Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) Read Online Free

dad’s hands on Declan’s shoulders in a paternal gesture that suggested that this was not the first time they had met.
    “Where’s your mom now?” I asked. I recognized almost everyone here.
    “Oh, she stayed back home,” he said. “I’m representing the family today.”
    “And my dad? How do you know him?” I asked.
    “Trip to Ireland in the seventies,” he said, his attention diverted by a buxom guest in a strapless gown.
    I looked around the hall, noticing that after a short break the dance floor had filled once again.
    “You fancy a dance?” he asked, holding out his hand. No ring. Good sign.
    “Oh, thanks. You’re sweet. But no.” Truth was, I was only a good dancer with half a bag on. I pointed to my feet. “Aching dogs.”
    “Ah,” he said. “Too bad. Maybe a pint when all of this,” he said, waving a hand around the room, “is over?” He flashed that smile again and, I’m sorry to say, I was becoming kind of a sucker for it.
    “Maybe,” I said, and downed my pint. Caleigh and Mark were headed back from the great lawn and it appeared that despite having suffered through one round of toasts, we were going to suffer through another.
    I watched my brothers reassemble on the stage after a short break, the tension between Arney and Feeney palpable as they argued about which song they would now play now that some of the Irish-dancing stuff was out of the way. A line of people queued up to toast the happy couple. I noticed Declan Morrison somewhere in the crowd and he gave me a little wave, making a gesture that suggested we would be drinking another pint together when all of this was over.
    Caleigh returned to the hall and I watched her dance with my father, the old guy sobbing like he was sending her off to Afghanistan rather than a five-bedroom house down county in Bronxville, complete with a full-time maid and groundskeeper. When they were finished, she grabbed me as she exited the dance floor, holding on to my arm to steady herself. Caleigh could never hold her liquor; I knew that from experience. My car had been detailed more than once after a night spent with my darling cousin, a trip to Eden Island in the middle of the Foster’s Landing River to party ending with a crying, nauseated Caleigh in the backseat.
    “Why don’t I get you a glass of water, Caleigh?” I asked, extricating her hand from my arm. She had the brute strength of someone who was a devotee of my mother’s legendary Pilates classes. Around Foster’s Landing, there was a cadre of women who looked more fit than a team of Navy SEALs thanks to Oona McGrath’s torture sessions. “Oona” means “Queen of the Fairies” in Gaelic, but for my mother it meant “Queen of the Biceps.” At sixty-five, the woman could bench-press her body weight and then some.
    “Cute, right?” Caleigh slurred, accepting the glass of water I had grabbed from a nearby table and slurping noisily.
    “Who?”
    “The guy you were talking to.”
    “Yes. Adorable,” I said. “Apparently, you’re related?”
    She didn’t answer, spilling the rest of the water down the front of her dress, missing her mouth completely. “I love you, Bel. You are the closest thing to a sister I’ve ever had.”
    I’d seen this show before, too. This was the part where Caleigh had so much to drink that she turned sappy and sentimental. If I weren’t careful, copious tears would follow, sentimentality followed quickly by spiraling depression. I chose my words carefully. “I love you, too, Caleigh.” It was the second time I had said it that day, words that I had never uttered to Caleigh ever before.
    “Like a sister?”
    “Like a sister. Now let’s get you upstairs,” I said, steering her toward the exit. I looked around for Mark, but he was nowhere to be found.
    “We’re best friends! Right, Bel?”
    “Right. Yep. The bestest.”
    I pushed open the door to the hall and escorted her out into the grand foyer of the mansion and toward the stairs, which