Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) (22 page)

Who loved me? That’s what I wondered, that one piece of information being dropped by Bev into my proverbial lap something I puzzled over. I hoped it was Brendan and not Ben. Not Kevin, even though the look on his face was odd, embarrassed. Not anyone else but the guy whom I likely had sat next to at countless assemblies, never really taking notice of him, my eyes always on Kevin and no one else.

I sat there for a long time, pondering all of this. Nothing else had come out of the hypnotist’s session; everything I had told Kevin was what I said again while in an altered consciousness. Finally, I got up, brushed off the back of my pants, and started up the hill.

Behind me, a car crawled along slowly. I turned and saw Brendan behind the wheel of his old Honda; he gave the horn a little beep in greeting. The passenger-side window rolled down and he leaned across the seat.

“You look like you could use a drink,” he said.

At the sight of him, uncomplicated, friendly, and warm, I felt the stress leave my body, my limbs relax. “You’re right about that,” I said, walking over to the car.

“I was hoping I’d find you here.” He reached over and opened the car door. “Hop in. You look like you have a lot to tell me.”

On our way to the river, I asked him the one question that had been niggling at the back of my mind since we first met at the empty swimming pool. “Are you for real?” Between Kevin, who had kissed my best friend right in front of me, and Ben, the wanker who let me take the fall for his mistake and had cheated on me, I was unaccustomed to guys as nice as Brendan Joyce. He looked taken aback at the question. “Yes, I’m for real.” He turned left out of the street and headed toward the river. “You may not have noticed, but there aren’t a lot of opportunities to date here in the Landing, unless I want to go out on a limb and ask Bev from the Post Office out.”

My stomach got a little sick at the mention of her name.

“Which I don’t, by the way.” He turned and looked at me. “By the look on your face, I take it you know Bev, pet psychic?”

“I do,” I said, leaving out that we had just become acquainted. I turned and looked out the window, watching the village go by. “She’s also a clown.”

“Now that’s not nice, Bel.”

“No. For real. She’s a clown, too. It’s on her Web site.”

“Huh,” he said. “Multitalented.” He made a left, heading toward the water. “She’s actually trying to channel my cat, Felix, and help me find him. He ran away about six months ago and I’m lost without the little bugger.”

“Hmm,” I said, not paying attention to what Brendan was saying, where we were going.

“So, our date,” he said, pulling into the train station and driving down to the kayak put-in. “What happened? Why did you have to cancel?”

I explained the whole thing. Cargan, his recollections, the murder. How it was unsolved and no one seemed to have a great urgency to solve it. How Dad had involved Paul Grant.

“You mean Philip?” Brendan asked, pulling into a spot, gravel spraying up around the car.

“Yeah. Remember him?”

“I do,” he said. “I guess ‘Paul’ rhymes with ‘fall’?”

“That’s my guess. And Paul is a saint.”

“Paul Grant?”

“No. Saint Paul.”

“Saw his kid on
Jeopardy!
Little bugger is as smart as a whip, but I hate kids’ week.”

He and Mom had that in common. Here’s hoping the kid’s father was as smart as a whip, too, in case we ever needed him again.

Brendan and I took a spot at the splinter-covered picnic table. Once we sat down and he revealed the items in his reusable grocery bag I asked him why he had shown up. “Why did you come looking for me?”

“I don’t know,” he said, though I could tell that he did.

I waited.

“Well, yeah, I do.” He handed me a piece of baguette with a healthy smear of soft cheese. “I wanted to see you. Felt like things were left off a little abruptly the other day and then you canceled. Just wanted to make sure we were square.”

“Square?”

“Solid.”

I gave him a little fist bump. “We’re square. Solid.”

“I guess I’ve been teaching at the high school for too long. I’m starting to sound like one of the kids.”

I laughed. “You definitely do not sound like one of your students. I don’t think any one of them would use the word ‘square’ to sum up a relationship.” He handed me a glass of wine and I caught sight of the label as he poured himself one. A good bottle, somewhere in the thirty-buck range. I complimented him on his choice.

“Thanks. I took a class at a local winery one summer.”

“To meet chicks?” I said. As far as I knew, that was the only reason men went to cooking class, wine-tasting seminars, yoga.

“To meet chicks,” he said, nodding enthusiastically. “It didn’t work.”

“There was always Bev from the Post Office.”

