The Mutual Admiration Society

by Lesley Kagen

  “Why on earth are you down on the ground, Tessie?” he asks in his voice that sounds so rich and creamy. Birdie almost always goes hungrier when she hears him, because he sounds very much like Mr. Ed Herlihy, the man who does the commercials for Kraft cheese on the television set and Velveeta is her favorite food next to candy. “Everything copacetic?”

  If he is the murderer, I don’t want him getting more riled up than he already is, so I use the sturdy mausoleum wall and the whittling stick I picked up to help me get back on my feet. “Oh, yeah, I’m very copacetic, Mister McGinty.” I reassure him with fake smile #3 and then, because it can’t hurt to remind him that I got a deadly weapon on me, too, I open up my hand to show him my most prized possession. “Daddy’s very sharp Swiss Army Knife fell out of my pocket, that’s all. I was just lookin’ for it in the leaf pile.”

  Unlike me, of course, sweet-hearted Birdie isn’t thinking ugly, suspicious thoughts about our friend.

  She right away holds out her little paw and says, “Charmed, I’m sure.” She loves to shake hands. She’ll hug people, too, or if she gets really excited, she’ll give a person a juicy smooch or a lick on their cheek, if they don’t turn tail when they see her coming, which I completely understand. I don’t go in for that sort of sentimental sloppiness, either. Unless a person has the same blood as me running through their veins, stiff-arming is my policy. (I, of course, make an exception to that rule for Charlie.)

  But Birdie’s being more affectionate than a pet-store puppy never seems to bother Mr. McGinty, even if he is so shy. Like always, he grins down at her—he’s got fantastic choppers—gives her little hand a few pumps in his big one, and then he gets busy wiping his fingers off with his hankie, refolding it, and putting it back in his gray shirt pocket just so, because gray is the only color of clothing he wears when he’s on the job. “Going about my business wearing a sunny-yellow or sky-blue shirt, even a leaf-green one, would appear too cheerful to grievers. They might think I don’t care that the world as they knew it will never be the same for them,” he explained to me during one of our fishing nights after I asked why he always dresses so ho-hum. “It’s more respectful to blend in with the gravestones.”

  His thoughtfulness and cleanliness-next-to-godliness routine are two of the main reasons I’m having such a hard time picturing him killing somebody. In the movies, blood and guts leave an ungodly mess and Mr. McGinty is always spit and polished. He keeps his shack spotless, too. A quarter bounces about a foot offa his bed and my finger comes off cleaner when I run it across the tops of the beautiful framed pictures of woods and birds that he’s got hanging on the wall above his brown sofa and dust bunnies run for the hills when they see him coming.

  On the other hand . . . I got medal evidence. And tall and thin Mr. McGinty matches the description of the guy I saw under the flickering cemetery lights last night. He also had the opportunity to kidnap and kill Sister M & M, because he lives right down the road from the scene of the crime. And he had the means to wring the life out of her, because I bet he could beat Samson in an arm wrestle.

  But what in the heck would his motive be to snatch and snuff out a nun? Not killing anybody is the #6 Commandment on God’s TO-DO list and Mr. McGinty is the most religious person I know, even worse than Gert Klement. He’s front and center at Mass every single morning, faithfully confesses every week, actually looks forward to saying the Stations of the Cross, and one of his hobbies is collecting holy cards, for godssake! (I thought he was going to start crying when I gifted him the card of St. Michael, the patron saint of soldiers, for Christmas a few years ago.)

  Q. Isn’t it just a little suspicious that this military man who spends half his nights prowling around Holy Cross for “intruders” hasn’t already said something about the commotion that he must’ve heard at 12:07 a.m. last night? Should I just go ahead and ask him if he heard the yelling and screeching? Or would that be doing the famous saying “Stirring the pot?”

  A. Cannot predict now.

  Slightly more relaxed, now that he knows I’m okay, Mr. McGinty smiles and says, “So what’s cookin’ this morning, girls?”

  “Nothin’ is cookin’ this morning, Mister McGinty,” my sister answers in a huff. “Campfires are not allowed in the cemetery, isn’t that right, Tessie.”

