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

by Maggie McConnon

  Mom and Dad had been conspicuously absent from the kitchen since I had arrived and I wondered if that was standard operating procedure, given that Goran had been such a diva, or if they were afraid of meddling too much in my business and driving me out of the place as well. Everything under control, I went into the office, where Dad was having an animated discussion with someone over the presence of a bouncy castle at an upcoming wedding—Dad didn’t want the liability, but the customer was demanding it—so I backed out noiselessly and looked around for Mom, wanting to see if, from her vantage point, everything was going well. She was, after all, the hostess—the grande dame, as it were—of Shamrock Manor, the gorgeous face of a mansion that was starting to show its wear and age, unlike its female proprietor, who, for all I knew, had a fountain of youth in the basement. Or just great genes.

  Or a great plastic surgeon.

  Upstairs, the last of the police tape hung limply from the doorknob of the bedroom where I had last left Caleigh during her own wedding. A smudge of something—blood maybe or just red wine?—was on the doorjamb, which was slightly ajar. I got a whiff of Mom, Chanel No. 5, and knew that she was on the other side. I knocked gently.

  “Just a minute!” she called out. “One second!”

  I stood outside the door, but I didn’t have a lot of time to kill, what with the potatoes in the pot and the hungry guests and Brendan, a lovely art teacher but not a cook, helping out in the kitchen. I pushed open the door and found Mom at the mirror, dabbing under her eyes with a tissue and reapplying some under-eye concealer. On the bed was an imprint and a wrinkled comforter, the telltale signs that she had been sitting on the bed before I entered.

  “Mom?” I said, taking a step into the room.

  “Yes, Belfast?” she asked, turning to face me, the only sign she had been crying her red-tinged nose. “Everything okay in the kitchen? And who is that tall man in there with you?”

  “Brendan Joyce,” I said.

  “Paddy and Fiona Joyce’s boy?” she asked, adjusting her spine so that she was standing as straight as she could, her pageant-girl posture returning.

  “One and the same,” I said.

  “He was always a nice boy. Always carrying his sister’s hard shoes before dance class.”

  “Were you crying?” I asked.

  I could see the wheels turning in her head. “Well, yes,” she said, deciding not to lie. “I’m just a bit overwhelmed. Today’s wedding, what happened at Caleigh’s party, the state of the Manor.” She paused and crossed her arms over her chest, her voice catching a bit when she said, “That poor boy.”

  “What poor boy?” I asked.

  “Declan. Mr. Morrison.”

  “That poor man,” I said, correcting her. “He was a man.” And not a very nice one at that, but I left that out.

  “You’re right. He was a man.”

  Behind her, outside, I could see the smoldering pit where I had roasted the pig, the river in the distance. “You lost an earring that day, Mom. The day of the wedding.” I watched her carefully. “I forgot to mention it.”

  She touched her ears reflexively, making sure the earrings she had donned that morning were still there. “Yes. Thank you, Belfast. They were cheap. Plastic, really. I don’t care.”

  “Any idea where you may have lost it? Did you retrace your steps?” I asked.

  “No need,” she said. She sighed. “I’ll get more earrings.”

  “We’ll get this place back on track, Mom. Don’t worry.”

  “Yes, we will,” she said. “You’re here now, Bel, and that will help things tremendously.”

  I didn’t know about that, but I let her indulge the fantasy. After all, she was upset. And I couldn’t bear to think of her, the rock of the family, feeling off her game or upset about the events of the past few months and last week. The Manor was in trouble and she felt as if she were to blame. It was written all over her smooth, unwrinkled face.

  “Shouldn’t you go back to the kitchen?” she asked.

  “Yes, I should,” I said. When hugging or any kind of emotional display of affection isn’t in your family’s repertoire, there’s not much else to do but move on, so that’s what I did. But before I got to the door, I turned around. “The man. Declan Morrison. Did you know him?” I asked for not the first, or last, time.

  She did her best not to lick her lips, but she couldn’t help herself. “No. Never met him before in my life.”

