Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) (31 page)

I wished my brother had been my sous at The Monkey’s Paw. Maybe none of what had happened would have happened the way it had. “You’ve always had my back, Car.”

“And…,” he started, and we were back at the swimming pool, my mother’s face staring up at us with her long eyelashes, though not quite as long back then, imploring me to do the right thing, Caleigh making fun of him, me holding her head under the water. His little, skinny legs in his red bathing suit. Her cruelty. There were other times, times Cargan and I didn’t mention. The time I had punched Larry McGovern in the mouth after he had called Cargan an idiot came to mind. I think I still owed the Lord Jesus three Our Fathers for that one, having lost count that afternoon in church after confession. It had mostly gone one way, me fighting the good fight, Cargan being the victim. Things had suddenly changed. Maybe that’s why he had done what he had, fighting that good fight, in secret, in private. He swallowed hard. “You’ve had my back, too, Bel.” He nodded almost imperceptibly. “Thank you.”

“Eat your fry-up,” I said, the sob in my throat making my voice sound stuffy and trapped. There was no fry-up left to eat, though, just the two of us, knowing what he had done and why.

We did love each other, I wanted to say. We just don’t say it. I love you, Car; you’re the best brother a girl could have, ever. It was also there, but stuck in my throat.

The fry-up would have to be enough. I ruffled his short buzz cut and took care not to knock over the fiddle by the window and left him, staring out at the arid riverbed, knowing that he would always have my back.

And that was enough.

CHAPTER
Forty-three

There were two people waiting for me in the kitchen when I returned. One I desperately wanted to see; the other I wished a painful death. Neither I had seen in a while. I started with Franceso Francatelli and figured I would deal with Brendan Joyce next. I pulled a big knife out of the knife block and held it in one hand, a ripe tomato in the other. I threw the tomato in the air and cut it into two perfectly symmetrical halves, catching one in midair in my knife hand, the other behind my back.

“Franceso, I had hoped you had contracted dysentery in my absence and died of dehydration,” I said.

Not my finest hour or opening line. I had thought of all of the things I wanted to say to Francesco if we ever had the opportunity to meet again, but that wasn’t it. Nor, in my fantasies, was I wearing a head scarf underneath which a chunk of my head was missing.

He laughed, an actor used to responding on cue. “Bel! You always were such a jokester,” he said.

“Not joking, Francesco.” I looked at Brendan Joyce, wondering why he was there. He looked away, sheepish. Part of him, I could tell, was in awe of being in the presence of an award-winning actor. “What do you want?”

“Bel,” Francesco said, throwing his hands out. “Friends? Again?”

“No. Not friends,” I said. “What do you want?”

Always the actor, his face went into some approximation of sadness, but underneath that was the empty void that was his personality, his lack of soul. “Bel. I want you,” he said.

I looked over at Brendan Joyce, united in our incredulity. “Are you getting a load of this?” I asked.

Brendan nodded dutifully.

“You want me to come back?” I asked. “To The Monkey’s Paw?”

“That’s what I want,” he said. Francesco Francatelli, a guy who had no business opening a restaurant, never mind playing a sweet, genius paraplegic with a heart of gold. The guy didn’t have an idea of how to run a restaurant. And he didn’t have a heart. “Ben isn’t working out.”

I laughed out loud. “Brendan, we didn’t even need Beverly Dos Santos to tell us that that was going to happen.” Francesco came around the corner and I brandished the knife. “Stay back,” I said.

“Didn’t you go to anger-management classes?” he asked, looking like he wanted to give me a hug. I didn’t like hugs and I certainly didn’t want one from him. The tall, good-looking guy in the corner? Now that was a different story.

“I did. One intense class where I learned that if I feel threatened, I need to remove myself from the situation.” I looked at Francesco in his expensive loafers and with his hair plugs and stepped back. “As a result, I am going to remove myself from this situation by asking you, Francesco, to leave.”

He put his hands in his pockets. “Here’s the thing, Bel,” he said, chuckling. “You see, receipts are down. Reservations are almost non-existent. And the only way Max Rayfield will do a show is with you,” he said, referencing the cable bigwig who had wanted to film me for a reality show and who had been in the restaurant that fateful night. “The Monkey’s Paw needs you.” He put his hands out again. “I need you.”

