The Mutual Admiration Society(13)

I desperately need to beat to the punch everybody else in the parish who’s been trying to catch whoever nicked the money out of the Pagan Baby collection box up at church a few weeks ago. When I get my hands on whoever perpetrated that crime, I’m not going to rat them out. I’m going to tell them that I won’t reveal their identity if they give me the money. I’m not gonna keep it. I’m gonna shove it under the bushes that grow against the side of the church, and then after Sunday Mass with so many witnesses gossiping about each other on St. Kate’s steps, I’ll wander over to where I hid it, pretend to be tying my sneaker, and pull out that stash of cash and yell, Oh, my goodness! Look what I found in these bushes! Because the way I see it, them Pagan Baby gals getting their moo-la-la back might go a long way in getting President Gert Klement off the Finley sisters’ backs, and what the heck, who knows? Returning the money to its rightful owners could even win me some brownie points from our mother and the Almighty might cut me some much-needed slack, too.

The Mutual Admiration Society hasn’t found any clues yet, but word around the neighborhood is that Skip Abernathy might be the no-goodnik thief that everyone’s been looking for. That’s why hours before the murder happened over at the cemetery, as soon as I saw the lights go out in Gert Klement’s house, Birdie and me snuck out to our garage, loaded up our Radio Flyer wagon—besides bringing library books home in it, we take the coaster on all our snooping missions, except for the cemetery ones, because it’s too hard to shove it over the black iron fence without all the tools and Birdie’s snacks falling out—and under the cover of darkness we made our way over to the Abernathys’.

10:35 p.m. The Finley sisters were preparing to spy on our suspect at 7119 N. Keefe Ave.

I was, anyway. After all the brouhaha Birdie caused on the night pom-pom-waving Mrs. Tate was in her rumpus room pumping away for Mr. Horace Mertz, I didn’t trust my sister to remember to keep her mouth shut, so I made her be the lookout.

FACT: If it turns out that Skip Abernathy really is the one stealing from little kids whose lives are already so cruddy because they are forced to listen to missionaries hour after hour, day after day, trying to convert them to Catholicism under the scorching sun in the Congo just so they can get shinier hair, blow their noses, and have no b.o., he should be very ashamed of himself. Not for thieving, of course. It would be two-faced of me to condemn him on that count, because hardly a week goes by that I don’t ignore the Thou Shalt Not Steal Commandment.

PROOF: I’m a light-fingered Louie during the day and an even better cat burglar at night. (Secret God’s work, that’s what I’m doing. I don’t remember the exact words, but He told somebody in olden times something like, “It’s easier for a camel to get into Heaven than it is for a rich person.” So even though our neighbors and the store owners don’t deserve it, me sneakily lightening their load of worldly goods is greasing the hinges on the Pearly Gates for them.)

I most often make things disappear from Gert Klement’s house because I want her to think that she’s got that old-person sickness of going hard in her arteries, but sometimes I just swipe her stuff because I am a big believer in an eye for an eye. She’s trying to steal so much from my sister and me, so tit for tat, right? And, okay, sometimes my fingers get sticky at Kenfield’s Five and Dime, Dalinsky’s Drugstore, and Melman’s Hardware, too, but only if I run out of important supplies like Tums or Hershey’s kisses or Three Musketeers bars, or if Birdie or Charlie need something important ASAP. Like the night-light I stuck under my T-shirt at the five and dime that’s so powerful it lit up the insides of my sister’s brain and made her nightmares stop and makes me feel like I’m already on the Miss America stage when I’m practicing my routine in the middle of the night. And the Bowie knife I stole from the hardware store? That was for Charlie, because whittling is one of his most important hobbies. And fine, there was this one time that I slipped two pairs of hose out of Janet’s Dress Shop on Lisbon St. and stuck them in the bottom of Louise’s unmentionables drawer when her last pair got a runner in them. (That was kind of a kooky thing for me to do, I know, but what the heck. All the gal’s got going for her is her looks.)

So anyhoo, there Birdie and me were last night over at the Abernathys’. I was about to spy into Skip’s bedroom window, hoping to catch him counting out the money he stole from the pagan babies, when his dad came banging out of the back door of the house to light up. Cigar smoke gives my sister a sneezing attack, which is why we had to hotfoot it out of there before we had the chance to get the goods on our suspect.

“As a matter of fact,” our neighbor who’s got her nose stuck into everybody’s business, but the farthest into the Finley sisters’ business, tells Louise so high and mighty from the other side of the hedge, “a very troubling incident took place in the neighborhood last night that I’m quite certain will turn out to be a matter for the police.”

Uh-oh.

Just like I was afraid of, it looks like the wretched geezer got the better of me. She must’ve watched Birdie and me sneaking toward the Abernathys’ out of her front window after she turned her lights off and she’s about to rat us out again. Not only to our mother, but the men in blue, too.

Louise must also be worried about that, because her good-smelling Jergen’s lotion hands are clamping down around Birdie’s and my necks. She knows the cops showing up at our front door would wreck her chances to be the new treasurer of the Pagan Baby Society. Under no circumstances do those gals want one of their muckety-mucks to have jailbirds for kids, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen if Gert squeals on Birdie and me. Officer Mick Dunn, Davey Dunn’s dad, came by the house to lecture us in the living room the last time we got caught spying into our neighbors’ windows. He made Birdie and me sit on the sofa, but he stood and gave us a good talking-to. “I’ll let you off with another warning,” he threatened, “but if I have to come back one more time . . .” He looked over at our mother fuming in Daddy’s favorite chair, and then he narrowed his already somewhat beady eyes at us and pointed to the handcuffs that were hanging off his creaky black leather belt. “You get my drift, girls?”