Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) (32 page)

Mom leaned toward Caleigh and patted her arm. “That is lovely, dear, but we really don’t talk about such things at the dinner table.”

Mark picked up the slack. “We couldn’t be happier.”

“When are you due?” I asked.

“End of March, beginning of April,” Mark said.

Ah, the old honeymoon baby. Or the two-nights-before-the-wedding baby.

Caleigh looked at me. “Bel, aren’t you going to say anything?”

Did I have to? I guess I did to keep up this charade. “That’s wonderful, Caleigh. Mark. A new baby. How grand.”

Even Caleigh wasn’t dumb enough not to hear the sarcasm in my voice. I had tried to keep it at bay, but I couldn’t. Mark gave me a quizzical look.

“No. Really. I’m delighted,” I said. “A baby!” I jumped up and brought the two of them together in an awkward hug, looking across at Cargan to see if my performance was convincing. By the look on his face, I would say it was not. He was the actor; he had proven that in spades.

“How do you feel?” Mom asked.

“A little morning sickness,” Caleigh said. “But other than that, all good.”

“I only had morning sickness with one pregnancy,” Mom said, and I knew what was coming before she looked at me. “Maybe you’re having a girl, too.”

“As long as the baby is healthy,” Mark said like a dutiful father-to-be.

We went back to eating, the excitement over the lasagna superseding the excitement over the pregnancy. Hunger always wins out in my family and today was no exception. So I was surprised when Mark brought up the murder at the wedding.

“Well, it’s the elephant in the room, so we might as well talk about it,” he said. I thought Mark and his people were more tight-lipped than mine when it came to things we didn’t want to talk about, so Mark’s opening of the topic that no one wanted to discuss took the entire table aback. Aunt Helen, in particular, looked like she was about to faint. “I spoke to Detective Hanson this morning, and while things have been rather quiet in the investigation, they are tracking down a lead.” He put his fork down and wiped his mouth on one of Mom’s linen napkins. “A good lead. A solid lead.”

Aunt Helen blanched. “What kind of lead?” she asked, her hand at her neck.

“A lead on the killer,” Mark said, his choice of words dramatic and inelegant.

“They know who it is?” Helen asked, and I was starting to think that maybe she knew more than she let on. Frank the Tank sat in stony silence, one of his giant arms snaking around her shaking shoulders.

“That was the impression I got,” Mark said. He looked over at Derry. “Pass the sauce, please?” He doused his lasagna with a ladleful of my marinara. Despite the conversation, I was happy to see him enjoying his meal. Once a chef, always a chef.

“And who do they say it is?” Helen asked, her voice quavering just a tiny bit.

I looked over at her, as did Cargan. Derry, Arney, and Feeney were oblivious, a side conversation starting about the free fall that the Yankees’ season was in, their limited chances of making the post-season unless things turned around before the All-Star break.

“They didn’t tell me,” he said, his mouth around a giant lasagna noodle. “But thankfully, we’ll be able to put this behind us soon and concentrate on what was so wonderful about our wedding.” He turned and looked at Caleigh, her face as white as her mother’s, her eyes cast down on her plate. Her appetite appeared to be gone. “Like how beautiful this gorgeous woman looked. The food. Your wonderful hospitality. How we are now one family.”

This guy was growing on me. Where I had once seen someone wooden and emotionless I now saw a real gentleman. I’d have to remind myself in the future to be less judgmental and more accepting when coming upon someone new. He loved my cousin and only wanted the best for them as a couple. He seemed genuinely concerned about the murder at the wedding. That made him a kindred spirit to me, the only other person, it seemed, who wanted to get to the bottom of this.

“Who wants dessert?” Mom asked, dinner not over yet.

“It was only because he hurt our girl,” Frank said, his voice still almost unrecognizable to everyone because we had hardly ever heard it.

Across from me, I saw Cargan flinch slightly, seeming to know what was coming next. Everyone else was still in the dark, Derry concerned with a dollop of sauce that had landed on Mom’s beautiful white tablecloth, Arney speaking to his wife about how they were going to ditch the kids and go on a date night after dinner was over. I heard it all even though I was still turned toward Frank and Helen, wondering what he was going to say next.

