Read Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) Online
Authors: Maggie McConnon
“Yes. She’s got one of those iPhones with the nice camera and I can have her take your photo at Sunday dinner.”
“No need, Mom,” I said. “I have a head shot from when The Monkey’s Paw opened. We can use that.”
“Oh,” Mom said, looking, in that moment, as if she was wondering what else she didn’t know about me, the onetime big-city girl who cooked for presidents and had a professional photo of herself tucked away in an old copy of
Bon Appétit
. “Do you look nice in it?”
“Do you mean do I look thin?” I said, more annoyed than I should have been, but what she didn’t know about me couldn’t hold a candle to what I didn’t know about my own parents. The earring in the sugar. The guns. The preposterous third cousin once removed, now dead. “I have been airbrushed within an inch of my life.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, looking down at her ledger, the red numbers indicating failure.
Point taken. The Manor was going under and I was here to help right the ship. “I’m sorry, Mom. Yes, I look nice and it’s a great photo and you should definitely use it and me to drum up business for the place. The same guy who takes Oprah’s photos took it.”
“Oprah?” Now I had her attention.
“Yes. Whatever you need to do. I’m available.”
“Thank you, Belfast.”
I stood there for another minute, staring at my mother staring at the ledger, listening to my father banging away in the foyer, doing what came normally to him, nothing making it seem as if he was worried that he could outfit a splinter terrorist group with the number of guns in his studio. No, what was their concern right now was a failing business and a broken banister.
Why was I the only one worried about everything else, namely, the guy who had broken the banister in the first place? I went back into the kitchen and looked down at the hors d’oeuvres I had arranged on a silver tray, finally popping a piece of chicken in my mouth and wondering how to get the truth out of two of the most tight-lipped people I knew.
I finished up my work, texted Fernando and offered him a full-time position after clearing it with Mom, and hung my apron by the walk-in. I wrapped up the hors d’oeuvres I had made after Dad turned his nose up at them and refused to eat them, and planned to bring them to my apartment, figuring that the starving Brendan Joyce would enjoy them. Guy seemed to eat anything happily and without complaint.
Before I went back to the apartment, I went into Dad’s studio and poked around a bit more. Dad was still in high dudgeon while working on the banister, which would keep him occupied for a while, and Mom was sinking into a further depression while looking at the books and seemed unable to move. I hoped that behind the bizarre paintings of birds—a newfound avocation, it seemed—cans of paint and turpentine, and pieces of scrap metal for his “installations” there wouldn’t be any more ammunition or firearms.
Cargan poked his head into the studio at one point, scaring the life out of me. “Whatcha doing?” he asked. Today, he was dressed in soccer training pants, athletic slides like Dad wore, and a Messi jersey, Messi being some kind of
fútbol
Messiah.
I grabbed my heart and thankfully did not fall into the canvas painted with giant eagles, leaving a clue as to my presence in Dad’s studio. “Jesus, Cargan. You scared me.” I stood upright and adjusted the other canvases. I took a few deep breaths. “Just looking at Dad’s work. It’s fantastic.”
“No, it’s not,” Cargan said. “It’s terrible. And everywhere I go, I see it.”
“Is he selling it?” I asked.
“No, he just hangs it places around town like he owns everything. People are too afraid to tell him that they don’t want it.” He pulled at the neck of his jersey. “You know how Dad is.”
“Pigheaded? Loud? Blustery?”
“Stubborn,” Cargan said, getting right to the point. “So what are you doing here?”
“Looking at Dad’s art,” I said.
Cargan looked at me, not convinced.
“Really. Just wanted to see what direction he was heading in. Artistically speaking, that is.”
“Looks like you were looking for something.”
How could one man be so dense and yet so perceptive? He was like this as a kid, too; just when you thought something had gone over his head, he would say something insightful or profoundly intelligent and leave us all with our mouths hanging open. He had once pronounced one of Dad’s pieces “almost Modiglianian in execution,” and while Feeney had thought Cargan had said something dirty and had guffawed loudly, I knew enough about art to know that not only had he said the artist’s name correctly and with a flawless Italian accent, but he was right: Dad’s work did almost look like a Modigliani. If you were kind of blind, but still. Despite the fact that in this instance Cargan was right again, I didn’t want to let him on what was happening. “Hey, Cargan,” I said, attempting to throw him off the scent, “I never asked you.”
“What?”
“Declan Morrison, the guy at the wedding.”
“You mean the dead guy?”
“Yes, the dead guy,” I said, as if there were another Declan Morrison in our lives. Scratch that; maybe there was. We Irish tend to gravitate toward the same names over and over, which was why I had fourteen cousins named Kathleen and Ballyminster had their fair share of Declans. “Did you know him?”
“No, Bel. Never saw him before in my life. Come to think of it, didn’t even see him at the wedding.” He looked up at the ceiling. “No, that’s not right. I did see him at the wedding.” He went silent, apparently thinking that that was enough of an answer.
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what was he doing? Did you talk to him?”
Cargan thought that over for so long that I wondered if he had forgotten the question. “He was arguing.”
I waited.
“With Mark Chesterton. Caleigh’s husband.”
I let out a little
oomph
of surprise. “Did you tell Kevin Hanson?”
“He never asked.”
“He didn’t question you?” I asked. Now the idea of looking for guns seemed passé, the text of Mark and Declan’s argument much more important. “You didn’t offer him this information?”
“He did question me. And I think I mentioned it, but I can’t remember. I think I forgot about it until this moment.” Cargan picked up a paintbrush, still wet, and brandished it like a sword, feeling the heft of the handle in his hand. “Kevin said I had an alibi because I was playing music while the whole thing went down.”
True enough. But what about finding out what Cargan might have known or might have seen? No use in asking that? I wondered how I could send an anonymous message to Lieutenant D’Amato, letting him know that even though I had buried the past with Kevin and we had reached détente, he was still as dim as a 25-watt bulb. Still cute, but still dim. “You need to tell Kevin, Car. Make sure he knows.”
“Tell him that I saw them arguing?” he asked. “I figured it was over the fact that Declan crashed. That’s what Mom said anyway.”
Mom. Spit polishing the truth once again. “Let’s go see Kevin right now.” I walked past the giant table in the middle of the room and led my brother outside. “We can walk to the station.”
Cargan was hesitant, his jersey stretched between us, me pulling and him holding back. “Oh, I don’t know, Bel. It didn’t seem like a big thing at the time. Just a little spat.”
I took my brother by the shoulders and pressed down, trying to make my point. “Everything related to a murder is a big thing, Car. Everything.”
He knew that resistance was futile. We argued about that as we walked down the path from Shamrock Manor into the village and through the front door of the police station, housed in an old Tudor that was original to the area. Kevin was standing at a desk in the front; I recognized its inhabitant as Francie McGee, a classmate of Arney’s whom he had escorted to the junior prom, an event that had been held, conveniently, at the Manor.
“Hi, Francie. Hi, Kevin,” I said. I motioned toward an office in the back, not sure if it was Kevin’s but knowing we needed some privacy. If I recalled correctly, Francie was a bit of a gossip, a trait that got a good workout from her current position as receptionist at the FLPD. Francie looked at me, acting as if she didn’t believe her eyes. The last time she had seen me, I was ten years old probably and trying to get a peek at her making out with my brother in the coat-check room at the Manor.
“Bel McGrath?” she asked. “Nice to see you. What brings you here?” she said, and by the lilt in her voice, the excitement lurking beneath the banal questions, I could tell that she had lapped up every salacious detail of my removal from The Monkey’s Paw and the murder at the Manor. She was apparently the one
Times
reader in Foster’s Landing.
“Just need a word with Detective Hanson,” I said, my hand firmly on my brother’s forearm, guiding him toward the room at the back of the open office area. Kevin followed behind me and, once inside the room, turned on the light and closed the door.
“What can I do for you, Bel?” he asked, leaning back against a credenza, his hands in his pockets.
I gave Cargan a little poke. “My brother has something to tell you.”
“Cargan?” Kevin said.
Cargan turned a deep red before all of the blood drained from his face and he went white. Kevin pulled out a chair and led him to it, pouring him a cup of water from a cooler next to the credenza. He put his hand on my brother’s shoulder, showing sensitivity to someone he had known most of his life.
“Bel, why don’t you give us some privacy so we can have a chat?” Kevin asked. I reluctantly allowed him to walk me to the door and he gave me a look as I exited that conveyed he had my brother’s best interests at heart. I had no choice; I had to trust him. I left the room and wandered over to Francie’s desk, figuring I could catch up on the intervening years and what she had been doing beyond answering the phone and any 911 calls at the police department.
