Bel, Book, and Scandal: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries)

by Maggie McConnon

“I don’t want to know,” he said, his hand on the door handle. “She once made me a ‘poultice’ for a bruise I got playing soccer, I smelled like cabbage and Vicks VapoRub for a week.”

  “But the bruise?” I asked.

  “Gone in a day,” he said, smiling. “She’s still got a few tricks up her sleeve.”

  After he left, I returned to my computer, considering my next steps. My brother was on to me; he knew I was lying to him, but I wasn’t ready to involve him just yet. His time would come; he would be valuable at some point. For right now, though, I was going it alone, setting out on a mysterious adventure that had room for only one traveler.

  CHAPTER Six

  While lying in bed that night, I realized I had overlooked one important detail in the story, that of the sculptor who had lived at Love Canyon, a woman who was easily found by googling her name: Chelsea Mertens. I knew a little about sculpture because my dad fancied himself a mixed-media artist, doing weird sculptures that bore no resemblance to their models, paintings that were strange in their conception and execution, and the aforementioned installations that looked as if they had dropped from the sky—and some alien planet—and that took a lot of brainpower to decipher their meaning. Dad was incredibly creative … just not terribly talented.

  Chelsea Mertens was still alive and, while once the owner of a gallery in New York City, she had closed that and moved to Farringville, a bedroom community about an hour south of here right along the river, now plying her trade in an old barn behind what seemed to be a grand and spectacular Colonial. The photos on her Web site were the equivalent of real-estate porn and I wondered just how good her sculptures were—or how much she sold them for—for her to be able to live in such splendor. I wish Dad were more talented; maybe then I could get that professional stove that I craved. I was practically drooling onto my keyboard at the sight of her kitchen, a study in marble and stainless steel, fitting for an almost-hundred-year-old house yet functional in the contemporary world. I read through her site to find out if one needed an appointment to see her or her sculptures and found that she worked in her barn every day and that “walk-ins are welcome.”

  Walk in I would. Thank you very much, Chelsea Mertens.

  The timing was off; she had left years before Amy had landed there, I was sure, but it was worth a try. I was looking for anything that could help and I had found exactly one person who had been there at all. Chelsea Mertens was a dead end, most likely, but since when did I let something like that stop me?

  I drove along the river, taking the scenic route. Winter hadn’t hit officially yet, but it was cold, the river on my right showing whitecaps that looked like they would be positively bone-chilling to the touch. It didn’t take me long to get to Farringville; I had left after rush hour and it was a weekday, so the route I traveled was light on commuters. I still couldn’t wrap my head around what I had seen in the paper and I knew I was tilting at windmills, as it were, but I felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins and thought that this was a reason for being, a reason to be alive. To see if my old friend had been at Love Canyon and, if so, if she was still on this planet at all, waiting to be found, hoping to see me and all of her old friends again.

  It was a long shot but one that I was willing to follow.

  A few months earlier, there had been a big-city reporter who said she was looking into the case, a woman with the improbable name Duffy Dreyer, a callback to the Amazin’ Mets catcher of old. I wondered if she was any closer to finding Amy or had given up on the story, tired of chasing a cold lead that went nowhere. I wouldn’t be sharing anything I had learned with her; I was on my own and didn’t need any help here.

  It took me several tries to find the street on which Chelsea Mertens lived. It wasn’t a street exactly, but more like a lane, a long, paved stretch of road that was flanked on both sides by trees, some still green, even in late fall. The house appeared in the distance, but before that, a sign directed me to pull off to the right to the barn that housed “Mertens Art.” Less a barn and more a rustic outpost to the main house, it sat on a big clearing, devoid of trees, with a little pad for a few cars to park next to the big wide doors that had the same name of the studio stenciled across the front.

