“I think so.” I sigh stronger than Louise does when she stares at me like I’m a lost cause, and for once I’d have to agree with her. “But I thought when Kitten first mentioned that a note was found that it was a ransom note and when she told me it wasn’t, I got so disappointed that I accidentally questioned her information and she . . . she . . .” When my lips begin to tremble, Charlie, who keeps close track of the who, what, where, when, and why goings-on in the neighborhood, picks up my hand, looks at my red wrist, cringes, and says, “She gave you this hideous Indian burn.” He closes his eyes the way he does when he’s feeling very sad or when he’s trying to recall one of his statistics. “I know that hurts like the dickens, but look at it this way. Ya got off lucky ’cause she likes you and Birdie so much. If any other kid questioned her information in front of the other greasers like you did, she’d . . . she’d . . .” He opens his beautiful green eyes, sees the look on my face, and gulps. “Kitten dared you,” he says with a groan, but Birdie doesn’t. Not because she doesn’t understand the hot water I’m in, but because she doesn’t understand anything at this point in the game. My little dreamboat has hauled anchor and sailed off to parts unknown. She’s rocking back and forth in the pew next to me, grinning up at St. Francis like the two of them are taking a stroll on the deck of a luxury cruise liner on the high seas.
After I tell Charlie what Kitten dared me to do, he says, “Oh, Tessie, The M . . . m . . . m . . .” He hates it when he nervous stutters, so he looks up to his favorite saint for a little help and his prayer is answered. “The Mutual Admiration Society will find out what happened to Sister Margaret Mary, we will.” He picks up my hand and blows on my wrist to cool it down. “I know how much you were countin’ on solving this case, but you gotta remember the encouraging words from the first chapter of Modern Detection. ‘Don’t give up. If the investigation you’re working on isn’t fruitful, try shakin’ another suspicious tree.’”
I know that Charlie’s trying to cheer me up by reminding me that I have the two people I love most in the world to lean on over the next three days and that we have so many bad apples in this neighborhood that we’ll have no problem finding another case to solve, but after striking out all morning, I’m feeling more like gum stuck on the bottom of a shoe than a gumshoe.
“I wish you the best of luck,” I tell Charlie. “I’m throwing in the detecting towel.”
“Aw, c’mon, Tessie,” Charlie says. “Don’t be that way. You know that—”
1:24 p.m. “We gotta go,” I say before he can tell me to keep my sunny side up. I love him very much, but this is one of the things we do not have in common. How can he be so cheerfully sad all the time? It’s like being hungrily full or . . . or smartly dumb, which, well, I guess I am the perfect example of. “Louise wants us to clean up the house, and then I gotta get busy workin’ on the dare.”
When the three of us pass the pew Jenny Radtke is still sitting in, she’s brushing her perfect little blond pageboy when she laughs and says, “The same way you’ve failed to beat me in the spelling bees, you’ll fail to complete Kitten’s dare, and then ya know what’s gonna happen, ya loser? You’ll be an even bigger laughingstock, which is going to wreck your mother’s chances of becoming the new treasurer of the Pagan Baby Society.”
I lunge at her and snarl, “Sit on a screwdriver and rotate, ya stupid little squealer,” which wasn’t half as much fun as something else I had in mind, before levelheaded Charlie planted himself between her and me so I couldn’t commit spelling-medal strangulation.
“Hey,” he whispers to my back as I tug my still-drifting sister down the main aisle of St. Kate’s feeling lower than low, bluer even than one of Gracie Carver’s Billie Holiday songs she likes to listen to when she cleans the church. “I’m going to stay and light some candles for my ma, but after ya get your chores done, we should go over to the convent and talk to Linda O’Brien. She got sentenced to work in the kitchen this week for telling her mother that she wouldn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground, so she’s probably the snitch who told Kitten about Sister Margaret Mary’s note that Sister Prudence found. You could bribe Linda to tell you where Sister is with the rest of our treasury money.”
That’s very sweet of Charlie, but very dopey. First off, we only have three dollars left after I paid Kitten for information, and second off, Linda O’Brien wouldn’t tell us where our principal went even if she knows. She’d never risk that, not for all the money in the world. Believe me, nobody wants to double-cross Kitten. (There are stories floating around the neighborhood about kids who have that are too gruesome to repeat in mixed company.)
When we reach the church doors, gentlemanly Charlie opens them for Birdie and me, and I guess I must look pretty pathetic, because he finally does the something that I have been wanting and waiting for him to do for the longest time. He uses his mouth for something other than talking!
And then, I don’t know what the hell happened, because I’m not kidding, the sweet peck on my cheek from his lips that are so much softer than I ever imagined drove any bad thoughts I was having out of my brain faster than St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.
I feel lighter than air! I’m floating down the steps of St. Kate’s on cloud nine! I forget that I am a detective who was so positive that she had a kidnapping and murder case on her hands but was 100% wrong. I forget that I shook on a dare that could make my life, my sister’s, and my mother’s take a terrible turn for the worst. I even forget to miss Daddy.
It’s my little dreamboat Birdie who brings me back to earth, for a change, after we make the turn onto our block and she docks herself in front of the Tates’ house.
Birdie points and says, “Uh-oh.”
She’s talking about the new, huge sign our mother’s opponent has sticking out of her front lawn. It’s almost as big as the WORKS OF ART billboard her brother and my friend, “The Leonardo da Vinci of Undertaking,” has on top of the old Goodyear tire store on North Ave.
TWO-FOUR-SIX-EIGHT!
WHO’S NEVER MISSED A PAGAN BABY MEETING?
NANCY TATE!