Bel of the Brawl--A Belfast McGrath Mystery

by Maggie McConnon

  He stayed silent for a minute while I chopped carrots. “You’re right,” he said finally. “You’re right to feel that way.”

  I didn’t need his validation of my feelings. I changed the subject. “Now, you can either stay and help me cut these carrots or you can go to school,” I said. It sounded harsh. “Obviously, I’d prefer if you’d stay and help me cut these carrots but I would understand if you wanted to leave.”

  He smiled. “I do have a job to go to.”

  I wanted to believe him. I had fallen hard for him just a few months ago and had already spent nights wondering if he was Rebound Man, Mr. Right, or Mr. Right Now, all categories in some ridiculous women’s magazine that Mom had left in the office and that I had purloined for bedtime reading. I didn’t have any female friends in Foster’s Landing to ask whether or not I had become so crazy about him because of my bad choice in attaching myself to my former fiancé, Ben, a choice that had led to a called-off wedding and a lost job. I finally decided after taking as many quizzes as I could find on the topic that I was truly, deeply in love with this guy, only to get let down again. This all went through my head as I stood in the kitchen, a pile of chopped carrots under my hand, my eyes trained on his face.

  “Can we get past this?” he asked, moving toward me, his arms outstretched.

  “We can,” I said. “Just never do that again.” I stared up at him. “I was scared, too, Brendan.”

  He stopped just before taking me in his arms, not because of what I had said but because of the appearance of Mom, who waltzed into the kitchen, fresh from one of her Pilates classes, wearing leggings and a form-fitting shirt with some kind of Indian Sanskrit on it. It was hard having a mother who made the boys blush but, then again, I’m just lucky that way. Brendan didn’t seem to know where to look, so he studied the ceiling. It was a lot to take in, a woman Mom’s age with a body like that. A woman any age, really.

  “Oh, Brendan,” Mom said. “Lovely to see you, lad. How’s your mom?”

  “Grand, thank you, Mrs. McGrath.”

  “Call me Oona,” she said for at least the fiftieth time. But we all knew he wouldn’t. “Please give her my best.” She looked him up and down, taking in the wet collar. “Is it raining?”

  “No, just in a rush,” he said, touching his hair instinctively.

  “Oh. So I guess you heard about the unpleasantness here at the Manor over the weekend?” she asked, all brisk efficiency, bustling around the kitchen, putting a fork away here, replacing a knife to the block here. “Horrible, I tell you. We’re going to have to do a lot of damage control after this one. And I don’t know how we’re going to use the ladies’ room on Saturday if the police still don’t want us to use it.”

  I guess “unpleasantness” was one way to describe it.

  Mom studied the prep table. “And what’s happening here?” she asked, picking up a can of coconut milk, one of the ingredients for my soup. “And this? Coconuts?”

  “Coconut milk, Mom,” I said. “Trust me. It will be delicious.”

  “Trust me,” Mom repeated. “I hear that at least once a week. Mr. McByrne is still calling about the caviar that he inadvertently ate.”

  “What did he think he was eating?” I asked. “Caviar is generally pretty identifiable. And I’m sure the girls described the dish while serving it.” That last part was unclear; as many times as I had instructed Eileen, Pauline, and Colleen about the finer points of serving a banquet meal, including the passed hors d’oeuvres at the cocktail hour, they had their own way of doing things, some of which included making things up as they went along. I had recently discovered that when serving my lovingly prepared Manchego squares with fig jam, they had called the bite-sized appetizers “cherries jubilee.”

  Sometimes I wondered how long I’d last here.

  Mom was on a tear. “Capers, Belfast. He thought he was eating tiny green capers. That were, for some reason, black. Rotten, perhaps.”

  I shut my mouth before I could ask “Who eats rotten capers?” but Brendan Joyce wasn’t as smart as I was. He asked for me.

  Mom glared at him but didn’t respond, putting the can of coconut milk down on the table. “And that was exotic enough for him. Caviar? Not what he bargained for.”

  “But he loved it,” I reminded her. I remember seeing the old guy shoving them into his mouth as if he were eating his last meal.