  Even though I’m still scared because we’re standing here chatting with a possible murderer, I can’t help but answer, “That’s right, Bird,” with a little relieved smile on my face, because her saying something goofy like that means her wild streak is finally over, which is gonna make getting her to do what I want a whole lot easier.

  Because he has known my sister for her whole life, Mr. McGinty doesn’t circle his finger around his head or roll his eyes the way other people do when my sister says stuff like that, he just asks his question in another way, one he knows she’ll understand. “What are you two doing this morning, Birdie?” He usually finds us at Daddy’s pretend grave or the weeping willow tree having a Mutual Admiration meeting, so I understand why he’s suspicious, especially if he’s the guilty party that I’m beginning to think he is.

  “We’re doing . . . um . . .” Birdie swivels her head around in a what-the-hell-just-happened way, which is normal after one of her streaks is done and dusted. “What are we doing this morning, Tessie?”

  “Remember, honey?” I think fast and wave around the whittling stick I found under the necking tree. “We came over here this morning to gather these for Charlie’s hobby.” I lied, because a detective such as myself knows that it’d be very stupid to say that we’re looking for clues in a kidnapping and murder investigation in front of an armed and very strong suspect.

  Of course, someone as nice and religious as Mr. McGinty cutting the heads off the Finley sisters in broad daylight is still pretty hard for me to picture, but Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst nightmare” Bellflower, a detective for over thirty years in New York City, also writes in his excellent book, “You must suspect everybody during an investigation. Do not allow yourself to be swayed by appearances or personal relationships. Leave no leaf unturned.” And it cannot be a coincidence that is exactly what Birdie did. She turned over all the leaves in the pile behind the mausoleum to find our first piece of evidence, which is pointing straight at the guy standing in front of us, which means it’s time for the Finley sisters to make like bananas and split.

  “Hey, it was great seein’ ya, Mister McGinty,” I say, “but time is a-ticking.” I reach into my shorts pocket where I keep Daddy’s watch to prove my point, but when I do, I can feel that the Timex has gotten tangled around the St. Christopher medal. His St. Christopher medal? I can’t tip my hand until I know for sure, so I leave both of them where they are. “We got a long TO-DO list this morning.”

  I wish he wasn’t so dang blasted tall. I’d love to get a good look at his neck before we take off, because if his medal is missing in action, that’d be such a great clue. It’s to him what Daddy’s Swiss Army Knife is to me. Holy lucky. He’d never let that medal out of his sight on purpose. He loves it so much that if it ever broke, he would not drop everything and run up to Mr. Howard Howard’s jewelry store on North Ave. to get it repaired. He would drop everything and if his red-and-purple-scarred shrapnel leg wasn’t aching too bad, he’d run over to the equipment shed where he keeps his shovels, shears, hedges, mowers, and whatnot to fix the medal himself at his wooden work table. “I’m beholden to Saint Christopher for saving my life countless times during the war,” he told me once during a game of checkers we were playing on the card table in his shack. “I believe it was his divine guidance that helped me come back”—he knocked his fist against his head that’s got the plate in it—“mostly in one piece.” And then he hopped over two of my red checkers with a winning grin. “Christ the King me.”

  “What’s this?” Mr. McGinty says when his eye catches something and he bends down to pick it up out of a low branch of the bush that Birdie is standing next t
o. It’s a gold candy wrapper from a Rolo. He despises littering, but he could have that frown on his face because he thought he’d found his golden medal that he lost last night when he was up to no good.

  Needing to get as far away as possible from him while the going is still good, I put my arm around my sister and hold her to my hip, so when I turn around to leave, she’s gotta turn with me. “You go right ahead and straighten things up, Mister McGinty. Like I said, we need to get to work, too, right, Birdie?”

