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

by Paulits, John

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Y.”

  “Because I want to know! All right! I want to know!”

  “I told you. ‘Y’.”

  “No... you... didn’t... tell... me... why.” Philip was speaking slowly, trying to keep his temper. “You didn’t tell me anything!”

  “I told you everything. Now listen. The grandmother spells her name with a ‘Y’. ‘D-Y’. She doesn’t have any I’s in her name. Get it? You looked under ‘D-I’ and I looked under ‘D-Y’.”

  Philip stared at Emery and rubbed his stomach.

  “Hungry?” Emery asked.

  “No, I’m not hungry,” Philip shouted. “You’re making my stomach hurt.”

  “How? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Just tell me the number again.”

  “243-6885.”

  Philip took a pencil from the end table and wrote the number down.

  “Okay,” he said. “You call it. Come on into the kitchen.”

  Emery followed, took the phone, and punched in the number.

  “It’s ringing,” Emery whispered.

  Philip nodded.

  “Oh, hello. May I speak to Janie? Oh, she isn’t there? Me? Oh, you can tell her that Philip called. Bye.”

  “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.

  Seven

  “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.

  Eight

  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.”

  “Funny kind of best friends,” said Joanie.

  Philip rushed on. “You think your sister would help out?” His plan was growing clear in his mind. With a big smile on his face, he explained to Joanie what it was he wanted her to do.

  Joanie thought it over and smiled. “Sure, it might be fun. I’ll ask Janie. I think she will. She’s the one who usually talks me into playing tricks on people who confuse us for each other. She really hates when people do that.”

  Philip made his final plans with Joanie and then said good-bye. This could turn out to be the best school vacation he’d ever had!

  Nine

  After lunch Philip rushed to Emery’s house.

  “Hi,” said Emery. “What’d you do this morning?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Philip could barely keep from smiling.

  “I had to push the babies around so my mother could buy food.”

&n
bsp; “You got to have food,” said Philip wisely.

  “I’d give up food if I could give up babies,” Emery moaned. “What do you want to do?”

  “The playground was good the other day. They even had the water fountain working. Let’s go back.”

  Emery agreed and fifteen minutes later the boys were climbing, jumping, and chasing each other at a mad pace amid a lot of other children. Philip occasionally glanced at the entrance to the playground. Finally, he saw what he was looking for.

  “Look, Emery, here comes that girl.”

  Emery paused and watched her approach.

  “Remember,” Philip whispered, “you’re Philip and I’m you.” Philip didn’t want Emery to make a stupid mistake and mess up all his plans.

  The girl smiled and looked at Emery. “Hi, Philip.”

  “Uh, hi Janie.”

  The girl looked at Philip. “Hi, Emery.”

  “Hi, Janie,” said Philip.

  Emery gave Philip an ‘I told you so’ look.

  Philip shrugged and said, “No library today?”

  “I was there already. I thought I’d come here and see if anybody was here.”

  Philip explained what he and Emery were playing and the girl joined in.

  After an hour the girl said, “Well, I have to go now and take my violin lesson. Say, why don’t you both come to the library on Saturday? There’s a pizza party. It’s free. It should be good.”

  “Pizza? Free?” said Emery.

  “Sure,” said Philip. “What time?”

  “One.”

  “Okay, we’ll be there,” said Philip.

  “Bye now,” the girl said and walked away.

  “See. I told you there was only one girl,” Emery crowed. “Same girl—library and violin lesson that one day. Same girl. Free pizza. She’s okay.”

  Philip nodded and kept his smile inside.

  ~ * ~

  Philip and Emery met at twelve-thirty on Saturday and started for the library.

  “We did pretty good in our disguises,” said Emery. “We followed that girl without her knowing, then tracked her down without our disguises and figured out her mystery. That was neat.”

  “Yeah, you sure were right, Emery.”