there is. That’s takin’ advantage of them when they’re already down.”
“How’s it goin’ with Father Mickey?” I ask Troo. Since it’s Tuesday, she had her religious instruction tonight. She never complains about having to go up there right after supper, so I thought she might be ditching the meetings. That’s why I secretly followed her last week. Other than stopping to throw an egg at the Heckes’ front window, she went straight to the rectory. I was impressed. It’s not like her to be so obedient. She must want to go back to Mother of Good Hope School in September as much as I want her to, which really does my heart good. “Does he make you study the same borin’ catechism we learn in school or do you talk about more interestin’ stuff?”
Troo smiles like our old barn cat would when he was lapping up a puddle of spilled cream. “He… ah… more interestin’ stuff,” she says, lighting a match to use on her cigarette, but blowing it out when Mother comes slamming outta the back door.
“Maybe I should start breakin’ into people’s houses,” Mother rants. “It’s the only way I’m going to get to spend any time with you.” And then she goes on a rip about how long it’s taking to get permission from the Pope so they can get married and how she can’t wait forever and how she wants Dave to buy her things. Not later. Now! These fights are like listening to the Moriaritys’ dog barking over and over. “When are you going to get me my own car?” Mother wants to drive downtown to the museum and buy her clothes at Chapman’s, not Gimbels. She wants to “Soak up some culture and look good doing it.” And especially she wants to get away from the neighborhood “riffraff.” Everybody is talking behind her back about how she’s living in sin. Even though she’ll tell you she couldn’t care less what people say about her, she does.
Dave is trying to calm her down in his always-cool Danish way. “I know I haven’t been around much lately, Lennie, but I think… that might change soon.”
She doesn’t tonight because we’re being secretive, but Troo usually laughs when she hears him call her that. Lennie was Mother’s nickname when they were the prom king and queen. (When Mother showed us the pictures of them on their matching thrones in the high school gym, Troo whispered to me, “Just like I thought. She’s
“We got a break in the case,” Dave tells Mother, but he doesn’t sound happy like the television detectives do when that happens to them and I wonder why.
Mother answers snippy, “Oh, really,” because even though this is great news, once she gets this worked up she can’t just shrug it off. Her mad clings to her worse than a slip when it comes outta our new dryer.
Their voices have gotten closer-sounding, so I know they moved over to the shiny new bench.
Dave says, “We found footprints under the bushes at the Holzhauers’ place and they don’t belong to either Bill or Heidi.”
“Can you… will you be able to tell who’s stealing… how does that work?” Mother doesn’t know anything about detecting. She doesn’t like to talk to Dave about his work the way I do and her favorite show on television isn’t
“No. Not until we catch a suspect to compare them to,” Dave answers.
“So what did you mean about getting a break in the case?” Mother asks.
“I meant that we’ve narrowed the suspect pool down. I think… we think… we’re pretty sure a kid is doing the burglaries.”
My throat goes skinny and Troo starts licking her lips.
Mother says, “A kid?” All the hope that she was feeling about getting to spend more time with Dave is replaced by a sore-loser laugh. “Who came up with
She’s not thrilled that Detective Riordan has been romancing her best friend, Mrs. “Aunt Betty” Callahan. Detective Riordan has the reputation as a love-’em-and-leave-’em type. I would have to agree with Mother on this. I’d say I don’t like Detective Riordan about the same as I don’t like Father Mickey and it’s not just because he is such a Romeo. Detective Riordan splashes on too much of a cologne called English Leather and once when I caught him staring at Nell’s bosoms, his eyes looked like two sewer-hole covers and oh, I don’t know. Maybe Ethel is right. Maybe I do have a problem with men in uniforms. But if that was true, then I woulda immediately started liking Dave’s partner a lot more when he became a regular-clothes detective and I still think he stinks.
Mother asks, “What would a kid do with the paintings and silver and… that doesn’t make sense. Joe Riordan wants that sergeant’s job. He’s trying to make you look bad.” I notice that Mother doesn’t doubt for a second that kids would do something so terrible. She just can’t figure out what we’d do with the loot. “Did it ever cross your mind that the burglar could be a small-footed man? It… it could be Paulie.”
That’s not nice to think your own brother could be guilty of burglary, but they have never gotten along. Even before his brain got damaged, she never liked him, but other than that, she’s right. My uncle’s feet are not much bigger than mine and Granny did mention during the SOS supper that he’s been keeping odd hours.
Troo mouths to me in a very exaggerated way at the
Mother can’t stand Mr. Charles, who is the Tick Tock Club’s manager. He fired her when she worked there as a singing hostess before she met Daddy. She blames everything on him.
“Harvey’s got those teeny feet to match his teeny mind and… and something else that is probably very teeny, too.”
“Len…” Dave sounds like he’s working hard not to smile, which is smart of him. Mother might tell him to wipe that smirk off his face or she’ll wipe it off for him. “A small-footed adult is a good theory, but Paulie’s much too damaged to pull off something like this. And as far as Harvey goes… have you ever seen him wearing a pair of Converse?”
Of course she hasn’t. Only kids wear those. I don’t have any, but Troo’s got some white ones and… and sweet baby Jesus in heaven, that’s the only kind of shoes Mary Lane wears! It’ll be just a matter of time now before the cops figure out that it’s one of our best friends who is breaking into those houses. I gotta tell Mary Lane to stop being a cat burglar immediately, before Dave and the other cops start going door-to-door asking to look at kids’ shoes like… like some kinda crime-busting Prince Charmings.
“I have to go. They’re waiting for me. I’m sorry,” Dave says to Mother. “I tell you what… how about this weekend we look at a car? Flip Johnson’s got his red Studebaker for sale and it’s a beaut.”
When I can’t hear their voices anymore, I peek through the green beans. I thought Mother mighta coldcocked Dave because I know she really wants a Pontiac, but they’re kissing. When they finally come apart, he puts his arm around her small waist and they go back into the house, so for now they have come to a meeting of Mother’s mind.
I should turn Mary Lane in to Dave right this minute. If I do that, Mother will stop acting like a fire-breathing dragon toward him because he won’t have to spend all his nights looking for the cat burglar instead of massaging her feet, and next to keeping Troo safe, I want more than anything to see in their eyes that melting look of love. But how can I hand my other best friend to him on a platter?
What I need is some good advice and nobody is better at giving it than the smartest woman I know, Ethel Jenkins. She is out on her screened-in porch next door soaking her “dogs” in the white pan. I know that she’s off duty because I’m not hearing the bouncy rhythm-and-blues music Ethel listens to when she’s tending to Mrs. Galecki. After she’s done for the day, after the sun goes down, my good friend listens to broken-heart songs that have the sweetest, saddest sounding horn called a saxophone in them and sometimes a singer named Billie Holiday.
But if I’m going to hop over there, I need to be quick about it. The sky is getting noisier than Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl on a Saturday night. Not right above us, but it’s coming our way.
My sister blows a smoke ring at me. “Doesn’t seem like things are goin’ so swell for Helen and Dave. If she gets worked up enough, she might even call off the weddin’. Gee, that’d be too bad,” she says, not meaning it.
Troo hasn’t thought this out. It really would be too bad. Mother doesn’t have any money of her own. What would we do? We couldn’t go live with Granny. There’s not enough room in her little bungalow house. Her bigness and Uncle Paulie’s weirdness take up a lotta space. Mother would have to get a job at the cookie factory to put a roof over our heads the way Aunt Betty had to.
From over the fence, Ethel’s voice comes pouring thick and sweet. “That you O’Malley sisters ponderin’ the