  “I’d like to taste this soup before we go forward,” she said, exiting the kitchen.

  I looked at Brendan. “See what I have to put up with?”

  “Will you make me carrot soup sometime?” he asked.

  I considered that. Would I? I was still smarting from his retreat the other day, his silence the next. I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t be a pushover anymore when it came to men—this man—but before I could think about it further, I blurted out, “Sure. You’ll love it.”

  “I’m sorry, Belfast,” he said. “There’s not much more I can say, no way I can really explain myself.”

  As I watched him walk away, I wondered about that. I think there was plenty more for him to say, but did I want to hear it?

  When I was alone in the kitchen again, Mom working on the computer in the adjacent office the only sound I could hear, I dug my phone out of my pocket and dialed Pauline’s cell. I had texted her several times but had gotten no response and I hadn’t seen her since before I had discovered Gerry Mason collapsed. Kevin had seemed mildly concerned with her absence during our group interrogation after the wedding but I didn’t know if he had found her in the interim. I hadn’t yet brought up my concern to Cargan, and the look on his face, as always, was inscrutable when it was clear yesterday that she had vanished after the wedding. But the girls’ faces, coupled with Pauline’s unceremonious departure, had me concerned.

  I listened to the phone ring and ring but when it was clear that no one would answer, I hung up.

  She was in the wind. I was sure of that. I just didn’t know why.

  CHAPTER Seven

  My father had decided that a midweek check-in on the preparation for the upcoming wedding was necessary to make Shamrock Manor “run like a clock.” Heck, even a broken clock is right twice a day, right? We all came from different parts of the Manor, our tasks relegated to specific areas in the big mansion. The waitresses did other jobs at the hall during the week, mostly cleaning and ironing so everyone was present and accounted for. I grabbed Eileen as we walked toward the dining room, asking her if she had seen Pauline.

  “No,” she said. “And neither has Colleen. And they’re roommates.”

  I didn’t know that. “Really? How long?”

  “Long time,” she said. “Colleen says she hasn’t seen her since the Casey wedding and she’s worried, Bel.” She grabbed my arm. “Do you think…?” she asked, trailing off.

  “That she was picked up? Deported?” I asked.

  Eileen clapped a hand over my mouth. “Don’t say it.”

  “Well, that’s what you’re worried about, right?” I asked. “Deportation?”

  Her look told me everything, wild and panicked. “Deportation back to Ireland is the best thing that could happen. She might be in a detention center. Awful places,” she said, shuddering.

  “But why?” I asked. “How? If she was picked up, then certainly you might have been, too, right?” Around us, everyone was assembling in the dining room and Dad was gearing up for his talk. We didn’t have much time to talk further about the situation.

  “I don’t know, Bel.” She started for one of the banquet tables, stripped of its soiled tablecloth, the top scarred after years of use. “All I know is that she had a lot going on here and wouldn’t just leave.” She turned back and looked at me. “Unless she had to. Was made to.”

  Dad took his place on the stage where the boys normally played, actually using the microphone even though his voice at its normal timbre was as close to a foghorn as one could get. He could be heard for miles.

  The mic whistled an ugly feedback
in response to Dad’s welcome to the crew.

  “You’ve got a hot mic there, Dad!” Feeney shouted out, despite the fact that he was sitting not ten feet from the stage.

  Dad fiddled with the mic for a few minutes before giving up and placing it on top of one of the unplugged amps. “Can you hear me now?” he asked.

  Montreal could hear him. And maybe St. Petersburg. The one in Russia, not Florida.

  He clapped his hands together. “Well, we’ve had some unpleasantness here at the Manor.”

  “Again,” Arney said.

  “Yes, Arney, again,” Dad said. Suffice it to say that it seemed that no good came from having your wedding at my parents’ historic mansion. And when all was said and done, the first deceased party guest a few months earlier turned out not to have had a good heart or soul and made trouble for just about everyone with whom he had come in contact. He had set his sights on Caleigh. She had responded in kind, and he was dead shortly thereafter.

