The Mutual Admiration Society(41)
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute!
There I go assuming again.
There’s still a chance that dead Sister Margaret Mary didn’t give the gold medal to Mr. McGinty. There’s gotta be other people in the neighborhood who have M. M. and J. M. initials. Like . . . ah . . . or . . . well, just because I can’t think of anyone right this second doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone. Just the same, until I can get things sorted out, to stay on the safe side, maybe Birdie and me better keep our distances from Mr. McGinty.
FACT: There is nobody I know that takes the famous saying “There is a place for everything and everything has a place” more seriously than he does.
PROOF: Because I’m not where I’m supposed to be—standing upright, instead of still laying on top of the leaf pile—after our neat-to-the-hilt friend comes to a halt in front of my sister and me, he starts acting more fidgety than Suzie “That French Slut” LaPelt does in the Communion line when all the gals in the parish train their Sunday eyes on her.
Ex–army soldier Mr. McGinty is on high alert this morning, but he is most of the time. I swear, if there ever was a contest that awarded a blue ribbon for The Most Jumpy Person in the Neighborhood at the Fourth of July picnic at Washington Park, he would win with his hands tied behind his back. Because he hates loud noises, the other contestants wouldn’t have a chance after he heard that starter gun go off. Mr. McGinty despises Gotchas! That’s why I have to signal him with my woo . . . woo . . . whoot whistle whenever I get within striking distance. If I don’t, he rockets into the air and reaches for his knife that he, like me, is never without. Only mine isn’t a switchblade that can flick open fast enough to slit the throat of a Nazi. Or a nun.
“Why on earth are you down on the ground, Tessie?” he asks in his voice that sounds so rich and creamy. Birdie almost always goes hungrier when she hears him, because he sounds very much like Mr. Ed Herlihy, the man who does the commercials for Kraft cheese on the television set and Velveeta is her favorite food next to candy. “Everything copacetic?”
If he is the murderer, I don’t want him getting more riled up than he already is, so I use the sturdy mausoleum wall and the whittling stick I picked up to help me get back on my feet. “Oh, yeah, I’m very copacetic, Mister McGinty.” I reassure him with fake smile #3 and then, because it can’t hurt to remind him that I got a deadly weapon on me, too, I open up my hand to show him my most prized possession. “Daddy’s very sharp Swiss Army Knife fell out of my pocket, that’s all. I was just lookin’ for it in the leaf pile.”
Unlike me, of course, sweet-hearted Birdie isn’t thinking ugly, suspicious thoughts about our friend.
She right away holds out her little paw and says, “Charmed, I’m sure.” She loves to shake hands. She’ll hug people, too, or if she gets really excited, she’ll give a person a juicy smooch or a lick on their cheek, if they don’t turn tail when they see her coming, which I completely understand. I don’t go in for that sort of sentimental sloppiness, either. Unless a person has the same blood as me running through their veins, stiff-arming is my policy. (I, of course, make an exception to that rule for Charlie.)
But Birdie’s being more affectionate than a pet-store puppy never seems to bother Mr. McGinty, even if he is so shy. Like always, he grins down at her—he’s got fantastic choppers—gives her little hand a few pumps in his big one, and then he gets busy wiping his fingers off with his hankie, refolding it, and putting it back in his gray shirt pocket just so, because gray is the only color of clothing he wears when he’s on the job. “Going about my business wearing a sunny-yellow or sky-blue shirt, even a leaf-green one, would appear too cheerful to grievers. They might think I don’t care that the world as they knew it will never be the same for them,” he explained to me during one of our fishing nights after I asked why he always dresses so ho-hum. “It’s more respectful to blend in with the gravestones.”
His thoughtfulness and cleanliness-next-to-godliness routine are two of the main reasons I’m having such a hard time picturing him killing somebody. In the movies, blood and guts leave an ungodly mess and Mr. McGinty is always spit and polished. He keeps his shack spotless, too. A quarter bounces about a foot offa his bed and my finger comes off cleaner when I run it across the tops of the beautiful framed pictures of woods and birds that he’s got hanging on the wall above his brown sofa and dust bunnies run for the hills when they see him coming.
On the other hand . . . I got medal evidence. And tall and thin Mr. McGinty matches the description of the guy I saw under the flickering cemetery lights last night. He also had the opportunity to kidnap and kill Sister M & M, because he lives right down the road from the scene of the crime. And he had the means to wring the life out of her, because I bet he could beat Samson in an arm wrestle.
But what in the heck would his motive be to snatch and snuff out a nun? Not killing anybody is the #6 Commandment on God’s TO-DO list and Mr. McGinty is the most religious person I know, even worse than Gert Klement. He’s front and center at Mass every single morning, faithfully confesses every week, actually looks forward to saying the Stations of the Cross, and one of his hobbies is collecting holy cards, for godssake! (I thought he was going to start crying when I gifted him the card of St. Michael, the patron saint of soldiers, for Christmas a few years ago.)