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

she had been nice always, a real gem. A nurse. She volunteered at a local soup kitchen as often as she could, given her schedule, a regular Mother Teresa with long legs, gorgeous hair, and a heart of gold. Mom had filled me in on the details of Mary Ann’s endeavors and her and Kevin’s courtship over the years, often closing with the observation that everyone in the Landing—everyone!—wondered why Kevin had never proposed, never made Mary Ann an “honest woman.”
    It was like going back in time, coming here.
    Of course he had left me for her. He couldn’t leave me for a harridan, some harpy. Nope. Mary Ann D’Amato had been class valedictorian, a Peace Corps volunteer, and an all-around wonderful girl. Just ask anyone. She took my mother’s Saturday morning Pilates class, one of the first things Mom told me when I moved into the apartment over Dad’s studio.
    “She’s as gorgeous as ever,” Mom had said. “Lovely girl.”
    I know, I wanted to say. She always had been. Even though Kevin had picked her over me, I couldn’t hate her. She was just that wonderful.
    “You’re lucky to have me as a witness,” I said, unable to turn my face away from the dead body on the floor. RIP, Mr. Hot Stuff, I thought. You were a lovely fantasy while you lasted. I looked up at the broken banister, so wrecked that I wondered at the strength of the person who had thrown Declan through it.
    Kevin ignored me, getting down in a crouch in front of the body. As if he knew what he was doing. Which he didn’t. Kevin Hanson was a Foster’s Landing boy and now a Foster’s Landing cop. “Detective,” as he reminded me. Not much difference, in my book. He looked around the foyer, taking in the stunned expressions of the two uniformed cops who had responded after Goran had called 911 after hearing me scream. “You two,” he said, throwing his investigative weight around inside his Men’s Wearhouse suit, “go inside and question everyone who spoke to this guy, served him a canapé, or maybe had a one-night stand with him.” He looked at me pointedly as if I were the painted whore of Babylon, smiling again to lessen the impact of his words. He stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “That happens at weddings,” he said, keeping his eyes on me. “One-night stands.” He offered a chuckle to cover the fact that what he had said was insulting—albeit accurate, unbeknownst to him—but the damage was done. He was being an ass and I wasn’t sure why.
    “Jealous?” I asked. I don’t have as much control over my bloodstream as I do my digestive tract, so I knew I blushed red, telegraphing to the entire room that even if I hadn’t had a tryst with dead wedding guest number one, I had thought about it. I also knew that the blushing bride, not the innocent she pretended to be, had made good on that thought. “You should call the county cops,” I said in the most helpful tone I could muster. “I think we’re all a little out of our league here.” I wondered why I was the only one who saw that. Kevin responded by turning his back on me. He had already asked me what I had seen, heard. I told him everything, except for the part where I had deleted all evidence of Declan’s rendezvous with Caleigh on her phone. That I was keeping to myself, at least for the time being.
    I stepped back and waited for Kevin to take control of the scene, something that would have required him to do more than clear the area and stare at the body like it was a mermaid who had been dropped into the middle of a bar mitzvah. Tired of watching him consider the gaping hole in the guy’s head, I moved into the main dining area, where two hundred silent people greeted me, one old lady pointing mutely at my shoes, blood splattered and ruined. I stripped them off and threw them in a waste can before going to find my parents in the crowd. The shoes had been the wrong size and definitely the wrong color, a fuchsia gone so wrong that it would never be right.