by Lesley Kagen
Why am I getting so lathered up and assuming again?
Charlie could still be at our meeting spot. I just didn’t see him, that’s all.
Shoving my temper to my back burner, I kneel next to whimpering Birdie, pry her too-long, blah-brown bangs off her forehead, and tell her in a less-boiling-mad way, “If ya wanna make up to me for all your screw-ups this morning, then right after I get you cleaned up”—she’s a sweaty, wet mess. Tears are trickling out of the corners of her eyes and snot is gushing out of her too-upturned nose—“I want you to use your Indian vision and check for Charlie around the willow.”
Sliding my arms under her arms, I get her to her feet, pull the rubber band out of her remaining messy pigtail and finger rake her hair into a ponytail like mine, hook her bangs that I was counting on Charlie to trim with his sharp whittling knife during the meeting behind her ears, then I lick my finger and rub off the dirt streaks on her knees and the chocolate ring around her mouth.
“That’s better,” I step back and tell her when I’m done spiffing her up. “You look so, so, so, so beautiful. You remind me of Ida Lupino.”
“Thank you, Tessie,” she tells me four times with a wink, and then I wink back at her, and then she winks back at me and that can go on forever, so I put a halt to it by asking her, “Ya ready to look for Charlie now?”
“Roger that, but before I do”—she spins around, lowers her shorts and undies down to her knees, and moons me—“can ya see the stinger?”
There’s a red mark on the heinie cheek where I pinched the heck out of her, but, of course, I have no intention of owning up to that. I just pretend to pull something out and say, “There you go, good as new.”
“Ship . . . ship . . . hurray!” Birdie says when she nuzzles her damp cheek—her face one—against my neck, and then because she is not an Indian giver in her words or her deeds, she tugs her undies and shorts back up to her round tummy and gets to work straightaway looking for Charlie at the willow tree with her red-man-looking-for-settlers-to-scalp stare.
When a few minutes pass by and she doesn’t say anything, I ask her, “Well?” because waiting for the verdict is just about killing me. I can’t remember a time that I felt more desperate to see my fiancé. “Ya see him?”
“Who am I lookin’ for again?”
“Charlie!” And before she can ask me which Charlie, I spell it out for her. “Not Charlie ‘Dogbreath’ Bennett, not Charlie ‘Booger’ Hawkins, and not Charlie ‘Four-Eyes’ Arnold. Do you see Charlie ‘Cue Ball’ Garfield down there? You can’t miss him. He’s got a bald head!”
She looks a few more seconds, then turns back to me and says, “Nope. Nobody with a bald head down there. I’m hungry. I want some Velveeta.”
Damn Mr. McGinty’s Kraft-cheese-sounding voice!
Because I stomped her P B and M to oblivion, her tummy, which has a lot better memory than she does, is complaining to Birdie that it didn’t get its usual morning snack. I was counting on all the Hershey’s kisses she stole out of my pocket during the wild streak tiding her over to lunchtime, but there I go again, being a big assuming dope.
The safest thing to do would be to hustle us straight home so I could make her another sandwich pronto, but I can’t do that. Birdie is not going to forget my sister-promise. So before we can climb back over the black iron fence, what we need to do is swing by Mr. Lindley’s grave to get those chocolate-covered cherries before we go visit Daddy. If I don’t put more food in front of my sister’s face by the time St. Kate’s church bells clang twelve, believe me, things will go from bad to worse around here in a hurry, which reminds me. How much time do I got left before Birdie starts flapping her arms, squawking, licking her lips, and staring at me like that famous saying “You look good enough to eat” is one she wouldn’t mind putting to the test?
Daddy’s Timex is still really tangled up with the St. Christopher medal in my pocket, but I have no problem seeing that it’s 11:41 a.m.
Uh-oh.
“I’m hungry,” Birdie repeats three more times.
“I know you are, honey, but . . .” I show her what I’m working on. “I just need to straighten these out real quick and then off we’ll go to get ya something good to eat.”
The Finley sisters need all the luck we can get and leaving Daddy’s watch and the St. Christopher medal in a twisted mess feels to me as unholy lucky as drawing a mustache on the pretty blue Virgin Mary church statue like some kid did last week. (The Mutual Admiration Society is already on THE CASE OF THE BLESSED MUSTACHE. We have it narrowed down to two possible culprits. Butch Seeback, because he’s always the most likely suspect, but it could also be Chuckie Jaeger, the kid who connects my freckles with a ballpoint pen when I fall asleep at my desk. He’s a nincompoop, but he’s also the best artist in school and that mustache on the Virgin statue was very lifelike.)
