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

done two nights before was no big deal. Water under the bridge.
    Caleigh smiled at me through her tears and I knew I had calmed her down. No one would know that she really looked like she wanted to vomit right before she stepped out the door of Shamrock Manor and that deep down, as she had confessed to me the night before over a bottle of really cheap white wine—okay, maybe two—she knew that she maybe had cheated on Mark, more than a little bit, just the night before.

 
    CHAPTER Two
    I was watching the most raucous Siege of Ennis I had ever seen at any social gathering, let alone a wedding, with 100 percent of the bride’s side and 0 percent of the groom’s participating. The groom’s family watched in perplexed horror.
    If you’ve never seen a Siege, it’s pretty amazing. Two lines of dancers face each other and advance and retire and advance and retire before each grabbing a person from the opposing line and spinning them around so hard that it’s not unusual to see an older lady or gentleman get winged into a bus tray, sending champagne glasses flying. The dance originated in county Clare in the west of Ireland and represents the battle that took place when Ennis was under siege. As always, the siege had something to do with Catholics, Protestants, and a dispute over land, which, if you know anything about Irish history, is the root of every problem in the culture.
    That and flat beer.
    Anyway, it was an epic Siege. It went on for twenty minutes, and when it was clear that the remaining dancers had worn themselves out and I could get across the dance floor without being whisked into a bus tray I headed straight for the bar, where I got a pint, found an empty table, kicked off my shoes, a gorgeous pair of fake Jimmy Choos that I bought used on eBay, and took a breather. Jacqui, I noticed, had taken the newly married couple out to the lawn and was doing some still shots in his patented Night of the Living Dead style, not a smile exchanged between man and wife.
    Caleigh never told me whom she had slept with the night before and I didn’t ask. It seemed curious to me that she wasn’t dying to tell me, secret keeping not being one of Caleigh’s character traits. She liked to spill the beans and spill them often, which led her to tell my mother things about me over the years that I didn’t want my mother to know, ever. I had learned a long time ago that if you wanted the entire world to know something you told Caleigh. The fact that she had kept her paramour’s identity a secret was telling, in and of itself. I scanned the crowd, wondering if that person was here.
    It was a little hotter in the room than I would have liked and, coupled with the mass of sweating Irish bodies, it was downright unbearable. I grabbed one of the busboys.
    “Hey, Padraic. Go turn the air-conditioning down to sixty.”
    The kid paled beneath his freckles. Mal McGrath was notoriously stingy when it came to creature comforts. “But Bel…”
    “Just do it. I’ll take the heat,” I said. “So to speak.”
    I found a napkin and fanned my cleavage vigorously just in time for the cute guy in the sharp suit to come over and have a seat next to me.
    “How ware ya?” he asked, and I’ve been around enough people with thick Irish brogues to know that he was inquiring after my state of mind, not asking if he could don me like a raincoat.
    “Grand, thanks,” I said, speaking his language.
    “Declan Morrison,” he said, holding out his hand.
    “Bel McGrath,” I said, thinking that I was correct: he was from Ireland and we were definitely related. He looked like my cousin Jimmy on my dad’s side, but then again, everyone looked like Jimmy. And me, a bit. Declan also resembled my brothers, who when together looked like they had just come from a casting call for Riverdance . “Caleigh’s first cousin on our moms’ side of the family.”
    “Caleigh’s third cousin, once removed,” he said. “Do you know the groom?” he