Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Disgusting Sneakers (3 page)

“I fear this poor girl is past medical help,” Bugs sighed. “Find her a warm and comfortable cell.”

Officer Friedman frowned. “I don’t know who’s telling the truth. We’ll have to straighten everything out at headquarters.”

All at once Sally looked worried. “Encyclopedia, say something. Don’t let Bugs get away with this!”

“He won’t,” Encyclopedia assured her.

WHY NOT?

(Turn to
this page
for the solution to The Case of the Broken Vase.)

C
hief Brown hung up the kitchen telephone.

“I’ve got to leave,” he said. “It seems we have another case with a message in code. This time it’s a kidnapping.”

“Why don’t you take Leroy along?” Mrs. Brown suggested. “He’s so good at codes.”

Encyclopedia stopped scraping the dinner plates. He held his breath until his father smiled.

“Let’s go, Leroy,” Chief Brown said.

Encyclopedia let out a whoop. Being with
his father on a real police case was the thrill of thrills.

He whipped through the last two dishes and was seated in the patrol car before his father even got behind the wheel.

As they drove, Chief Brown told Encyclopedia what little he knew about the case.

“A man named Harry Dunn was kidnapped this morning,” he said. “About an hour ago, the kidnappers telephoned his sister, Mrs. Allen. They demanded half a million dollars in ransom.”

“What about the coded message, Dad?”

“We’ll know more when we see it.”

As they pulled up to Harry Dunn’s big house, Officer Kent greeted them at the curb.

He said, “Harry Dunn’s sister, Mrs. Allen, is in the living room. Also a neighbor, Mr. Tradd. He may have seen Harry Dunn being kidnapped.”

Mrs. Allen was a pale, middle-aged woman. Her eyes were red from crying. Chief Brown questioned her first.

“I received a telephone call late this afternoon from a man with a deep voice,” she
said, sobbing. “He said my brother had been kidnapped and the ransom was half a million dollars. I’d be told where to leave the money later.”

“You called the police right away?” asked Chief Brown.

“No, first I called Harry,” Mrs. Allen said. “There was no answer. So I drove here and let myself in—I have a key. The house was empty. That’s when I called the police.”

Chief Brown turned to the neighbor, Mr. Tradd. “What can you tell us, sir?”

“About ten o’clock this morning, I borrowed some garden tools from Harry,” Mr. Tradd said. “He didn’t answer the doorbell when I returned the tools at noon. The garage door was open, so I left the tools on his workbench.”

“Which house is yours?” Chief Brown inquired.

“The one right across the street,” Mr. Tradd replied. “I was planting in the front yard. So I saw everyone who came to Harry’s front door.”

“The back door was locked from the inside,” Mrs. Allen put in. “Whoever kidnapped
Harry used the front door.”

“Did you see anyone at the front door?” Chief Brown asked Mr. Tradd.

“While I was planting, three delivery vans drove up, about fifteen or twenty minutes apart. But each of them blocked my view of the front door,” Mr. Tradd said.

“So Mr. Dunn could have been taken out the door and placed in one of the vans,” Chief Brown said, “without your seeing him.”

“That’s possible,” Mr. Tradd agreed.

Chief Brown took out his pocket notebook. “Can you describe the three vans?”

“Each van had its company’s name painted on the side—Bill’s Fish Market, ABC TV Repair, and Sun Drug Store.”

“Was that the order in which they parked at Mr. Dunn’s front door?” Chief Brown asked.

“I just don’t remember,” Mr. Tradd answered. “I really didn’t think the vans were important. I didn’t know about the kidnapping.”

Officer Kent said, “I checked the companies. All the deliveries were scheduled.”

He handed Chief Brown a small sheet of paper.

“This is the note I found on a pad by the telephone in the family room,” he said.

Chief Brown studied the note. He gave up and passed it to Encyclopedia.

“What do you make of it, Leroy?”

The boy detective read:

Chief Brown showed the note to Mrs. Allen. “Is this your brother’s handwriting?”

Mrs. Allen put on her eyeglasses. “Yes … it looks like his.”

“Did your brother like to write coded messages?” Chief Brown said.

“As a boy he did,” Mrs. Allen answered. “He still enjoys word puzzles.” She dried her eyes. “I kept telling him not to live in this big house all alone!”

Encyclopedia was thinking hard. He had closed his eyes. He opened them and asked his one question.

“Is Crabcake Mr. Dunn’s nickname?”

“I never heard him called that,” Mrs. Allen replied. She blew her nose.

“It’s the newspaper’s fault,” she said bitterly. “It printed our pictures when Harry and I each inherited a million dollars last month. That gave somebody ideas!”

She began to weep again.

Chief Brown took Encyclopedia aside.

“Maybe the vans and the crazy note have nothing to do with the kidnapping, Leroy,” he remarked.

“No, Dad,” said Encyclopedia. “The word
Crabcake
tells which van took Mr. Dunn away. The top four words give the key to the code.”

WHICH ONE?

(Turn to
this page
for the solution to The Case of the Three Vans.)

C
louds hid the sun Saturday morning. Nevertheless, Encyclopedia and his pal Tommy Barkdull decided to go ahead and rent a canoe.

They nearly changed their minds at Captain Pete’s.

The old sailor’s freshly painted canoes were neatly tied to the little dock by their front ends. They were not just in the water. They were partly under it.

Half an inch of rainwater lay in the bottoms.

