The Mutual Admiration Society(14)
Birdie didn’t, of course, because she was smiling her head off when she asked him if she could play with his billy club, but I certainly did. And so did the gal standing next to me who’s turned whiter than my Holy Communion dress. “A troubling incident?” Louise asks as she clamps her fingers tighter around her daughters’ necks. “What kind of troubling incident?”
The #1 person on my SHIT LIST is not looking at our mother anymore, she’s glaring even harder at me with eyes the color of an enemy submarine lying in wait at the bottom of the ocean when she says across the hedge, “Sister . . . Margaret . . . Mary . . . has . . . gone . . . missing!” My mother gasps, so Birdie does, too, but I gotta keep my wits about me. Getting questioned by Gert about any crime committed in the neighborhood from stolen merchandise to fires to broken windows is nothing new. She raked me over the coals about the missing Pagan Baby money, too. That’s how come I’m 100% positive that I know what’s gonna come out of her mouth next. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about Sister’s disappearance, would you, Theresa?”
“Me?” I answer with my second-best most innocent look because I already used my first-best most innocent look up on Louise. “I certainly do not know anything about Sister Margaret Mary going missing, Missus Klement. Goodness gracious, that’s . . . that’s . . .”
The best news ever!
But, obviously, it’d be stupid to give my sworn enemy that kind of ammunition to use against me, so I put on my this-is-the-worst-news-ever look, the kind all the movie gals get—Loretta Young, she does the best horrified looks so beautifully—and say to Gert, “That’s . . . terrible news!” even though it’s anything but. In fact, I’m pretty sure what I might be beholding here is the living, breathing Holy Trinity of famous sayings!:
1. The Lord’s one about giveth-ing and taketh-ing away.
2. Mr. Walt Disney’s one about dreams coming true.
3. Daddy’s one about never, ever throwing in the towel.
Here I was feeling so down in the mouth because I thought Gert was going to tattle on the Finley sisters to Louise and the coppers, and on top of that, it was starting to look like I’d imagined it all and bloody nothing took place in the cemetery last night, but now . . . my cup run-eth over-eth! Birdie and me are not going to get spanked and we’re not going to the hoosegow, and sure, the Mutual Admiration Society might’ve lost the chance to solve a murder, but we just got our first-ever missing person case dropped in our lap instead!
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
Now that I think about this, maybe THE CASE OF THE MISSING NUN is not one we should tackle after all. I mean, what if we actually found the despised principal of St. Kate’s? I wouldn’t put it past the pissed-off kids in the parish to drag us over to the Washington Park Zoo to do something biblically bad to get back at us. Something like throwing us to the lions.
On the other hand . . . searching for the school’s top penguin might be worth taking the risk of getting eaten alive. Yes, I think Daddy would agree with me if he was here, because whenever he threw his paycheck into the pot when he was playing poker in Lonnigan’s back room with the factory men, he’d lean down and whisper in my ear, “Always go for broke, kiddo.”
Wait just another cotton-pickin’ minute.
What if . . . what if there is more here than meets the eye of this private eye? The last thing I want to do is assume again, but I thought the screech I heard last night coming from the cemetery sounded familiar, so maybe our school principal isn’t just missing, maybe she . . . dear, holy Mother of God. Did you just drop a fantastic twofer crime into The Mutual Admiration Society’s laps?
Q. Did the limp body I saw getting carried behind the Gilgood mausoleum last night beneath the flickering streetlights belong to not just a missing principal, but a kidnapped and murdered principal?
A. Outlook good.
Well . . . amen to that, Sister.
Amen, amen!
5
JUST LIKE IDA LUPINO
The scrumptious-smelling red apple breeze is pushing around the yellow-and-white-checked curtains next to the avocado stove in our kitchen, where I’m putting the finishing touches on our breakfast while Louise puts the finishing touches on herself at the vanity table in her bedroom.
FACT: Daddy was our chief cook and bottle washer, but since I stepped into his shoes, I have to be the one to scramble the eggs and Spam in the black fry pan every morning. If Birdie and me want to live to see another day, that is.
PROOF: Louise Mary Fitzgerald Finley was the prime suspect on a recent detecting job that The Mutual Admiration Society didn’t have to break a sweat to solve—THE CASE OF THE TROTS.
At St. Kate’s potluck dinner last month that always takes place in our school cafeteria, parishioners who helped themselves to a scoop of the beef and whatever else it was that our mother stirred into the “gourmet” casserole that made it smell like toe jam got awful trots, and boy, oh, boy, were they ever sore. When the finger-pointing suspicion fell on Louise’s mystery casserole almost immediately—unbeknownst to her, she has a reputation around here for being the antonym of Chef Boyardee—she didn’t put the blame on the butcher for selling her bad hamburger, but she didn’t deny the rumor after I started it, either. I really like Mr. Wisnewski, he tells the best Polack jokes in the neighborhood, so I felt like a louse after I thumbtacked one of my poison-pen letters on the church bulletin board: