The Mutual Admiration Society

  Of course, I ripped my poison-pen letter off the church bulletin board after the hullabaloo died down and posted another much nicer one that was also written with my left hand. (As a gumshoe, I knew that I shouldn’t leave any evidence and I’m pretty sure my Palmer penmanship would be recognized by Sister Jane, who finds it “Quite good for a child of your background.”)

  ATTENTION PARISHIONERS!

  FALSE ALARM!

  Mr. Wisnewski’s meat is as great as ever! Eat as much as you want! You won’t get the trots!

  Yours in Christ,

  The Watcher

  After I’m done slapping our breakfasts onto the white S&H Green Stamp plates Louise collects from the Red Owl every Wednesday, I know I shouldn’t be doing that famous saying “Counting your chickens before they hatch,” but I just can’t help myself. Besides getting the chance to solve a kidnapping murder that could really pay off, if I can stay two steps ahead of Gert Klement’s plan to get rid of Birdie and me, we won’t have to run away. But because it’s always good to BE PREPARED, just in case I come up a day late and a dollar short and we have to hit the road, instead of wandering around the countryside like two Gypsies who are sure to get their throats ripped out on a full-moon night—in the movies, where there are Gypsies, a werewolf is never far behind—the orange juice I’m pouring into the little glasses is reminding me that it’s one of the chief exports of the final destination I finally came up with that Birdie and me will run away to, if come what may.

  After studying TV shows and movies, combing through my geography book, visiting the Finney Library’s travel section, and paying half attention during catechism class, I came up with a list of all the places that I thought might make a nice future home for the Finley sisters. Some of the locations sounded okay with pretty nice weather, which is something Birdie and me would have to take into consideration, because we won’t have a place to live until we can get jobs or get to know everyone in our new neighborhood good enough to start blackmailing the snot out of them for enough money to stay at a hotel:

  RUNNING-TO PLACES

  France: chief exports: the perfume that my mother and most of the gals in the neighborhood wear, the movie Gigi, and sluts.

  Mongolia: chief exports: Attila the Hun, pillaging, and homes for different kids.

  The Congo: chief exports: head-shrinking Pygmies, cannibals, and pagan babies.

  Lourdes: chief exports: crutches, rosaries, and Holy Water.

  Fatima: chief exports: miracles, sheepherders, and appearances by the Virgin Mary.

  New York City: chief exports: book writers, the Empire State Building, and crime.

  Hawaii: chief exports: pineapples, the hula dance, and leprosy.

  Unfortunately, hard work doesn’t always pay off. I ended up having to pull the plug on all those spots, especially France, because everybody over there smelling like Louise all the time would make Birdie too sad and give me a headache. And even though I would love to shake the hand of the man who wrote Modern Detection, I don’t want to live in New York City, either. It’s known on a TV show as The Naked City and that sounds like a good way to pick up a disease. I also gave the boot to the new state of Hawaii—I don’t want to bump into Father Damien and his lepers for Miss America reasons—and Fatima didn’t sound like a whole hell of a lot of fun, ditto for the Congo, and the home of Attila the Hun.

  It was just this past Sunday night, when Birdie and me were on the sofa watching the Walt Disney Presents show, that the end-all and be-all of where we should run away to came to me. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Eureka! I said to myself. California, here we come! I didn’t mention anything to my sister, because sure, she loves Snow White because that black-haired beauty is also an animal lover, particularly of birds, and her best friends, the dwarves, are all about the same height as my sister, so they’d have that in common, but I’m still not positive that the eight of them are enough to tempt Birdie away from our mother, which is something I should probably add to my SURE SIGNS OF LOONY list. (If we do have to run away, I’m counting on my sister getting over Louise once we’re in California and she feasts her slightly bulging eyes on the Magic Kingdom in living color.)

