The Mutual Admiration Society(60)
PROOF: I’m getting a very bad feeling in my guts that Charlie is getting ready to tell me something he heard about our principal’s disappearance that I don’t want to hear.
Reaching into my pocket, I make a wish on Daddy’s holy lucky Swiss Army Knife before I choke out the question Charlie better say no to, if he knows what’s good for him, “Sister hasn’t turned up, has she?”
“Not that I heard, but . . .”
O, thank you, St. Jude, patron saint of lost objects and persons, for sleeping on the job!
“What I mean is that when I heard Missus Klement tell my dad that Sister M and M had disappeared,” Charlie explains as the three of us go back to hiking up the rest of the church steps, “I got some ideas about what mighta happened to her and kidnapping wasn’t one of them. Statistically speaking, somebody getting snatched for ransom happens about as often as a triple play.”
Charlie is on rock-solid ground now. Just like undertaking Mr. Art Skank, he knows a lot about Braves baseball and who swings and misses and how many bases get stolen and how often the Green Bay Packers win or lose, and it’s not only sports he keeps track of. My fiancé marks down what flowers are the most popular at the cemetery, what people’s favorite colors are, who dies from what disease or accident, which Masses get the biggest crowds, how many and what kinds of birds he sees, and I guess how often nuns get kidnapped. (He’s never said, but I bet he even keeps track of how many mothers do away with themselves and how many times their sweet boys are the ones who find them in their garages.)
This constant recording of things is not one of Charlie’s better qualities. This is one of his wrinkles I will have to iron out after our honeymoon in Wisconsin Dells. He’s too black-and-white, too much like Joe “Just the facts, ma’am” Friday. I’d like him to spend less time noticing how often things do happen and more time thinking about what could’ve happened, because being able to picture a crime in your mind is a very important part of being a gumshoe, according to Modern Detection. “The ability to envision possible scenarios that may have unfolded during the commission of a crime is an essential skill an investigator must endeavor to achieve.”
So with the words of famous Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst nightmare” Bellflower still ringing in my ears, and because the “Secrets of a Happy Marriage” article said that even if a wife completely disagrees with their husband, sometimes it’s better to pretend that you don’t because that can cause fur to fly, I say to Charlie, “If you’re so sure Sister Margaret Mary wasn’t kidnapped, what other possible scenarios do you think unfolded to make her disappear?”
“You coulda unfolded on her, for one thing,” he says adorably. “And accidents are always a major cause of missing persons. Maybe Sister went down to check the hole that Two-Ton Thomkins made in the basement steps and she fell in and nobody found her yet, the same way Timmy Martin is always falling into abandoned wells and doesn’t get rescued until Lassie shows up. Or maybe Sister’s disappearing wasn’t an accident at all. She coulda done something on purpose.”
“Like what, Charlie?” a practically drooling-all-over him Birdie asks.
“Well, she coulda run off to get married like that priest at Mother of Good Hope did, or maybe she quit her job like that gal in The Nun’s Story did.”
Well, isn’t he just a little statistically speaking black cloud raining all over my private-dick parade.
But facts are facts, no matter how much I don’t want to face them and my down-to-earth future husband might be on to something here. I was so sure that our principal had been murdered last night in the cemetery and according to my sister, I was wrong about that, so I guess Sister M & M might not have been kidnapped, either, and admitting that to myself has got my tummy more knotted up than the Boy Scout handbook. (No joke.)
What about my shopping spree?
All my BE PREPARED plans?
How about my idea to stuff our running-away jar so full of blackmail or reward greenbacks that if Gert Klement convinces Louise to send Birdie and me to our “homes” that we’ll be able to run away in style to live in California and . . .
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
Who’s in charge around here?!
I put my foot down and tell Charlie, “You could be right that something else happened to Sister Margaret Mary besides Mister McGinty or anybody else kidnapping her, but then what about the Saint Christopher medal Birdie found in the leaf pile with their initials on it? How does that figure into all this?”
Charlie shrugs—he really loves to shrug—and says, “Ya got me.”
You better believe I do, my match made in Heaven. Until death do us part, I want to say, but I’m not sure how he’d take that, so instead I clear my throat and tell him more businesslike, “As president of The Mutual Admiration Society, I hereby declare that we’ll keep investigating Sister’s disappearance like she has been kidnapped until we find evidence that proves she wasn’t.”
“Roger that, Tessie,” Birdie says, and when Charlie pulls open one of the church’s doors, he must be on board, too, because when he ushers the Finley sisters into St. Kate’s, he bows his head and tells me, “Your wish is my command,” and ya know what? If I didn’t have serious detecting and confessing to do, I would very much like to pucker up and take him up on that offer.