“Okay, Tessie, you straighten them out, but hurry. I’m really, really, really, really—” Birdie stops chomping on the bit long enough to point down at my busy fingers. “The medal for sure belongs to Mister McGinty, ya know.”
“Remember, honey? We still don’t know that this is his medal, we only strongly suspect that it is.” I’m having a tough time separating it from the Timex and I can feel my temper starting to simmer again. “The only way we could know that this medal is his for sure is if I checked to see if his was missin’ from around his neck and the only way I coulda done that is if I was wearing stilts.”
“Well, then . . .” she says with a cock of one of her pale eyebrows. “How wonderfully fortuitous that when the gentleman in question bent down toward the bush that I was standing next to when we were behind Mister Gilgood’s mausoleum that I availed myself of the opportunity to inspect his neck.”
Oh, brother.
I have no idea what my suddenly-gone-old-timey-on-me sister is trying to pull, but she couldn’t have thought of inspecting McGinty’s neck to see if his medal was around it in a million years. Pyewacket the cat could think of doing that before she could.
From years of experience, I know that I shouldn’t get into a sparring match with her when she’s hungry, but between my frustration at getting the watch and the medal free from one another and my worrying about what’s gonna happen next if I don’t get some food into her and that smooth, superior tone she’s using on me that sounds a lot like the one Louise uses when she thinks she’s got the upper hand, I can’t help myself.
“You didn’t inspect Mister McGinty’s neck,” I tell her, snippy. “You’re making that up.”
“Well, I never.” She crosses her arms across her chest and stomps her little foot. “For you to suggest that I’m prevaricating is nothing short of an outrage!”
PreWHATacating?
Talking gibberish is a very bad sign that I should put on the LOONY list when I get the chance, but . . . geez, I don’t know. Long shots do come in every once in a while. I guess Birdie’s attention might’ve been pulled in the direction of Mr. McGinty’s neck. Not because she’s smart enough to think of looking to see if his medal was missing on purpose, but because she got a whiff of what he was picking out of the bush. She could’ve whipped her head toward the leftover smell of chocolate and caramel that’d been wrapped in the gold Rolo wrapper and accidentally got a look at his neck.
“So you’re tellin’ me that something like this”—I hold up the free-at-last St. Christopher medal—“wasn’t hanging around Mister McGinty’s neck when he—?”
“Would you please kindly lower your voice?” Birdie says with a scowl. “I have abnormally sensitive hearing and you’re aggravating my condition.”
I know this is no laughing matter, but honestly, even when I’m as ticked off as I am, my sister just slays me. “Oh, ya got a condition that I’m aggravating, huh?” I say with a chuckle. “Well, I got a condition that you’re aggravating, too, missy, and it’s that you better be tellin’ me the truth about what you saw, or didn’t see, around Mister McGinty’s neck.”
She squares h
er shoulders, lifts her chin, and places her right hand on her heart. “I can unequivocally state that the caretaker’s neck was completely . . . oh, my, dare I say . . . bare?” she does dare to say with cheeks the color of her freshly pinched heinie.
What the heck?
The kid who will pull her pants down and moon not only me, but just about anybody in the neighborhood, including Father Ted if the spirit moves her, is suddenly too prim and proper to say the word bare?
“And before you can question the quality of my eyesight again, young lady,” Birdie says, Sunday school teacher snooty, “let me also assure you that my verification of the identity of the person that I observed in the vicinity of the willow tree a few moments ago is absolutely accurate as well.”
The identity of somebody? At the willow tree? Is she . . . is she talking about my Charlie?
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
I think I might’ve caught my sister telling me a coupla bald-faced, old-timey fibs.
“But when I asked you a few minutes ago to check for Charlie,” I say nice and slowly, so there can be no confusion on her part or mine, “you told me that you didn’t see him down there. And just now you told me that your verification was absolutely accurate.” I hitch up my shorts and do my Sheriff of Dodge impression that she loves. “Sounds to me like you’re changin’ yer stories, little lady.”
“I most certainly am not!” Birdie says, not charmed, I’m sure. “After you asked me to check for your betrothed beneath the weeping willow, I stated quite clearly that I didn’t see anyone bald in the vicinity. Not that I didn’t see anyone at all.”
