We should be home free now because after she gets some of the oozing cherries into her, I’ll honor my sister-promise to go see Daddy, and then the Finley sisters will climb the cemetery fence and make our way to Charlie’s house, which is where I’m pretty sure he’ll be whittling away on his back porch and full of questions. During our meeting, I’ll spill the beans about THE CASE OF THE MISSING NUN WHO WAS KIDNAPPED AND MURDERED BY MR. MCGINTY. The Finley sisters might be in way over our heads, but Charlie will know what to do, I know he will. He’s a very level-headed fiancé.
When I finally catch up to Birdie after her record-breaking race down the hill, she’s not lounging around Mr. Lindley’s grave stuffing her face. She somehow managed to snag the heart-shaped box of Stover chocolates that were sitting on top of it—thank you, Mrs. Melman—and flew straight over to the nearby marker that is our most favorite in the cemetery to stuff her face:
EDWARD ALFRED FINLEY
REST IN PEACE
SEPTEMBER 2, 1931–AUGUST 1, 1959
I wasn’t BE PREPARED.
Usually, I feel like I’m coming home when I catch sight of his gorgeous, speckled, polished gravestone, but this morning, seeing it is sucking every ounce of strength out of me. Between dealing with Louise and Gert, and Birdie’s wild-streaking ways, her everyday weirdness, and her new old-timey-ness, and . . . and wearing Daddy’s big shoes, and not seeing Charlie, and worrying about how Mr. McGinty is looking so guilty of kidnapping and murdering Sister Margaret Mary that he’s probably going to get the electric chair, I am knocked down to the grass next to Daddy’s pretend grave for the count.
Of course, there’s always the chance that Birdie didn’t really see what she thought she did, which isn’t far-fetched, no matter how positively old-timey she sounded up on the hill. Trusting her without grilling her further, well, that’d be dumb. And it just so happens that Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst nightmare” Bellflower agrees with me. “When considering evidence or information gathered during the course of an investigation,” he wrote in Chapter Five of Modern Detection, “it is absolutely crucial that you weigh the dependability of your sources.”
Now, I love my little featherweight to death and back and all the stops in between, but “dependability” is not one of her best qualities.
“Bird?” I say to my partner in crime, who is pressing her cheek against Daddy’s tombstone—that’s the closest she can get to him, so she really is in hog Heaven.
“Yes, Tessie?” she says with cherry juice dribbling down her chin.
“Ya remember how you told me a little while ago that you were absolutely positive that Mister McGinty didn’t have his Saint Christopher medal around his neck when we were behind the mausoleum with him?”
I’m praying that fact has slipped her mind forever, that she’s about to say something like What are you talking about, Tessie? but God must be out to lunch or something, because Birdie shoves another chocolate in her mouth and nods four times with a lot of enthusiasm, poor thing.
All she knows is that she found a clue in a leaf pile and that Mr. McGinty’s medal was not around his neck. That’s the 1 + 1, but she’s not smart enough to come up with what that equals. She doesn’t understand how guilty that makes him. We figured out this case and I’m not so bigheaded to think that eventually the police won’t. When they question everyone in the neighborhood about the disappearance of Sister Margaret Mary, Gert Klement will step up to point her finger at me. Tell the police what a banshee I am and how I don’t have a conscience and that everyone in the parish knows how much I hate our principal for holding Birdie back in school. Of course, I wouldn’t tell the coppers a thing when they dragged me down to the station house and gave me the third degree, because I do hate Sister M & M and I’m very willing to let bygones be bygones when it comes to Mr. McGinty murdering her. But my sweet-hearted, overly friendly sister? Even if I reminded her four thousand times to keep her mouth shut, she’ll forget. She’ll tell the police whatever she remembers about me hearing the yelling in the cemetery the night Sister Margaret Mary disappeared and about how she found Mr. McGinty’s medal behind the mausoleum, and before we know it, the cops will come to pick up our godfather in a paddy wagon and tell him, All aboard for the gas chamber.
I tell Birdie, “I’m really sorry to have to break this bad news to you, honey.” I have to prepare her. She is going to take this very, very, very, very hard, but the sooner I get it out of the way the better. “But . . . well . . . it looks like Mister McGinty is guilty of kidnapping and murdering Sister Margaret Mary.”