The Mutual Admiration Society Read online

  Because Birdie studies the medal for only a few seconds with her slightly bulging Indian eyes, I take that to mean that she can’t make the squiggles out, either, so I’m surprised when she breaks into what can only be described as, pardon my French again, a shit-eating grin and tells me, “It says, ‘To J. M. from M. M.’”

  That can’t be right. “One more time?”

  “It says, ‘To J. M. from M. M.,’” she repeats with a lot of gusto.

  Is she trying to be funny again? She keeps this up, I might have to cross #9 off the SURE SIGNS OF LOONY list: Not getting jokes and the ones they tell are lamer than Tiny Tim.

  “Are you pulling my leg?” I ask her.

  Birdie looks down at her hands and my right gam like they might be doing something she doesn’t know about and says, “No, I am not pulling your leg, Tessie.”

  Sure seems like she might be, because I know who those initials belong to and it’s just out of the question those two would be over at the cemetery together in the middle of the night. And even more far-fetched to think that one of them did not live to see another day. Birdie must’ve gotten the letters mixed up, she does that sometimes. Flips them. A w can turn into an m and a j into a g, a b into a d and whatnot.

  “How sure are you,” I ask, “that you’re seeing J. M. and M. M.?” I hold my thumb and pointer finger close together. “Just a smidge? Or . . .” I open up my arms as wide as they go. “Heaps?”

  “Heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps.”

  Oh, boy.

  I sure didn’t see that one coming.

  11

  EVERYTHING COPACETIC?

  Modern Detection says, “When searching for possible suspects in a murder case, start with the people who are the most emotionally involved with your victim, i.e., wife, husband, sister, brother, and girlfriend, etc. Statistics show that the closer the relationship a person has with another, the more likely they will be to kill them.”

  My statistic-loving fiancé, Charlie, loved that quote, but I dog-eared that page of the book and had to read it over around ten times. Stating that the more a person loves someone, the more likely they are to murder them? That seemed flat-out wrong.

  On the other hand . . . if an important detective like Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst nightmare” Bellflower of New York City, where there is more crime than he can flash his badge at, says that’s a fact, who am I to question him?

  Of course, I immediately recognized the initials on the back of the medal—J. M. = James McGinty. M. M. = Sister Margaret Mary—because I am very well acquainted with the two of them. But why our shy, soft-spoken, caretaking friend would be “emotionally involved” enough with our nasty, screeching principal to be considered a suspect in her murder is completely beyond me. And how could M. M. know J. M. good enough to give him this expensive gold present? You wouldn’t gift something this special to just anybody. You’d have to really like a person, maybe even love them.

  Uh-oh.

  Could those two be doing what the Polack kids in the neighborhood snigger and call “the horizontal polka?” Oh, my Lord. No. That’s not only disgusting, it’s impossible. When you become a nun, you’re married to God and the only way you’re supposed to dance the polka is on your own two feet. Once any Catholic gets hitched, they’re not supposed to shout, “Roll out the barrel, let’s have a barrel of fun,” with anyone other than the person they said “I do” to. Marriage is ’til death do them part.

  That’s the rule a Mr. and Mrs. are supposed to follow, anyway, but some of the ones in our neighborhood do make exceptions.

  Evelyn at Melman’s Hardware leaves the heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolate cherries on the grave of a man she wasn’t married to, and Mrs. Nancy Tate waved her pom-poms in her rumpus room for Mr. Horace Mertz when her husband was recovering in the hospital from a broken leg, and as much as I like Miss Peshong from the Finney Library, she nibbles on the neck and the chocolate chip cookies of the husband that belongs to her heavy-sleeping next-door neighbor, Mrs. Maccio, when he gets off his Wednesday shift at the Feelin’ Good factory.

  “Bird?” I poke her in the ribs to get her attention. “You’re not gonna believe whose initials these are on the back of the—”

  “Mister McGinty’s and Sister Margaret Mary’s.” That she figured that out completely surprises me, and I’m about to give her a pat on the back, but she doesn’t give me the chance. “Shhh.” Her head is cocked, and she goes stiff as a stiff when she whispers, “Ya hear that?”

