The Mutual Admiration Society(31)
I close my eyes and plead for help.
Q. O, dear Magic 8 Ball, what useful advice can you offer me under these life-threatening circumstances?
A. Outlook not so good.
Well, that’s about as helpful as a rubber crutch.
What I need is some useful expert advice.
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
What am I thinking?!
I do have some useful expert advice!
I haven’t read any pages yet in Modern Detection where it’s spelled out what a gumshoe should do if they find themselves trapped in this particular dangerous situation, but I’m 98% sure the New York City detective who wrote the book would recommend finding the nearest escape route, which, in Birdie’s and my case, would be through the #1 spookiest spot in the whole neighborhood. Phantom Woods.
Should we tiptoe past the mausoleum and slip into woods that even the sun and the streetlights are too scared to shine into? Run through those trees whose branches are so black and twisted that they remind me of German children getting eaten by witches in the fairy tales written by those brothers who certainly were named correctly—Grimm? No. That plan is the perfect example of that famous saying “Jumping from the frying pan into the oven.”
What else could I do to save our hides?
Chapter Thirteen in the modern detecting book covers a subject that especially interests me, so I paged ahead, and thank all the angels that I did, because I’m pretty sure that TIPS FOR ASSUMING A FALSE IDENTITY is about to come in real handy!
If only I had thought to bring along the disguises that are so near and dear to us. The black wigs and scruffy beards that Daddy bought Birdie and me at Kenfield’s Five and Dime around this time last year so we could be hobos for Halloween. That was such a great night. After my sister and me counted up our candy and got out of our costumes, “Good Time Eddie” Finley couldn’t wait to treat his babies to a gruesome bedtime story he called “The Butcher of Keefe Ave.” After he got done giving us all the gory details and one of his tremendous good-night hugs and double Eskimo kisses, I got busy explaining to Birdie under our sheets that the story wasn’t really true the way Daddy told us it was. “He was just having some tricky Halloween fun, that’s all, honey.” But my sister wouldn’t quit whimpering, so I had to use my Roy Rogers flashlight to check under our bed for a butcher who escaped the insane asylum with a cleaver in his apron and . . . lo and behold! I know now that it was cows’ brains, but I almost threw up when I saw the bloody, raw hunk of something dripping away under our bed that night! I yanked Birdie out of bed and we hightailed it down Keefe Ave. screaming like two little chickens, “The Butcher is on the loose! The Butcher is on the loose! Run for your lives!” It wasn’t until we scrambled to hide under some bushes across the street that we heard our funny father laugh and shout off our front porch, “Gotcha!, girls.”
Birdie and me still have those costumes. Sometimes we wear them to bed at night when we’re especially missing Daddy, and we wear them most of the time when we snoop on neighbors who might recognize us. But because our black wigs and scruffy beards are balled up in the Radio Flyer in our garage with our other TOOLS OF THE TRADE, I’m going to have to come up with a different bright idea to get Birdie and me out of this fix ASAP! Something like . . .
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
What was it that Modern Detection also mentioned in Chapter Thirteen? “If an operative should find themselves in a tight spot without their disguises, I highly suggest they use what is on hand to extricate themselves. Improvise! Assume an alternate identity!”
Now there’s the ticket!
I got both of those helpful hints covered better than a coat of Sears and Roebuck paint!
And while I’m at it, what the hell, why not go for broke? Daddy would.
If the killer is behind the mausoleum and if he still hasn’t peeked around the corner to recognize me, for all he knows, I could just be half of a pair of two other sisters racing around the cemetery on a not-a-cloud-in-the-sky beautiful Indian summer morning. Two other sisters like Barb and Jenny Radtke, who ran over to this mausoleum just for fun and not to investigate the crime he committed.
Boy, oh, boy, I’d sure love that tall, skinny guy to pay a visit to one of them sisters if he is on some kind of kidnapping murdering rampage, that’d be so great. That’d take care of #5 on my SHIT LIST: Brownnoser Jenny Radtke. I could run a line through her name with permanent ink. (Joke!)
All I gotta do now is hope that Birdie doesn’t blow the roof offa my ruse and say something stupid like, Who are you pretending to be, Tessie Finley, the kid who saw a kidnapping murderer sneak behind this mausoleum last night out of our bedroom window? Because my sister adores game shows, I’m hoping to improve my chances of getting this trick past her by putting on a toothy grin before I announce really loudly in the voice of eighth-grader Barb Radtke, who everyone in the neighborhood knows has trouble saying words that start with the s sound, “Congratulations, Jenny Radtke, who was thleeping over last night at the white house behind the themetery and thaw a man murdering at twelve-oh-theven a.m. Unfortunately, due to thircumstances beyond my control, I’ve forgotten your prize for winning the race to this mausoleum this morning, but never fear! I’ll award you your blue ribbon and cash prize after you’re done practicing your thpelling words tonight. When you’re completely alone and defenseless in the first-floor bedroom in the back of our blue house located at 7022 North Keefe Avenue, tho be thure to keep your eyes open for—”