Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) (26 page)

I texted Mary Ann D’Amato and told her that unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to make it to dinner after all. No use operating under false pretenses anymore.

CHAPTER
Thirty-four

“Bring your boyfriend to dinner,” they said.

“We’d love to see him again!” they included.

“It will be fun!” was the consensus.

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I no longer had a boyfriend, that that relationship had been the shortest in the history of relationships. It was fine, though, because what my family left out when they begged me to bring him was that they wouldn’t be on their best behavior, their best behavior something that they had misplaced somewhere along the way, along with class, couth, and the ability to sit down,
en famille,
at the large table and have a discussion that didn’t include Mom clucking about someone’s lack of grooming, Dad blustering about the lack of accolades for his new installation, or Feeney poking Cargan about a recent musical arrangement to the point of an almost fistfight. I made up an excuse about Brendan planning for the week at camp, which was a Herculean task given that most of the days at the camp previous to this summer had the kids swimming for most of the day.

The McCarthy wedding from the day before had gone off without a hitch, my new hors d’oeuvres making quite a splash and everyone complimenting Dad on the food as they left. The boys had played flawlessly and no one had fought in between sets. No injuries during the Siege. More important, everyone had lived. All in all, it had been a good day.

I wondered if everyone had just lost their collective spark all at once. I knew it couldn’t last.

Caleigh showed up for dinner without Mark, who I guessed had had enough of my family to last him a lifetime.

Mom raised an eyebrow in disapproval. “Busy?” Mom asked, a smile plastered on her face not disguising her disdain for a husband who didn’t accompany his wife to Sunday dinner at her family’s.

“He’s talking to the contractor about our new quartz countertops,” Caleigh said, checking her teeth in her knife. You could take the girl out of Foster’s Landing, but you couldn’t take Foster’s Landing out of the girl.

“On a Sunday?” Mom asked. “More peas, Derry?” she added, showing everyone who she liked best at that moment.

Derry took the bowl and helped himself to a heaping spoonful of peas; I had bought them at the farmer’s market along with the tomatoes. Cargan and I had shelled them in the kitchen, side by side, in silence. I assumed we were still in a fight over my taking him to the police station, a situation that was taking an inordinately long time to blow over.

Before everyone arrived, I asked Mom if she had invited Aunt Trudie to dinner, a question that was met with stony silence. I guessed that that was a “no”?

“Yes. Mark is very busy,” Caleigh said, licking her lips. She had Mom’s tell, too. Must have been a family trait. “The contractor is very busy during the week, too, so he bids and consults on the weekend.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire. It was written all over her red face.

Feeney got to the point. He pointed his knife in Caleigh’s direction. “I don’t think he fancies us much.” Feeney’s girlfriend, Sandree, had begged off this week, a fact about which I was disappointed; she had promised me some Old Navy Super Cash and I was looking forward to acquiring a new collection of yoga pants. That, and she had written some new songs and we were going to miss their debut.

“Probably thinks we’re a bunch of hooligans,” Derry added. Another county heard from, so to speak. “And rightly so.”

Arney chuckled around a mouthful of peas.

“That’s not what he thinks,” Caleigh said. “He likes you all just fine. Very much, in fact.”

Frank the Tank chimed in from the end of the table, “He’s a fine fellow.”

We all turned in unison and looked at Frank, shocked to hear his voice for the first time in days.

“Well, he is,” Frank said. “And he deserves our girl here.”

We didn’t mention that Caleigh wasn’t technically “his girl.” She blushed deeply at the emotion coming from a previously emotionless man and nodded her head to him in silent gratitude.

We all went back to eating, Feeney finally breaking the silence. “I got questioned again by Hanson.” He sighed. “Jesus. You get one vandalism conviction in high school and you’re forever a suspect.”

“A perp,” Derry said.

Arney chimed in, “There was also the drunk and disorderly. Oh, and the public indecency.”

“Dismissed,” Feeney reminded him. “Lack of evidence.”

“Actually, it wasn’t lack of evidence. Everyone saw you with your pants around your ankles at The Dugout. Oogie dropped the charges,” Arney said, a stickler for the truth and accurate details.

