The Case of the Stinky Socks

by Lewis B. Montgomery

  by Lewis B. Montgomery

  illustrated by Amy Wummer

  The KANE PRESS

  New York

  Text copyright © 2009 by Lewis B. Montgomery

  Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Amy Wummer

  Super Sleuthing Strategies illustrations copyright © 2009 by Kane Press, Inc.

  Super Sleuthing Strategies illustrations by Nadia DiMattia

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Kane Press, Inc., 240 West 35th Street, Suite 302, New York, NY 10001-2506.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Montgomery, Lewis B.

  The case of the stinky socks / by Lewis B. Montgomery ; illustrated by Amy Wummer.

  p. cm. — (The Milo & Jazz mysteries ; 1)

  Summary: Detectives-in-training Milo and Jazz join forces to tackle their first big case—finding out who stole the lucky socks from the high school baseball team’s star pitcher.

  ISBN 978-1-57565-285-6 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-57565-288-7 (lib. bdg.)

  [1. Socks—Fiction. 2. Baseball—Fiction. 3. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Wummer, Amy, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.M7682Cs 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2008027536

  ISBN 978-1-57565-340-2 (e-book)

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First published in the United States of America in 2009 by Kane Press, Inc.

  Printed in Hong Kong

  Book Design: Edward Miller

  The Milo & Jazz Mysteries is a trademark of Kane Press, Inc.

  www.kanepress.com

  eISBN: 978-1-5756-5340-2 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-5756-5655-7 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-5756-5656-4 (mobi)

  For Will, Ryan, Taylor, and Elliot:

  may your socks never stink!—L.B.M.

  Milo sat on his bed and stared at the plain brown box. This was it! At last!

  He’d been waiting for this package ever since the day he spotted the ad in Whodunnit magazine.

  Milo tore open the package and dumped everything out on his bed.

  Wow! Look at all this stuff!

  There were special rear-view sunglasses for spying on someone behind him. There was a little notebook with a black leather cover—well, it looked like leather. And best of all, there was a pair of invisible-ink pens with ultraviolet decoder lights.

  But where was the first lesson?

  He shook the package again, and a sheet of paper fell out. The side facing him was blank. He flipped it over. The other side was blank, too.

  No lesson. Dash Marlowe had made a big mistake.

  He grabbed one of the invisible-ink pens. Dash is a dope, he scribbled on the paper. Sure enough—the ink was invisible! The paper still looked blank.

  Milo turned the pen around and clicked on the decoder light to read what he’d written.

  Whoa! Underneath his scribbled note, a message had appeared.

  Oops. Now who was a dope?

  His mom and dad were always telling him to slow down and think things through. But somehow, it sounded more important coming from a world-famous private eye.

  Milo flopped backward and let his head hang off the end of the bed. He always read like that. His brain seemed to work better upside down.

  He read on. There was more about how to observe and think and draw conclusions like a detective. Then Dash said his next task was to go out and find a mystery to solve. Not a made-up mystery like the “blank” sheet of paper, but a real one. . . .

  He flipped the page over.

  The lesson ended by saying that once Milo solved a mystery, he could write in and get his next lesson.

  Hmm. Keep a sharp eye out for anything strange or unusual. . . .

  Milo stuffed the notebook and one of the special pens in his back pocket. He grabbed the spy shades, too, and went downstairs.

  His mom was in the kitchen slurping green slime from a spoon. Gross, but not unusual. She ate a lot of yogurt, and her favorite flavor was key lime pie.

  Still, he might be missing something. He squinted, trying to make his eyes sharper.

  “What?” said his mom. “Do I have yogurt on my nose?”

  Outside, Milo found his little brother, Ethan, playing pirates with a friend.

  That was unusual. Usually Ethan played dinosaurs.

  “How come you’re not a dinosaur today?” Milo asked.

  “I am,” Ethan said. “A pirate dinosaur. Arrr!”

  Milo sighed. His brother was a mystery, all right. But not the kind even a super sleuth could solve.

  He could see that he was not going to get very far watching his family. He’d have to find someone else to observe.

  A few blocks over, he saw a girl reading on her porch. She was in his class at school. Her name was Jasmyne, but he’d heard the other girls calling her Jazz.

  That magazine she was reading looked familiar. . . .

  Jazz glanced up. Quickly, Milo crouched down, pretending to tie his sneakers. What was she reading? If only he could get a closer look. This observing thing was harder than Dash made it sound.

  Then Milo remembered the spy shades. Now was the perfect time to try them out.

  He turned his back to Jazz and slipped the glasses on. They had little mirrors on the sides, just like a car.

  Cool. There was the front walk. The porch steps. The porch. An empty chair, with a magazine lying on the seat. He tried to read the title on the cover, but the mirror lenses turned the letters backward—

  Wait. An empty chair?

  Where was Jazz?

  Milo tilted his head a little farther, and the glasses fell off. As he dove after them, they hit the sidewalk, bounced, and landed by a purple flowered clog.

  A purple clog?

  Slowly he looked up. Jazz stared back down at him, fists planted on her hips.