“Sorry, you’ll get wet feet,” Captain Pete apologized. “I painted the canoes the other day. As I launched the last one, I twisted my ankle and had to go home. The canoes stayed out in the rain, but there’s not enough water in them to matter.”

“The water won’t bother us,” Tommy said.

Captain Pete rang up the rental fee and laid two paddles and two life jackets on the counter.

“You’ve been here before,” he said. “You know the rules.”

Tommy nodded. “Don’t run the canoe ashore unless the beach is soft, without rocks.”

“If we see lightning, come in fast,” Encyclopedia said.

Captain Pete grinned. “Enjoy yourselves.”

The boys chose canoe number six. Since they were both the same weight, it didn’t matter who sat in the back and steered.

“It’s your turn,” Tommy said. “I steered last time.”

Encyclopedia wasn’t about to protest. Being able to paddle and steer was more fun
than sitting in front and just paddling.

He sloshed through the rainwater in the bottom of the canoe and took his seat in the back. Tommy got in and cast off.

They stroked across the Idaville River and entered the tree-lined waterways of the state park.

After a while they came to the park ranger’s station. It stood on a rocky little island, a patch of solid ground surrounded by mangrove trees.

The door was wide open. The patrol boat that normally was tied to the dock in front was gone.

The boys were about to investigate when they saw black storm clouds moving toward them.

“Let’s make waves!” Tommy yelped.

They paddled back to Captain Pete’s as fast as they could.

Captain Pete was waiting for them.

He had the boys haul the canoe onto land. The previous night’s rainwater spilled out as they turned it over on its rack.

Carefully, Captain Pete examined the freshly painted pink-and-orange bottom.

“Not a scratch on her,” he muttered.

“What’s this all about?” Encyclopedia asked.

“Just making sure,” Captain Pete said. “Three fishing rods were stolen from the ranger’s station.”

Earlier in the morning, he explained, the ranger had overheard a boater’s distress call on the radio. He had dashed off in his powerboat. He must not have closed the door securely, and the wind blew it open.

As he pulled away, he glimpsed a pink-and-orange canoe approaching the station.

“It had to be one of my canoes,” Captain Pete said. “I purposely use colors no one else uses.”

“Who was in the canoe?” Tommy asked.

“The ranger didn’t notice,” Captain Pete replied. “He was too concerned with the distress call. When he came back to the station an hour later, the three fishing rods were missing.”

“Who else rented a canoe this morning?” asked Encyclopedia.

“The Baldwin sisters went out half an hour before you,” Captain Pete said. “And
the Smith twins left right after them.”

“Here they come,” said Tommy, motioning toward two pink-and-orange canoes on the river.

First to tie up were the Smith twins, Barry and Gary. They were powerful, one-hundred-sixty-pound high-school wrestlers.

The Baldwin sisters came in shortly afterward. Peggy, a small sixth-grader, sat in front. Nancy, a big eighth-grader, sat in back.

They tied the front of the canoe to the dock, as the twins had done.

The twins and the sisters claimed they knew nothing about the stolen fishing rods.

“We never even got out of our canoe,” Gary insisted.

“Nor did we,” Nancy said.

Their canoes had neither fishing rods on the inside nor scratches on the outside.

“Heck,” Tommy whispered. “Whoever stole the rods had time to hide them among the trees. Why did Captain Pete look for scratches?”

“He probably figured the thieves beached their canoe on the rocks behind the ranger’s
station, where there is less chance of being seen,” Encyclopedia said. “Scratches would tell which canoe it was.”

“They could have used the ranger’s dock,” Tommy pointed out. “Come to think of it, so could any boater. Maybe the fishing rods were stolen by someone else.”

“No,” Encyclopedia said.

“How can you be so sure?” Tommy inquired.

“When we brought the canoes in,” Encyclopedia replied, “we all made wet sneaker prints on Captain Pete’s dock—you, me, the twins, and the sisters.”

“Of course we did,” Tommy said. “All three canoes still had rainwater in them.”

“True,” Encyclopedia said. “But there was one set of footprints too many, and they belong to the thief.”

WHO WAS THE THIEF?

(
Turn to
this page
for the solution to The Case of the Rented Canoes.)

T
yrone Taylor was a friendly boy who was known throughout the neighborhood as Romeo Glue.

He was always stuck on some girl.

“Who is she this month?” Encyclopedia asked Sally as they biked to Tyrone’s birthday party.

“Cindy Hayes, the blonde in Mrs. Benson’s fifth-grade class,” Sally said. “She looks as if she’d lose her way walking upstairs. But she’s smart. She’s doing seventh-grade math.”

Cindy Hayes was also quick on her feet. She won the first game at the party, musical chairs played blindfolded.

“The music was wrong,” Sally complained, rubbing her leg. “It should have been ‘Lullaby to Shin Splints.’ ”

For the second contest, pie eating, there were only four contestants. Chester Jenkins, Encyclopedia’s widest pal, scared off everyone else. As soon as the eating began, Chester showed why he was nicknamed Jet Jaws. He won by half a pie.

“You only go around once in life,” Chester told the detectives. “You’ve got to eat all the banana-cream pies you can.”

After he waddled off, Sally said, “Chester is sure to win another prize, first one in the dining room.”

Encyclopedia defended his pal. “Chester is more than an appetite in shoes. Don’t forget that he won the brain game last year.”

“That’s because Tyrone didn’t let you play,” Sally replied.

Encyclopedia had not been allowed to enter any brain games since Tyrone’s fifth birthday party. “You’re too smart,” Tyrone
had said then, and every year since.