated life and Catholicism at BHJ, I guided Ben toward the stairs.

“Wait,” he said, his chef’s coat moist beneath my hands from sweat or something else, I couldn’t tell.

“What, Ben?” I asked. “I’ve been gone for over two months and that life, the one we had together, is over. You made that perfectly clear when you didn’t come after me. When you didn’t call.”

“To here?” he asked. “To this hellhole? You hate it here. You told me yourself.”

“It’s not a hellhole,” I said, and I was surprised to admit that. Foster’s Landing had wrapped me in its warm embrace, the one where it was not unusual to awaken to the sounds of the train in the distance and, on a really clear night in the summer, the sound of a local band playing at the riverfront park. “I needed a break from all of that. From The Monkey’s Paw. From New York.” I looked into his eyes and seeing nothing that would ever draw me back in—and wondering why he ever had that power—said, “From you.”

“From me?” he said. “Baby, you’ve got that all wrong.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “And don’t call me baby.”

He leaned in close and I got a good whiff of booze, sweat, and something else that smelled like dehydrated shiitake mushrooms. I wondered what in God’s name—and yes, I took it in vain—I ever saw in this guy. Had the accent been enough? The good sex? The common goal of becoming top chefs, working at competing New York City restaurants but always remembering that we were one unit?

I decided, after I thought it through, that it had been two years of temporary insanity.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “You used to be fun. Now you’re cooking at a bougie wedding hall and living in a dump.”

“At least I didn’t serve a life-threatening piece of snapper to a president,” I said. Behind me I heard Taylor, the feral cat, let out a howl of approval.

“So there it is.”

“There what is?”

“You blame me,” he said. “For everything.”

“And why wouldn’t I?” I said. “You let me take the fall. You let Francesco treat me like garbage. You never said one word to defend me.”

“One word: ‘head chef,’” he said. “You were responsible for what left that kitchen.”

“That’s two words.” I turned my back on him. because if I looked at his face any longer I would start crying and that would ruin everything. “Why are you here?”

“You never gave me the recipe for the bordelaise.”

“You don’t know how to make bordelaise without a recipe?” I asked. Any chef worth their salt—heck, any home cook worth their salt—knew how to make a bordelaise from scratch and memory. “Have you ever heard of Google? Allrecipes.com? You needed to come up here via train to ask me what the recipe is?”