“Indeed.”

“But I hear she’s taken.” She was. According to her Web site, he—Jacob, a blacksmith—was her “one true love,” her “reason for being.” Okay then. “And a clown.”

Brendan snapped his fingers, dismayed. “Damn it.” He topped off my wine. “I bet she’s flexible. Can probably ride a unicycle.”

“Both great traits in a partner.”

“It’s slim pickin’s around here, Bel. You have no idea.”

I did have an idea. Since I got back, I had eaten dinner every Sunday with my parents and four brothers. I had no social life to speak of. I knew well of the dearth of possibilities for young, swinging singles in Foster’s Landing, having been in my apartment for the last two months with no one to talk to, not one person with whom to hang out.

“Will you be my social life now?” he asked. “Will you hang around with me? I would hate to have to ask Bev to go for a kayak ride or a pint at the Grand Mill.”

“Well, that would be cheating, because of her husband. A clandestine love affair,” I said.

“Good point.” He turned and stared into my eyes. “Will you hang around with me, Belfast McGrath?”

“Brendan Joyce, are you asking me to go steady?” I asked.

He took a slug of wine. “I guess I am.”

It had been a long, crazy day. I looked at his open, honest face and didn’t hesitate.

“Sure, Brendan Joyce. I would love to go steady with you.” And something finally dawned on me. “And I think I know where your cat is.”

CHAPTER
Twenty-nine

Brendan took me home a little before eight and we hunted around for the cat we hoped was Felix. I gave Brendan a description of the cat I had appropriated and he sounded an awful lot like Felix. After searching for almost an hour with no sign of him, we gave up. Brendan said that after he pulled together some paintings for a show that weekend he’d come by and see if he could lure the cat home.

“He likes lo mein.”

“That’s my cat,” Brendan said.

“Ah, well,” I said. “I hope I can visit from time to time.”

He gave me a quick kiss before I got out of the car. “That can be arranged,” he said before driving off.

I stopped by Dad’s studio to see if I could smooth things over between us, but he was deep in conversation with Uncle Eugene and Frank the Tank. Uncle Eugene was still in town and not scheduled to leave, I had learned at our last family dinner, for another two weeks. He had spent a week in the Bronx visiting with some old friends and was now back in the Landing and staying in one of the guest rooms at the Manor. The three men were drinking a pint of beer and eating some kind of organ meat, the smell of which filled the studio and made my stomach hurt just by smelling it. I hadn’t jumped on the offal train when it became a thing, preferring to stick to clean, delicious food that you didn’t need to convince people to eat because it was the latest trend. I was surprised that Frank was partaking, but he was right there with the guys, eating whatever delicacy my father had prepared. Frank nodded silently when I walked in, downing his beer and beating a hasty getaway, mumbling something about Helen and chicken.

Dad watched him go. “Never can understand what that guy is saying,” he said, looking at me. “Belfast. Nice to see you.”

But it wasn’t. I could tell that I was still in trouble for the Cargan mess.

At least Uncle Eugene, who was usually a giant crank pot, looked happy to see me. “Belfast! How are ya, my girl?” He proffered the meat. “Black pudding?”

“Ah, no thanks, Uncle Eugene. I’m full.” I gave him a hug. Dad stood to the side of the big table in the middle of the room and avoided my eyes.

“You good, girl?” he asked.

“I’m great, Uncle Eugene.” I looked around the room and into the side room, but the big box, the one marked “ART,” was gone. “Little excitement here, but that’s all over now,” I said to him, hoping my father would agree.

“I heard,” Eugene said. “Poor lad. Quite a scare sitting in the police department.”

“Sure is,” I said. “It was all a big misunderstanding.”

I heard my father mutter something under his breath. Sounded like “thanks to you.”

“It’s just that—” I started, hoping to explain what had happened and why.

But Dad cut me off, exploding into one of his patented tirades. “‘It’s just that’ nothing, Belfast. You put your brother in a very precarious position by making him talk to that wanker Kevin Hanson again. What the heck has gotten into you?” he said, storming about the room. Even Eugene, who was given to his own flights of bluster, seemed a little surprised and a lot wary. My dad is a big man, and even though he has the heart of a lamb, when he loses his temper it’s a sight to behold. It’s not like Mom’s slow burn; it’s a full-on volcano. I’m not sure which was scarier. Right now Dad was winning, but I hadn’t seen Mom yet to see if her emotions were at full boil. “You need to remember that family comes first! That we protect our own! That we take care of each other. You had no business marching your brother down to the station.”