  CHAPTER Nineteen

  The next morning, the cat, whom I had named Taylor after the lovely Ms. Swift, made an appearance on the back porch. Mom had left me a pouch of salmon during one of her clandestine cleaning trips to the apartment, and even though I was starving when I got home the night before the smell of it gave me another idea.

  I sniffed. “Cat food!” I put it on a paper plate and let the feline chips fall where they may.

  It never occurred to me that leaving out the contents of a pouch of salmon would also attract an intrepid raccoon, his or her eyes glistening merrily as I walked past the glass door on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. He or she scarfed up most of the salmon before I shooed him or her away by shoving a broom handle between the door and the porch. I had lived in the city long enough that I had forgotten about raccoons. Rats, no. Pigeons, not them, either. But raccoons were denizens of the suburban rural environment and made their presence known, particularly when food was around, even if it was in the form of garbage.

  The cat smelled the oil that had soaked into the paper plate, though, and that was enough to bring him or her up the steps, once the raccoon had retreated when daylight broke. I stood in the hallway, not daring to make a move, and got a glimpse of the animal I had been hoping to make my pet. Big, fluffy, white, with an orange spot on her mouth—I decided an animal this beautiful could only be a female—she regarded me from the other side of the glass door before loping down the steps to parts unknown. I made a mental note to buy more crappy salmon in a pouch and to research how to keep raccoons from arriving at your back door. I wondered if she liked her new name and if she would ever settle down and become a part of my life for real.

  For the past few Sunday mornings since I had come home, my parents and I went through the same charade. They would creep up the stairs and rap lightly at the door and ask if I was going to Mass, to which I would reply that I couldn’t, citing “work” I had to do. I don’t know why we persisted in pretending that I would actually go to Mass—I was a grown-up and could tell them that Sunday Mass was not part of my routine anymore—or why they accepted my contention that I was so busy. It was easier that way for everyone, I guess. I had no friends—well, I sort of had Brendan Joyce, our bond stronger now that he had come to help at Shamrock Manor the day before—and I had less of a life. It was me, this apartment, and the phantom cat. Regardless, church was not part of my plans.

  But making breakfast for Brendan, snoring loudly on my couch, was. Fortunately, the door to my apartment is at the back and as far away from the living room as you could get. Mom would surely paint me a harlot if she knew that I had a man in the place, even though the man hadn’t laid a single hand on me the night before, the two of us, exhausted from the O’Donnell wedding and its attendant messiness, sharing a bag of microwave popcorn before going our separate ways in my four-hundred-square-foot space. I didn’t have a team of cleaners to come in after me and make sure the kitchen was shipshape; that was all on me, so we spent several hours making the kitchen at the Manor spic-and-span so that the next time I came in it would look more like a professional kitchen and less like an Army mess hall.

  But today Mom and Dad didn’t come up to ask me to go to Mass that Sunday and I was relieved. Maybe they had seen how exhausted I had been after the O’Donnell wedding. Cooking at the Manor was different from cooking in a restaurant kitchen and I was unused to being the sous chef, the line cook, the expeditor (Brendan, bless his heart, did his best, but it wasn’t good enough), and the manager of the waitstaff. I was glad
my parents were going to Mass because with them occupied for an hour at the service and then again at the Cub Scouts’ pancake breakfast, something that Dad never missed in thirty-five years in Foster’s Landing and as a parishioner at Bleeding Heart of Jesus, I could make Brendan an omelet that would make him fall hopelessly in love with me in peace. Our plan the night before had been to share an exceptional bottle of Bordeaux that I had in my wine rack and that I had purloined from The Monkey’s Paw that night I left, but after one glass and a bellyful of popcorn Brendan was sound asleep, his big feet resting on my Ikea coffee table, and I headed to bed as well, feeling as if I had been run over. I had covered him with one of Mom’s crocheted afghans, one of an army of blankets that seemed to be recklessly reproducing, a new one appearing in my apartment practically with each passing day. This one was an homage to her beloved New York Mets, an off-center blue-and-orange logo the centerpiece of this particular monstrosity.