Feeney waved his hand. “There was a line for the men’s room,” he said, looking around for the person who guffawed at the revelation. It was Frank. He couldn’t help it. Feeney high-fived him over the pot roast on the platter in the middle of the table.

“And there was that time at the concert,” Arney said.

Dad slammed his hand on the table. “Enough! Youthful indiscretions. All of them.”

Cargan excused himself from the table, the thought of going back to the police station seeming to bring on some intestinal distress. The door to the bathroom at the end of the hall slammed shut behind him.

“Poor lad,” Frank said, shaking his head.

Him or the dead guy? I wanted to shout, but no one seemed terribly concerned about the murder. Still. I decided to go for broke. “So, Caleigh,” I said.

At my tone, she shot me a look. Cease and desist. Shut your piehole. But I wouldn’t.

“The police say that Declan was a wedding crasher, even though we now know he was a relative. Our relative, but a relative nonetheless. Are you still sticking to that story?”

Arney sat up straighter, stiffening. And considering he was a stiff to begin with, the straightest of the bunch, the most reliable and dare I say “normal,” that was saying a lot.

Caleigh, directly across from me, met my eye. “Yes, Bel. A crasher. No one knew him.”

“That’s not true. He said he had met you in Ireland a few times. He was my cousin but he said he met you. And even though everyone else denied it, Aunt Trudie’s arrival certainly confirms that it was true.”

I turned to Dad, who had suddenly fallen silent at the head of the table, his previous exhortations on Feeney’s indiscretions, the state of Ireland, post–Celtic Tiger, and a host of other topics getting the attention of Frank and Brendan; we had all heard it before. “Really? You seemed to know him pretty well, Dad. He was your nephew. When was the last time you saw him? You said it was when he was a ‘wee baby’ but that can’t be, can it?”

Mom spoke for him. “Let it go, Belfast. This is not the time.”

I looked at Aunt Helen. “Not a clue? No idea?”

Helen looked down at her plate, a lone dollop of mashed potatoes sitting in the middle of the free stoneware that we had collected as kids and that Mom still used. “I didn’t know him, Belfast.”

I looked at every member of my family: Mom, Dad, Arney, Derry, Feeney, Cargan, Caleigh, and Aunt Helen. “Not one of you?”

I realized this wasn’t the best time to interrogate the family at large, but we wouldn’t be together for another week and that was another week that the murder of some poor bloke—something no one else seemed to care about—at Shamrock Manor went unsolved.

Maybe this wasn’t about him, I thought as the family stared back at me like I had lost my mind. Maybe my impending hysteria was about something else. Maybe this was about Amy. Unsolved mysteries. People who appear and then disappear without a trace. Maybe this was about my own guilt, my own sadness.

I didn’t realize until that moment that I had stood and was gripping the edge of the table. I sat down and looked down at my lap.

“You knew him, Caleigh.” It was Cargan, having returned from the bathroom, the collar of his soccer jersey damp from when he had washed his face earlier. When she didn’t answer, he continued. “I saw you together. Stop saying you didn’t know him.” He said what I had been thinking for weeks.

Aunt Helen threw her napkin onto her plate. “Well, I never!” she said.

Feeney looked at Aunt Helen. “We always suspected that.”

Helen looked at him, furious.

“That you never,” Feeney said, earning himself a cuff to the head from Dad.

“I didn’t know him, Cargan.” Caleigh tried to laugh it off. “You’ve had a few, haven’t you? Bless your heart.” She looked around the table for support but seeing everyone’s downcast eyes, sad expressions, knew that she was alone.

As beautiful as she was, at that moment she was really ugly.

“I’m not drunk, Caleigh, and I’m not stupid, like you’ve always thought. Like you used to say.”

Caleigh looked around for support, but she got none. “Well, you weren’t the sharpest tool in the silverware drawer,” she said.

Mixed metaphors notwithstanding, I saw red when she said that, an image of us as little kids floating into my head, Cargan, about ten, in bright red swim trunks at the village pool, me, the younger sister trying to teach him to do the backstroke. Caleigh, in a snappy one-piece with cutouts on the side, saying, “What’s the matter with you? Are you a baby? Are you stupid?” And me, getting grounded for a week because I had held her head under the water, not long enough to drown her or cause brain damage (well, I hope not), but just long enough to teach her a lesson.