  St. Kate’s church bells are announcing that it’s half past the hour, the kids down the block are still shrieking out names during their Red Rover game, the same dog is barking two streets over, and much, much closer . . . someone is listening to the radio during their visit to a grave and, hopefully, not dancing on it. The Everly Brothers are wailing “Wake Up, Little Susie.” That song was one of Daddy’s all-time favorites. He’d sing to barmaid Suzie LaPelt—“Oo . . . la-la”—every single time it came on the jukebox at Lonnigan’s. That’s why I put her on my people to QUESTION OR SURVEIL list. Not because I think Suzie’s guilty of something or should be shadowed. I really and truly miss spending time with the gal that almost all of the other gals in the neighborhood call “That French Slut,” none louder or more often than our own mother.

  “Wake up, little Susie . . .”

  This is very bad timing for the missing sadness to spring back up. Hearing that tune and remembering how Daddy would get that cute twinkle in his eye when he’d sing it to Suzie . . . my heart just can’t take it.

  I stuff the St. Christopher medal in my shorts pocket, brush off the tears, and clear the ache out of my throat so I can tell my sister, I need to go see Charlie, but she cuts me off at the pass when she says, “Someone’s comin’ out of Phantom Woods.”

  And that’s when all the other sounds fade away and I hear what she’s been hearing.

  The rustle of fall leaves. Not made by squirrels scurrying around for nuts. It’s the crunch of human footsteps, getting louder by the second as closer . . . closer . . . and closer whoever it is comes stomping toward the Finley sisters, who are standing behind the mausoleum like sitting ducks.

  Is it the kidnapping murderer?

  Instead of hiding behind the mausoleum the way I thought he might be, could he have been watching and waiting this whole time behind one of those twisted tree trunks in Phantom Woods until the time was right?

  I have to let my sister know that we could be in mortal danger, but when I open my mouth to scream, nothing comes out. Something’s gone wrong with my breathing, too much out and not enough in and my eyesight isn’t working too good, either. The cemetery is going fuzzy around the edges and my knees have gone wobbly, and before I can steady myself, I land in a heap on top of the leaf pile my sister was digging through. The leaf pile that could still contain a corpse casserole that very soon Birdie and me could become ingredients in.

  FACT: Time can fly faster than Dracula, but it can also stagger like Frankenstein.

  PROOF: It seems like I’m waiting for an eternity, paralyzed with fear on top of the leaves, before the owner of those footsteps appears on the edge of the woods.

  My eyes are still blurry, but I can tell who it is. He’s a few inches taller than the graves he digs, with a face that reminds me of one of those salt maps we made in geography class, that’s how craggy it is from working so many years in the cemetery in all kinds of weather. His eyes are round and cow brown and his nose runs on the big side, too. If he was a kid, he’d get a nickname like “Elsie” or “Shnoz.” The rest of him looks like a capital T. Drinking straw skinny below the waist, but strong in the shoulders from shoveling and the one hundred push-ups he does every morning after he eats his “breakfast rations.” All in all, if you are looking at him from a distance, sideways, the way I am, I think our good friend Mr. James “Jimmy/Good Egg” McGinty is a fine-looking fellow with a good job and to the best of my knowledge, he is not, I r
epeat, not a murdering monster.

  That’s how come I suggested to Louise that she should go on a date with him before she started canoodling with what’s-his-name. If Birdie and me had to have a new daddy, I thought our godfather would do nicely. But when I suggested to our mother that the two of them go on a picnic and even offered to make the sandwiches so she wouldn’t give him stomach poisoning, she said, “Jimmy McGinty? No, thanks. I already have enough on my plate.”

  I think that might’ve been a nasty crack about the plate Mr. McGinty got in his head after he stepped on a land mine in the war, but it was also a huge Louise lie. We aren’t doing that great in the food department around here, so her plate and Birdie’s and mine are never full. She probably just didn’t want to admit the real reason she wouldn’t go on a date with Mr. McGinty is because he’s Scottish.

