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

out relatively quickly because, really, who tries to kill themselves by jumping off a second-floor balcony, the danger of the FDR bust notwithstanding? The word “murder”—as well as the rumor of an argument on the balcony—floated through the crowd like the sound a crow makes on a spring morning.
    Murder.
    “He says that they’re going to interview every single one of us,” my father added, looking chagrined.
    I looked around the room. “That will take a while.” Three cops plus two hundred guests equaled a long night ahead. “Where’s Caleigh?” I asked, not spying the bride. “Mark?”
    “Kevin gave them permission to leave,” Dad said. “He had a quick word with them and then let them take off.”
    A “quick word”? In a murder investigation? Interesting. I wondered what their alibi was or if they even had one. I had gotten Kevin through sophomore-year geometry, so I wasn’t all that impressed by his ability to incorporate logic into his thinking. Presumably, Caleigh was still sleeping when all of this happened, but that little voice in the back of my head was telling me that maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was on the balcony. Maybe she had seen something.
    “Kevin looks good?” Mom said, throwing it out there like it was some innocent question, something that wasn’t fraught with emotion, years of recrimination.
    “He does,” I said. I looked at my father, squirming uncomfortably in an oxford shirt, the collar of which circled his size 17 neck in a way that suggested it was a wee bit too tight. “Dad, did you know the dead guy? This Declan character?” I said, trying to make it sound like I didn’t know him, didn’t think he was the most attractive guy I’d seen around these parts in a long time, and that I hadn’t daydreamed that we might see each other without clothes sometime later in the evening.
    My dad pulled at the collar of his shirt. In addition to owning Shamrock Manor, he is also a painter, sculptor, and creator of “installations” that use random pieces of wood and metal as their foundations, so he’s more comfortable in a paint-covered T-shirt and jeans than the formal wear he’s required to wear when there is an event at the Manor. I looked at his hands, little bits of blue paint dotting his freckled skin. No blood, not a speck. I don’t know why I went there in my mind, but I had. I quickly looked away while I waited for his answer.
    “Just met him at the wedding,” he said. A thin sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead.
    “He said you had met in Ireland,” I said.
    Dad looked up at the ceiling, either trying to remember or formulating a lie. “No. Nope. I don’t think so.”
    “Dad, take off your tie,” I said, reaching over and loosening the knot. “You look like you’re going to have a heart attack.”
    Mom poured Dad a glass of water from the one pitcher that the frantic busboy hadn’t taken away. “You do, Mal. You look like you’re going to have a heart attack,” she repeated unnecessarily.
    Dad took the water and greedily gulped it. “Thanks, Oona.” He wiped his brow with his napkin and looked a little bit better, the color fading from his cheeks, his breathing returning to normal.
    “You just met him here?” I asked again. “And Mom, you didn’t know him, either?”
    “Never saw him before in my entire life,” she said. And how did I know that that was the truth? Mom has a “tell” when she lies; immediately after uttering a falsehood, she licks her lips. This time, she locked her jaw and just stared straight ahead, looking as if she was trying to tune out the chatter behind us, the group coming to their own conclusions about who had killed Declan Morrison.
    “He said he was Caleigh’s cousin,” I said. “Third once removed.”
    “Nope,” said Dad.
    “Maybe?” said Mom.
    Caleigh had once confided in me that Mark and his family thought our clan was a little “rough around the edges.” Charming in our own way, but not really