  Before he fell asleep, a little punch-drunk, he said, “Is it my imagination or does this place smell like meat loaf? Or hot dogs? Or both?”

  I couldn’t get rid of the smell or the ketchup stain on the couch, so I had given up. No amount of Febreze helped and Mom, when confronted, denied ever having been in the place.

  I stared at Brendan on the couch, his mouth hanging open, his hair even more unruly than usual. He was cute. And sweet. A deadly combination for someone like me, someone truly on the rebound. Go slow, McGrath, I cautioned myself. You’re not that long out of a relationship.

  His eyes closed, he spoke. “You shouldn’t stare at sleeping people. They may get the idea that you’re some kind of psychopath or something.”

  “Not a psychopath,” I said. “Just your normal, everyday chef with amazing knife skills.”

  “Oh, that’s heartening,” he said, opening his eyes. “Thanks for the blanket.” He pulled the afghan up to his chin and craned his neck to get a better look at the Mets logo. “A Mets fan?”

  “Mom is.”

  “Mom likes to suffer, eh?”

  “Mom loves to suffer,” I said. “Don’t all Irish moms?”

  “Good point,” he said, pulling himself into a sitting position. “Mr. Met looks like he’s had a stroke, though.”

  “Mom is still learning the finer points of crochet.” The kitchen was attached to the living room, so I kept up my end of the conversation while I assembled the ingredients I would need for breakfast: a slab of pork belly that I had brought home from the Manor the night before, some eggs from a local farmer’s market, a loaf of store-bought bread. Milk. Cheese. All of the good stuff. I pulled some bowls down from the cupboard and recognized them as the free stoneware we used to get at the grocery store when we were kids, saving Mom’s receipts and figuring out which items we’d be able to get with our next order. Cargan was the last to get his own dinner plate and never let us forget it. I got the first full set because I was the only girl, the youngest, and, according to my brothers, the “most special” and “Dad’s favorite.” I wasn’t sure about that, but being the only female and younger than those hellions did accord me some privileges that they didn’t receive. Eating the last Oreo. Being believed when I said “he hit me first.” Or not having to sit in the way, way back of the Vanagon because I professed a profound car sickness that could rear its ugly head at any time, particularly when we were going over a particularly windy road that led to the bridge out of town.

  I wasn’t carsick. Just spoiled. The boys were right, but I would never tell them that.

  Brendan lumbered over to the counter and took a seat, watching me as I started to cook. After a few minutes, minutes in which he was awed by my skill, or so I told myself, he asked me a question.

  “So what really happened?”

  The fork that I had been using to beat the eggs slipped from my fingers and sank into the deep stoneware bowl, disappearing beneath a pool of viscous yellow fluid. I didn’t have to ask what he was referring to; the look on his face told me that he was asking about my former job and life and that he instantly regretted bringing it up.

  “The Monkey’s Paw?” I asked. “How much do you know?”

  “Just what was in the paper. You were the head chef. President Moreland was there. You left.”

  “I was fired.”

  Brendan dipped his head so that he didn’t have to look at me. “Okay. You were fired.”

  I leaned on the counter. “It was a Tuesday night. Pretty quiet. A nice couple, a cop and his professor wife, were celebrating his fiftieth birthday with his partner and his wife. I knew the partner’s wife because she’s a cable bigwig and had been talking to me about doing my own reality show.”

  Brendan’s eyebrows went up.

  “I said no,” I said, putting to rest any thoughts he might have had of me being a cable star. “It was just them and the reporter from the Times.” I grimaced. “Unfortunately.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Anyway, the president was a late reservation, but being as it was a Tuesday, we had plenty of room to spare. Secret Service came in and swept the place. All clear.” I dipped my fingers into the eggs and extricated the fork. “He ordered the snapper.”

  “Ah, the snapper,” Brendan said, his own memory of the story jogged.

  “It had a bone in it.”

  “Yep. I read that.”

  “That’s basically it,” I said.

