The Mutual Admiration Society(38)

Because Birdie studies the medal for only a few seconds with her slightly bulging Indian eyes, I take that to mean that she can’t make the squiggles out, either, so I’m surprised when she breaks into what can only be described as, pardon my French again, a shit-eating grin and tells me, “It says, ‘To J. M. from M. M.’”

That can’t be right. “One more time?”

“It says, ‘To J. M. from M. M.,’” she repeats with a lot of gusto.

Is she trying to be funny again? She keeps this up, I might have to cross #9 off the SURE SIGNS OF LOONY list: Not getting jokes and the ones they tell are lamer than Tiny Tim.

“Are you pulling my leg?” I ask her.

Birdie looks down at her hands and my right gam like they might be doing something she doesn’t know about and says, “No, I am not pulling your leg, Tessie.”

Sure seems like she might be, because I know who those initials belong to and it’s just out of the question those two would be over at the cemetery together in the middle of the night. And even more far-fetched to think that one of them did not live to see another day. Birdie must’ve gotten the letters mixed up, she does that sometimes. Flips them. A w can turn into an m and a j into a g, a b into a d and whatnot.

“How sure are you,” I ask, “that you’re seeing J. M. and M. M.?” I hold my thumb and pointer finger close together. “Just a smidge? Or . . .” I open up my arms as wide as they go. “Heaps?”

“Heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps.”

Oh, boy.

I sure didn’t see that one coming.





11


EVERYTHING COPACETIC?

Modern Detection says, “When searching for possible suspects in a murder case, start with the people who are the most emotionally involved with your victim, i.e., wife, husband, sister, brother, and girlfriend, etc. Statistics show that the closer the relationship a person has with another, the more likely they will be to kill them.”

My statistic-loving fiancé, Charlie, loved that quote, but I dog-eared that page of the book and had to read it over around ten times. Stating that the more a person loves someone, the more likely they are to murder them? That seemed flat-out wrong.

On the other hand . . . if an important detective like Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst nightmare” Bellflower of New York City, where there is more crime than he can flash his badge at, says that’s a fact, who am I to question him?

Of course, I immediately recognized the initials on the back of the medal—J. M. = James McGinty. M. M. = Sister Margaret Mary—because I am very well acquainted with the two of them. But why our shy, soft-spoken, caretaking friend would be “emotionally involved” enough with our nasty, screeching principal to be considered a suspect in her murder is completely beyond me. And how could M. M. know J. M. good enough to give him this expensive gold present? You wouldn’t gift something this special to just anybody. You’d have to really like a person, maybe even love them.

Uh-oh.

Could those two be doing what the Polack kids in the neighborhood snigger and call “the horizontal polka?” Oh, my Lord. No. That’s not only disgusting, it’s impossible. When you become a nun, you’re married to God and the only way you’re supposed to dance the polka is on your own two feet. Once any Catholic gets hitched, they’re not supposed to shout, “Roll out the barrel, let’s have a barrel of fun,” with anyone other than the person they said “I do” to. Marriage is ’til death do them part.

That’s the rule a Mr. and Mrs. are supposed to follow, anyway, but some of the ones in our neighborhood do make exceptions.

Evelyn at Melman’s Hardware leaves the heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolate cherries on the grave of a man she wasn’t married to, and Mrs. Nancy Tate waved her pom-poms in her rumpus room for Mr. Horace Mertz when her husband was recovering in the hospital from a broken leg, and as much as I like Miss Peshong from the Finney Library, she nibbles on the neck and the chocolate chip cookies of the husband that belongs to her heavy-sleeping next-door neighbor, Mrs. Maccio, when he gets off his Wednesday shift at the Feelin’ Good factory.

“Bird?” I poke her in the ribs to get her attention. “You’re not gonna believe whose initials these are on the back of the—”

“Mister McGinty’s and Sister Margaret Mary’s.” That she figured that out completely surprises me, and I’m about to give her a pat on the back, but she doesn’t give me the chance. “Shhh.” Her head is cocked, and she goes stiff as a stiff when she whispers, “Ya hear that?”

St. Kate’s church bells are announcing that it’s half past the hour, the kids down the block are still shrieking out names during their Red Rover game, the same dog is barking two streets over, and much, much closer . . . someone is listening to the radio during their visit to a grave and, hopefully, not dancing on it. The Everly Brothers are wailing “Wake Up, Little Susie.” That song was one of Daddy’s all-time favorites. He’d sing to barmaid Suzie LaPelt—“Oo . . . la-la”—every single time it came on the jukebox at Lonnigan’s. That’s why I put her on my people to QUESTION OR SURVEIL list. Not because I think Suzie’s guilty of something or should be shadowed. I really and truly miss spending time with the gal that almost all of the other gals in the neighborhood call “That French Slut,” none louder or more often than our own mother.