  We got so many different kinds of people in the neighborhood who came to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Braves from their old countries. The Hungarians are big eaters, of course, their name gives that away. Germans drink their beer out of steins and love bratwurst. The Polacks brought their hilarious jokes and the “horizontal polka” along with them on the boat. Micks have the worst tempers, can drink anybody under the table, and love blarney. 100% English people, like Gammy and Boppa, Daddy, and my Charlie, drink tea with stiff upper lips. The wops think they’re the best thing since sliced garlic bread, because all of us are Roman Catholics and Rome is the city where the headquarters of the church is located. And Gracie Carver, who I can’t wait to get back from Mississippi, is the only Negro we know, and she doesn’t actually live around here. For some unknown reason, that’s not allowed, she has to stay with “her own kind,” which is such a pity, because if other colored people are as wonderful as Gracie that would make the neighborhood a lot more fun. She takes the #1 bus up North Ave. five mornings a week from a town called The Core with her best friend, Ethel, who is a helper to an old lady near Mother of Good Hope Church. Gracie is also not a Catholic who likes hymns, she is a Baptist who likes the music of Billie Holiday, keeping the church really clean, and like me, she likes poetry, but not by Dr. Seuss. (That Grinch book of his just slayed me.) Gracie likes some guy name of Langston Hughes, who I told her I will check out some day at the library when I get the chance. She also thinks The Mutual Admiration Society are the only ones around here who got any “snap” to ’em, but she gets a charge out of Kitten Jablonski, too. (Even though Gracie’s not here right now, I mention her because she’s such a good friend of ours that for a long time I was planning on Birdie and me running away to live with her, before she put the kibosh on that idea. “You’d get found right quick, Sugar. You and your sister’d stick out in my neighborhood like two marshmallows in a cup of hot cocoa,” she said with one of her Southern laughs that I really love the sound of, it’s very relaxing.)

  And then we got the people like Mr. McGinty. The ones who play bagpipes at funerals, eat something called haggis, which they tell everybody is a “delicacy” on potluck night up at the church, so the Scots must also be known for being born without taste buds besides being famous for holding their purse strings very tight. Louise could probably overlook the awful music and their horrible taste in food—takes one to know one—but she could never ever put up with a skinflint. Getting a pile of money is #1 on our mother’s TO-DO list.

  FACT: The relief that flooded through me when I first saw our Scottish friend come out of Phantom Woods instead of an unknown raving murderer has suddenly dwindled to a dribble.

  PROOF: This is a very terrible thought that I feel very terrible about having, but I’m 95% positive that the medal Birdie found in the leaf pile belongs to Mr. McGinty, which means he was at the scene of the crime and could be the guilty murderer.

  And when he wildly waves his glinting-in-the-sun sharp gardening shears and shouts at us, “Where ya been, girls? I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” my tummy must be thinking the same thing because it goes as hard as an arithmetic problem that doesn’t add up.

  It’s awfully far-fetched to think he could be a killer, but . . . what if he is, and he’s rushing toward the Finley sisters not to shoot the breeze with us, but for some other very scary reason?

  Q. Was he really surprised when he came out of the woods and spotted Birdie and me behind the mausoleum? Or was he just pretending to be surprised? Did he figure we’d show up here this morning because he saw me watching him at 12:07 a.m. out our bedroom window lugging around a victim that he was “emotionally involved” with, the nun who gifted him the expensive gold St. Christopher medal? And isn’t it mighty strange that during the millions of talks we’ve had over the years that he never said one word about how him and the principal of St. Kate’s were so palsy-walsy, especially since I complained about her so much?

  A. Ask again later.

  As far back as I can remember, Mr. McGinty has never been nothin’ but nice and thoughtful to Birdie and me, but in my experience, people and things can change for the worst, mostly when you least expect it. So, it’s always better to be waiting for the other shoe to drop than to get caught off balance, because take it from me, something like that can just about kill you.

  My boxing daddy also taught me, “Stay on your toes. You don’t want to get sucker punched.” And those words of wisdom are echoed in the pages of Modern Detection, too. Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst nightmare” Bellflower says, “Anyone is capable of murder, given the right circumstances. Stay on your toes at all times.”

  Are these the right circumstances?