  Mertens Art was a business, plain and simple, with a receptionist at the front desk asking what I might be interested in viewing before letting me pass into a large room that held paintings, sculptures, and even some blown glass. I figured out after browsing by myself that it was an artist co-op, a detail that I had blown past on the Web site that I hadn’t visited while looking for information. I was so intrigued by the artwork I figured I would get the lay of the land before asking for Chelsea, but I didn’t have to wait long. Above me, on a lofted area that was accessed by a spiral staircase, a woman appeared, long, flowing gray hair billowing out behind her, skinny and fat silver bracelets adorning each arm. She swept down the staircase and landed next to me, her face open and smiling.

  “I’ve been waiting for you!” she said.

  “You have?” I asked, looking around to see if anyone else was in the room or even if I was part of a weird reality show where unsuspecting art gallery patrons were pulled into some strange prank.

  “I have!” she said. “Delilah, hold my calls.”

  The receptionist at the front of the room gave Chelsea a thumbs-up in response, an odd response for a subordinate to her boss.

  At her request, I followed the woman into a back room that smelled just like Dad’s studio, a combination of paint, thinner, wood, and, for some strange reason, burning rubber. There was a giant wooden slab that functioned as a desk; Chelsea took a seat behind it, motioning for me to sit across from her.

  “I’m very excited to have this conversation,” she said.

  “You are?” I asked.

  “I am!” she said. “It’s like you’ve been dropped from heaven so I can tell my story. My true story. The story of my art.”

  “I think you may have me confused with someone else,” I said. “My name is—”

  “I know your name,” she said. “Everyone knows your name.”

  I hoped that wasn’t true, because if it was it meant that more than a few people knew about my stint at The Monkey’s Paw and even more than I thought knew that I had a bad reputation. That I had been required to take anger-management classes in order for my former boss not to press charges against me for brandishing a broken bottle in his presence. “You do?”

  “Why, you’re a woman of few words, aren’t you?” she said, placing one hand over the other atop her desk. “Now, shall we get started?” She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, putting her feet up on the desk. “It was in my mid-thirties that I decided that I needed to express myself in another medium, one that went beyond sculpture to bring—”

  “I have to stop you, Ms. Mertens.”

  She opened one eye and looked at me. “Why?”

  “Well, I don’t think I’m who you think I am.”

  She repositioned herself into a sitting position, her feet on the floor, her eyes on a datebook in front of her. She riffled through a few pages. “It’s Tuesday. It’s ten o’clock. You’re Francesca Dell’atoria.”

  I’m a plump redhead with the map of Ireland on my face. My father, an Irishman himself, probably looked more like a Francesca Dell’atoria than I did.

  “Rizzoli News?” she asked. “Francesca?”

  I held out my hand. “Belfast McGrath. Shamrock Manor.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” she said. On her desk her phone buzzed, and she pushed a button.

  The voice of the receptionist came through. “Chelsea? Francesca Dell’atoria is here.”

  “I’ll be right out.” She looked back at me. “So you’re a customer?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, knowing I didn’t have a lot of time. “My name is Belfast McGrath and I work at Shamrock Manor in Foster’s Landing and I had a friend who disappeared … her name was Amy Mitchell … and she went to Love C
anyon and we haven’t seen her in fifteen years and I know you were there did you ever go back?” I asked, taking a deep breath when I was done. “I know you probably left before she even got there, but you’re my only link to the place and I’m hoping…”

  “No,” she said, definitively and with finality. “I didn’t see her.”

  “This girl?” I asked, pulling out a photo from my purse I had thought to bring with me, the same photo that Brendan Joyce had had in his wallet a few months earlier and that had caused our breakup, Amy’s graduation photo. I put it on her desk. “Please. Have you been back to Wooded Lake? To see Archie Peterson? Zephyr? Did you ever see her?”

  She looked at the photo nervously biting her lower lip, finally pushing it back toward me. “I didn’t see your friend,” she said, standing. “I left Wooded Lake a long time ago.”

  I got up, taking the photo and putting it back into my purse. “Are you sure? Can you tell me anything?”

  “Ms. McGrath, is it?”

  I nodded.

  “I have an appointment.” She ushered me to the door of the office and into the shop’s space. She said nothing else to me before depositing me at the receptionist’s desk again and whisking a gorgeous leggy Italian woman back to the office, the Chelsea I originally met returning, her fires stoked by the thought of telling her “story” to the arts reporter.