I settled into a chair across from Francie’s desk, giving her a wan smile. “Do you like working here?” I asked, not much else to talk about now that my brother was behind closed doors, alone, with one of Foster’s Landing’s finest.
“I do!” she said, whipping a pen out of a carousel and making a great show of writing something in a notebook. “Something different every day.”
“Hmmm,” I said, not sure I wanted to know what those somethings were. I prayed that they didn’t include any members of my family. I know that Dad had spent more than a night or two at the station bailing Feeney out after one or the other of his punk performances, with his band Bleeding Heart of Jason (yes, he’s going to hell), a group who wore their old CYO jerseys. One night at the local VFW hall (which one could rent for a song) had turned into a night we would all like to forget, with Feeney ending up in the one cell in the Tudor’s basement.
“You’ve been gone a long time, Bel,” Francie said, not looking at me. “Long time.”
“Yes. I moved to New York.”
“I guess you had to get out,” she said, studying the day planner on her desk.
“Of New York?” I said.
“Yeah, there too.”
“You mean the Landing?” I wasn’t following her line of questioning.
She made a little noise, affirmative and judgmental all at once.
I sank further in my chair. Because of Amy? Because of the last night we were together? I didn’t ask. I didn’t have to.
“Because of Amy,” Francie said, clucking sadly. “Poor girl. Poor parents. The worst thing that can happen: your child goes missing and is never found.”
The second worst? Being the girl’s best friend and years later having someone like Francie McGee—and others; I’m sure she wasn’t alone in her thoughts—assign some kind of guilt to you. Some kind of responsibility. I stayed silent.
An hour ticked by and then another one. I texted Brendan Joyce my apologies and told him he would have to take a rain check. The length of time I had been here was a sign that something wasn’t going according to the original plan, wherein Cargan would tell Kevin what he knew, we would leave, and Kevin would carry on with his investigation. No, something was definitely wrong.
Into the third hour, Kevin opened the door to the room where he and my brother had been talking and strode across the room, none of the other cops in the area really taking note of him. His mouth was set in a grim line, but he waited until he reached me to tell me what was going on, whispering into my ear so that Francie McGee, she of the fancy pen and pencil carousel, couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“Your brother wants a lawyer.” Kevin paused. “Preferably not Arney.”
Arney specialized in divorce cases and not particularly well, particularly since his clientele was mostly Irish, all Catholic, and thought that divorce was a mortal sin. Business was not exactly booming. I wasn’t surprised that Cargan didn’t want Arney to represent him. I tried to remain expressionless but wasn’t sure how successful I was.
“And a ham sandwich. Hold the mustard.”
There was no way to handle this without involving my parents. I could handle the ham sandwich on my own, but I had to let them know that Cargan was at the FLPD and that something was afoot. Needless to say, when I found them at the Manor, both in the office, my father rubbing my mother’s feet, they weren’t happy.
“What now?” my mother said, pulling her feet out of my father’s hands so quickly that she nearly upended herself on her swivel desk chair. “Your brother is where?”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with that night at the pool, does it?” Dad asked.
“What? Pool?” I asked. “No.” I had to return to that later. “He told me that he had seen Declan Morrison and Mark Chesterton arguing at the wedding, so I took him to see Kevin.”
“You did what?” my mother asked, her face turning the color of the pig I had roasted a week before.
Dad was silent. Mom had been protective of Cargan always, casting him in the role of the one who needed protecting, simple almost. I could never figure out why; he had friends in school and had even dated a girl—another one besides Amy—in my class for a couple of months before settling into a life in Foster’s Landing that revolved around soccer and the Manor. He was smart in his own way and, if I had to rank them, would put him as the best musician among my brothers, the one who crafted interesting arrangements for the band or who put songs together for a set that allowed people to whoop it up for just as long as they needed before settling into a nice waltz to catch their breath. He had been an all-Ireland fiddle champion three years running, much to the chagrin of the hometown crowd in Ireland, who grudgingly admitted that he was the best there was and that no one in all thirty-two counties could touch him musically. There was a time when he traveled extensively as a musician, his fiddle paying his ticket out of Foster’s Landing. He had returned eventually and seemed to be stuck here now after the years before that took him far and wide. Why my mother insisted on treating him as if he were special in some way, in need of constant encouragement and guidance, was something I never understood but, to my mind, had kept him as a sort of man-child in the family, someone whom no one else really took seriously.