  “Roger that, Tessie, but . . . I need to tell Mister McGinty something before we—”

  “No, no, no, no honey, we don’t have time.” I can’t risk that the “something” she wants to tell him is, We found your medal and Tessie and me think you might be the culprit who kidnapped and killed Sister Margaret Mary, so I say to her the only thing that I’m sure will make her leave the scene of the crime. “But I sister-promise we’ll come back tonight and you can eat windmill cookies and pet Pye and talk all you want, okay?” But when I try to pull her in the direction of the weeping willow and Charlie, Mr. McGinty takes a giant step, blocks our way, and says in his commanding Velveeta voice, “I understand that you’re on a tight schedule, Tessie, but I have a matter of the utmost importance to discuss with you and it shouldn’t be put off until tonight.”

  Uh-oh.

  Because I’m almost positive that he wants to army-interrogate me about what I saw out the bedroom window last night, I think this might be one of those desperate measures times that Daddy used to tell me I had to always BE PREPARED for, which I am. I don’t even have to put a fake terrified look on my face when I point to the side of him and yell, “Holy Mother of God! Run for your life, Mister McGinty! Look out! It’s a bee!” and with my other hand reach around and pinch Birdie on the heinie really hard.

  “It got me!” she screams. “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!”

  Thank goodness that the caretaker is as impressed as I am by my sister’s big-lunged, operatic performance. He’s windmilling his arms and frantically backpedaling, which is exactly what I hoped he’d do, because believe me, getting the third degree from a guy who is deathly allergic to bees, but who might be very copacetic when it comes to kidnapping and murder, that’s the kind of close call I’m 100% positive the Finley sisters can live without.

  12

  THE DEAD MAN’S FLOAT

  After Birdie and me make our getaway from Mr. McGinty, we stop on top of the steep, grassy hill that overlooks the cemetery pond, because even as desperate as I am to see my fiancé, the Finley sisters need to take a breather before we head over to our Mutual Admiration meeting. We gotta recombobulate ourselves.

  “It’s very important to always look your best when spending time with the man of your dreams,” was another suggestion from that Good Housekeeping magazine article, and I’m pretty sure after chasing Birdie around during her wild streak, collapsing in a pile of fallen leaves behind Mr. Gilgood’s mausoleum, and making a break for it from Mr. McGinty, that I don’t look shipshape. More like “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” (Joke!)

  My already wavy hair has gone springy, my tan T-shirt has come untucked from my shorts, I’m drenched in Indian summer sweat, and Daddy’s little dreamboat isn’t anything to write home about, either. One of her pigtails got undone, her mouth that’s ringed in chocolate is clashing with her cheeks that are pinker than a bubble gum cigar, and her shorts have a new grass stain across the seat in the shape of our state.

  “Tessie?” she asks me as she rolls around on the ground.

  “Yeah?”

  “I been thinking.”

  That’s never a good sign.

  “Mommy named you after Saint Theresa the Little Flower,” Birdie says, “so shouldn’t bees come after you more than they come after me?”

  Naming me after that sainted gal was just wishful thinking on my mother’s part. “Like I told ya all the other times you asked me, the reason bees are attracted to you more is because you’re a sweeter kid than me, honey, and you gotta remember not to call her Mommy.”

  “Roger that, Tessie,” she says, and goes back to rolling around on the ground to try and locate the imaginary stinger I made her think she has in her heinie, which is fine by me. I need some time to pull myself together the best I can for Charlie. He better still be waiting for us at the weeping willow tree next to the pond that most cemetery visitors find such a lush oasis in the middle of row after row of unending sadness.

  Staring down at the water from up here, I’m remembering how Mr. McGinty told me a long time ago that the pond was dug in the first place because “Beauty can help fill the cracks in people’s hearts and comfort their souls.”

  There was a time not that long ago when the sweet smell of flowers drifting over from the graves, songbirds in the trees, and the feel of the pond mud oozing between my toes with someone I love and who loves me back did make my heart and soul feel good, but those days went away when Daddy did. I still do get a little glimmer of hope when I fish with Mr. McGinty, skim rocks across the pond with Charlie, or pick wildflowers that grow along the bank with Birdie, or if we have a really great Mutual Admiration meeting under the weeping willow, because sometimes, just for a minute or two, the crack in my heart does feel like it’s getting just a little sealed up with hope. But most of the time, when I stare at the furry cattails alongside the water, the missing sadness and an awful wave of black guilt washes over me.

