Philip and the Case of Mistaken Identity and Philip and the Baby (9781597051095) (5 page)

“Why did you say I called?”

“I’m you, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So there is a Janie,” said Emery.

“Who answered?”

“Sounded old. Must have been the
grandmother.”

“Let me call her, too,” said Philip.

“Why?”

Philip glared at Emery. “Don’t start ‘whying’
me again,” he warned.

“For what reason do you want to call?” Emery
said, giving a sharp nod.

“We’ll just be sure. Move. This time she
should say wrong number.”

Philip moved to the phone and dialed.

“Oh, hello. May I speak to Joanie, please?
What? She’s out? Where’d she go? I mean I’m sorry I missed her. Can
you tell her that Emery called? Thanks. Bye.”

Philip and Emery stared silently at each
other for a moment.

“Maybe she has two names,” said Emery.

“Are you sure the girl you saw was the same
one we saw at the supermarket?”

“Positive.”

“There’s only one thing to do,” said
Philip.

“You’re right. Into disguise.”

Philip nodded, ran upstairs to get something,
and the boys went back to Emery’s house to put on their
disguises.

“You didn’t tell me how I look,” Philip said.
He and Emery were standing in the supermarket parking lot, looking
through a metal fence at the house where the girl and her
grandmother had gone on Saturday. Philip had run up to his bedroom
and brought two baseball caps with him from his house. He wore one
cap in a normal fashion, the brim sticking out over his eyes. The
other hat was on backwards, the brim jutting out over the back of
his neck.

“Why don’t you like your derby? The picture
didn’t have two people with deerstalker hats on.”

“Maybe if it was a real derby. But an inside
out baseball hat with white lines and air holes...” Philip just
shook his head. “Now I have my own deerstalker hat.”

“It looks okay. I still think you should have
put on the freckles and the eyebrows,” said Emery, adjusting his
empty glasses.

Philip shook his head. “I told you. That red
pencil takes too long and it’s too hard to get off. I hate rubbing
spit all over my face. If we’re going to follow the girl and talk
to her, I don’t want to look like Bozo the clown. A fake ear and a
fake nose are enough.”

Their plan was to watch the house. When the
girl left, they would follow her. When they saw where she was
going—they hoped it was the library again—they would remove their
disguises and go talk to her. They were determined to find out
whether she was Joanie or Janie and why she was trying to trick
them.

They waited until lunchtime but no one
entered or left the house. They decided to go to the playground
after lunch and take up their watch at ten o’clock next
morning.

The next day, Tuesday, they met at ten and
were at their posts, disguised, by ten-fifteen.

“How long are we gonna stay today?” Emery
asked.

“Until lunch, I guess. Maybe tomorrow we
should pack our lunches. We only have this week to figure this out
and then we have to go back to school.”

“I know... look!”

The grandmother was leaving the house. She
paused on the sidewalk to look into her purse, then closed it, and
turned right.

“What’ll we do?” Emery said excitedly.

“You think she might be going to get the
girl? Maybe the girl left earlier for someplace and she’s going to
bring her home.”

“Maybe. You follow the granny and I’ll stay
here in case the girl is still in the house. Go, she’s turning down
the street.”

Philip didn’t argue about following the
grandmother. He was glad to have some real spying to do. He made
certain his big nose was securely glued in place, adjusted his big
ear, and straightened his two baseball caps. He was confident the
girl would never recognize him.

The grandmother had turned the corner and was
out of sight. Philip ran after her and when he reached the corner,
he spotted her walking down the street. He stayed behind her,
keeping a sharp eye on her. She would not get away from him. After
three more blocks the grandmother turned left onto Oxford Avenue, a
wide street lined with stores and businesses. Philip stayed across
the street and watched as she entered the Orkis Music School. Five
minutes later the grandmother came outside along with the girl, who
was carrying a violin case.

Philip waited to see whether they would start
out the way that the grandmother had come and head right home. When
they did, Philip ran to the corner and dashed up the block. He
pulled off his nose and yanked off his ear. He took off his hats
and stuffed them into his pocket. Then he walked slowly down the
street toward Oxford Avenue.