  I hate for any opponent of mine to know what I’m feeling, so I’m very good at playing my cards close to my chest—Daddy taught me. But I must be accidentally smiling at the pictures I got in my head of Birdie spinning around in the flying teacups at Disneyland with Dopey, and Kookie Kookson the Third from 77 Sunset Strip lending me his comb, because when Louise lowers herself down on the chair where our father used to sit at the head of the yellow Formica kitchen table, she doesn’t guess that I’m thinking about the place where you can wish upon a star and make your dreams come true, but she does guess what’s going on in the other part of my mind, which is how we’re going to earn enough money to get us there.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face, Theresa. Sister Margaret Mary’s disappearance is none of your business,” she says. “You hear me?”

  I snap to and tell her, “Loud and clear,” but when I pull my chair in next to Birdie and shovel a helping of eggs and Spam into my mouth, what I’m thinking is, Oh, Louise, little do you know. Sister M and M’s disappearance is exactly my business!

  My sister smiles, points next to our mother’s plate, and says, so excited, “I got you a present. I got you a present. I got you a present. I got you a present.”

  Louise looks down, picks up the trinket with her napkin, and says, “How . . . how . . . mmmm.”

  The gal might be mean most of the time, but thanks to Miss Emily Post, she has excellent manners, so she’s trying to think up something nice-ish to say about the doodad my sister left for her this morning. Birdie does this from time to time. Because she’s not a thief like me, she doesn’t steal the presents. She’s more like a crow, ya know? Finders keepers, losers weepers and all that. When my sister comes across something shiny or fluffy, she puts it in her pocket and finds a time to sweetly surprise Louise or me with it. Like the 1958 nickel she left under my pillow this morning. Birdie used to leave feathers in Daddy’s pants pockets, but now she lays them around his tombstone, and to Louise, she almost always gives a piece of fake jewelry that she might find in a sidewalk crack or under a kneeler at church or in a Cracker Jack box. But I’m not sure where she found the pink plastic heart-shaped ring with a red stone that’s doing a terrible job of looking like a real ruby that our mother is holding in her fingers. (It will eventually end up in the garbage, which is fine, I guess. Birdie’s memory is so bad that she won’t remember giving it to her in the first place.)

  Louise slips the crummy ring on her finger that used to hold her beautiful golden wedding ring that Daddy won in a poker pot, looks across the table at my sister, and says, “Thank you for the token of your affection, Robin. Now please stop kicking your leg against the table. I’m already on pins and needles about starting this new job at the Clark station and you’re making it worse.”

  “She’s not doing it on purpose,” I swallow and tell our mother. “I told you her toes are going numb.”

  Louise was supposed to pick up a new pair of sneakers and saddle shoes for Birdie the day summer vacation ended, but she either forgot ’cause she’s thinking all the time about what’s-his-name or how short she is on money. Either way, I’m not going to make a federal case out of it this morning, because for now, my sister doesn’t really need new school shoes from Shuster’s anymore.

  I know that most of the fathers around here work at foundries like Northland or factories like Feelin’ Good Cookie, Pabst Brewery, and American Motors—you can smell where they do their shifts if you sit next to them at church—but one dad is a carpenter and my fiancé Charlie “Cue Ball” Garfield’s old man dyes tools for a living and after Daddy died, Becky Winner’s father was charitable enough to give Birdie and me lifetime passes to the Tosa Theatre that he owns. But I never heard of Molly Hopkins’s father’s job before last week. He gets a paycheck for sniffing around f
or trouble in old buildings. (With her excellent sense of smell, Birdie would be good at this job if she grows up, so further research at the Finney is required.)

  Mr. Hopkins got called to our school on the afternoon Sister Prudence sent Tommy “Two-Ton” Thomkins to the basement to tell our janitor, Wayne “Creeper” Carlson, to wheel his bucket and mop up to the gymnasium so he could clean up the cookies that Davey O’Meara tossed on the floor during dodgeball. Fortunately, Two-Ton never made it down to that spooky room with the incinerator, the furnace, a calendar of Betty Grable loving a tractor too much hanging on the wall, a floor polisher, sawdust, and whatnot, where the janitor spends most of his time. Two-Ton fell straight through the basement steps and Creeper had to jerry-rig a hoist to pull him out!