Nothing like your father losing your temper at you to make you feel twelve years old again. I felt a sob building in my chest and creeping up my throat, so I took a big gulp and pushed it down, hoping that this outburst would be short-lived. When he appeared to be done, I apologized for my role in all of this.

“Apologize to your mother! And your brother!” he said.

“I already apologized to Cargan,” I said.

Uncle Eugene put a hand on my dad’s arm. “Mal, take it easy.”

“I won’t take it easy,” Dad said, but it was clear that he had run out of steam. “I won’t take it easy,” he said again, this time with a little less passion. He had one last burst of vitriol left in him. “And stop it with the fancy food! We want what we want. Cook it our way!”

That was a deal breaker, but we wouldn’t discuss it now, not with tempers flaring and emotions running high.

Eugene changed the subject to something more disturbing than the menu at the Manor. “We all want to know what happened to that poor chap,” Eugene said, “who had it out for him.” A look passed between Eugene and my dad that was inscrutable, mysterious.

My dad straightened, calming down, turning into someone else. “Yes. We do. A terrible thing, that was.”

“Sure, he was a nice chap,” Eugene said.

I felt like I was in the middle of some kind of performance, one where all of a sudden we all cared with the same degree of intensity about what had happened to Declan Morrison.

“Did you know him, Eugene?” I asked.

Again a look between Dad and Eugene. They knew more than they were letting on.

“Well, yes, I did, Belfast. He’s a mate from the old country. Grew up around my boys,” Eugene said.

“Dad? Did you know that?” I asked.

“Old Eugene here reminded me that we had met the kid when we last went home.” Dad went into a ridiculous monologue about he forgets things, how he’s forgotten more than I would ever know. “So, yes,” he pronounced. “I had met the young man.”

“But you forgot. Until right now,” I said, wondering if stating that would make him see how ridiculous it all sounded.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes. That’s right.”

“So you lied to me,” I said. “When you said you didn’t know him.”

“I forgot,” he said.

We stood in silence for a full minute. When it was clear that there was nothing left to say on the subject, I looked at Uncle Eugene. “We’ll see you at Sunday dinner?” I asked.

“Sure you will,” he said.

I turned to leave, but the sight of a woman at the door of the studio stopped me in my tracks. She was small and dark and the look on her face told me that she was not to be trifled with. She looked at first my father and then Uncle Eugene. “Malachy,” she said in greeting. She didn’t acknowledge Eugene.

Dad looked more defeated than stunned. He bent at the waist, resting his hands on the edge of the table. “Trudie.”

“Hi,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m Belfast.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, accepting my hand. “I’m Trudie McGrath. And I’m here to get my son.” When it was clear I didn’t know what she was talking about, she elaborated. “Declan. Declan McGrath.”

CHAPTER
Thirty

Not shockingly, Declan hadn’t give any of us his real name. True, Dad knew who Declan was and had lied to me. I’m sure Mom did, too. And Uncle Eugene. They all knew and had chosen to keep it to themselves.

Why? was the question.

“We didn’t know him, Belfast,” Dad said after Trudie left the studio and went out to the car to wait for a ride. “Trudie kept him from us after Dermot left. We never saw him after he was a wee baby.” Dermot was Dad’s younger brother, someone rarely spoken about, someone I had never met. Declan had been his son, now reunited with his father in heaven, or so said Dad and Eugene, both crossing themselves at the thought.

Eugene nodded in agreement at everything Dad said.

“Why did he show up here, Dad?” I asked.

But there was no answer for that.

Uncle Eugene was the one who offered to take Trudie to the police station to start the process of getting her son’s remains shipped back to Ireland, even though it was clear to me that they had a very tense relationship. I could only imagine how Kevin and the rest of the Foster’s Landing Police Department would feel once they knew that my parents not only knew the deceased, they were related to him. Well, at least Dad was, by blood. Declan had been raised by his mother, Trudie, in a small village in the west of Ireland that was far from Ballyminster after Dermot left the family, sometime in the early eighties, as far as anyone could remember. Ah, I see, I thought. So, despite the thousands of Declans in Ireland, that’s why no one knew our Declan.