“I saw you together after the rehearsal dinner. Outside of The Dugout.” He closed his mouth suddenly, not sure he wanted to continue. But continue he did. “You knew him. I saw you kiss him.” He sat down at the table. “And now, I think I would like a beer.”

CHAPTER
Thirty-five

Caleigh had left in a huff after dinner and Cargan’s revelation, denying everything that Cargan saw. I believed Cargan over her—everyone did—and she knew it. I never did get to ask her if she had been back to the FLPD to talk to Kevin, as he had promised she would be. She protested heartily to us and for a long time, but it was written all over her flushed face: she knew Declan and more than a little bit. And now others at the table knew what I had known all along. I’m not sure Aunt Helen or any of the other elders made that connection, but Feeney surely did and when he looked at me he rolled his eyes, never having been a fan of our dear cousin.

In the kitchen, I asked Cargan if he had told Kevin about the kiss. “On the advice of counsel, I plead the Fifth.”

“Car, we’re not on
Law and Order
. I’m your sister. You can tell me.”

But he had just repeated himself and turned his back on me, giving his full attention to the sink and to the roasting pan that was crusted with dried gravy.

Before I walked out, he whispered, “They have a cell phone. With lots of messages.”

I knew that, but now I was the one keeping secrets. I kept my mouth shut and made a hasty exit. “How do you know that?” I asked.

He was caught. “I overheard something at the police station.”

“Did you also happen to overhear anything about why anyone would have bugged the Manor?” I asked.

“No.”

“What do you think?” I asked. “Who do you think did that? Maybe Declan?”

“I don’t know, Bel. Let the police figure it out. It’s complicated, I’m sure.”

I eyed him before I left, seeing if he would give something else up, but he was tight-lipped, putting away the leftovers.

Aunt Helen was crying copious tears at the table as I departed, Frank in the same position he had been in at the wedding, his arm around her, consoling her. “It will be okay, Helen. He’s gone now,” he said in his deep baritone. I wasn’t sure who he was referring to—Declan or Cargan—but Aunt Helen wasn’t having any of his consolation. She threw his arm off with a strength that surprised no one—she was one of Mom’s Pilates acolytes after all—and stormed from the house, slamming the door in my face before I could leave myself.

I turned to the stunned members of my family. “Well, that went well,” I said, but that proclamation didn’t break the tension like I thought it might. I left right after that, thinking that those first early days when I slept all day, the covers pulled over my head, after my dismissal from The Monkey’s Paw and my broken engagement seemed like the glory days compared to the past couple of weeks here. I left and went to the only home I knew now: the apartment.

I was lounging on my stained couch when Kevin showed up a few minutes after nine. I wasn’t expecting him and told him, indelicately, that he was the last person I wanted to see.

“Sorry about that,” he said. He noticed the healthy pour of red wine in the goblet on the counter. “Got another one of those?”

I only had one wineglass, so I took a water glass from the cabinet and filled it halfway. “This will have to do,” I said. “I’m short on anything that matches around here. All hand-me-downs.” I thought about Mary Ann’s perfectly appointed house on the other side of town and how good it had smelled that night I had had dinner there. I didn’t know where he lived exactly and wondered how it could compare to his girlfriend’s place. “How’s Mary Ann?” I asked. I couldn’t meet his eye. It was too uncomfortable after the kiss.

“She’s good,” he said. He shifted around in his suit, still on the clock, the red wine notwithstanding. “Hey, Bel. Is Caleigh back from her honeymoon?” he asked. “She was supposed to call me as soon as she got back to the States. I’ve been trying to reach her, but she doesn’t answer her cell or her home number. And I’ve been in touch with Bronxville PD and there’s no sign of her at the house.”

I wondered about that. Maybe she was the person living in our basement? Was she in hiding? She had been back at least two days that I knew of, but coupled with Cargan’s admission of seeing her with Declan it was no wonder that she hadn’t called Kevin. “She is,” I said, not sure how much I should reveal. She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s my pain in the ass and I didn’t wish her ill despite her duplicitous nature. When I thought about it, she’d probably sell me down the river for a new Hermès bag, a thought that was beneath me but probably the truth.