  “Why are you spying on me?”

  Milo jumped up. “How could I be spying on you? I wasn’t even looking in your direction. I was looking at—at—” He glanced around wildly. “That car!”

  Jazz raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Suddenly her hands shot out. Before he could duck, her fingers clamped over his eyes. “What color is it?”

  “Huh?”

  “What color is the car?”

  Milo tried to think. Uhh. . . . He had no idea. So much for the first step toward becoming a super sleuth. “Silver?” he guessed.

  She took her hand away. The car was brown.

  “I mean—kind of silvery brown. You know.”

  Jazz crossed her arms. “I know you were spying on me. You even faked tying your shoelace.”

  “What makes you think I was faking?”

  She pointed at his sneakers. “Velcro.”

  Milo scowled. She was a better observer than he was, and she hadn’t even read Dash’s lesson.

  Jazz reached for the spy shades. Sounding friendlier, she said, “I saw these in Whodunnit magazine. Do they really work?” She tried them on and craned her head.

  Ohh, Milo thought, she’d been reading Whodunnit! No wonder the magazine had looked so familiar. He said, “You like reading mysteries?”

  She nodded. “And I’m good at solving them, too. When you’re the youngest of four kids, no one tells you anything. So I always have to figure stuff out by myself.”

  She handed him back the glasses. “So, what are you playing? Spy? Detective?”

  Milo stood up straighter. “
I’m not playing anything,” he said. “I happen to be a real private eye. In training. And I’m trying to solve a mystery.”

  “Really?” Her eyes widened. “What is it?”

  “Um, well . . . actually, I don’t know yet,” he said.

  She looked confused. “You’re solving a mystery, but you don’t know what it is?”

  Milo explained about Dash Marlowe and his detective lessons.

  “So now I have to come up with a real case to solve. But so far, I’m not having any luck.” He shook his head. “I’ll bet there hasn’t been a missing diamond or a stolen code in this whole town today.”

  “You need to let people know you’re a detective,” Jazz said. “Advertise.”

  “You mean, like on TV?” Milo pictured himself bellowing into the camera like Crazy Larry, the car dealer.

  Jazz laughed. “I was thinking more like putting up signs. That’s what my sister did when she wanted a babysitting job.”

  Signs. That made sense.

  Milo followed Jazz into her house. She got out some paper and a purple glitter pen. They sat down at the kitchen table.

  “So, what do you want to say?” she asked.“I don’t know. . . . ‘Call me if you have a case’?”

  Jazz shook her head. “It needs to be catchier. Something people will remember.”

  He thought. “How about, ‘Milo can solve any case, even if it’s from outer space’?”

  She giggled. Then she said, “Hang on. I’ve got it! ‘Milo and Jazz, private eyes. Mysteries of any size.’”

  Milo and Jazz? What did she mean, ‘and Jazz’? “Hey, wait a minute—”

  She kept right on talking as if she didn’t hear him. “Give us a shout—we’ll figure it out!”

  Suddenly they heard someone shouting.

  Jazz ran up the stairs, with Milo close behind. They followed the yells to an open door.

  “Gone! Gone, gone, GONE!”

  Milo peeked in the room. Whoa. His mom thought his room was messy. She should see this.

  Drawers hung open. Clothes trailed from the closet. A laundry basket lay on its side, dirty laundry spilling everywhere.

  At first Milo couldn’t see anyone in the mess. Then he spotted two long legs poking out from under the bed.

  “Dylan, what’s wrong?” Jazz asked.

  The legs wriggled backward, and a teenage boy stood up. He wore a blue T-shirt that said Westview Wildcats in gold. He looked upset. “My lucky socks!” he said. “They’re gone!”

  Milo looked around the room. There were socks all over the place.

  Jazz must have noticed them too. “Are you sure they’re gone?”

  Her brother nodded. “I’ve looked everywhere.”

  “Where did you last see the socks?” asked Milo. His mom always asked that when he lost something.

  “In my locker,” Dylan said. “I always keep them in my locker between games.”

  “Then why were you looking here?”

  Dylan shrugged. “Just in case I brought them home by mistake.”

  Jazz looked at him. “If you never bring them home, how do they get washed?”

  “They don’t.”

  “Dylan, that’s disgusting!” Jazz said.

  “I was wearing them when I pitched a no-hitter in the first game of the season,” her brother protested. “I don’t want to wash away the luck.”

  “Don’t they smell bad?” Milo asked.

  “They stink! That’s how I noticed they were gone. My locker stopped smelling so rotten.” Dylan glowered. “When I catch the creep who stole them—”

  Stole them? Milo’s ears perked up. Could this be his first case? He pulled out his notebook.

  Jazz said, “Who would steal your stinky socks?”

  “I think it was an eagle,” Dylan said.

  “An eagle?” Milo pictured a bird with sharp talons swooping down to snatch the socks away.

  “The Eggleston Eagles,” said Dylan. “While I was at practice, someone on their team must have sneaked into our locker room and nabbed my lucky socks.”

  “Why?” asked Milo.

