So I guess now, on top of my already long list of sins, I can go ahead and add grave robbing. Covering up evidence, too. Because when I placed the white flowers I stole from Mr. Williams on top of Daddy’s pretend grave, I spotted something buried deep in the grass next to one of the hawk feathers that Birdie finds and brings to him because she can’t leave them anymore in his pants pockets. It was an L&M butt. That’s the kind Louise Mary Fitzgerald Finley smokes, because those are her first two initials. Charlie, who keeps track of these sorts of things, told me that L&Ms are the most popular brand around here, but this coffin nail belongs to our mother. I recognize her Revlon red lip prints on the filter, I’ve seen them a million times. Louise misses Daddy, too? Enough to visit him? That’s just too hard to believe on a morning when everything has been just too hard to believe. And if she does stop by here, I’m sure it’s not to honor her wonderful husband or pay her respects. She probably just comes to tap one of her cigarettes over his pretend grave and say, “Ashes to ashes.”
I know I should tell my partner in crime what I found, but because Birdie won’t reach the same conclusion I have, I bury it deeper in the grass. If I showed that evidence to her, ya know what she’d do? She’d take it as proof that Louise is not as crummy of a mother as I tell her she is and that would be disastrous. If we have to run away, the tighter she’s tied to our mother’s apron strings, the harder it will be for me to convince her to take off for California.
This is all my fault.
If only I’d minded my own beeswax, our friend wouldn’t be in this hot water. I’m so very sorry, Daddy, but when I started this investigation, how was I supposed to know that Jimmy “Good Egg” McGinty might turn out to be guilty and that your kid, the one who I’m supposed to be giving tender loving care to, might wind up being the key witness for the persecution, who would make sure that your best man paid the price for his crimes?
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
I’m assuming again!
The only thing really written in stone around here are birthdays, deathdays, and heavenly hopes. And while it is looking very bad for Mr. McGinty, Modern Detection warns all the time in the same chapter that warns all the time about assuming, “If an investigator jumps to a final conclusion without clearly establishing means, motive, and opportunity, their entire case could be in jeopardy.”
FACT: We got the medal evidence, but Birdie and me only got two of the three main ingredients that a gumshoe is supposed to have before they hand a suspect over to the cops on a silver platter!
PROOF: Mr. McGinty’s means are his strong arms, and he had the opportunity, because he hardly ever leaves his post at Holy Cross at night, except to play bingo every Saturday and to eat his supper at Fish Fry Friday, and today is Thursday. But what would his motive be? Like my sister would say, Why . . . why . . . why . . . why? would he do our principal in?
This is very unprofessional conduct for the president of a detecting and blackmailing business to admit to, but ya know what? I honestly don’t give a crud what evidence Birdie and me have found out about Mr. McGinty so far, and my tummy, for once, agrees with me. Modern Detection does, too. “Perhaps the most vital of all the TOOLS OF THE TRADE an investigator possesses is his gut instinct.” Until we discover the why of the crime, Mr. McGinty is only around 66% guilty, so that’s at least a little ray of hope at the end of the tunnel. If we keep our noses to the grindstone, The Mutual Admiration Society could find another person who we don’t like so much that we could blackmail for $$$$ or earn a big reward for when we turn him in to the cops for kidnap and murder.
Q. Could we still get one of those and-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after endings to this case, instead of one of those really Grimm ones?
A. Without a doubt.
14
A TURN FOR THE WORST
Well, like a famous guy named Johnny whose hobby it was to roam around America planting fruit trees might say, How do ya like them apples? (Joke!)