The Mutual Admiration Society(45)
“Who am I lookin’ for again?”
“Charlie!” And before she can ask me which Charlie, I spell it out for her. “Not Charlie ‘Dogbreath’ Bennett, not Charlie ‘Booger’ Hawkins, and not Charlie ‘Four-Eyes’ Arnold. Do you see Charlie ‘Cue Ball’ Garfield down there? You can’t miss him. He’s got a bald head!”
She looks a few more seconds, then turns back to me and says, “Nope. Nobody with a bald head down there. I’m hungry. I want some Velveeta.”
Damn Mr. McGinty’s Kraft-cheese-sounding voice!
Because I stomped her P B and M to oblivion, her tummy, which has a lot better memory than she does, is complaining to Birdie that it didn’t get its usual morning snack. I was counting on all the Hershey’s kisses she stole out of my pocket during the wild streak tiding her over to lunchtime, but there I go again, being a big assuming dope.
The safest thing to do would be to hustle us straight home so I could make her another sandwich pronto, but I can’t do that. Birdie is not going to forget my sister-promise. So before we can climb back over the black iron fence, what we need to do is swing by Mr. Lindley’s grave to get those chocolate-covered cherries before we go visit Daddy. If I don’t put more food in front of my sister’s face by the time St. Kate’s church bells clang twelve, believe me, things will go from bad to worse around here in a hurry, which reminds me. How much time do I got left before Birdie starts flapping her arms, squawking, licking her lips, and staring at me like that famous saying “You look good enough to eat” is one she wouldn’t mind putting to the test?
Daddy’s Timex is still really tangled up with the St. Christopher medal in my pocket, but I have no problem seeing that it’s 11:41 a.m.
Uh-oh.
“I’m hungry,” Birdie repeats three more times.
“I know you are, honey, but . . .” I show her what I’m working on. “I just need to straighten these out real quick and then off we’ll go to get ya something good to eat.”
The Finley sisters need all the luck we can get and leaving Daddy’s watch and the St. Christopher medal in a twisted mess feels to me as unholy lucky as drawing a mustache on the pretty blue Virgin Mary church statue like some kid did last week. (The Mutual Admiration Society is already on THE CASE OF THE BLESSED MUSTACHE. We have it narrowed down to two possible culprits. Butch Seeback, because he’s always the most likely suspect, but it could also be Chuckie Jaeger, the kid who connects my freckles with a ballpoint pen when I fall asleep at my desk. He’s a nincompoop, but he’s also the best artist in school and that mustache on the Virgin statue was very lifelike.)
“Okay, Tessie, you straighten them out, but hurry. I’m really, really, really, really—” Birdie stops chomping on the bit long enough to point down at my busy fingers. “The medal for sure belongs to Mister McGinty, ya know.”
“Remember, honey? We still don’t know that this is his medal, we only strongly suspect that it is.” I’m having a tough time separating it from the Timex and I can feel my temper starting to simmer again. “The only way we could know that this medal is his for sure is if I checked to see if his was missin’ from around his neck and the only way I coulda done that is if I was wearing stilts.”
“Well, then . . .” she says with a cock of one of her pale eyebrows. “How wonderfully fortuitous that when the gentleman in question bent down toward the bush that I was standing next to when we were behind Mister Gilgood’s mausoleum that I availed myself of the opportunity to inspect his neck.”
Oh, brother.
I have no idea what my suddenly-gone-old-timey-on-me sister is trying to pull, but she couldn’t have thought of inspecting McGinty’s neck to see if his medal was around it in a million years. Pyewacket the cat could think of doing that before she could.
From years of experience, I know that I shouldn’t get into a sparring match with her when she’s hungry, but between my frustration at getting the watch and the medal free from one another and my worrying about what’s gonna happen next if I don’t get some food into her and that smooth, superior tone she’s using on me that sounds a lot like the one Louise uses when she thinks she’s got the upper hand, I can’t help myself.
“You didn’t inspect Mister McGinty’s neck,” I tell her, snippy. “You’re making that up.”
“Well, I never.” She crosses her arms across her chest and stomps her little foot. “For you to suggest that I’m prevaricating is nothing short of an outrage!”
PreWHATacating?
Talking gibberish is a very bad sign that I should put on the LOONY list when I get the chance, but . . . geez, I don’t know. Long shots do come in every once in a while. I guess Birdie’s attention might’ve been pulled in the direction of Mr. McGinty’s neck. Not because she’s smart enough to think of looking to see if his medal was missing on purpose, but because she got a whiff of what he was picking out of the bush. She could’ve whipped her head toward the leftover smell of chocolate and caramel that’d been wrapped in the gold Rolo wrapper and accidentally got a look at his neck.
“So you’re tellin’ me that something like this”—I hold up the free-at-last St. Christopher medal—“wasn’t hanging around Mister McGinty’s neck when he—?”