  “And the families this weekend,” I said, looking at the information sheet in front of me to refresh my memory of the happy couple. “The O’Connells and the Smiths are still on board to have their wedding here?” I asked the obvious question, the one no one ever seemed to want to ask.

  “Well, yes,” Dad said, nodding vigorously. “They are delighted to have their special event here at Shamrock Manor.”

  “And what did you discount them, Dad?” Cargan asked.

  Dad blustered a moment or two before spilling it. He chose not to say it into the mic, hoping we would miss it. “Forty percent.”

  The boys went crazy. Cutting the price forty percent impacted their bottom line significantly. Me? Well, I wasn’t getting paid that much to begin with so it was all the same to me. I was happy not to lose the business. One more deceased patron here and we’d be shutting our doors for good.

  Dad ignored the chaos in the room and continued, his voice carrying over the cacophony of disappointed and outraged staff members. “As a result of the events last weekend, the ladies’ room is not usable for the time being so we’re going to have to come up with a plan to make sure our one hundred and fifty upcoming guests have proper facilities to use, particularly our female guests.”

  We looked at each other. This wouldn’t be an easy fix.

  “So, Belfast,” Dad said, looking at me. “We’ll need to give them access to your apartment.”

  My mind went to the pile of laundry on the floor, the hole in the ceiling that had never been fixed. The ring around the tub. Housekeeping, it should be said, was not my strong suit, and Mom had just given up, having not made her usual clandestine visits to my abode in several weeks. Cargan looked at me and mouthed “I’ll help you.”

  “And girls,” Dad said, looking at Eileen and Colleen. Pauline, of course, had failed to show for the meeting. “We’ll need to devise some kind of system for allocating two stalls in the men’s room for the ladies. Put your thinking caps on.”

  The two girls looked at each other and then back at my dad.

  “Where’s the other one?” Dad asked.

  “The other who?” Derry asked.

  “The other girl. The dark-haired one.”

  We all looked at each other; I, for one, was surprised that Dad had noticed. When no one responded, he went back to the matter at hand: toilets. He looked at all of us, impatient. “You’re creative!” he bellowed. “Make it happen.”

  Cargan spoke up. “Um, Dad. May I make a suggestion?”

  “I’m all ears, lad. What is it?”

  “Why don’t we turn the men’s room into the ladies’ room just for this one day? Until everything is sorted out?” he said. “There are usually more women than men who need to use the restroom, generally, so it might be a good idea.” Before his brothers could protest, Cargan held up a hand. “And you all can use my bedroom en suite.”

  “What the hell is an en suite?” Feeney asked.

  “An attached bathroom,” Cargan said.

  “Better than what I have,” Feeney said. “I have a shoilet.”

  “A shoilet?” Mom asked.

  “A shower and toilet combination,” he said. Feeney lived in a converted sugar factory in the middle of town, one that promised to include high-end features like a gym and a spa when completed but whose developers had run out of money prior to the last phase of construction. As a result, my brother—or rather, my parents— had bought his condo for a song but had few of the promised amenities beyond the one parking space for the boys’ band tour bus.

  Mom turned away, repulsed. “I don’t even want to know.”

  Dad considered Cargan’s idea and finally pronounced it brilliant. “Yes. We’ll have the men use Belfast’s apartment and the women use the restroom. The lot of you,” he said, waving a hand toward the rest of the staff, “will use Cargan’s … en suite.” He consulted a piece of paper in his hand. “Belfast. Your turn. What’s on the menu?”

  I cleared my throat, the list in my hand. This wasn’t going to go well; I could feel it. “Well, for the cocktail hour, we’ll do pigs in a blanket,” I said, looking at Dad who nodded positively, “scallops wrapped in bacon, a cheese platter, chicken satay…”

  “Chicken satan?” Derry asked. “What in God’s name is that?”

  “Satay,” I said. “Satay. It’s chicken on a skewer with a peanut dipping sauce.”

  Feeney gagged audibly. “Sounds atrocious.”

