Now that I think about this, maybe THE CASE OF THE MISSING NUN is not one we should tackle after all. I mean, what if we actually found the despised principal of St. Kate’s? I wouldn’t put it past the pissed-off kids in the parish to drag us over to the Washington Park Zoo to do something biblically bad to get back at us. Something like throwing us to the lions.
On the other hand . . . searching for the school’s top penguin might be worth taking the risk of getting eaten alive. Yes, I think Daddy would agree with me if he was here, because whenever he threw his paycheck into the pot when he was playing poker in Lonnigan’s back room with the factory men, he’d lean down and whisper in my ear, “Always go for broke, kiddo.”
Wait just another cotton-pickin’ minute.
What if . . . what if there is more here than meets the eye of this private eye? The last thing I want to do is assume again, but I thought the screech I heard last night coming from the cemetery sounded familiar, so maybe our school principal isn’t just missing, maybe she . . . dear, holy Mother of God. Did you just drop a fantastic twofer crime into The Mutual Admiration Society’s laps?
Q. Did the limp body I saw getting carried behind the Gilgood mausoleum last night beneath the flickering streetlights belong to not just a missing principal, but a kidnapped and murdered principal?
A. Outlook good.
Well . . . amen to that, Sister.
Amen, amen!
5
JUST LIKE IDA LUPINO
The scrumptious-smelling red apple breeze is pushing around the yellow-and-white-checked curtains next to the avocado stove in our kitchen, where I’m putting the finishing touches on our breakfast while Louise puts the finishing touches on herself at the vanity table in her bedroom.
FACT: Daddy was our chief cook and bottle washer, but since I stepped into his shoes, I have to be the one to scramble the eggs and Spam in the black fry pan every morning. If Birdie and me want to live to see another day, that is.
PROOF: Louise Mary Fitzgerald Finley was the prime suspect on a recent detecting job that The Mutual Admiration Society didn’t have to break a sweat to solve—THE CASE OF THE TROTS.
At St. Kate’s potluck dinner last month that always takes place in our school cafeteria, parishioners who helped themselves to a scoop of the beef and whatever else it was that our mother stirred into the “gourmet” casserole that made it smell like toe jam got awful trots, and boy, oh, boy, were they ever sore. When the finger-pointing suspicion fell on Louise’s mystery casserole almost immediately—unbeknownst to her, she has a reputation around here for being the antonym of Chef Boyardee—she didn’t put the blame on the butcher for selling her bad hamburger, but she didn’t deny the rumor after I started it, either. I really like Mr. Wisnewski, he tells the best Polack jokes in the neighborhood, so I felt like a louse after I thumbtacked one of my poison-pen letters on the church bulletin board:
ATTENTION PARISHIONERS!
BEWARE!
The meat at Wisnewski’s Butcher Shop is no good!
Yours in Christ,
The Watcher
Like they say, “Charity begins at home,” so what choice did I have?
I guarantee you, nobody would write down the name of a gal who almost diarrhea-ed them to death on the Pagan Baby election ballot and mark my words, if our mother loses out on being treasurer when that vote takes place, chances are that she’ll blame Birdie and me and our “shenanigans” for messing up her chances.
This is far-fetched, but it has crossed my mind that Louise wants to be treasurer so bad because she’s going to stealthily “borrow” some money out of the club’s coffers to save our house from the First Wisconsin Bank. When Daddy was still here, her and him fought all the time about how much more hard-up we were than the other families in the neighborhood. Mr. Fleming, the father of Mary Jane Fleming, used to call the house once a week to ask where the mortgage money was, but now that we don’t have some of Daddy’s paycheck anymore, Mr. Fleming calls every day. (I think he wants to send us to the poorhouse.)
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