  He smiled. “But it’s not really, is it?”

  I thought about how much to tell him, how much to reveal. “You want the true story?” I said. “You want to know what really happened?”

  “I do.”

  “Are you trying to decide whether to cast your lot with a crazy chef?”

  “No,” he said. “I already think that I want to. But I have a feeling there’s more to this story because I’ve known you, what?” he said, counting on his fingers. “Twenty-two years with a long hiatus thrown in there? So, seventy-two hours at most? I don’t see crazy. I see passionate. I see smart. I see kind.” He looked at me, the fork in my hand dripping egg onto the counter. “I see beautiful.”

  I didn’t want to blush, but I couldn’t help it. “I was engaged to my sous chef, Ben. He’s what my parents would call a wanker.”

  “I thought wankers were British.”

  “They are, but my parents love the word, particularly when it applies to my former boyfriends. And he is. British, that is. But that doesn’t matter. That’s what they call Kevin Hanson, too.”

  “Detective Hanson?” Brendan asked. His sunny demeanor clouded for a moment, leading me to believe that he and Detective Hanson—Detective Wanker—had a history of which I wasn’t aware.

  “One and the same.” I put the fork in the sink and got a new one out of the drawer. Only two remaining. Just right for our breakfast a deux. “Anyway, Ben was in charge of deboning the fish, making sure it was ready to go from the grill to the plate and to the president’s table.”

  “So, not you?”

  “Not me.”

  The realization dawned on his sweet, concerned face. “You took the fall.”

  “And Ben never said a word,” I said, choking back a sob with a little, rueful laugh. “Francesco didn’t like that I was becoming bigger than the restaurant, that my star was rising. He had been looking for a way to get rid of me for months because I didn’t want to do the show. People loved my food, so he didn’t just want to out and out fire me. This was his out. This was his way to get rid of me, promote Ben, and bring the spotlight back to him and his ownership rather than a celebrity chef who could have had her own television show but who chose not to.” Brendan looked at me, his expression a combination of pity and pride. “It was all about the food with me. It always has been. I didn’t need some television crew following me around, watching my every move. I am not in this business for the fame or the glory.”

  “Well, that’s good, because now you’re the head chef at Shamrock Manor,” he said, and the sound of his laughter was welcome after going back in time to
The Monkey’s Paw and Ben the wanker and Francesco Francatelli. “The broken wine bottle?” Brendan asked. “Saw something about you threatening Francesco with a broken wine bottle?”

  “When Francesco came into the kitchen to tell me about the president’s snapper, he picked up my chef’s knife and was going to throw it at the wall behind me, so I picked up the closest thing I could find and made it into a weapon.” I shrugged. “You don’t grow up with four older brothers and not figure out ways to defend yourself.”

  “He was going to throw the knife? This story is just ridiculous,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t believe it myself if it hadn’t happened to me. Maybe he would have thrown it, maybe not. But my line cook was coming out of the walk-in and if Francesco missed his target, well, that would have been the end of Lucio.” I looked at the bowl of eggs. “Remember. Francesco was nominated for an Oscar for The Thrill of the Sierra Madre and supposedly learned knife throwing. But that was in the seventies, so I didn’t trust his skills.”

  Brendan rubbed his hands over his face. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

  I began to beat the eggs again. “No. You can’t.” I got a skillet out from the drawer under the stove and lit the burner. “So there it is. The unvarnished truth. Did I lose my temper? Yes. Did I threaten my former boss with a wine bottle? Indeed. Did I serve the president red snapper with a bone in it? No, I did not. Was it my responsibility to check? You betcha.”

  Brendan spoke softly. “Do you love Ben?”

  I answered quickly and without reservation, “Not anymore.” Thinking about it, I wasn’t sure I ever had, and that troubled me even more than the fact that I had fallen for his lines, his charm. If everything had stayed the same, I’d be engaged still to a wanker who had no second thoughts about betraying me to save his own hide or make his own star rise.

  “When were you supposed to get married?” Brendan asked.