Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) (34 page)

It was all there, like an Amy Mitchell time capsule, having been beneath the water for who knew how long. Whether she or someone else had put it there was something that I wondered if I’d ever know.

I looked around, hoping to see Brendan, looking for a pair of strong arms into which to fall, but he wasn’t there. I was all alone in amidst the copse of trees, staring at what would seem like a bunch of meaningless objects to most but that meant so much to me.

In the distance, Kevin turned and, almost like he could sense my presence, locked eyes with me across the short, sandy beach, and in that look the last decades melted away and we were two kids joined together by this tragedy, one looking for the answers, the other trying to forget.

I just wasn’t sure which one I was.

Or who I would be as this story continued to unfold.

Read on for an excerpt from

Bel
OF THE BRAWL

the next Belfast McGrath mystery from
Maggie McConnon
and St. Martin’s Paperbacks!

CHAPTER
One

When we were kids, we used to say that if heaven did indeed exist on earth, it had taken the form of Eden Island.

Set in the middle of the Foster’s Landing River, a little tributary that flowed into the mighty Hudson, it was lush and green and covered with spongy ground cover that protected the ecosystem below its surface. My friends and I knew the island well, had walked every inch of its pristine landscape, taking great care to remove the dead cigarette butts and empty cans from overnight expeditions that the local police department turned a blind eye to, mostly because they themselves—homegrown all—had spent a night or two there looking up at the stars, a little buzzed, marveling at both the good luck and the horrible misfortune they had to be growing up in a river town like Fosters Landing with everything and nothing to offer.

It had rained a lot that year, the year I graduated from high school, so much so that Eden Island was the only island still above ground, but the water was creeping over the island’s banks, closing over the edges of the little land mass, making its way toward the trees that sat in the center like a copse of sentries protecting their territory.

That early summer morning, years earlier and following a night fuzzily remembered at best, when I was a teen who forgot to wear sunscreen (much to my mother’s chagrin), was always covered in bug bites and wore a bathing suit under my clothes most of the time, I woke up and turned onto my side, surprised to find myself outside and exposed to the elements. I could hear a little rumble of thunder in the distance and feel a light rain falling between the hanging leaves, the ones so low I could almost touch them. The moss beneath my cheek was cold and damp and provided a soft cushion for my throbbing head. My sweatshirt—Foster’s Landing High School Swim Team—was soaked through. I sat up, feeling the back of my head for a wound that I was sure was there but found nothing; this pain was just a result of having slept outside and having had maybe a go or two at the keg that some older kid had brought. My usual go-to, a plate of greasy diner eggs and sausage, wouldn’t allay the queasiness that the briny smell of the small river brought to my nose, nor the shakiness in my legs.

I looked around, alone in familiar surroundings but with a feeling of dread spreading icy tendrils through my limbs. “Hello!” I called out, wondering about the whereabouts of the rest of the usual quartet that accompanied me everywhere—Amy, Kevin, Cargan. The island wasn’t big, maybe six hundred feet across, an eighth of a mile long, and a quick check of the perimeter on all sides told me that I was alone.

In those days, I wore Keds that were always threadbare, having been white and clean for about a week before my pinkie toe started to peek out from first the right one, then the left. They were beside me, soggy and soiled. I searched the pockets of my cut-offs and found a soggy dollar bill and the key to my house but nothing else. I looked out across the northern edge of the island and stuck a tentative toe into the water: high tide. The water barely came up to my knees when I waded in, and determined to get home before the real rain came, the thunder rolling and rumbling closer to the spot where I stood, I strode across the expanse toward the other shore.

From the trees behind me, I heard a rebuke. “Where you going, Bel?” they seemed to ask as they swayed and rocked in the wind, getting increasingly more violent as the thunder reverberated, this time a little closer. I waded in deeper, my sneakers skidding and slipping on the rocks below. “Where you going, Bel?” the trees seem to ask again, their cadence not unlike Kevin’s when he asked me the same question the night before, the one that was buried in the deep recesses of my brain. Where I was, why he had asked, and where I had been going were all questions I couldn’t answer. A thought went through my clogged brain, the synapses firing slowly but in this case, deliberately.

