The Mutual Admiration Society(32)
“Land sakes, child,” Birdie interrupts in a suddenly extremely polite, old-fashioned way. “While I generally find your voice characterizations delightful, may I remind you, and please feel free to correct me if I am in error, but I believe we’ve arrived at our current destination with the singular purpose of further pursuing pertinent clues in our ongoing criminal investigation. Carpe diem!”
Damnation!
Birdie has no idea of the danger we could be waltzing into. She doesn’t have a clue that there’s a fifty-fifty chance that Daddy could be signing one of us up for heavenly harp lessons in the next few minutes and the other one of us will be taking up handbasket weaving in Hades. But before I can get my jaw that dropped down to my knees snapped up and working again to warn off my wild-streaking, babbling-in-tongues, and definitely-going-more-old-timey-on-me-more-often sister, she melts behind the Gilgood mausoleum like freshly churned butter on a just-baked biscuit.
And that leaves me with no other choice but to swallow back the breakfast eggs and Spam that have come halfway back up my throat, pray that God is as big of a fan of Shirley Temple as I am, and prepare to rescue the kid who is now screaming at me from behind the mausoleum in her usual way of talking, “Come quick, Barb Radtke!”
Now she’s figured out the improvised identity I was using to throw the kidnapping killer off our tracks?
Now?
Sometimes, like right this second, forgive me, Daddy, but I very much wish that I’d never stepped into your enormous shoes and made Birdie #1 on my TO-DO list. I’ve already had it up to here with her today and it’s only 10:35 a.m.
In fact, my sister is getting on my nerves so bad that I’m tempted to let the murderer rough her up a little to teach her a lesson about how important it is to never forget that I’m the boss of the Finley sisters and always will be, but then, dang it all. No matter what Gert Klement tells anyone who’ll listen, like it or not, I do have a pesky, chirping voice in my head that tells me right from wrong.
And right now my conscience is reminding me how 95% of the time, no matter how weird Birdie is, no matter how mad she makes me, no matter how many Tums I gotta eat because I worry about her getting all the numbers on the loony list, or how many tossing-and-turning nights I spend dreading what she might come up with when the sun does, if a genie magically appeared to grant me three wishes, not one of them would be Please change Birdie into a normal sister. To make a long story short, no matter how much I am currently despising her, I’m mostly willing to overlook her extremely short plus column because I love her with what’s left of my heart. Warts and all. And if I don’t rush behind the mausoleum to save her, the way I didn’t save Daddy, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, and even after I die I’ll be bawling so hard that my tears will put out the everlasting fire, which will probably piss Satan off so much that he’ll send me to an even lower circle of Hell.
If I had Mr. McGinty’s gun that’s a souvenir of the war, I could shoot or bayonet the killer. If I had my double-Dutch jump rope, hog-tying would be good, and so would lynching him. With the saw I had to steal from Mr. Holland’s gardening shed after I heard that he was planning to cut down the apple tree in his backyard that Birdie likes to pick from, I could cut off the murderer’s feet to slow him down. But all I can get my hands on at the moment are Daddy’s watch, my lists and detecting notebook, a stubby pencil, Hershey’s kisses, and the lucky Swiss Army Knife. So, unless the murderer wants to know the time, is interested in snooping and blackmail secrets and lists, wants to write a letter, can’t resist chocolate, or wants to add another murdering knife to his collection, what am I left with?
It looks like I’m gonna have to stab the guy with Daddy’s Swiss Army Knife. Not just once, but many, many times. I found that out the hard way when #2 on my SHIT LIST, Butch Seeback, ambushed Birdie and me during the middle of a game of ghost in the graveyard a few weeks back. He jumped out from behind a tree, snatched Birdie, tucked her under his beefy arm, and ran off to the pond with me in hot pursuit. At the slippery edge, he threatened to throw my sister, who can’t swim any better than me, into the deep end, if I didn’t give him back the Oriental kitty that Mr. McGinty and me saw him try to drown in the same water that he was about to toss my sister. All the greasers push littler kids around. Trip them, pull their pants down, or throw their bikes off a bridge, that sort of thing, but Seeback? There’s something seriously wrong with that boy. Never in a million years would I give him back the kitten we called Pyewacket after the one in the excellent movie starring Miss Kim Novak, Bell Book and Candle, so what choice did I have when that maniac hoisted Birdie over his head on that muddy bank to make good on his promise? I took Daddy’s knife out of my pocket and flicked it open. Seeback sneered and said, “Whatcha gonna do, Finley?” Hardy har har. “Stab me?” I told him, “Looks like,” and then I lunged at him and slid the Swiss blade in right above his knee, and when he dropped my sister, we took off to the sound of him squealing like a stuck pig, “I’ll get ya for that, Finley, ya fucked-up little shit.”
Lesson learned. One stab into the body of a despicable person isn’t enough, so after I dig Daddy’s knife out of my pocket, I’m ready to do an impression of Lizzie Borden when I come galloping around the corner of the Gilgood mausoleum to save Birdie from . . . from . . .
Damnation!
I hate it when she gets me all worked up like this over nothing.