Birdie can see that she’s disappointing me, so she starts flapping her arms. She’ll throw her head back and start squawking next and it can take forever to work her out of that state, so I tell her, “Don’t get yourself all lathered up, okay?” and then I pet her little back in long strokes, the way she likes. “Remember? Louise is only gonna take away your candy bars if we get caught over at the cemetery and that’s not gonna happen.” Birdie still doesn’t look ready to rumble, so I need to up my ante. I pick up her hand and place it on the front of my shorts. “That’s a whole pocketful of Hershey’s kisses, and look!” I wave the Red Owl bag in front of her face so she can get a whiff of what’s inside with her special smelling power. “I made you a P B and M.” It can’t hurt to throw one more chip into the pot to convince her how much is at stake here. “And if you mind your p’s and q’s, I’ll nab the box of chocolate-covered cherries offa Mister Lindley’s grave and you don’t even have to give me any.” Next to Three Musketeers bars, Birdie loves those creamy, gooey cherries best of all, so she must be very scared about heading over to the cemetery, because she’s perked up some, but she still doesn’t look like she’s burning with desire.
I’d mention to her our new case and how life-changing important it is to us, but that won’t be enough. I don’t think she understands or cares all that much about solving the kidnapping murder. She might not even remember it anymore. No. I’m going to have pull out my big guns to get her moving toward the black iron fence.
Visiting Daddy’s pretend grave always makes his little dreamboat feel like her ship has come in (Joke!), and she also goes very gaga for my nice fiancé, Charlie “Cue Ball” Garfield, almost as much as I do, which is gonna work out so great after him and me become Mr. and Mrs. When we get back from our honeymoon in Wisconsin Dells that my sister will go on, too, of course, because it’s our version of Disneyland—my little animal lover will just adore petting the deer and seeing the statue of Paul Bunyan’s ox, Babe—The Mutual Admiration Society will live happily ever after in the house on Hadley St. that I like so much. The solid-looking redbrick one with the white shutters and pretty maple tree out back that shades the bedroom off the kitchen that will belong to Birdie. Charlie and me will take care of her for as long as she lives. The same way Mrs. Obermeyer across the street watches over her sister Audrey, who got polio. Even after being in an iron lung at Sacred Heart Sanitarium for a year, the gal still has to wear those steel braces.
I give Birdie’s back a few more kitty-cat strokes and say into her ear, “I know you’re worried about us getting caught and Louise takin’ away your ones for all and all for ones, but . . .” I rub Daddy’s Swiss Army Knife, because I’m about to fire off my end-all-and-be-all trick. “You really, really, really, really wanna go to the cemetery to visit with Daddy and Charlie, don’t you?”
Ha!
You Bet Your Life she does! (Joke!) My future bridesmaid yells, “Go, Bird, go,” and pushes me out of the way, pops through the squeaky back door of the house, and thank goodness I caught a hold of her arm before she jumped down the steps and ran across the backyard toward the cemetery fence.
I yank her toward me and tell her, “I like your enthusiasm, kiddo, but before we can go say hi to Daddy and Charlie, we got a very important caper we gotta pull off first.”
Along with all the other putridness Gert Klement does to Birdie and me, she put a real crimp in our cemetery visits after she paid to get a gigantic picture window put in above her kitchen sink. So now, whenever she’s doing the dishes or cooking or baking or pondering evil plans, she can keep tabs on Birdie and me better than she ever has. And believe me, nothing, and I mean not . . . one . . . thing on God’s green earth, even pagan babies, fills the black heart of that old biddy with as much joy as catching the Finley sisters in the act.
Birdie looks up at me, cocks her head, and asks, “What very important caper do we gotta pull off first, Tessie?”
This is not the time or place for this kind of sentimental sloppiness, but I can’t help myself. She is just so darn cute that I give her an Eskimo kiss before I narrow my eyes at the house next door and tell her, “We gotta sneak past the old fart first.”
7
LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS
After sitting Birdie down on our back porch steps and giving her strict instructions to stay put until she hears my coast-is-clear signal, I got busy doing reconnaissance from behind a tree in front of Gert Klement’s house.
I’m peeking around the trunk to make sure that everybody who is out and about on the block is so busy paying attention to something else that they won’t notice me and report back to Gert that they saw me on the morning in question. So far . . . so good. A group of around twenty kids are playing a rough game of Red Rover in the middle of Keefe Ave. Looking like death warmed over, Mrs. Stewart is barely pushing her tenth colicky baby in a ratty-looking carriage on the opposite end of the block. And four houses down, Louise’s opponent in the Pagan Baby Society election is working up a storm.