I have to say I’m sorry, I thought, for the first, but not last, time.

The water was cold, colder than it should have been for June. It was all that rain making it chilly, bracing. Up to my thighs now, the water rushed from Sperry’s Pond to the north, where rapids had stranded more than one overly brave kayaker out for a relaxing paddle on a gorgeous summer day, the kind of summer days that normally I lived for. I waded closer to the shore, turning back once to make sure I really had been alone on the island. My addled mind was playing tricks on me, and a place I loved was quickly turning into somewhere sinister and foreboding, a place that I needed to escape.

Finally, because it was easier, I began to swim, short strokes while bent at the waist, the current getting stronger, the wind picking up. The shore, which always seemed so close when I was on the island with my friends who seemed to have deserted me, seemed far away now that I was alone. Unreachable. I pushed through the water, my legs—short but swimmer’s legs nonetheless—doing the work, my arms splashing at the water but really not helping my progress across the expanse. I pulled off my sweatshirt, noticing a purple handprint around my right bicep and Kevin’s words as he caught me as I came out of my kayak—“That’ll leave a mark!”—ringing in my ears.

Where was everyone? More importantly, where was Amy? I had left my best friend on the shore the night before, telling her she would be sorry and that I would never speak to her again but a night on the beach, alone and wet, had convinced me that I had overreacted, that it hadn’t been as bad as I thought. Maybe she hadn’t looked at me the way I thought she had after kissing Kevin—my boyfriend—right in front of me. But the truth was that she had. I held onto the hope that Amy never would have ended the night without finding me first. We were a team. A duo. We were never apart.

Until now.

When I finally reached the shore, out of breath and soaked to the skin, a clap of thunder exploded directly overhead and the spot where I had lain just moments earlier was struck by a bolt of lightning so thick and sustained that I knew I would have been killed had I not awoken when I had. Something had roused me; I had no internal clock. Anyone who had seen the number of tardy markings on my report would know that I was never on time, ever. I looked back across at Eden Island, squeezing the water out of my sweatshirt and putting it back over my head.

“Where
am
I going?” I wondered.

I decided I didn’t know.

I lay on the shore, looking at the murky sky overhead. It would be raining steadily soon but it didn’t matter; I was already wet. Behind me, footsteps approached but I was too tired to be wary. The person crouched by my head and held out a hand.

“Ready to go home, Bel?” my brother asked, the sight of him bringing tears to my eyes.

“I had a horrible night, Cargan.”

He had, too; he had been up all night. It was written on his face.

“I know,” he said. “Let’s go. Mom and Dad are worried sick. We’ve been looking for you for hours.”

“I was right there,” I said. “I was right where you left me.”

He shook his head, his dark hair wet and flopping onto his forehead. “No. You weren’t.” He leaned over and hugged me, and the sound of a great sob—his or mine, I wasn’t sure—disappeared in the latest clap of thunder. Over his shoulder, I spotted my other brothers—Arney, Derry and Feeney—clamoring down the hill behind the Casey’s house toward the river, their voices loud and raucous, excited. I had been found.

In the distance, there were sirens and voices, coming together in a panic-filled cacophony. I looked at my brothers for the answer to the unspoken question, the worry on his face still there in spite of the fact that I had been found.

Only Cargan spoke. “We found you.”

There was something more, something ominous. It was written on his face.

One tear slid down his face. “But Amy Mitchell never came home.”

CHAPTER
Two

“Beets?” Gerard Mason, the groom-to-be, asked, sniffing the air as if just the mention of the root vegetable could produce an odor.

“No beets?” I asked, looking down at the hand-written menu that I had labored over for the past several days. Beet salad was part of my entrée, adding a bit of color to an otherwise colorless meal—in my opinion anyway—of filet mignon and scalloped potatoes. It was a meal I could make in my sleep, even for one hundred and fifty guests. Behind me, I could almost feel my mother’s eyes boring into the back of my head, her words ringing in my ears:
We left the old country so that we wouldn’t have to eat beets, Belfast. No beets!