  The receptionist, an Indian woman in her early twenties, watched her go. “I don’t know what you said to her, but she looked pissed.”

  “I didn’t really say anything,” I said, trying another tack. “Hi, I’m Belfast.”

  “Delilah,” she said, holding out a hand. “Chelsea’s my mom. I can read her like a book.”

  “Your mom?” I asked.

  “Adopted,” she said, noticing my confusion at their disparate complexions. “Found me when she was in an ashram in Bangalore.”

  “Found you?” I asked.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, taking disaffection to a whole new level. “Anyway, are you a customer or what?”

  I leaned on the desk, at shoulder level for me. “Well, not exactly,” I said. “You mentioned your mother was in an ashram. Did she ever mention a place north of here called Love Canyon?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, her tone full of portent. “For sure. That’s the commune-y place, right? The one her brother thought was a cult?”

  “That’s the one,” I said.

  “Yeah, she brings that up every now and again. Wasn’t a good experience,” Delilah said. “The guy that ran the place was a real lech. Broke her heart into a million pieces.”

  “Did she say anything else about it? Has she ever gone back?”

  She shook her head, her black curls, some pink ones interspersed, shaking with the motion. “Nope. Just that he had lots of women and that was what led her to leave. Told me most men were scum and to stay away from them,” she said. “Except for my father. She loves him. Says he’s different.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “Sorry I upset her. I’m looking for a friend.” I started for the door.

  “Aren’t we all?” the girl asked, looking at her fingernails.

  CHAPTER Seven

  I ran into Dad first thing when I returned. He did have a shiner and it was a good one. I whistled appreciatively, glad to have something besides Amy to think about. “That’s a good one, Dad,” I said. “But you’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself.”

  He waved me off, walking into the dining room. The Christmas tree was on its side in the foyer, a beached conifer waiting to be upright once again. I followed him into the big hall.

  “Maybe this is the year we hire someone to put it up for us? Secure it to the railing?” I asked.

  “You know, Belfast,” he said, bending to pick up an errant piece of paper that hadn’t made its way into the garbage bin, “I thought there might be a reason I had four sons. Four strapping sons! I thought maybe, just maybe, that they would help me in my old age, make it so I didn’t have to hang onto a Christmas tree like a surfer riding a wave.” He pointed to his black eye. “They’re useless. All of them.”

  Dad usually overlooked my brothers’ shortcomings, but landing on his face in the foyer seemed to have put him in the darkest of moods, particularly where they were concerned. I went up to him and studied his face, the bruise that circled his usually bright, and twinkling eye. “I’ll handle it, Dad. You’re right: You’re getting a little too long in the tooth to try to put up a twenty-foot Christmas tree.”

  “It’s only eighteen,” he said, “and I’m not long in the tooth. Just tired. Sick and tired,” he said, storming toward the back of the dining room toward the bathrooms. “And would it kill anyone to restock the toilet paper?” he asked from the confines of the men’s room. “For God’s sake!”

  My father was generally a congenial sort so his outburst was a little disturbing. Even if he was angry at my brothers, he never took it out on me or let me see just how annoyed he really was. He blustered a lot but that’s all it was: bluster. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and started a group text among the five McGrath children and tapped out a message.

  Family meeting. Ten o’clock. Manor kitchen.

  Arney practiced law in town, so unless he had a meeting with a disgruntled divorcée he’d be free. Feeney’s only source of employment at the moment was as lead singer in the McGrath Brothers band, so even though he didn’t get up before noon most days, I was hoping he’d see the message and grace us with his presence. Cargan was in the Manor, so his attendance wasn’t an issue. And Derry was now a stay-at-home father, probably just finishing up his viewing of the morning news programs; I didn’t think I was interfering with anything very important that couldn’t be handled at a later time, like laundry or the preparation of the evening’s pot roast.

  My brothers all sent questioning texts asking what this was about, but rather than explain, I let them twist in the wind. Giving them any explanation of why I wanted to meet would only justify their excuses and we needed this tree put up, trimmed, and full of lights before the weekend’s wedding.