“You threw me under the bus, Francesco. I did not leave that fish bone in there and you know that.”

“I know that!” he said.

“You know that?” I asked. “When did you know that?”

“That night!” he said. “You’re too good. You never would have prepared something yourself and let it leave the kitchen unless it had been perfect.” He looked aggrieved. “Why, Bel? Why did you let the fish go out like that?”

I hated having to say this in front of anyone, let alone the two men in the room. “Because I trusted him.”

Francesco let out a throaty laugh. “Guy is a wanker, Bel. That was your first mistake.”

“So, why all the drama? Why the public firing?” I asked, forgetting that Brendan Joyce was in the room and that we had unresolved business.

“Max was there,” Francesco said. “I figured it would be good business. Good for the show.” He smiled again, his teeth fake and all the same size and shape. “Drama. I figured she’d love that.”

I approached Francesco, the knife still in my hand. “You ruined my life,” I said before realizing that he really hadn’t. He had saved my life, when I took time to think about it. I was done with Ben. I was done with New York. I stepped back and put the knife down. “Please leave.”

He waved a hand around, surveying the room. He could tell I was serious and that changed his demeanor for the worse. The soulless stare was back and he was done with me and Shamrock Manor. “This is where you work now, Bel? In a kitchen in a wedding hall? For Irish people? You are so much better than that. The Irish don’t even appreciate good food.”

“And how would you know that, Francesco?” I asked. “How would you know that every Saturday I serve a gourmet meal to approximately one hundred to one hundred and fifty people who eat my food and drink the wine and dance and have a wonderful time because they are good people, not pretentious people? How would you know that?” I turned my back on him. “That’s right. Because you’re a pompous ass who made one or two good movies and thought he knew how to open a restaurant.” I pulled another knife out of the block, just to see him squirm. “And you’re wrong. The Irish love good food. And laughter. And life.” I looked at Brendan. “Right?”

Right on cue, Brendan nodded vigorously.

“But you didn’t see my people in The Monkey’s Paw because it was missing the laughter and the life. The good food was always there.”

He went to a line that Ben had used on me. They must have rehearsed together. “You’ll never work in New York again.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” I said.

I looked around, at the kitchen, at the giant cans of carrots, at the walk-in, which I knew held more fresh ham than any one wedding party could consume. I looked at Brendan Joyce in his khaki shorts and camp polo shirt. I looked at my brother Cargan, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, wondering what all of the commotion was, making sure I didn’t need a hand. I spied my gorgeous mother in the office, pretending that she didn’t hear every single word that had been said and that she wasn’t on pins and needles waiting for the conclusion to this drama. I saw my father in the foyer of the Manor, installing his latest installation,
Twenty-One Guns,
not knowing that it was named after a Green Day song and meant something completely different from what he meant. I looked at Francesco.

“I’m not better than that,” I said. “I don’t need to be in New York. I’m right where I belong.”

CHAPTER
Forty-four

The Finnegan wedding went off without a hitch.

And after a rocky start, Brendan Joyce and I were getting back on track as well, with me promising that I would never kiss a not-married-but-committed man ever again. I still hadn’t invited him to Sunday dinner because … well, my family. Enough said, right? Kevin had given me wide berth and I had dodged Mary Ann’s suggestion to come over or double date, citing my not-as-bad-as-I-made-it-sound head wound as a convenient excuse to lay low. Every time the subject came up, and it came up a lot because I seemed to run into Mary Ann D’Amato everywhere, I would point to my head and say, “Stitches.”

She must have thought I had gone to Dr. Frankenstein with the length of time it was taking for my wound to heal.

It was after the Finnegan wedding, a Saturday night, that I lay in my temporary accommodations in the Manor, listening to Mom and Dad in the next room wonder about Uncle Eugene’s whereabouts, Dad’s voice coming through loud and clear, Mom’s more hushed. No one had seen Eugene since that day on the back porch, which made us wonder if maybe Cargan was on to something about our dear, unrelated “uncle.”

As I lay there, I remembered our conversation. Into my head popped one line, something Eugene had said while we were talking, before I had lost my temper.

“I was trying to calm down that big lummox your aunt Helen calls a boyfriend.”

