Philip and the Case of Mistaken Identity and Philip and the Baby (9781597051095) (3 page)

“Of course not,” Philip said, raising his
voice. “I never
met
anybody whose ears didn’t match.”

“Nobody’ll notice. Nobody’ll notice.” Emery
waved his hand. “Now, where shall we go to find somebody to
follow?”

“Some place dark a hundred miles away,”
Philip grumbled.

“Where?” Emery asked.

“Nothing,” said Philip. After a quiet couple
of seconds Philip said, “How about the supermarket? There’ll be a
lot of people there.”

“Yeah,” said Emery, “and we can walk round
and push a cart and nobody’ll pay any attention to us.”

“Unless they see my ears,” Philip grumbled
again.

“Don’t worry, I told you. Nobody’ll notice.
Now let’s go to the supermarket and find somebody who looks
suspicious.” Emery gathered up the rest of his disguise kit and
tossed it back into the box. “I have to give my mother her mirror
back.” He took the mirror and ran upstairs while Philip put his
jacket on and checked his hat.

“Ready?” said Emery when he got back. “How do
I look?”

Philip studied Emery’s false nose, black
eyebrows, empty glasses, and fancy hat. “You look fine. How do I
look?”

Emery studied Philip’s inside out,
half-a-baseball cap, spaghetti line, freckles, big nose, and one
big ear. “Don’t worry, nobody’ll notice,” he said and led Philip
out the front door.

Two people were walking down the sidewalk
towards them. The first was an old man. He took a long look at
Philip and said, “Well, hello, Howdy Doody. Great freckles.” He
gave the boys a thumbs-up and passed by.

Philip turned to Emery. “Howdy Doody? What
did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” said Emery. “Uh-oh. Here
comes Leon the loser.”

“Just keep walking. Maybe he won’t recognize
us,” said Philip.

Leon was Emery’s cousin and a boy who rarely
had the slightest piece of good luck. He tripped. He fell. He lost
things. He messed up in school. Nothing ever went right for
Leon.

Leon smiled his chip-toothed smile at
them—he’d been jumping up and down on his bed and missed, he’d told
them—and said, “Hi, Philip. Hi, Emery. I’m going to the store for
my mom.” He walked by without stopping.

Philip and Emery paused, turned, and looked
after him.

“How’d he know us?” Philip asked in
amazement. “That’s means everybody will know us.”

“No, it doesn’t. Maybe he saw us come out of
my house. Yeah, that’s probably it. The people at the supermarket
who don’t know us won’t know us.”

Philip turned to look at Emery. “What did you
say?”

“I said that Leon probably...”

“No, the second part.”

“I said that the people at the supermarket
who don’t know us won’t know us.”

“What does that mean?” Philip said in a loud
voice. “Of course the people at the supermarket who don’t know us
won’t know us. If they don’t know us, they wouldn’t know us whether
we were in disguise or dressed regular.”

“But the
second
time they see us, you
know, later, they won’t know it was us when they saw us in
disguise. When they call the police and report they were followed
by two people who look like us, they won’t know it was us because
then we won’t look like us.”

“Who will we look like?”

“We’ll look like us.”

“Huh?”

“Us regular instead of us disguised.”

Philip thought it over a minute. “I think I
get it. You mean when they see us now, they don’t really see us
because we’re not us right now. So the next time they see us and
we’re really us, they won’t know us because it’s really us.”

Emery looked at him. “What are you talking
about?”

“I’m just repeating what you said,” Philip
said in a louder voice. Sometimes Emery made him want to shout just
to be sure his words got into Emery’s brain.

“You mean anyone who sees us now doesn’t
really see us and when they do really see us they won’t know it’s
us that they see?”

Philip could feel his stomach muscles
gathering into a nervous knot. As quietly as he could he said,
“Emery, let’s just keep going and get to the supermarket.”

Emery nodded but for the rest of the walk
Philip could hear him saying under his breath, “If they see us
now... No, when they see us later... No...”