  Ever since I let Daddy drown, I have been blaming myself on two counts. And I’m not the only one. I’ve come to learn in Modern Detection that not diving in after him is known in the eyes of the law as “accessorizing after the fact.” And in the eyes of the Almighty, sitting on my hands and laughing my head off while my father sunk to the bottom of Lake Michigan because I thought he was playing a Gotcha! joke on me, instead of at least trying to save him, makes me guilty of committing a sin of omission.

  Hey, Tessie, who’s next on your list to let down? Birdie? Charlie? Your dear old grandparents?

  No way. No how. Cross my heart and hope to die.

  I’ve been trying to teach myself how to swim in our bathtub. Soon as I can figure out how to do more than just the dead man’s float, I’ll be able to dive to any depth to save my loved ones. And I suppose I’d have to rescue Louise if she was going under for the third time, too. It would look too suspicious to the cops if I didn’t.

  What was that? There! That rustling in the weeping willow branches? Charlie? Boy, oh, boy, I can’t wait to behold the look of amazement on his face after the three of us get seated in a circle beneath the flowing green branches that are long enough to keep us from getting noticed by cemetery visitors who might stop by the water to refresh their thirsty, sad hearts.

  After I call our meeting of The Mutual Admiration Society to order, I’ll first tell our Sergeant of Arms, who doesn’t even know yet that we’ve taken on THE CASE OF THE MISSING NUN WHO MIGHT BE KIDNAPPED AND MURDERED, about the scrapes the Finley sisters had with Louise and Gert Klement and Mr. McGinty this morning. He’s gonna get such a kick out of that.

  Charlie may be a kid whose smile went rusty after his mother suicided herself, but he can’t help but grin when he’s got a good adventure or mystery story in his hands. That’s another important something we have in common. We both love checking out books from the Finney Library that he sometimes joshes should be changed to the “Finley Library,” because I really do believe the famous sign that’s painted on the wall behind the checkout desk—KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.

  “My heinie hurts, but I don’t feel nothin’ stickin’ in me,” Birdie sits up and says. She’s stopped rolling, and now she’s bouncing her bottom up and down on the grass. “Ya sure you saw a bee, Tessie?”

  “Ummm . . . I guess it coulda been a hornet or a wasp. Ya better keep at it.”

  I want to keep her busy a little longer while I go on searching for more signs of Charlie, who is sure to peek his head out any second to check for the hundredth time if Birdie and me are coming his way, because he kn
ows how important good timing is to me and we’re so late for the meeting. But unfortunately, other than seeing tan and black Pyewacket streak out from beneath the green branches of the willow, all seems quiet down there and that can mean only one thing.

  “Goddamnit all, Bird!” Before I even know what I’m doing, I reel around and knock her down on her back, straddle her, and shake my fist in her face. I’m not sure if we would’ve been on time for the meeting if she hadn’t run off, but chasing her around the cemetery didn’t help. I know it’s not her fault when a wild streak comes over her, but I can’t help it when my beastly temper comes over me, either. I am Big Bad Wolf mad! “Looks like Charlie got tired of waiting for us to show up, and guess whose fault that is?!” Before Birdie can say something dumb like I don’t know, Tessie. Whose fault is it? I tell her, “Yours!” That’s not completely true, either. Bumping into Mr. McGinty slowed us down, too, but my temper doesn’t care about facts when it gets a grip on me, it has a mind of its own.

  “I’m so, so, so, so sorry, Tessie.”

  Birdie didn’t singsong that apology the snotty way she did when I asked her to give me a mea culpa during her wild streak, she really does mean it now that she’s back to her old weird self. But instead of her whimpering making me feel righteous the way it should when you put somebody in their place, I’m all of a sudden feeling like I’m doing an excellent impression of that maniac Butch Seeback. Whatcha gonna say and do next, you mean bully? Call your poor, half-witted sister Tweetle-Dumb and roll her down the hill?

  FACT: It’s not my fault that I can be the worst big sister in the world, just the pits.

  PROOF: Everybody knows that nasty tempers go hand in hand with red hair and I inherited the both of them from my mother.

  Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.