  Gosh, I sure hope not.

  REASONS WHY I DON’T WANT MR. MCGINTY TO BE THE GUILTY PARTY

  I’d like my sister’s and my head to stay where they are and not snipped off with his sharp gardening shears.

  We can kiss good-bye to the reward bucks I thought we’d be making by solving the murder, because if he doesn’t decapitate us with his TOOLS OF THE TRADE in the next few minutes, I could never blackmail Mr. McGinty, even I got my limits. And I don’t want the reward I’d get for turning him in to the cops, either. That’d be blood money.

  If he gets sent to the Big House, I’d miss watching our red bobbers in the cemetery pond during our late-night fishing trips. When he first invited me to join him, I told him no, because that’s what Daddy and me were doing the day he died and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to stand remembering how I let him down and the horrible missing sadness would come over me and make me feel like I was going under for the third time. But Mr. McGinty finally convinced me that fishing again could be another way to honor Daddy, like me singing for him at the Miss America contest the “Favorite Things” song, and that it might actually help me feel a little better, and he was right. I like watching the fireflies switching off and on under the reflection of the moon that disappears in ripples when frogs chase a fly, but mostly I enjoy the talks Mr. McGinty and me have about everything under the sun after we throw in our lines because sometimes I pretend that it’s Daddy at my side instead of his old friend.

  Birdie wouldn’t miss reeling in a bluegill or those pond talks under the stars with our godfather if he gets electrocuted for murder because I make sure she’s deep asleep when I crawl out our bedroom window and meet up with him. My little animal lover has always hated fishing, which is why she wasn’t out on the boat with Daddy and me that afternoon. What would bother my sister is that we wouldn’t be able to visit with Mr. McGinty anymore in his cozy shack that’s another home away from home for us. She just can’t seem to get enough of beating him at gin rummy, and, of course, being the excellent caretaker that he is, he always has windmill cookies and cold Graf’s root beer at the ready when the Finley sisters drop by.

  We wouldn’t be the only ones who would join the Lonely Hearts Club if Mr. McGinty got sent up the river. Charlie will be so sad to wave good-bye to our friend who taught him about birds and whittling, and believe me, my fiancé doesn’t need another person he cares about leaving him in
their dust-to-dust.

  And what will become of our tan and black Siamese that Mr. McGinty dove in to save after that maniac kid, Butch Seeback, threw her in the cemetery pond? Unlike tail-wagging Birdie, I haven’t fallen hook, line, and sinker for Pyewacket, but she loves running her little hand down the cat’s back and purring along with her, and . . .

  Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute!

  There I go assuming again.

  There’s still a chance that dead Sister Margaret Mary didn’t give the gold medal to Mr. McGinty. There’s gotta be other people in the neighborhood who have M. M. and J. M. initials. Like . . . ah . . . or . . . well, just because I can’t think of anyone right this second doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone. Just the same, until I can get things sorted out, to stay on the safe side, maybe Birdie and me better keep our distances from Mr. McGinty.

  FACT: There is nobody I know that takes the famous saying “There is a place for everything and everything has a place” more seriously than he does.

  PROOF: Because I’m not where I’m supposed to be—standing upright, instead of still laying on top of the leaf pile—after our neat-to-the-hilt friend comes to a halt in front of my sister and me, he starts acting more fidgety than Suzie “That French Slut” LaPelt does in the Communion line when all the gals in the parish train their Sunday eyes on her.

  Ex–army soldier Mr. McGinty is on high alert this morning, but he is most of the time. I swear, if there ever was a contest that awarded a blue ribbon for The Most Jumpy Person in the Neighborhood at the Fourth of July picnic at Washington Park, he would win with his hands tied behind his back. Because he hates loud noises, the other contestants wouldn’t have a chance after he heard that starter gun go off. Mr. McGinty despises Gotchas! That’s why I have to signal him with my woo . . . woo . . . whoot whistle whenever I get within striking distance. If I don’t, he rockets into the air and reaches for his knife that he, like me, is never without. Only mine isn’t a switchblade that can flick open fast enough to slit the throat of a Nazi. Or a nun.