Is it even humanly possible that not one of our neighbors called the Washington St. station house to report what they heard and saw in the cemetery last night? Am I really the only one who knows about the crime that was perpetrated? Well, while I would just love to believe that, I learned my lesson. I can’t screw up again, not the way I did when I assumed it was half-in-the-bag Mr. Howard Howard ranting over there in the wee hours. So I remind myself again how Modern Detection warns gumshoes to look at all the different answers to problems that pop up during the course of an investigation, not just the ones they go crazy for right off the bat. “An investigator must remain skeptical of easy solutions,” Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst nightmare” Bellflower, the writer of the detecting book whose words I take very much to heart, warns in Chapter Four.
So from here on out, I, Theresa Marie “Tessie” Finley, hereby do swear that when something mysterious happens during the course of this investigation, I will examine all possibilities before I draw any conclusions and I will not let my emotions get in the way of doing my job again, either. I will ask myself the tough questions in a very coldhearted way, the ones I’d ask Daddy if he was here, or the ones I ask my Magic 8 Ball because he isn’t.
Q. Am I not seeing the police looking for footprints or searching for a body with a knife sticking out of its neck because there wasn’t a murder in the cemetery last night after all?
A. Reply hazy try again later.
Q. Could it be possible that I want to solve a crime that’d give Birdie and me a big reward or a bushel of blackmailing bucks so much that I let my imagination run away with me?
A. Cannot predict now.
Q. Could I have accidentally drifted off last night and dreamt the murder up?
A. Ask again later.
I’m so wrapped up in giving myself the third degree that I jump about a foot when Birdie taps my shoulder and asks me with a chocolaty grin, “Whatcha doin’, Tessie?”
A. Better not tell you now.
“I’m . . . I’m lookin’ around for that great-good-luck something I wanted to show ya,” I say, before I go back to bobble-heading over the porch railing, only this time in a much more desperate way.
But no matter how hard I stare at the cemetery in every direction, all I can see and hear is cemetery caretaker, grave digger, and Birdie’s and my good friend, Mr. McGinty, shouting something about funeral flowers at the hard-of-hearing widow of Mr. Peterman, whose heart attacked him a few days ago in aisle four of Melman’s Hardware when he was testing out a new toilet plunger. When the now ex-foreman over at the Feelin’ Good Cookie factory tried to pull the stuck plunger off the store’s floor, that’s when his ticker punched its time card. (No joke.)
“What kind of great-good-luck thing are you lookin’ around for?” my sister leans in close and asks me. “A four-leaf clover?”
“Nope.”
“A rabbit’s foot?”
“Uh-uh.”
“A—?”
“Corpse! Now zip it. I gotta concentrate.”
“A corpse? Oh, no.” Birdie puts her arm around my waist with a real forlorn look on her face. “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this bad news,” she says like she’s Nurse Barton getting ready to explain to a patient that they got a deadly disease. “Your good timing is very off this morning, Tessie.” She reaches into my pocket and slides Daddy’s watch out so fast that I don’t barely feel her, because she has real potential as a pickpocket on account of her hands not being much bigger than the ones on the watch she’s holding up. “I think it’s around seven o’clock and Mister McGinty told us yesterday when he was digging Mister Peterman’s grave that he’s not gonna get buried until twelve o’clock today.” She taps the face of the Timex. “That’s when the hands are both straight up and they’re not.”
See who I’m working with here?
She can remember our mother’s #1 Commandment, how important good timing is, and she can recall when the heart-attacked foreman of the Feelin’ Good factory is getting buried today, but she can’t keep in her memory any of the really important stuff, which is just about everything I need her to.
“A course I didn’t forget that Mister Peterman is getting buried at noon today,” I say crossly, because honestly, as much as I love the skin she’s in, she can get on my nerves. “I’m not looking for his old corpse. I’m looking for a really fresh one.”
“A really fresh what?”
Showing and not telling her what I heard and saw last night in the cemetery isn’t working out, so I point at Holy Cross and come clean. “I’m ninety-five percent positive a murder got committed over there last night!” When Birdie’s slightly bulging eyes go even bulgier, I go ahead and tell her the whole story, wrapping up with, “I couldn’t see him real good because it was so dark and those streetlights are always flickering in that part of the cemetery, but I could tell that our suspect was tall and skinny before he disappeared behind the Gilgood mausoleum with a limp body in his arms, which is why it definitely couldn’t have been Mister Howard Howard. He’s built like a fire hydrant and he really likes—”
“Dinah’s jelly donuts and three sugars in his Jim,” Birdie nods and says, very knowingly.
“You mean three sugars in his joe.”
“Roger that.”
“That’s why I wanted you to climb the cemetery fence this morning with me.” I am feeling as deflated as my bike tire went when I rode over that broken glass last week behind Lonnigan’s. (I know I gave it up, but I just couldn’t help myself from wanting to stare at the back door of the bar one more time and wish Daddy would walk out of it.) “I wanted to show you that murder,” I tell my sister.