The supermarket was two streets away in an
outdoor mall that was just a long line of stores in the middle of a
giant parking lot. The only store in the mall that Emery and Philip
ever used was the movie rental store. The two boys paused on the
sidewalk in front of the supermarket. People were walking by, some
pushing carts full of bags toward their cars, others pushing empty
carts toward the store entrance.

“Grab a cart,” said Emery.

Philip spun a cart around and, with him
pushing the right side and Emery pushing on the left, they headed
for the store entrance.

When they started up the first aisle, the one
filled with paper goods, Emery whispered, “See, nobody noticed your
ear.”

Philip nodded, trying to look at everybody
sideways so they wouldn’t see his two ears at once.

“Who shall we follow?” Philip whispered
back.

“I don’t know. Let’s keep looking.”

Up and down the aisles Philip and Emery
searched. They rejected a man carrying a quart of milk and a box of
diapers. He was moving too quickly. Then they rejected an older
woman pushing a cart, who stopped in front of practically every
item in the store. She was too slow. Suddenly, Philip grabbed Emery
by the arm and stopped.

“There’s that girl,” said Philip.

“What girl?”

“The one from the library. Her, with the
blonde hair. See her? She’s the one who smiled at me.”

“That girl smiled at you? Why?”

“I don’t know. Because I was in the
library.”

“No girl ever smiled at me because I was in
the library. Thank goodness.”

“She was in front of me when I returned your
book. Hey, you still owe me twenty cents.”

“I know. I know. Don’t worry. Want to follow
her? It’s a pretty suspicious thing she did.”

“What?”

“Smile at you. Why would any girl want to
smile at you? Don’t you want to find out whether she lives in an
institution or not?”

“Lives where?”

“In an institution. You know, where they put
crazy people. That would explain why she smiled at you.”

“Because she’s crazy?”

“Maybe she’s crazy
about
you.” Emery
smiled, jiggling his black-pencil eyebrows.

Philip felt his stomach tighten up again.
“She’s not crazy about me,” Philip said slowly, pronouncing each
word carefully. He wondered why Emery always made him either want
to talk loud or talk slowly to him. “But she did act
suspicious.”

As Philip and Emery watched, the girl took
two cans of soup off the shelf and looked around. Just then the
older woman who had slowly been inspecting everything on the
shelves came around the corner and into the aisle with her cart.
The girl walked over to her and dropped the two cans into the cart.
The girl and the woman spoke a moment, then turned around, and
moved toward the checkout line.

“Okay, okay,” said Emery. “Follow them.”

Philip and Emery pushed their cart down the
aisle. Emery grabbed a can of soup and a bottle of ketchup and
tossed them into the cart. Then he whipped out his magnifying glass
and studied a jar of pickles.

“What are you doing?” Philip asked.

“We’ll look suspicious pushing around an
empty cart.”

“No, I mean with the pickles.”

“I am inspecting them like a careful shopper
should,” Emery answered, still bending over the jar of pickles. He
turned slowly to Philip and held the magnifying glass in front of
his face. Slowly he said, “I’ve got my eye on you.”

“You’re going to have your black eye on me if
you don’t put that stupid thing back in your pocket. Nobody shops
with a magnifying glass.” Philip grabbed a plastic bottle of salad
dressing and threw it into the cart.

“I don’t like that kind,” Emery said, putting
his magnifying glass away.

“What’s the difference?” Philip said, his
voice creeping louder. “We’re not really going to buy it.”

“I just don’t like it anyway.”

Philip reached into the cart, grabbed the
salad dressing, and slammed it back onto the shelf. “You pick
one.”

Emery smiled and chose a bottle of red
dressing that said
Catalina
on it.

“Happy?” said Philip.

Emery nodded.

“Where are they?” said Philip.

“Look, look. They’re checking out. They’re
next.”

“Let’s push this cart out of the way and
leave. We can wait for them outside.”

Philip and Emery left the cart in the middle
of an aisle and continued walking away from the checkout counters.
They continued slowly up the aisle, looking at the different things
on the shelves, until they got to the top of the aisle. Then they
turned and walked quickly down the next aisle and out the front
door.