  “The Eagles and the Wildcats are big, big rivals. We’ve got a game against them coming up, and they’d do anything to make us lose.”

  “How would they know about your socks?” Milo asked. “They couldn’t actually smell them on the field. . . . Could they?”

  Dylan sighed. “Everybody knows. The local Z station sent a camera crew to last week’s game, and I shot off my big mouth about my winning streak. Told them with my lucky socks, we couldn’t lose.” He slumped down on his bed.

  Jazz asked, “Did you check with your teammates? Maybe someone took them by mistake.”

  “I asked everybody. Even Coach.”

  “Does anyone else use the boys’ locker room after school?” she said.

  Dylan shrugged. “The swim team, I guess. And the tennis players. And the fencing club. And track and field. . . . ”

  “That’s a lot of people,” Jazz said. “Anybody could have walked off with your socks.”

  “But why would anyone from our school want to wreck my lucky streak? We’re on the same side!”

  “Maybe someone’s mad at you,” Milo suggested. He was getting tired of Jazz asking all the questions. Who was the super sleuth around here, anyway? “Have you got any enemies?” he asked.

  Dylan frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then maybe it’s an international sock-napping gang. Was there a ransom note?”

  Dylan shook his head. “I’m sure it was an Eagle.” He sank onto his unmade bed. “Friday’s the big game. Without my lucky socks, we’ll never win.”

  Friday! That was the day after tomorrow.

  As they headed back downstairs, Jazz said, “So I think we should start at the scene of the crime.”

  Milo looked at her. “What do you mean, we?”

  “They’re my brother’s missing socks,” she said. “Besides, every detective needs a partner, right?”

  A partner? Um . . .

  “Anyway,” she said, not waiting for an answer, “I’ve got a plan. What I think is—”

  “I already have a plan,” Milo cut in. Who was in charge of this case, anyway?

  “Really?” asked Jazz. “What?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon I’m going over to the high school.”

  Jazz lifted an eyebrow. “And?”

  “And . . .” Okay, maybe it wasn’t a plan exactly. “And then I’ll look for clues.”

  “Like what?”

  How was he supposed to know before he looked? “Maybe someone saw an Eagle in the locker room.”

  “How would they know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How would they know it was an Eagle?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe he had on his uniform.”

  Jazz snorted. “Right. If I wanted to sneak into a locker room and steal stuff from a rival team, I would definitely wear my uniform.”

  He had to admit that she was thinking logically. Dash Marlowe would approve.

  “Okay. What’s your brilliant plan, then?”

  She smiled. “Are we partners?”

  Milo considered. On the one hand, they were her brother’s socks. And Jazz did seem pretty smart. But he didn’t like her know-it-all attitude. And besides, what kind of private eye wore purple flowered clogs?

  “We’d make a fantastic team,” she said. “I’ll be the brains, and you can be the . . . uh . . .” She frowned. “Well, I’m sure you can help.”

  Humph. That settled it. “I don’t need a partner,” he told her. “I’m going to solve this case all by myself.”

  “Ethan, do you have to be such a slowpoke?” Milo grumbled. Why did his mom pick today to make him babysit his brother?

  “You’d be slow, too, if you had a ten-ton tail,” Ethan told him.

  Milo rolled his eyes. He bet Dash Marlowe wouldn’t solve so many cases if he had to drag along a little kid who thought he was a dinosaur.

  Wh
en they reached the high school, Milo stopped by the baseball field to watch Dylan warm up.

  His first pitch went wide of the plate. The catcher tossed the ball back, and Dylan tried again. This time he completely missed the backstop.

  Wow, Milo thought. He’d better find those socks, and fast.

  With Ethan trailing after him, Milo headed to the locker room.

  “Excuse me,” he said to a boy in swim trunks. “Have you seen a pair of missing socks?”

  The boy stared at him. “If they’re missing, how am I supposed to see them?” The boy walked off.

  Maybe that wasn’t the best way to put the question. He tried another boy. “I’m trying to solve a mystery. Have you noticed anything strange around here?”

  The boy grinned. “Yeah.”

  “Really? What?”

  “You!” The boy laughed.

  This wasn’t going very well so far.

  Wait . . . what was that smell?

  Sniffing, Milo followed the smell as it grew stronger. What a stink! It had to be Dylan’s lucky socks!

  A tall boy stood in front of the locker-room mirror squeezing goop out of a bottle and putting it in his hair. He looked down at Milo’s notebook and flashed him a smile full of big, white teeth.

  “Hoping for an autograph, kid?”

  “Um . . . not exactly. I just—” Milo sniffed again. “What is that stuff?”

  “You mean my moose?”

  Milo stared at the smelly goop. “That’s supposed to be a moose?” Moose poop, maybe.

  “Not a moose,” the boy said. “Mousse. For my hair. M-O-U-S-E.”

  “That spells mouse,” Milo said.

  The blond boy tossed his hair out of his eyes. “Whatever. Look, kid, they don’t call me Chip the Champ for winning spelling bees.” He grabbed his tennis racket and gave it a swing, checking himself out in the mirror.