I hadn’t seen the lummox since the last Sunday dinner, a few weeks ago, and wondered if he would come to dinner tomorrow. I had never seen Frank the Tank lose his temper; in my opinion, he barely had a pulse, which made him the perfect boyfriend for the flighty, flaky, and kind-of-annoying Aunt Helen. Mom had promised no cabbage for our upcoming family meal, as it really didn’t go with the lasagna I had made, so I was hopeful for the meal in general.

Caleigh was coming, as was Mark, or so she said.

This would be an interesting one.

The next day, I went over to the family kitchen a bit early and put the lasagna in the oven. Cargan limped in a few minutes later and peered in at the Italian casserole, making an appreciative noise at the look of it.

“I’m so happy we’re not having cabbage,” he said.

“Me too,” I said. “But lasagna on a hot summer day is a bit of culinary anomaly, too. A good gazpacho would have been nice.”

Cargan laughed. “Let me guess: Mom said no.”

I put my finger to my nose. “Bingo.”

The family assembled at the appointed time and all were in awe of the appearance of Mark Chesterton, fresh from the links, still in his golf clothes, down to his cleats.

“Sorry about that. I forgot a change of clothes and didn’t get home in time to freshen up,” he said, pointing to his tasseled shoes. He sat on a bench inside the front door and took them off, placing them neatly underneath. “It was a long eighteen today. Stuck behind a group of elderly women,” he said. “No disrespect, Mother,” he said to Aunt Helen, giving her a winning smile.

“None taken,” she said, but obviously there was some taken. She was insulted by the fact that she was included in a group described as “elderly,” but being as both she and Caleigh were still in the honeymoon period when it came to their individual relationships with Mark, Helen let it go.

Frank the Tank was in the dining room in his usual seat, nursing a glass of beer. Aunt Helen took her seat next to him and fussed with her napkin for a while, which apparently wasn’t folded to her liking. I couldn’t figure out what the two of them saw in each other, beyond companionship. They went together like a doily and a carburetor, one all fussy and precious, the other stolid and silent. I took a seat I wouldn’t normally so I could sit across from Frank and get a sense of whether or not he was acting any differently than usual, but being as he was as close to a corpse as one person could get and still be alive, I figured I wouldn’t have much luck on that account.

Mom brandished the lasagna like it was the Holy Grail. She was like that with most things I cooked, but particularly Italian food, which to her was incredibly exotic. “Lasagna!” she proclaimed as she set it on a trivet, protecting the table Dad had built from the hot cookware, even though there was enough polyurethane on that thing to keep a boat afloat in an angry sea. Mom had frozen the lasagna and then thawed it out on the counter. I prayed that in the summer heat the cheese hadn’t turned bad, leaving all of us with a bad case of food poisoning when the night was over.

We all ate in silence for a long time, no one sure what to say; there were so many hot topics and so many things we shouldn’t talk about that it was better to keep quiet. Silence kills me. I’ve been working in kitchens for almost two decades, and if there is one thing about a professional kitchen it’s that it isn’t quiet. Ever. Unless it’s empty. So to be sitting among a group of people all capable of making a lot of noise and seeing that they had all fallen silent, I looked for an excuse to talk. I looked across at Caleigh, sitting demurely beside her husband, someone in the dark but a pretty good guy, I suspected.

“So, a lot has happened,” I said, for want of something to say, anything to break the silence.

Caleigh nodded. “It sure has.” She glanced over at Mark and smiled.

Uh-oh. This smelled of a Caleigh revelation.

She didn’t wait, blurting out, “We’re pregnant!”

The reactions were all over the board.

Dad: “That’s great?”

Feeney: “So soon?”

Mom: “Lovely, dear.”

Aunt Helen: “It’s all about me!” (Well, that’s not what she said, but that’s what I heard.)

And I, using every ounce of will that I had, bit my lip and didn’t ask, “Whose is it?” but smiled politely.

“You see, they have these new tests that can tell you almost to the moment of conception,” Caleigh said, wide-eyed at the thought of this new technology and giving everyone the impression that she was as pure as the driven snow on her wedding night. Johnnie McIntyre, her first boyfriend and the boy who took her virginity, would have been surprised to hear that.