  After Mr. Hopkins got done inspecting the damage, he hung a CONDEMNED sign on the basement stairs railing and then, according to my confidential informant Kitten Jablonski, he also reported that he smelled an “unusual” odor drifting around the basement, which was such great news. “The school needs to be closed down immediately as a safety precaution. It could be gas,” he told Sister Margaret Mary, who at that time was still present and accounted for. (I could’ve stepped in and told Mr. Hopkins that it definitely was gas he was smelling because he showed up on Beans and Wienies Wednesday to do his inspection, but no one except #5 on my SHIT LIST, brownnoser Jenny Radtke, would do something that repulsive.)

  Louise, who’s admiring herself in the oleo knife, says, “Since you’re out of school until the repairs can be made, I expect the two of you to make yourselves useful. Dust and vacuum before I get home tonight, take out the garbage, and Theresa”—she gives me her evil eye—“go to confession today.” The reason she didn’t tell Birdie that she had to do the same is because she doesn’t have to go into the wooden box to tell her sins once a week to Father Ted like me and all the other kids in the parish do. My sister got declared an “innocent” by the church two years ago on account of the fact that she would kneel down in front of the black confessional curtain every Thursday and start clapping her hands and laughing her heinie off because she thought she was about to see a puppet show.

  7:49 a.m. The Finley sisters have big-deal detecting to do today and the sooner our mother is out of our hair the better, which is why I’m trying to come up with a compliment that could get her moving faster toward the front door. She usually falls for anything having to do with how good looking she is, that’s how sweet she is on herself. But I don’t know, sometimes I think I’m being too hard on the gal, ya know? If my long red hair fell down my back in perfect waves instead of looking like it got caught up in the spokes of my Schwinn if I don’t stick it into a ponytail every morning, and if both of my ears laid close to my head and my right one didn’t stick out like a handle, and if my cheeks were the color of baby pink roses instead of being covered with so many freckles that I can’t fall asleep at my school desk without that nincompoop Chuckie Jaeger connecting them with a ballpoint pen, and maybe if my eyes were the color of shallow water instead of looking like the bottom of the deep-blue sea, one of my hobbies might be staring at myself as often as I could, too.

  I lean back in my chair and tell Louise, “If you think you need to do more primping, don’t bother. I’m not kidding, you look even better than one of Mister Skank’s customers.”

  I listen to the Braves baseball games on the radio with my friend and business advisor, Mr. Art Skank, every other Saturday at his funeral home on Burleigh St., so that was not “hearsay” evidence. The undertaker is so good at fiddling with his customers that they end up looking like masterpieces, which is how he got his neighborhood nickname, “The Leonardo da Vinci of Undertaking.”

  FACT: Everyone around here tries to stay on Mr. Skank’s good side, because he is known to hold a grudge.

  PROOF: You should’ve seen what he did to one of his high school sweethearts who dropped him for another fella. Believe me, Mrs. Mitzi Kircher did not look anything like a framed picture of The Last Supper at her funeral. Mrs. Mitzi Kircher looked more like a box full of cafeteria leftovers at her funeral. (Joke!)

  When Louise doesn’t budge from the table, even though I just gave her that great Skank compliment, I move to my backup plan. I point to the clock above the sink and say, “Just like you’re always tellin’ Birdie and me how important it is to be on time, ya better hurry up if you don’t want to be late for your first day on the job. What’s-his-name is gonna pick you up at eight to take you to the station, right?”

  Our mother slowly grinds out her L&M cigarette in her eggs and Spam scramble that she hasn’t barely touched because she is always watching her figure, waiting for it to do what, I don’t know exactly. “How many times do I have to tell you the name of the man I’m seeing, Theresa?”

  What the heck comes over me?

  I know that hope is something that should not be allowed to spring eternally when I’m in the vicinity of our mother, but for some unknown reason, I let myself believe sometimes that she misses Daddy as much as Birdie and me do. That’s why I think she’s about to make a joke to remember him by, the same way I do every chance I get. Like the kind ya hear up at Wisnewski’s butcher shop and Lonnigan’s Bar all the time. Daddy loved those “How many Polacks does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” jokes. (Three. One to hold the bulb, two to turn the ladder.)

