I think that might’ve been a nasty crack about the plate Mr. McGinty got in his head after he stepped on a land mine in the war, but it was also a huge Louise lie. We aren’t doing that great in the food department around here, so her plate and Birdie’s and mine are never full. She probably just didn’t want to admit the real reason she wouldn’t go on a date with Mr. McGinty is because he’s Scottish.
We got so many different kinds of people in the neighborhood who came to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Braves from their old countries. The Hungarians are big eaters, of course, their name gives that away. Germans drink their beer out of steins and love bratwurst. The Polacks brought their hilarious jokes and the “horizontal polka” along with them on the boat. Micks have the worst tempers, can drink anybody under the table, and love blarney. 100% English people, like Gammy and Boppa, Daddy, and my Charlie, drink tea with stiff upper lips. The wops think they’re the best thing since sliced garlic bread, because all of us are Roman Catholics and Rome is the city where the headquarters of the church is located. And Gracie Carver, who I can’t wait to get back from Mississippi, is the only Negro we know, and she doesn’t actually live around here. For some unknown reason, that’s not allowed, she has to stay with “her own kind,” which is such a pity, because if other colored people are as wonderful as Gracie that would make the neighborhood a lot more fun. She takes the #1 bus up North Ave. five mornings a week from a town called The Core with her best friend, Ethel, who is a helper to an old lady near Mother of Good Hope Church. Gracie is also not a Catholic who likes hymns, she is a Baptist who likes the music of Billie Holiday, keeping the church really clean, and like me, she likes poetry, but not by Dr. Seuss. (That Grinch book of his just slayed me.) Gracie likes some guy name of Langston Hughes, who I told her I will check out some day at the library when I get the chance. She also thinks The Mutual Admiration Society are the only ones around here who got any “snap” to ’em, but she gets a charge out of Kitten Jablonski, too. (Even though Gracie’s not here right now, I mention her because she’s such a good friend of ours that for a long time I was planning on Birdie and me running away to live with her, before she put the kibosh on that idea. “You’d get found right quick, Sugar. You and your sister’d stick out in my neighborhood like two marshmallows in a cup of hot cocoa,” she said with one of her Southern laughs that I really love the sound of, it’s very relaxing.)
And then we got the people like Mr. McGinty. The ones who play bagpipes at funerals, eat something called haggis, which they tell everybody is a “delicacy” on potluck night up at the church, so the Scots must also be known for being born without taste buds besides being famous for holding their purse strings very tight. Louise could probably overlook the awful music and their horrible taste in food—takes one to know one—but she could never ever put up with a skinflint. Getting a pile of money is #1 on our mother’s TO-DO list.
FACT: The relief that flooded through me when I first saw our Scottish friend come out of Phantom Woods instead of an unknown raving murderer has suddenly dwindled to a dribble.
PROOF: This is a very terrible thought that I feel very terrible about having, but I’m 95% positive that the medal Birdie found in the leaf pile belongs to Mr. McGinty, which means he was at the scene of the crime and could be the guilty murderer.
And when he wildly waves his glinting-in-the-sun sharp gardening shears and shouts at us, “Where ya been, girls? I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” my tummy must be thinking the same thing because it goes as hard as an arithmetic problem that doesn’t add up.
It’s awfully far-fetched to think he could be a killer, but . . . what if he is, and he’s rushing toward the Finley sisters not to shoot the breeze with us, but for some other very scary reason?
Q. Was he really surprised when he came out of the woods and spotted Birdie and me behind the mausoleum? Or was he just pretending to be surprised? Did he figure we’d show up here this morning because he saw me watching him at 12:07 a.m. out our bedroom window lugging around a victim that he was “emotionally involved” with, the nun who gifted him the expensive gold St. Christopher medal? And isn’t it mighty strange that during the millions of talks we’ve had over the years that he never said one word about how him and the principal of St. Kate’s were so palsy-walsy, especially since I complained about her so much?
A. Ask again later.
As far back as I can remember, Mr. McGinty has never been nothin’ but nice and thoughtful to Birdie and me, but in my experience, people and things can change for the worst, mostly when you least expect it. So, it’s always better to be waiting for the other shoe to drop than to get caught off balance, because take it from me, something like that can just about kill you.