FACT: That tall, thin man definitely wasn’t Mr. Howard Howard.
PROOF: Due to my weekly surveillance of his Precious Gems and Jewelry store on North Ave. that I might have to heist someday if things go from bad to worse around here, I’ve watched the stumpy owner lock up his shop and waddle next door to Dinah’s Diner dozens of times to stuff his mouth with jelly donuts and wash them down with a cup of joe with three sugars.
So there I was, all set to sleuth after that mystery man and the no-longer-screaming gal he was lugging around, when my wiggle over the windowsill was stopped in its tracks by even more suspicious noises ripping out of the black, velvety night. Not more shouting or another screech coming out of the cemetery. These sounds hit even closer to home and were even more blood-curdling. Elvis Presley was warbling about a hound dog out of a car radio, and then the hot rod that belongs to our mother’s new boyfriend laid squealing rubber down Keefe Ave.
12:21 a.m. I barely had enough time to scramble back into bed and yank the sheet up to my chin before our mother, Louise Mary Fitzgerald Finley, came through the front door of our two-story wooden house that looks about the same as most of the other two-story wooden houses that beam out in blocks from St. Catherine’s Church and School like rays on a holy card.
After Louise turned on the bathroom light so she could swipe off her makeup with Noxzema cream and tinkle out the beer she wet her whistle with at Lonnigan’s Bar, she kicked her red high heels off in front of the Finley sisters’ bedroom door. All she probably wanted to do was hit the hay after her big fat date, but she had to make sure that Birdie and me weren’t sneaking around the neighborhood the way we do any time we get the chance, because she’s got something she wants really bad and she’s worried our “shenanigans” might screw it up for her. (For a gal who blew out twenty-nine candles on her last birthday cake, our mother is such a sucker. She’s fallen for the old stuff-pillows-under-your-sheet prison trick at least six times. In the last month.)
Of course, I kept my eyes shut when she came to the side of our bed, but I knew she was looking down at Birdie and me. I could smell the beer and peanuts wafting off her, the same way they did when Daddy would come home from working his late-night shift at Lonnigan’s. Only he wouldn’t stand next to our bed and sigh. “Good Time Eddie” Finley would belly flop onto the mattress between my sister and me, gather us in his strong arms, and belt out his favorite song. But instead of him sticking to the real words, “We belong to a mutual admiration society, my baby and me,” Daddy would wail, “We belong to a mutual admiration society, my babies and me.”
But there were other nights when the smartest and sweetest, handsomest and funniest man in the whole neighborhood wouldn’t sing. He’d lean his ladder against the side of our house, crawl through his “babies’” bedroom window with a black nylon stocking pulled over his face and a five and dime gun in his hand. “This is a stickup! Give me all your hugs,” he’d growl like a bank robber, only a lot slurrier. When Birdie and me would yank the covers over our heads and pretend to scream if we were waiting for him, or really scream if we weren’t, Daddy would slap his knees and say, “Ha . . . ha . . . ha! Gotcha!” because he adored jokes of all kinds, but he got the biggest charge out of the ones that practically scared the poop out of a person.
But as soon as our mother got done pressing her salty lips against Birdie’s and my foreheads a little bit ago and clicked the door shut behind her, I rolled over and wrapped my sweet-smelling sleeping sister in my arms and popped the top offa my biggest grin. Sure, the worst party pooper on the planet might’ve wrecked my investigating what went on in the cemetery as fast as I would’ve liked to, but when the sun came peeking through the cracks in our bedroom window shade, believe you me, the Finley sisters would have the last laugh. All the way to the bank.
I’m not so good at arithmetic, but one guy yelling + one gal screeching + the both of them disappearing behind the Gilgood mausoleum in the middle of the night? Any idiot could see that added up to one thing and one thing only.
The Mutual Admiration Society had a bloody murder case on our hands!
2
COME HELL OR HIGH WATER
“Good Time Eddie” Finley’s last words to me were, “What a great day to be alive and out on the water with one of my favorite girls.”
DADDY’S REMAINS
Birdie.
Jokes.
A hankie.
The Swiss Army Knife.
His Timex watch.
A brown belt.
Famous words of wisdom.