The Mutual Admiration Society(73)

After I hand off the Sealtest carton to Birdie so she can lick what’s left off the sides, I tell Charlie, “Be back in a jiff,” and I run out to the curb to see if the Rambler’s taillights disappear around the block. Once I’m sure the coast is clear, I rush back and give my partners in crime two thumbs up.

Charlie, acting like it’s no big deal, waves the wrinkly brown paper sack that’s got a for-emergencies-only P B and M for Birdie, and the stolen $209—Charlie is very good at arithmetic and he counted it twice—inside. “You want me to be in charge of this?” he asks.

FACT: I was surprised by how unsurprised he was when I told him that Birdie was the Pagan Baby money thief everybody in the parish would like to tar and feather.

PROOF: “Most thefts are committed by people who are in desperate need of funds,” he said with a shrug.

5:50 p.m. After I tell my fiancé that, yes, the Sergeant of Arms of The Mutual Admiration Society should be the holder of the loot, him and Birdie and me make our way across our backyard under the cover of creeping darkness. We shimmy up the cemetery fence easy, which is a big relief, because it’s getting harder by the minute to make out the pointy spears on top. As usual, the cemetery streetlights in this part of Holy Cross aren’t doing their job. (The caretaker doesn’t understand why no matter how many new lightbulbs he screws in, they still flicker, but I think I do. I’m pretty sure it’s Daddy’s way of talking to Birdie and me, maybe in Morris’s Code, which I am intending to learn the second I get the chance.)

As we make our way through the tombstones toward the shack, Charlie asks me, “You remembered your flashlight, right?”

I wrestle my trusty Roy Rogers out of my back pocket, flick it on, and hand it to him. I left the rest of the snooping TOOLS OF THE TRADE in our Radio Flyer wagon, because I knew we’d already have enough on our hands keeping Birdie in line, and we can’t be weighed down if she gets away from us. So my newest BE PREPARED plan has us stopping back at the garage to pick up the wagon that we’ll need to take with us when we roam around the neighborhood to gather information for the dare after we give Mr. McGinty’s medal back to him and figure out a way to return the stolen loot to St. Kate’s.

Because the Finley sisters can’t stay out past midnight anymore now that Louise is going to the Pagan Baby meeting and not staying out to all hours with her lousy boyfriend, we have to follow a strict timetable:

6:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m. Spend time with Mr. McGinty.

7:01 p.m.–8:00 p.m. Work on Kitten’s dare.

8:01 p.m.–8:15 p.m. Try to get Charlie to pucker up again before Birdie and me have to race back from wherever we are so we can beat Louise home.

Now that we know that Sister Margaret Mary wasn’t kidnapped, that means she left somewhere on purpose, so we should start by asking around the neighborhood to see if anybody saw her standing at a bus stop or walking down North Ave. When we were first trying to figure out why she was missing, one of Charlie’s other ideas was that she left the sisterhood for good, so maybe we’ll find out ex-Sister Margaret Mary has a new job. Who knows? She could even be working up at Lonnigan’s, serving cocktails alongside Suzie “That French Slut” LaPelt. Because you can’t see squat under their black habits, all the kids wonder if nuns have boobies or if they got chopped off the same day all their hair was when they became nuns. If our principal does have a bosom, it’d be pretty revolting to see it falling out of a skimpy white top the way Suzie’s do, so just in case, we better also make a stop at Dalinsky’s Drugstore and pick me up some Tums before we stop at the bar. (It’d be so great to see the rest of Suzie. Birdie and me really do miss her. She used to love it when the two of us would get up on the bar and sing the “Sisters” song for the customers.)

Those are all good ideas, but what I’m pinning a bushel basket of my hopes on is finding out some dirt at the Milky Way way before that. After I order us a strawberry Mercury malt with three straws, yeah, it’s a long shot, but The Mutual Admiration Society just might overhear one of Kitten’s snitches blabbing away to another one of Kitten’s snitches about what was in the note Sister Margaret Mary left while they’re waiting for a girl in a shiny skirt and alien antennae on her head to roller-skate out with red trays full of the out-of-this-world food.

“Watch your step, Tessie,” Charlie whispers as we’re tiptoeing past the stretch of Phantom Woods. Just like me and every other kid in the neighborhood, except for my sister, who I have tracked down in a tree a couple of times after a wild streak, the other love of my life is terrified that something or someone is going to reach out of those gnarled black trees and Grimm-ly eat us. (No joke!)

Once we make it past Mr. Gilgood’s mausoleum that is no longer the scene of a crime, and the weeping willow tree where we were supposed to have our Mutual Admiration meeting this morning—we’re close enough to the caretaker’s house that we can see a light shining out of his window—Birdie comes to a sudden stop, cocks her head, and does #1 on the LOONY list: Hearing, seeing, and smelling stuff that nobody else can.

Charlie looks over at the woods—I can see the sweat break out on the top of his pretty lip by the light of my flashlight—and says to Birdie, “Whatever you’re hearin’ that we’re not, please tell m . . . m . . . me it’s not coming outta the woods.”

Instead of answering him, Birdie, who always has got on her side what Modern Detection describes as “the element of surprise,” breaks free of our hands and makes a run for it.