The Mutual Admiration Society(47)

But what if Birdie is listening to another part of her weird brain and she’s yelling on her hustle down the hill that she’s going to look for Mister McGinty at his shack because she thinks it’d be fun to play a game of gin rummy with him? And because she doesn’t know any better, when she’s done eating her free windmill cookies and drinking her free root beer, she’s so proud of the clue she found that she just might brag to him when she’s shuffling the “52” that she dug his St. Christopher medal out of a leaf pile behind the mausoleum where a murder was committed last night. And that right there? That could be a life-ending decision. The poor kid doesn’t understand what could happen if she told already very jittery Mr. McGinty that we got proof that he was at the scene of the crime. Our armed-to-his-beautiful-teeth friend, who I’m now 95% sure murdered our principal, really, really, really, really wouldn’t like that Gotcha!

Clang . . . clang . . . clang.





13


WHY . . . WHY . . . WHY . . . WHY?

From hanging out at Lonnigan’s Bar with the best bartender in the neighborhood since I only came up to his knees, I have a bigger vocabulary than most kids, especially when it comes to cuss words, and I’m using every single one of them while I’m running after my sister down the side of the cemetery hill. Cussing and chasing after Birdie, I swear, if I could get paid for them, we’d be rolling in more dough than Meuer’s Bakery. (No joke.)

“Don’t run to the willow tree and don’t run to Mister McGinty’s shack. Go to the chocolate-covered cherries!” I’m shrieking between the clanging church bells that are telling my sister that it’s feeding time. “Turn right at the bottom of the hill! Right! That’s . . . that’s the hand you deal cards with!”

Birdie doesn’t slow down, turn around, and give me an A-okay sign, but she must’ve heard me, because just after St. Kate’s bells finish sounding noon, she makes a sharp turn toward Mr. Lindley’s grave, thank God.

We should be home free now because after she gets some of the oozing cherries into her, I’ll honor my sister-promise to go see Daddy, and then the Finley sisters will climb the cemetery fence and make our way to Charlie’s house, which is where I’m pretty sure he’ll be whittling away on his back porch and full of questions. During our meeting, I’ll spill the beans about THE CASE OF THE MISSING NUN WHO WAS KIDNAPPED AND MURDERED BY MR. MCGINTY. The Finley sisters might be in way over our heads, but Charlie will know what to do, I know he will. He’s a very level-headed fiancé.

When I finally catch up to Birdie after her record-breaking race down the hill, she’s not lounging around Mr. Lindley’s grave stuffing her face. She somehow managed to snag the heart-shaped box of Stover chocolates that were sitting on top of it—thank you, Mrs. Melman—and flew straight over to the nearby marker that is our most favorite in the cemetery to stuff her face:



EDWARD ALFRED FINLEY

REST IN PEACE

SEPTEMBER 2, 1931–AUGUST 1, 1959



I wasn’t BE PREPARED.

Usually, I feel like I’m coming home when I catch sight of his gorgeous, speckled, polished gravestone, but this morning, seeing it is sucking every ounce of strength out of me. Between dealing with Louise and Gert, and Birdie’s wild-streaking ways, her everyday weirdness, and her new old-timey-ness, and . . . and wearing Daddy’s big shoes, and not seeing Charlie, and worrying about how Mr. McGinty is looking so guilty of kidnapping and murdering Sister Margaret Mary that he’s probably going to get the electric chair, I am knocked down to the grass next to Daddy’s pretend grave for the count.

Of course, there’s always the chance that Birdie didn’t really see what she thought she did, which isn’t far-fetched, no matter how positively old-timey she sounded up on the hill. Trusting her without grilling her further, well, that’d be dumb. And it just so happens that Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst nightmare” Bellflower agrees with me. “When considering evidence or information gathered during the course of an investigation,” he wrote in Chapter Five of Modern Detection, “it is absolutely crucial that you weigh the dependability of your sources.”

Now, I love my little featherweight to death and back and all the stops in between, but “dependability” is not one of her best qualities.

“Bird?” I say to my partner in crime, who is pressing her cheek against Daddy’s tombstone—that’s the closest she can get to him, so she really is in hog Heaven.

“Yes, Tessie?” she says with cherry juice dribbling down her chin.

“Ya remember how you told me a little while ago that you were absolutely positive that Mister McGinty didn’t have his Saint Christopher medal around his neck when we were behind the mausoleum with him?”

I’m praying that fact has slipped her mind forever, that she’s about to say something like What are you talking about, Tessie? but God must be out to lunch or something, because Birdie shoves another chocolate in her mouth and nods four times with a lot of enthusiasm, poor thing.

All she knows is that she found a clue in a leaf pile and that Mr. McGinty’s medal was not around his neck. That’s the 1 + 1, but she’s not smart enough to come up with what that equals. She doesn’t understand how guilty that makes him. We figured out this case and I’m not so bigheaded to think that eventually the police won’t. When they question everyone in the neighborhood about the disappearance of Sister Margaret Mary, Gert Klement will step up to point her finger at me. Tell the police what a banshee I am and how I don’t have a conscience and that everyone in the parish knows how much I hate our principal for holding Birdie back in school. Of course, I wouldn’t tell the coppers a thing when they dragged me down to the station house and gave me the third degree, because I do hate Sister M & M and I’m very willing to let bygones be bygones when it comes to Mr. McGinty murdering her. But my sweet-hearted, overly friendly sister? Even if I reminded her four thousand times to keep her mouth shut, she’ll forget. She’ll tell the police whatever she remembers about me hearing the yelling in the cemetery the night Sister Margaret Mary disappeared and about how she found Mr. McGinty’s medal behind the mausoleum, and before we know it, the cops will come to pick up our godfather in a paddy wagon and tell him, All aboard for the gas chamber.