  “I don’t know, Louise,” I forget myself and say. “How many times do you have to tell me the name of the man you’re seeing?”

  But, of course, the second I see how tight her teeth are clenched, I knew what a hoping dope I’d been. And when she does open her mouth, I am shocked by how much she sounds like her idol, nasty Gert Klement, when she says, “For the last time, the name of the man I’m dating is Mister . . . Leon . . . Gallagher.”

  So she says as she shoves back her chair and sashays out of the kitchen in a cloud of smoke. Because he hasn’t fallen into our mother’s wedding web yet, Birdie and me haven’t met “Mister . . . Leon . . . Gallagher,” so there’s no way to be 100% sure who he is. Chapter One of Modern Detection says: “A subject’s identity must always be verified by loved ones,” which would be the Finley sisters. Louise told us the ignorant slob she’s trying to replace Daddy with works on the assembly line at the American Motors plant, but I’ll believe that when I see it. I still think he might be #4 on my SHIT LIST. The grease monkey all the girls in the neighborhood call “The Peeker.” (Judging from how many times I’ve caught him licking his lips and grinning at me when I’m keeping guard over Birdie outside the Clark station’s restroom when she’s tinkling out the root beer on our way home from the Tosa Theatre, The Peeker seems to have a taste for redheads, so he probably was the one who recommended Louise for the cashier job.)

  While I might be feeling a little slowed down by my mother’s chilly warning to mind my own beeswax when it comes to missing Sister Margaret Mary, believe me, I’m not about to throw in the towel. I immediately start working out in my head what the detecting Finley sisters have to get done today while I’m following Louise’s orders and filling the kitchen sink up with warm water and a squirt of Joy.

  Of course, the most important things I have to take care of ASAP are examining the scene of the crime over at the cemetery and calling a meeting of The Mutual Admiration Society to order. And if I want those things to happen ASAP, I got to remind forgetful Birdie she needs to step on it.

  “Honey?” When I turn around to make sure she’s quickly clearing the breakfast dishes like she’s supposed to instead of lazily licking off the leftovers . . . lo and behold! I’m the Lone Ranger without my Tonto!

  Damnation!

  I switch off the water faucet and call out, “Bir—Robin Jean?”

  When she doesn’t answer, Here I am, Tessie! the way she’s supposed to if I lose sight of her, I wipe my soapy hands off on my shorts and run through the dining room to check for her in the living room. She’s not on the green shag carpet in front of the Motorola television set, and she wouldn’t go
into the basement by herself, so I dash back through the kitchen and head up the stairs two at a time. “Honey?”

  After I poke my head into the bathroom and our bedroom and come up empty, that only leaves the last place that I was dreading looking for Birdie in the first place. I really don’t want to find my sister in what was once the most special spot in the house. It used to smell like Daddy’s Old Spice, and there were always matchbooks and a pack of his Lucky Strike cigarettes on his bed stand, and a deck of cards sitting on top of the bureau, and just being in there filled me to the brim with love. But ever since we lost him, when I even think of going in there, a missing sadness comes crashing down on me, the same way it’s doing right this minute. I have to plaster myself against the hallway wall to keep myself from getting knocked to my knees. But what choice do I have? I made a solemn vow to step into Daddy’s shoes and I’m not going to let him down. Not again. I promised to take tender loving care of Birdie and that’s what I’m going to do. Come Hell or high water.

  So I take a deep breath and try to push away the missing sadness the best I can, take shaky baby steps down the hall, and through the bedroom door. Because I’m feeling roughed-up when I plop down next to my sister on the edge of the bed Daddy used to snore in, I take an extra tight hold of her little hand. To steady myself, of course, but also to keep her glued to me. If Birdie starts to act up and do something really weird and loony, Louise, who is sprucing herself up at her vanity table, could change her mind and decide that “somebody more qualified” needs to keep watch over my sister today instead of me. I can’t risk that. The Finley sisters got what I’m almost positive is a kidnapping murder to investigate that could earn us great running-away bucks. That means getting stuck on Gert Klement’s front porch all day so she can keep her evil eye on Birdie and me while Louise is at her new job is completely out of the question.