The Mutual Admiration Society(46)

“Would you please kindly lower your voice?” Birdie says with a scowl. “I have abnormally sensitive hearing and you’re aggravating my condition.”

I know this is no laughing matter, but honestly, even when I’m as ticked off as I am, my sister just slays me. “Oh, ya got a condition that I’m aggravating, huh?” I say with a chuckle. “Well, I got a condition that you’re aggravating, too, missy, and it’s that you better be tellin’ me the truth about what you saw, or didn’t see, around Mister McGinty’s neck.”

She squares her shoulders, lifts her chin, and places her right hand on her heart. “I can unequivocally state that the caretaker’s neck was completely . . . oh, my, dare I say . . . bare?” she does dare to say with cheeks the color of her freshly pinched heinie.

What the heck?

The kid who will pull her pants down and moon not only me, but just about anybody in the neighborhood, including Father Ted if the spirit moves her, is suddenly too prim and proper to say the word bare?

“And before you can question the quality of my eyesight again, young lady,” Birdie says, Sunday school teacher snooty, “let me also assure you that my verification of the identity of the person that I observed in the vicinity of the willow tree a few moments ago is absolutely accurate as well.”

The identity of somebody? At the willow tree? Is she . . . is she talking about my Charlie?

Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.

I think I might’ve caught my sister telling me a coupla bald-faced, old-timey fibs.

“But when I asked you a few minutes ago to check for Charlie,” I say nice and slowly, so there can be no confusion on her part or mine, “you told me that you didn’t see him down there. And just now you told me that your verification was absolutely accurate.” I hitch up my shorts and do my Sheriff of Dodge impression that she loves. “Sounds to me like you’re changin’ yer stories, little lady.”

“I most certainly am not!” Birdie says, not charmed, I’m sure. “After you asked me to check for your betrothed beneath the weeping willow, I stated quite clearly that I didn’t see anyone bald in the vicinity. Not that I didn’t see anyone at all.”

Well, that empties all the bullets outta my six-shooter right quick, because that’s exactly what she did state, quite clearly.

Could she be telling the truth after all? On both counts?

I don’t care so much about the Charlie situation anymore because I’m pretty sure I know where we’ll find him, but I do care about the Mr. McGinty situation. If Birdie is right and this is for sure his medal I’m holding in my hand, then I’m almost positive that he’s the kidnapping murderer.

FACT: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions” is a very true famous saying.

PROOF: This is not at all what I wanted to happen when I thought it was a great-good-luck moneymaking idea to show up in the cemetery this morning to investigate what I heard and saw last night.

“I’m really, really, really, really hungry. I’m really . . .” drones my sister, who has suddenly returned back from her trip to the Wild West hungrier than she was before she left.

I have to get those chocolate-covered cherries into her gullet before the bells at St. Kate’s start clanging to let her and everyone else in the neighborhood know that it’s high noon.

Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.

What’s wrong with me?

I just remembered 12:00 is when Mr. McGinty told us that Mrs. Peterman decided to hold her husband’s funeral so the workers he bossed around at the Feelin’ Good factory could attend on their lunch break, which is the worst possible timing that could put the Finley sisters in grave danger—no joke—because the box of Stover candy that Mrs. Melman leaves on Mr. Lindley’s final resting spot is not too far away from Mr. Peterman’s new hole that most of our neighbors will be gathered around. If we’re sneaky, we should be okay, but only if Birdie doesn’t give us away. I so wish I had a gag on me like the sock I keep in the Radio Flyer wagon, because—

Clang . . . clang . . . clang . . .

Anybody who came to say their final good-bye to Mr. Peterman is about to be treated to a concert of hideously loud starvation squawking when those bells reach twelve. And, of course, one of them is bound to call our mother at the Clark station to tell her about the ruckus one of the Finley ghouls caused in Holy Cross during the funeral.

“Se?orita Birdie!” I turn to tell her in my sure-to-please Zorro voice. “Vamanos to those chocolate-covereds!”

Clang . . . clang . . . clang . . .

Unfortunately, she wants those runny cherries in her tummy even more than I thought she did. Before I have the chance to get a good grip on her hand, she vamanos-es down the side of the hill yelling . . . yelling . . . I have no idea what the hell she’s yelling. I caught the words, “sister” and “run” and “tree,” but she might’ve yelled, “mister” and “fun” and “free,” for all I know . . . no . . . no . . . no . . . no!

For some unknown reason, is unpredictable Birdie listening to her big heart instead of her big stomach? Could she be yelling at me, her sister, that she feels so bad about not seeing Charlie earlier, the way I wanted her to, that she’s going to run down to the weeping willow tree to check for him in person? That wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world, either, because I keep a stash of emergency candy in a hole in the willow along with our Mutual Admiration treasury money.