“Let’s wait down there,” Emery pointed. “Fix
your ear.”

Philip felt for his ear. It had slipped
sideways. He gave it a twist and looked into the big front window
of the supermarket to check on it. It seemed straight.

“Here they come,” said Emery.

The girl and the old woman, each carrying two
bags, crossed into the parking lot. As the boys watched, the woman
opened the trunk of a blue, medium-sized car and put the bags into
the trunk. Then she and the girl got into the car.

Philip and Emery moved through the parking
lot until they were right behind where the car was backing out of
its parking space.

“Let’s try to follow them as far as we can,”
said Emery.

The car rolled slowly to the parking lot
entrance. Emery and Philip moved after it.

“Get ready to run,” said Emery, and Philip
nodded. “Let’s go!”

The car left the lot and turned right. When
it came to the end of the street, which was only ten yards away
from the entrance, it turned right again and pulled into the
driveway of the second house on the block across the street from
the mall.

“We didn’t have to run very far,” said
Philip.

“Let’s see what they do,” said Emery.

The woman and girl got the bags from the
trunk and walked toward the house.

“That’s suspicious,” said Emery.

“What is?”

“Driving such a short way to go to the
supermarket. Look, they went in and left the front door of the
house open. That’s suspicious, too.”

The girl came back out of the house and
closed the door behind her. Then she walked off down the block.

“Let’s follow her,” said Emery, adjusting his
hat and glasses.

The boys set out. “Use the other side of the
street,” said Emery. “It’s more clever and she’ll never notice
us.”

Philip nodded. The girl turned left at the
corner and walked another block. She crossed the street and,
halfway up the block, turned and entered the library.

“That’s where you saw her before,” said
Emery. “Very suspicious. Want to follow her in?”

“Sure,” said Philip.

“Okay. You go. I have to go home.”

“What?”

“My mother said to be home by two to do some
chores. So you follow her and then report back to
headquarters.”

“Where’s headquarters?”

“My house.”

“All right, I guess.”

“You should undisguise yourself, though.”

“Why?”

“She’ll see you in the library but you can
just act like you’re looking for books. When we follow her again,
we’ll be back in disguise and then when she sees you in the library
she won’t know you when you’re in disguise. It’s like that thing
you said before. She won’t know you when she sees you because you
won’t look like you unless...”

“All right. All right,” said Philip loudly.
“Don’t start that again. Here, take my hat and ear. What about my
freckles and eyebrows?”

“Wet your finger and rub,” Emery
suggested.

Philip wet his finger and rubbed.

“Good, it’s going away,” Emery reported,
looking studiously at Philip’s face.

“I’m running out of spit.”

“What some of mine?”

Philip stopped rubbing and looked at Emery.
“No, I
don’t
want any of your spit.”

“Here, there’s still a freckle.”

Philip called up his last little bit of spit
and scrubbed his face clean.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Good, you look normal.”

“Take my jacket with you. If she saw us in
the supermarket she might recognize the jacket.” He handed his
jacket to Emery.

“What about your pants? She might recognize
them.”

“You want me to go into the library without
my pants?” Philip said, his voice rising again.

“Well, no, I guess that wouldn’t work.”

“No, I guess not. Okay, I’m going and I’ll
see you back at... headquarters.”

The two boys separated and Philip went into
the library.

The children’s room was crowded. Many of the
children were moving off into a separate room that had chairs lined
up as if a meeting of some sort was going to be held there. Philip
walked slowly around the librarian’s square workplace, trying to
find that girl among all the other children. He slowly ran his eye
along the walls of bookcases, but he couldn’t spot her.

From over his shoulder he heard, “Hi,
Emery.”

He turned quickly. It was the girl. She was
wearing a baby blue T-shirt that said “Little Angel” on it, long
blue pants and white sneakers.

“Uh, hi.”

The girl giggled. “You didn’t know that I
knew your name, did you?”

Philip shook his head rapidly back and forth.
What kind of a detective was he, he wondered, when the person he
was following found him instead of the other way around?