Well, that empties all the bullets outta my six-shooter right quick, because that’s exactly what she did state, quite clearly.
Could she be telling the truth after all? On both counts?
I don’t care so much about the Charlie situation anymore because I’m pretty sure I know where we’ll find him, but I do care about the Mr. McGinty situation. If Birdie is right and this is for sure his medal I’m holding in my hand, then I’m almost positive that he’s the kidnapping murderer.
FACT: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions” is a very true famous saying.
PROOF: This is not at all what I wanted to happen when I thought it was a great-good-luck moneymaking idea to show up in the cemetery this morning to investigate what I heard and saw last night.
“I’m really, really, really, really hungry. I’m really . . .” drones my sister, who has suddenly returned back from her trip to the Wild West hungrier than she was before she left.
I have to get those chocolate-covered cherries into her gullet before the bells at St. Kate’s start clanging to let her and everyone else in the neighborhood know that it’s high noon.
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
What’s wrong with me?
I just remembered 12:00 is when Mr. McGinty told us that Mrs. Peterman decided to hold her husband’s funeral so the workers he bossed around at the Feelin’ Good factory could attend on their lunch break, which is the worst possible timing that could put the Finley sisters in grave danger—no joke—because the box of Stover candy that Mrs. Melman leaves on Mr. Lindley’s final resting spot is not too far away from Mr. Peterman’s new hole that most of our neighbors will be gathered around. If we’re sneaky, we should be okay, but only if Birdie doesn’t give us away. I so wish I had a gag on me like the sock I keep in the Radio Flyer wagon, because—
Clang . . . clang . . . clang . . .
Anybody who came to say their final good-bye to Mr. Peterman is about to be treated to a concert of hideously loud starvation squawking when those bells reach twelve. And, of course, one of them is bound to call our mother at the Clark station to tell her about the ruckus one of the Finley ghouls caused in Holy Cross during the funeral.
“Señorita Birdie!” I turn to tell her in my sure-to-please Zorro voice. “Vamanos to those chocolate-covereds!”
Clang . . . clang . . . clang . . .
Unfortunately, she wants those runny cherries in her tummy even more than I thought she did. Before I have the chance to get a good grip on her hand, she vamanos-es down the side of the hill yelling . . . yelling . . . I have no idea what the hell she’s yelling. I caught the words, “sister” and “run” and “tree,” but she might’ve yelled, “mister” and “fun” and “free,” for all I know . . . no . . . no . . . no . . . no!
For some unknown reason, is unpredictable Birdie listening to her big heart instead of her big stomach? Could she be yelling at me, her sister, that she feels so bad about not seeing Charlie earlier, the way I wanted her to, that she’s going to run down to the weeping willow tree to check for him in person? That wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world, either, because I keep a stash of emergency candy in a hole in the willow along with our Mutual Admiration treasury money.
But what if Birdie is listening to another part of her weird brain and she’s yelling on her hustle down the hill that she’s going to look for Mister McGinty at his shack because she thinks it’d be fun to play a game of gin rummy with him? And because she doesn’t know any better, when she’s done eating her free windmill cookies and drinking her free root beer, she’s so proud of the clue she found that she just might brag to him when she’s shuffling the “52” that she dug his St. Christopher medal out of a leaf pile behind the mausoleum where a murder was committed last night. And that right there? That could be a life-ending decision. The poor kid doesn’t understand what could happen if she told already very jittery Mr. McGinty that we got proof that he was at the scene of the crime. Our armed-to-his-beautiful-teeth friend, who I’m now 95% sure murdered our principal, really, really, really, really wouldn’t like that Gotcha!
Clang . . . clang . . . clang.
13
WHY . . . WHY . . . WHY . . . WHY?
From hanging out at Lonnigan’s Bar with the best bartender in the neighborhood since I only came up to his knees, I have a bigger vocabulary than most kids, especially when it comes to cuss words, and I’m using every single one of them while I’m running after my sister down the side of the cemetery hill. Cussing and chasing after Birdie, I swear, if I could get paid for them, we’d be rolling in more dough than Meuer’s Bakery. (No joke.)