  Dad passed me, a bag of garbage from the bathroom in one hand. “We’ll handle it, Dad. Leave the tree to us,” I said.

  Muttering about ungrateful kids—the youngest of whom was me, making it that we really couldn’t be defined as “kids”—he marched past me. Out back, I heard him throw the garbage into the Dumpster with gusto and then take off for parts unknown. We had a lot of land, so he could disappear pretty easily and be gone for hours.

  I went into the kitchen, checked over my to-do list, and spent the morning working on a few of the items on there. I had just put the last of a tray of canapés into the freezer, popping an extra one in my mouth, when my brothers showed up in the kitchen, Cargan the only one not looking put out.

  “I’ve got a meeting at eleven, so you’ve got exactly fifty-nine minutes,” Arney said.

  Feeney had some other kind of excuse and Derry just shrugged, knowing that we knew he had nothing to do ever and that his days were filled with car pool, volunteering at the school, and writing the great American novel, something he had been doing since he was twenty-two and had graduated from Sarah Lawrence with a degree in creative writing.

  I had held back an assortment of canapés and proffered them on a plate. “Here. Try these,” I said, hoping to mollify the angry crowd. While they ate, I pointed to the foyer, to the prone tree, something that none of them had commented on upon arrival. “We need to get that tree up. Dad fell off the balcony last night and has a black eye. It could have been much worse.”

  “I told Dad to hire someone,” Arney said. “I even told him I would pay for it.”

  “Cheap bastard,” Feeney said between mouthfuls of a miniature spinach quiche.

  “Hey, now,” Cargan said, a warning in his tone. “It will take all of twenty minutes with your help and I for one don’t want to have the old guy laid up in the hospital with a broken neck.”

  “You generally di
e of a broken neck,” Derry added. “Instantly.”

  “Not helpful,” I said. “Now, who’s in?”

  Cargan had already gotten one of the groundskeepers to help bring up the extendable ladder. The Shamrock Manor grounds crew had long ago decided to strike against putting up the tree, their own safety of paramount importance; Dad had gone along with the decision because he is an old softie, first and foremost. He’s also a great boss if you have a good excuse for why you don’t want to do something. While I stood on the second-floor balcony, which overlooked the entire foyer, Arney, Derry, and Feeney righted the tree while Cargan stood behind it. He scooted out from behind it when it was clear it was standing and assessed its levelness.

  “A little to the right,” he said. “Okay, left. Just a smidge.” Below me, I heard cursing that, if Mom had heard, would have landed us all in time-out, sent to our rooms without supper like in the old days. There was also a lot of whispering, furtive, tense words between Feeney and Arney in particular that ceased when they saw my face peeking from around the tree, up on the second floor. I held the very top of the tree, leaning over the balcony, knowing exactly how Dad felt as he did moments before he rode the tree down to the ground below.

  I tied a piece of rope from the top of the tree around one of the spindles on the balcony and pulled the knot tight. With five of us working on it as opposed to Dad’s and my two-person show, it was bound to stay upright longer. I hoped I was right.

  I came down the stairs and noticed Arney and Feeney deep in conversation by the dining-room doors and I didn’t think my ears were deceiving me, but I definitely heard the one word—the one name—I didn’t want spoken in my presence ever again.

  Brendan.

  “All right,” I said, marching up to my two very guilty-looking brothers. “What gives?”

  Feeney was a practiced liar and all-around charlatan. It wasn’t hard for him to look me straight in the eye and say, “Nothing. Nothing gives.”

  But Arney, the oldest of our lot, and the one on whom Mom and Dad pinned all of their hopes and dreams, was still an altar boy at heart and, as a result, probably the worst divorce attorney one could hire, giving away the store to one aggrieved partner or another. I had gleaned from conversations between Mom and Dad that whoever was represented by Arney usually lost the battle and the war and I wondered how he stayed in business. It didn’t take more than five seconds, and a harsh stare from me, for him to blurt out, “We saw him. We saw Brendan Joyce.”