  I ignored them, continuing. “And carrot and coconut soup shooters.” I caught Mom, out of the corner of my eye, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “It’s new. It’s different. And it uses some of our tried-and-true ingredients in a new way. Like carrots.” I looked at the rest of the staff hopefully. Only Colleen, the most positive of our serving staff, nodded agreeably. “And for dinner,” I continued, “prime rib of beef, au jus, scalloped potatoes, and a beet salad with goat cheese.”

  “No goat cheese, Belfast,” Mom said. “And no beets.”

  “It’s a major component of the dish,” I said, and before she could protest further, added, “and the bride requested it. The Caseys and the Masons loved it!”

  Mom was unconvinced but the subject was tabled by the arrival of Kevin Hanson. He stood in the doorway and listened to my father expound on the finer points of cocktail service, directed at our longtime bartender, Seamus O’Dea, who had a hard enough time finding Shamrock Manor after thirty years behind the bar, never mind trying to figure out how to make some of the newer drinks that people requested such as Cosmopolitans—so out that they were back in again—and any number of the things one could do with a small-batch bourbon. Seamus poured pints and glasses of wine and made a mean Manhattan but when it came to anything else, he was a bit adrift.

  “Belfast!” Dad bellowed. “You’ll help Seamus, girl, won’t you?”

  “I’m a chef, Dad, not a bartender.” I looked over at Kevin, a smile playing on his lips. We had been friends since childhood; none of the histrionics that my family displayed were news to him. He was used to Dad’s bluster and Mom’s tough-girl routine and my brothers’ inability to find their collective way out of a paper bag. I held up a finger and motioned that I would need a minute.

  “And Arney,” Dad said. “What new tunes do we have for the wedding?”

  Arney punted to Derry and Cargan. “Yeah, what new tunes do we have?”

  Cargan straightened. “I wrote a new reel and we have a jig that segues nicely from ‘Celebration’ by Kool and the Gang.”

  “Very good, lads,” Dad said. He consulted a list he had written and stuffed into his pants pocket. We covered serving etiquette, length of the cocktail hour, length of the meal, and how to handle an unruly cake-cutting, as we had witnessed at the previous wedding. We didn’t discuss what to do when you found someone slumped over in the toilet. That was not on the agenda. “Do not engage if they start smashing cake into each other’s faces!” Dad cautioned. “Keep your distance!”

  “Unless the police need to be called, and then we can make
that decision as needed,” Mom said. She looked toward the door. “Detective Hanson, would you agree with Malachy’s and my assessment of what to do when the cutting of the cake goes awry?”

  Kevin hadn’t been expecting to be part of the conversation regarding proper behavior at Shamrock Manor but he rose to the challenge. “Well, yes, Mrs. McGrath, by all means please call us if you feel the situation is getting out of control. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Our tax dollars at work,” Feeney said, though I was pretty sure he hadn’t paid a village tax in over three years. “What are you doing here anyway, Hanson?” There was no love lost between my brothers and Kevin Hanson. Our tumultuous relationship and subsequent breakup had seen to that. Ever hear of Irish Alzheimer’s? You forget everything except the grudges. My brothers made that old joke the truth.

  “Good question,” Derry said. “Didn’t we answer every question you had for us the other day?”

  “You did,” Kevin said, walking into the ballroom. He was still dressed for work, though his tie was stuffed into the pocket of his sport coat. Clearly he had stopped by on his way home but why was still the question. “By the way, you can use the ladies’ room this weekend. I think our work there is done. It’s no longer a crime scene. Just wanted to let you know.”

  “Well, thank the Lord,” Dad said, making a sign of the cross. “So we don’t have to use anyone’s bathroom, en suite or…” he said, stopping and searching for the correct word, “shoilet. Thank you, Detective. I feel much better.”

  Next to me, Colleen and Eileen looked around, trying to affect airs of nonchalance without success. They hurried off, not making eye contact with anyone before leaving.

  I grabbed Cargan before he left the room. “Have you seen Pauline?” I asked, getting a sad head shake in response and a quickened step to get away from me. He wasn’t talking but that wasn’t odd behavior for him. But he was blushing and that was some kind of sign; I didn’t know what that meant but I could guess.