“Don’t run to the willow tree and don’t run to Mister McGinty’s shack. Go to the chocolate-covered cherries!” I’m shrieking between the clanging church bells that are telling my sister that it’s feeding time. “Turn right at the bottom of the hill! Right! That’s . . . that’s the hand you deal cards with!”
Birdie doesn’t slow down, turn around, and give me an A-okay sign, but she must’ve heard me, because just after St. Kate’s bells finish sounding noon, she makes a sharp turn toward Mr. Lindley’s grave, thank God.
We should be home free now because after she gets some of the oozing cherries into her, I’ll honor my sister-promise to go see Daddy, and then the Finley sisters will climb the cemetery fence and make our way to Charlie’s house, which is where I’m pretty sure he’ll be whittling away on his back porch and full of questions. During our meeting, I’ll spill the beans about THE CASE OF THE MISSING NUN WHO WAS KIDNAPPED AND MURDERED BY MR. MCGINTY. The Finley sisters might be in way over our heads, but Charlie will know what to do, I know he will. He’s a very level-headed fiancé.
When I finally catch up to Birdie after her record-breaking race down the hill, she’s not lounging around Mr. Lindley’s grave stuffing her face. She somehow managed to snag the heart-shaped box of Stover chocolates that were sitting on top of it—thank you, Mrs. Melman—and flew straight over to the nearby marker that is our most favorite in the cemetery to stuff her face:
EDWARD ALFRED FINLEY
REST IN PEACE
SEPTEMBER 2, 1931–AUGUST 1, 1959
I wasn’t BE PREPARED.
Usually, I feel like I’m coming home when I catch sight of his gorgeous, speckled, polished gravestone, but this morning, seeing it is sucking
every ounce of strength out of me. Between dealing with Louise and Gert, and Birdie’s wild-streaking ways, her everyday weirdness, and her new old-timey-ness, and . . . and wearing Daddy’s big shoes, and not seeing Charlie, and worrying about how Mr. McGinty is looking so guilty of kidnapping and murdering Sister Margaret Mary that he’s probably going to get the electric chair, I am knocked down to the grass next to Daddy’s pretend grave for the count.
Of course, there’s always the chance that Birdie didn’t really see what she thought she did, which isn’t far-fetched, no matter how positively old-timey she sounded up on the hill. Trusting her without grilling her further, well, that’d be dumb. And it just so happens that Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst nightmare” Bellflower agrees with me. “When considering evidence or information gathered during the course of an investigation,” he wrote in Chapter Five of Modern Detection, “it is absolutely crucial that you weigh the dependability of your sources.”
Now, I love my little featherweight to death and back and all the stops in between, but “dependability” is not one of her best qualities.
“Bird?” I say to my partner in crime, who is pressing her cheek against Daddy’s tombstone—that’s the closest she can get to him, so she really is in hog Heaven.
“Yes, Tessie?” she says with cherry juice dribbling down her chin.
“Ya remember how you told me a little while ago that you were absolutely positive that Mister McGinty didn’t have his Saint Christopher medal around his neck when we were behind the mausoleum with him?”
I’m praying that fact has slipped her mind forever, that she’s about to say something like What are you talking about, Tessie? but God must be out to lunch or something, because Birdie shoves another chocolate in her mouth and nods four times with a lot of enthusiasm, poor thing.
All she knows is that she found a clue in a leaf pile and that Mr. McGinty’s medal was not around his neck. That’s the 1 + 1, but she’s not smart enough to come up with what that equals. She doesn’t understand how guilty that makes him. We figured out this case and I’m not so bigheaded to think that eventually the police won’t. When they question everyone in the neighborhood about the disappearance of Sister Margaret Mary, Gert Klement will step up to point her finger at me. Tell the police what a banshee I am and how I don’t have a conscience and that everyone in the parish knows how much I hate our principal for holding Birdie back in school. Of course, I wouldn’t tell the coppers a thing when they dragged me down to the station house and gave me the third degree, because I do hate Sister M & M and I’m very willing to let bygones be bygones when it comes to Mr. McGinty murdering her. But my sweet-hearted, overly friendly sister? Even if I reminded her four thousand times to keep her mouth shut, she’ll forget. She’ll tell the police whatever she remembers about me hearing the yelling in the cemetery the night Sister Margaret Mary disappeared and about how she found Mr. McGinty’s medal behind the mausoleum, and before we know it, the cops will come to pick up our godfather in a paddy wagon and tell him, All aboard for the gas chamber.