“What do you mean, Frank?” Cargan asked, no one but me focused on the conversation that was taking place between my sort-of-secret-cop brother and the guy at the end of the table.

“He hurt Caleigh. Took advantage of our sweet girl.” Frank’s grip tightened around Helen’s shoulders. “He wasn’t nice to Helen here, either.”

Caleigh heard her name and perked up. “What? Who? What happened?”

Frank stood and placed his napkin over his uneaten lasagna, as if pronouncing it dead on arrival. “The lasagna was delicious, Bel,” he said. “But I have to go.”

I should have figured this out way earlier. The hushed arguing I heard right before Declan came crashing through the banister. The strength it would take someone to haul someone into the foyer below. Frank’s connection to the family. His love for Caleigh, his devotion to Helen.

I just didn’t have a motive for why Francis Xavier Connelly, otherwise known as Frank the Tank, had killed Declan “Morrison” McGrath. Until now.

Frank started for the kitchen and from there would probably go through the foyer and out to the front of the Manor. Cargan looked at me helplessly. Although we both knew that he would be well within his rights and duties as a police officer to arrest Frank—both of us coming to the same conclusion at the same time—still no one besides me and my parents knew that my fiddle-playing, Manor-managing, soccer-loving brother was really a cop. My brothers thought he had interrupted Oogie’s confrontation with me, not aware that Cargan had tracked the old man’s movements for weeks. Cargan excused himself from the table and gave me a warning glance that said, Don’t move.

I had to move, though, because with all of the lying and the secrets I felt that if we could get this out in the open, this one truth, we could move on from here. I followed Frank through the kitchen and into the foyer.

“Why, Frank? You’re not a killer,” I said.

He turned and looked at me, the big lummox, as Uncle Eugene had referred to him, tears streaming down his face. “I love them both, Bel. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them.”

“Who?” I asked. “Helen and Caleigh?”

He ran his hand over the bust of Bobby Sands, his hand lingering on the top of the sculpture’s head. “Yes. My girls.”

I waited for more, hoping it would come, and it did, in a steady, albeit short, monologue.

“I saw him coming out of the wedding suite and I saw Caleigh was in there, too, crying.” He rubbed the sculpture some more. “I’m not stupid. It was clear what had happened.”

“What happened, Frank?” I asked.

He didn’t respond directly. “Who crashes a wedding and takes advantage of the bride?”

That part made sense, even if the rest of it didn’t. Another puzzle with missing pieces. I couldn’t imagine Caleigh confessing to Frank what she had confessed to me, but she had been one drunk bride.

Loose lips sink ships and apparently lead to murder as well, if this half-baked story was any indication.

“Who speaks to a lady like that?” he asked to no one.

“Caleigh?” I asked.

“Helen,” he said.

I didn’t want to tell Frank that Caleigh had accepted Declan’s advances—or he hers—and that no one had taken advantage of anyone. Frank’s heart looked broken already; no need to go any further. I wasn’t in any danger—that was clear—so I asked him if we could sit on the stairs and just talk for a while. Kevin came in as Frank got to the end of the story, Cargan by his side.

“Does Helen know?” I asked.

He shrugged but the look on his face told a different story. She knew. And she hadn’t said a word to anyone.

Mark entered the foyer and we all fell silent. “Ah, Frank,” Mark said, his voice tight. “Tell me this isn’t true.”

“Which part?” Frank said, but before he could go any further, reveal the truth of what happened that day, Kevin took over, reading Frank his Miranda rights.

Before they left, the big man in handcuffs, Frank turned to me. “I never meant to hurt anyone, Bel. I hope you know that. I didn’t mean to—”

I put my hand over his mouth as he started to form the word “kill.” “Shhh, Frank. Get a lawyer.”

I believed him. None of us ever meant to hurt anyone, but judging from what was left in our wake—both physical and emotional—it was hard to argue the point.

CHAPTER
Forty-five

After hearing every story, every tale of blackmail that accompanied Declan McGrath’s appearance at the wedding, it was hard to argue for his continued existence on this planet. Thinking that landed me in Father Pat’s confessional the next Saturday, the kitchen in the capable hands of Fernando and Eileen, the server with the adorable lisp, who seemed capable and confident of their abilities to keep things running until I was purged of all sin, having said my three Hail Marys and four Our Fathers and an Act of Contrition.