There they were, crossing the avenue and
about to start up the street toward Philip. He kept going toward
them, his eye on the girl. When she was close enough to hear him he
said, “Hi.”

The girl looked at him then up at her
grandmother. The grandmother smiled at him but the girl gave him a
mean look—a look that said ‘don’t talk to me again.’ She brushed by
Philip, who had stopped walking.

“Hi?” he said again, but the girl took her
grandmother’s hand and pulled her forward.

Philip stood and watched them move off down
the sidewalk. He let them get out of sight and then started back to
the supermarket parking lot. When he got there, Emery was gone, so
Philip went home and knocked on Emery’s door. Emery’s mother said
that Emery had not come home yet, so there was nothing Philip could
do but to go home and wait for Emery to call.

About an hour later he did call. He said to
meet in front of his house. Philip hung up the phone and ran
outside and down to Emery’s house.

“I followed the girl,” Emery said.

“You followed her? I followed her.”

“No, about twenty minutes after you left she
came outside. I followed her and she went to library again. I took
off my disguise and went in after her and purposely bumped into
her. She made believe she didn’t know me! I said, ‘Hi, Janie,’ and
she gave me a look and said she wasn’t Janie, so I walked away
fast. I went back to the parking lot to look for you but you
weren’t there, so I thought maybe you came back already and went
home.”

“I did. I followed the grandmother to a music
school on Oxford Avenue and she picked up the girl there.”

“What?”

“So I took off my disguise and made sure I
passed them on the street when they were coming home. I said ‘hi’
to the girl, but she acted like she never saw me before. She
grabbed her grandmother’s hand and pulled her away.”

Both boys slumped into a confused stupor.

Then Philip said, “You don’t think she’s
twins, do you? That would explain two names and why they didn’t
know us today.”

Emery shook his head. “Even if they were
twins they couldn’t look so exactly alike. What was the girl you
saw wearing today?”

“Jeans and a pink T-shirt.”

“Did the T-shirt say ‘Dreamgirl’ on it?”

Philip nodded his head slowly.

“See,” said Emery. “Mine, too. But it’s
impossible for two people to be so exact. How about Jimmy and
Johnny in school? They’re twins and they look the same but we can
tell them apart. They’re not exact.”

“I know,” said Philip.

“And we can tell Jamie and Janice apart,”
said Emery. “They’re twins.”

Philip looked at Emery. “Jamie is a boy and
Janice is a girl.”

“Oh. Right. But their faces don’t match like
Janie/Joanie’s, if there are two of her. No, she can’t be twins. I
think it’s the same girl, and she’s just trying to be smart and
make us feel stupid.”

“She’s doing a good job. Now what?” Philip
asked with a shrug.

“My mom said she’d take us to Cosmo’s
Playland tomorrow.” Cosmo’s was a thirty-minute drive from their
street. It was located on a boardwalk along a river and had lots of
rides and games. Because school was out, it was open during the day
for this week only.

“Good. I like Cosmo’s. I’ll ask my mom.”

“And maybe we’ll think of something when
we’re not trying to think of it.”

Philip looked at Emery. He knew what Emery
meant, but sometimes Emery said the strangest things. Philip just
nodded.

“Want to go to the playground?” Emery
suggested.

“I’ll come back after lunch,” said
Philip.

Their afternoon plans set, the boys
parted.

It wasn’t until Wednesday night in bed that
Philip gave any further thought to the strange girl he and Emery
had been following. They’d had a great day at Cosmo’s Playland
going on rides, playing games, and eating hot dogs, cotton candy,
kettle corn, and water ice. And the new roller coaster was just
right—scary, but not too scary. And Emery’s mother had been so busy
with her two babies that he and Emery had the run of the park on
their own.

