Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) by Maggie McConnon
Authors: Maggie McConnon
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best meeting point. He didn’t know that I had been there twice already and that I was trying to make visits there feel more normal. Routine. He came up with an alternative quickly. “Oh, sorry. How about Saturday? The Grand Mill?” he said, referencing a restaurant walking distance from my house. “Seven o’clock?”
“The Grand Mill it is. But make it Friday. I’m busy on Saturday,” I said, crossing the street from the pool to the parking lot. I turned and called after him, “And they do, you know!”
He looked at me. “They do what?”
“Have Pilates in Ireland,” I said.
“Good to know,” he said. “I’ll tell Francine.”
“Who?”
“My sister!” he called, and turned off running at the sound of a phalanx of buses pulling into the pool area, all filled with the “little bastards” who were in his care.
I was starting to rethink the hermit thing, the staying-in-the-house-all-the-time plan. Being a cloistered nun really didn’t hold a lot of appeal. And besides, getting out was proving to be a little more interesting than I would have thought.
CHAPTER Twelve
I finally stopped stalling and went into the kitchen of the Manor the next day, thinking that getting started on the preparations for the wedding might be in order. At four o’clock in a few days one hundred starving Irish wedding guests would descend upon Shamrock Manor, and I needed to be ready to knock their socks off.
Before I left the apartment, my black-and-white-checkered pants on, my chef’s coat buttoned, black clogs on my feet, and my hair held back by a colorful scarf that I had picked up on Canal Street years before, I could feel that old fire start in the pit of my stomach, the need to experiment with ingredients and spices. I took the short walk from my apartment to the kitchen, letting myself in with the key that Dad had given me, and took a look around.
Inside the walk-in freezer I found frozen canapés, egg rolls, and a hundred pounds of fresh ham.
On the wire rack next to the oven I discovered eighty pounds of potatoes. In the cupboards were some paper goods and a few large, industrial-sized cans of carrots, floating, I knew, in a putrid, ginger-colored liquid if I were to be so bold as to open one up. The refrigerator held a gross of eggs from a local farm, so that was good, and the requisite Irish butter that I knew my dad had imported for his guests. The Irish are nothing if not particular about their butter. His mother, Bridgie, my grandmother, had been able to go on for hours about the proper color and consistency of butter. There had been no autopsy when she died, but I always suspected that maybe butter had played a role in the massive heart attack she had the day before Arney’s Confirmation.
I stood by the stainless-steel island in the middle of the kitchen and put my hands on my hips and looked around. This, in my humble opinion, was a sad excuse for a catering-hall kitchen.
But it was my sad excuse and my responsibility to make it not so.
I heard the office behind me whir to life, the printer spitting out paper, the fax machine beeping. I went through the back of the kitchen and into the main office where I found Cargan—whom my parents had elected “catering manager,” God help us all—sitting at a desk in the windowless room, staring at a ledger, a Rubik’s Cube in his hand, his fingers lazily turning the sections without him looking at it.
“The Maloney party canceled.”
“Who?”
“The Maloneys. February ninth.”
“What year?”
“Next.”
Talking to Cargan was like putting together a puzzle with several missing pieces. I had learned over the years how to communicate with him, my mind able to fill in the blanks with just a few pointed questions. We were close in age, not quite “Irish twins,” being more than a year apart, but closer in age than any of the other siblings to each other. I was his protector in such a way that he always seemed younger than me, despite being
“The Grand Mill it is. But make it Friday. I’m busy on Saturday,” I said, crossing the street from the pool to the parking lot. I turned and called after him, “And they do, you know!”
He looked at me. “They do what?”
“Have Pilates in Ireland,” I said.
“Good to know,” he said. “I’ll tell Francine.”
“Who?”
“My sister!” he called, and turned off running at the sound of a phalanx of buses pulling into the pool area, all filled with the “little bastards” who were in his care.
I was starting to rethink the hermit thing, the staying-in-the-house-all-the-time plan. Being a cloistered nun really didn’t hold a lot of appeal. And besides, getting out was proving to be a little more interesting than I would have thought.
CHAPTER Twelve
I finally stopped stalling and went into the kitchen of the Manor the next day, thinking that getting started on the preparations for the wedding might be in order. At four o’clock in a few days one hundred starving Irish wedding guests would descend upon Shamrock Manor, and I needed to be ready to knock their socks off.
Before I left the apartment, my black-and-white-checkered pants on, my chef’s coat buttoned, black clogs on my feet, and my hair held back by a colorful scarf that I had picked up on Canal Street years before, I could feel that old fire start in the pit of my stomach, the need to experiment with ingredients and spices. I took the short walk from my apartment to the kitchen, letting myself in with the key that Dad had given me, and took a look around.
Inside the walk-in freezer I found frozen canapés, egg rolls, and a hundred pounds of fresh ham.
On the wire rack next to the oven I discovered eighty pounds of potatoes. In the cupboards were some paper goods and a few large, industrial-sized cans of carrots, floating, I knew, in a putrid, ginger-colored liquid if I were to be so bold as to open one up. The refrigerator held a gross of eggs from a local farm, so that was good, and the requisite Irish butter that I knew my dad had imported for his guests. The Irish are nothing if not particular about their butter. His mother, Bridgie, my grandmother, had been able to go on for hours about the proper color and consistency of butter. There had been no autopsy when she died, but I always suspected that maybe butter had played a role in the massive heart attack she had the day before Arney’s Confirmation.
I stood by the stainless-steel island in the middle of the kitchen and put my hands on my hips and looked around. This, in my humble opinion, was a sad excuse for a catering-hall kitchen.
But it was my sad excuse and my responsibility to make it not so.
I heard the office behind me whir to life, the printer spitting out paper, the fax machine beeping. I went through the back of the kitchen and into the main office where I found Cargan—whom my parents had elected “catering manager,” God help us all—sitting at a desk in the windowless room, staring at a ledger, a Rubik’s Cube in his hand, his fingers lazily turning the sections without him looking at it.
“The Maloney party canceled.”
“Who?”
“The Maloneys. February ninth.”
“What year?”
“Next.”
Talking to Cargan was like putting together a puzzle with several missing pieces. I had learned over the years how to communicate with him, my mind able to fill in the blanks with just a few pointed questions. We were close in age, not quite “Irish twins,” being more than a year apart, but closer in age than any of the other siblings to each other. I was his protector in such a way that he always seemed younger than me, despite being
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