There was the whole thing about Dad and blackmailing him to smuggle guns. And Declan had some stuff on his biological father, Uncle Eugene, that he had planned to take to the Feds if anyone revealed his plan to run guns. (His untimely death ensured that he took that information to the grave, and no one came to find out exactly what it was.) Uncle Eugene never knew about Declan, Dad told me, and finding out this son had died at the wedding broke the little man into what seemed like a million pieces. How he would know that, with Eugene in the wind, was beyond me. I really hoped—prayed actually—that Dad was as feckless as he seemed and that he wasn’t involved in any of this on any level.

Worst of all, the biggest secret that Declan revealed had been kept all of these years and I never saw it coming.

Caleigh was adopted.

Why Aunt Helen went to such great lengths to protect that secret, one that was not worth keeping, was the last mystery to solve. Caleigh had come from a place similar to the one that Trudie never wanted to go when she found out she was pregnant with Declan and would have lived out her childhood days in an Irish orphanage if not for the circumstances that brought her to Helen and Jack, a couple unable to have their own biological children.

Cargan knew more about what had happened and shared it with me, our bond stronger than ever, his faith that I wouldn’t reveal anything to anyone secure. When Frank found Declan on that second floor of the Manor, worried that Helen had been gone from the wedding a long time, he found him threatening my aunt with the truth about everything, including Caleigh, something he had learned from his own mother. Frank alleged that Declan had threatened violence to him and my aunt and that, coupled with Frank’s assumption that Caleigh had been violated in some way, was when things went south, both literally and figuratively, Declan being winged from the second floor to the first.

Mom tried to explain it away, “There never was a good time to tell Caleigh that she was adopted and then it became too late.”

I didn’t see the logic in that, but I held my tongue. I decided that I was now living among a group of really repressed people, people who needed more therapy and medication than one doctor could administer or prescribe. It was if they hadn’t evolved past the Roaring Twenties, their ideas about what was right and normal and just seeming to come from early in the last century.

We didn’t know what would happen to Frank, some kind of defense in the works with Paul Grant. I hoped for the best. Frank was a nice guy. A little impulsive, if the events were any indication, but a nice guy overall.

I returned from confession that Saturday and went to work in the kitchen, hearing the strains of “Locomotion” coming from inside the wedding hall shortly thereafter, the McNulty wedding in full swing. Word of the changes at Shamrock Manor had gotten out, and Cargan had been busy booking new weddings for the fall and into the new year. Dad’s creativity was sparked once again, and his
Twenty-One Guns
installation found its way to a permanent spot on the back lawn, where on days we had weddings Mom partially covered it with a sheet and some ribbon so as not to turn off our guests. It looked sort of like a crazy, mixed-up Maypole, but so far no one had complained. To me, it was Dad’s anti-gun statement writ large. The new menus were a hit, and I was now involved in the booking process, catering specifically to individual brides and grooms, finding out what they liked, what they expected, what would work for their guests.

Dare I say I was happy?

I started to visit Brendan’s cat at his apartment; he had finally gone home for good it seemed. And Brendan and I started to settle into a relationship that was free of drama, absent of angst. After his appearance on the same day as Francesco Francatelli, we had made our peace and finally put to rest the kiss that meant nothing.

And then it was over, the two of us going back to a nice, uncomplicated relationship.

Pauline came into the kitchen. “Head table! Salmon all day!”

“Salmon all day!” I repeated, throwing some butter into two different pans and cooking eight salmons to order for the wedding party, putting a dollop of potato puree under each and handing them to Fernando, who had transitioned seamlessly from sous to expeditor in the course of the day.

Mom came into the kitchen, looking gorgeous in a pale-blue silk sheath dress. “The McNultys think the food is divine, Belfast,” she said.

“Thanks, Mom.” I ladled some melted butter onto a piece of filet in a pan, a serving for the groom, who wanted surf and turf and who seemed to be protein-loading in anticipation of his wedding night.

“And Belfast?” she said before starting for the door.

“Yes, Mom?”