Philip considered what Emery had said about
its being impossible that the girl was really twins. Philip
disagreed. How else could the girl be in two places at the same
time and have two different names and not know him or Emery when
they met? Philip wasn’t going to see Emery until tomorrow
afternoon, so he decided to go and spy on the girl’s house in the
morning all by himself. If he could figure out what was up with
that girl, and if she really was a twin, that would prove he was a
better detective than Emery.

Just after ten the next morning Philip was
peering through the chain link fence in the supermarket parking
lot. It was a warm day, bright and sunny. Taking a break from
staring at the girl’s house, Philip watched a teenage boy going
around the parking lot collecting the supermarket carts. The boy
slammed the front of one cart into the back of another and presto!
they melted together and looked like one longer cart. The boy did
it over and over until the line of carts was so long that it
wobbled left and right when he pushed it. It looked like a fun job.
Philip thought he might like to do it when he got older.

Then the girl appeared. Philip had a definite
plan of action. The music school where he saw the girl who ignored
him was a right-hand turn from the front of the girl’s house. The
library where he saw the girl who talked to him was a left-hand
turn. If the girl turned right toward the music school, he would
let her go. If she turned left, he would follow her.

The girl came down the front path and...
turned right. That had to be the girl who’d ignored him. Philip
stayed at the fence, dividing his time between watching the girl’s
front door and watching the teenage boy make long lines of wobbly
carts.

About thirty minutes later the same girl—or a
girl that looked and dressed exactly like the first girl—left the
house. She walked down the front path and... turned left! Philip
walked along inside the fence, keeping her in sight. When he got to
the end of the parking lot, he waited, and sure enough, she turned
in the direction of the library.

Now he was getting somewhere!

Philip was certain he knew where the girl was
going, so he stayed far behind her. When the girl entered the
library, Philip crossed the street and entered the library, too. He
climbed the stairs to the children’s room and there she was,
sitting at a wooden table looking at a book. He walked over to
her.

“Oh, hi, Joanie,” he said, putting as much
surprise into his voice as he could.

“Oh, hi, Emery.”

The right one!

“What are you reading?” Philip asked.

Joanie spun the book his way. It was a book
about plants.

“I’m getting ready for Saturday’s last
meeting of the gardening club. We pick a partner and they ask us
questions then.”

Philip was not interested in talking about
the gardening club.

“Can I ask you a question?” said Philip.

A loud “Shhhhhh” came from a high school girl
who was reshelving books.

Philip pulled a chair out and sat next to
Joanie.

“Did you ignore me when you were coming back
from Oxford Avenue, or do you have a twin sister?”

Joanie gave a small laugh. “You must have
seen my sister, Janie.”

He’d been right!

“I said, ‘Hello’, but she just gave me a mad
look.”

“Janie hates it when people think she’s
me.”

“Do you hate it when people think you’re
her?”

She gave another small laugh. “No, I think
it’s funny.”

“Why doesn’t she come to the library with
you?”

“Oh, she’s the family musician.”

“Oh, right. She was carrying a violin.”

“She wanted to come to the garden club, but
she usually has music practice on Saturdays. She’s coming this
week, though. It’s a pizza party and I wrote her name down.”

“Both of you will be here Saturday?”

Joanie nodded. “It’s the last day. We get
pizza and our packs of seed.”

Philip was getting an idea.

“Do you like playing tricks on people?”
Philip asked boldly.

Joanie gave him a suspicious look. “What do
you mean?”

Philip explained that his friend Emery—who he
remembered to call Philip—had met Janie and then thought he had
seen her in the library on Tuesday. “But he must have seen you. You
didn’t talk to him.”

“Oh, I remember. He called me Janie and I
said I wasn’t Janie. I was going to explain but he turned red and
ran out the door.”

Philip started to laugh. ‘Turned red and ran
out the door.’ How dumb!

“Look, he’s my best friend...”

“He’s your best friend and you want to play a
trick on him?”

The librarian walked by and all of a sudden
he remembered that Emery still owed him twenty cents for those late
books. He wanted to play a trick on him all right.

“Oh, we trick each other all the time.”