Everybody’s got to have a hobby or two to make life worth living, and one of Mrs. Gertrude B. Klement’s top ways to have fun—besides being the president of the Pagan Baby Society, the most important and powerful club at St. Kate’s—is doing everything she can possibly do to further tarnish my already not-so-sterling reputation. (No joke.) She’s trying day and night to get me banished from the neighborhood immediately, if not sooner. When she’s not at church with the other Pagan Baby gals boxing up patchwork quilts, Breck shampoo, Ivory soap, Pepsodent toothpaste, Kleenex, and Ban deodorant to send to little kids who live on the Dark Continent of Africa, Gert spends her every waking hour trying to gather enough evidence against me to prove to my mother that all I need to put me on the straight and narrow path is a much firmer hand, which just so happens to be the specialty of the nuns at St. Anne’s Home for Wayward Girls.
Now normally, I’m highly against being held prisoner, but lately I been wondering if gettin’ sent up the river wouldn’t be that bad of an idea. Not forever, ya know, just long enough to learn how to hot-wire cars like Kitten Jablonski did the last time she was up at St. Anne’s for slashing tires. That way, if Birdie and me can’t save enough money from blackmailing or solving crimes to buy bus or train tickets out of town, I could jimmy the wires in our woody car and we could drive off into the sunset. Only problem with that plan is that I’d really miss my very nice fiancé and a coupla the other people in the neighborhood that the Finley sisters got on our side.
What would be better than running away is going to live with nearby relatives, ones who love us more than our mother seems to, but even though we’re Catholic—a religion that gives extra credit for baby breeding—Birdie and me don’t have the pick of the litter the way most everyone else around here does. All we got left in this world, besides one another, are Gammy and Boppa, our daddy’s folks. I really miss them, but we haven’t talked to or seen either one of them since right after he died thanks to our mother, who is having one of her 100% Irish temper tantrums. I’m not really sure why she’s so worked up. I think it has a little something to do with how hard Gammy and Boppa cry when they hug Birdie and me, but mostly I think she’s teed-off because our grandparents won’t give her any money. They would like to I’m sure, but they don’t have two nickels to rub together, either. So Louise won’t let them come visit, hangs up on them when they call, and has “ways of knowing” if I try to call them. And when it comes to someone from her side of the family taking Birdie and me in? Rotsa ruck. Supposedly, her parents are “eternally resting.” (They’re probably just lying on some beach and won’t tell her where.) She admits to having an older brother who is still alive and kicking, but she hasn’t heard from him in years. (More than likely, Virgil changed his name to Pierre and joined the French Foreign Legion to get as far away from his bratty little sister as he could.)
For a while there, I decided that if Gammy and Boppa couldn’t come to us Birdie and me would go to them, so I hatched a plan and packed our plaid suitcase and everything. We were going to run away to their cute rock house in the country, but that journey dead-ended around 73rd St. when my sister got hungry and I wasn’t exactly sure how to get to our grandparents’ place. I guess that worked out in the long run for the best. Because on the walk back home, I realized that Louise might not know the first thing about diagramming sentences or the capitals of the United States or mothering kids, but believe you me, the gal is smart enough to hunt my sister and me down at Gammy and Boppa’s house for no other reason but to bring us back to do her bidding while she’s out painting the town red with what’s-his-name.
FACT: Birdie and me are stuck between a rock and a heart place. (No joke.)
PROOF: I already got plenty of examples of Gert Klement trying to convince Louise to give me the boot, but in Chapter Four, Modern Detection warns detectives about the importance of gathering “substantial evidence” and I don’t want to fall down on the job.
That’s why I pay a confidential informant name of Kitten Jablonski, the most in-the know kid in the whole neighborhood, to keep me up on all the latest dirt about the Finley ghouls that gets spread around by our evil next-door neighbor. And thank all that’s holy that I do, because Kitten told me last week that Gert added something new on her TO-DO list that’s even worse than getting me sent away to the Catholic juvie home.
When Kitten and me bumped into each other at Dalinsky’s Drugstore, she was buying ointment for her skin, and I just got done boosting a few more rolls of Tums, because my guts have been taking Daddy’s death very hard. Of course, as usual, I was happy to see my lighthouse-tall eighth-grade informant that I look up to in more ways than one. (Joke!) But the same way I always do after I run into her, I had to take a giant step back. Not everyone knows this, but pimples are a kind of leprosy and I can’t risk one of the dozen she’s got marching across her face deciding to make a break for it and parachuting down to mine. (I’ve watched the Miss America contest on the television set many times, so I know that having peaches-and-cream skin and all your body parts is very important to the judges.)
Kitten, who must really believe in that famous saying about not giving up the ship, told me outta the side of her mouth in the drugstore’s BEAUTIFICATION aisle, “Ya better start watchin’ The Bird’s back even more than ya already are, Finley.”