The bride looked at me expectantly. “And goat cheese? Will it have goat cheese?”

“It can,” I said. “And candied walnuts, if you’d like.”

The bride, Pegeen Casey, looked at her fiancé. “It sounds delicious, Gerry. I think we should do it.”

I heard a door slam in another part of Shamrock Manor, whether by chance or on purpose, I wasn’t sure. Mom really had a thing against beets. And outdoor weddings. And off-the-shoulder dresses on brides. Something about the way the cake was cut. And a host of other things that I couldn’t remember but which came to me every once in a while, in a rush, making my head spin.

Gerry looked at his bride-to-be. “Whatever you want, baby.”

Good answer, Gerry, I thought. “Do you have any other special requests?” I asked, scanning my list. We had covered the cocktail hour and the main meal, which left the bar and the cake. “Any special requests for the bar? A specialty cocktail?” I asked, holding my breath. Seamus, our long-time bartender, was pretty one-note—he could pull a pint like no one’s business, but everything else was up for grabs. He didn’t know the difference between Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc and thought Merlot was something you got from a tick bite.

Pegeen Casey shook her head. “It’s a pretty standard crowd, Belfast. Your bartender can handle pouring pints and a few hundred glasses of Chardonnay, can’t he?” she asked, smiling. I loved a bride with a sense of humor; it made everything easier. Pegeen was as far from a “bridezilla” as one could get, and I appreciated that.

“He can handle those two things,” I said. “And the cake? Will we be making that for you?”

“I’ve ordered a cake from La Belle Gateau in Monroeville,” she said. “Are you familiar with them?”

“Yes,” I said. “Many of our couples use them for their cakes.”

“Please tell me that they’re good,” Pegeen said.

“The best,” I lied. Their icing was too dense and their fondant flowers often required some emergency surgery after the cake was delivered to the Manor. But Pegeen Casey didn’t need to know that. Her wedding was in a week and I didn’t want to add to her stress about the big day. I made some adjustments to the order sheet, signed it and handed her the original. “We’re all set,” I said. “If you think of anything in the meantime, please let me know and we’ll do our best to make sure that everything is just the way you want it.”

She smiled. “Thank you so much, Belfast. I was a little reluctant…”

Gerry interrupted her. “Yeah, who wants to have their wedding where a murder took place?”

She put her hand on her fiance’s arm. “You understand, don’t you?” she asked. “It’s nothing personal. Nothing against Shamrock Manor.”

“I do,” I said. “But that was months ago, and it was really all just a tragic misunderstanding. I promise that you’ll be perfectly safe here and that your wedding day will go off without a hitch.”

Gerry reached into his jacket pocket. “Well, if anything ever happens again, here’s my card.”

I looked at the card: Gerard Mason, Private Investigator.

“I can’t imagine that the Foster’s Landing Police Department has the manpower to handle those types of investigations,” he said.

I looked at him blankly, the idea that a private investigator had fallen into my lap, just when I needed one, muddling my thoughts.

“A murder,” he said.

“Right. Yes,” I said.

The local PD doesn’t have the manpower or the investigative skills. They bungled along for weeks on the case of the victim at my cousin’s wedding. “Well, thank you,” I said. “But we won’t be in need of a private investigator any time soon.” I knocked on the molding surrounding the entrance to the dining room.

I led them into the foyer, where a bust of Bobby Sands, Irish martyr and rebel for the cause, stood in the center. His poor head misshapen and hardly resembling a head at all, he had become a “talking piece” as my father, the artist in question, described it. I hadn’t met too many brides or grooms who wanted to talk about Bobby Sands or his distorted visage. “See you in a week,” I said, holding the big front door open for them and watching them drive away.

Private investigator. That was a new one. Maybe I had been lying just a bit when I’d said that I wouldn’t be in need of a private investigator any time soon.

Maybe this was exactly the time I was in need of one.

Too bad Gerard Mason ended up not being able to help me, his own wedding day being the last day he lived to see.

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