The Encyclopedia Brown Encyclopedia

Twinkletoes Willis earned his nickname because he was the fastest runner in all of Idaville. He was often seen running everywhere. When he was seen limping into to the Brown Detective Agency, Encyclopedia worried that Twinkletoes was injured. He was limping because he was carrying $12 in his shoe.

Twinkletoes had gone to Mr. Arronzi’s shoemaker shop to have one of his shoes fixed, but since Arronzi had been so busy, his shoe would not be ready for another two days. On his way out, he ran into Wilford Wiggins. Ugh, Wilford Wiggins, again.

Anyway, Wilford had been leaving a pair of boots to be repaired. He had casually mentioned to Twinkletoes that he was surprised to see him at the shoe repair shop and not at the city dump for another one of his secret meetings.

Twinkletoes was quite familiar with Wilford’s track record, yet he had somehow deluded himself into thinking that this time, Wilford was going to have a legitimate investment plan.

Encyclopedia decided he should go along and hear what Wilford had to say.

Wilford’s meeting was all about a little red pill. It was the life-long project of Dr. Pablo Mann in Brazil. Wilford told the crowd that one pill in a car’s gas tank would allow the car to drive for up to a thousand miles before needing gas again. This was right before the oil crisis, but even then, the importance of such an invention was obvious.

Mann still needed another two years to perfect the pill, but Wilford wanted to get the children of his hometown in on the ground floor so that he could make them millionaires. Wilford told the crowd that he would have been buying all of the shares himself, but he was planning to spend all of his money on plane tickets to Brazil the following day to help in Mann’s secret laboratory hidden in the jungle. He was planning on being gone for a year or so.

Encyclopedia didn’t believe Wilford that he had no money on him, so he demanded to see his wallet. Wilford was happy to oblige, as he had nothing to hide. He had less than $10, his driver’s license, a movie ticket stub, the claim ticket from Arronzi’s shoe repair shop and a few postage stamps.

Encyclopedia wondered aloud why someone planning on being out of the country for over a year would leave his boots to be repaired the day before leaving.

This scheme was stupid, even by Wilford’s standards. Let’s forget for a moment that, once again, Wilford’s story involved some scientist in another country that enlisted him as a partner to get investors – preferably prepubescent. And we’re supposed to believe that this scientist created a revolutionary invention, but he sent a prototype to some teenaged American high school dropout to show the pill off. Wouldn’t Mann be concerned that someone would get hold of the pill and create another one like it?

But the crux of the story was that Wilford was going to be leaving the country the following day. What was going to happen in two days when people still saw him around town? Or the day after that? Or any time after that? He’d have a bunch of angry investors wanting to know why he wasn’t in Brazil.

Wilford seemed to have put absolutely no thought into this scheme.

John Hall had called Chief Brown at 8:40 and requested his presence at his party to solve a mystery. Since it was a costume party, Hall requested that Chief Brown came in costume, so as not to spook the other guests. Fifteen minutes later, Chief Brown and Encyclopedia were in the car, dressed up as a caveman and a pirate, respectively.

A few things could be gleaned from that. 1) Chief Brown never got invited to parties unless some sort of crime occurred in the midst of one. 2) Given how quickly they were in the car, members of the Brown family always have costumes ready, just in case. 3) Chief Brown doesn’t care if the party would be appropriate for his 10-year-old son or not; he brought him. This could be why he doesn’t get invited to parties.

Hall greeted Chief Brown and Encyclopedia and explained that one of his priceless stamps had been stolen. At 7:00, he had taken his stamp album out of his safe to “enjoy it.” While most people would spend that time before a party getting last-minute things ready, this guy used that time to stare at his stamp collection for an hour. How do I know it was an hour? Because he went on to explain that when the first guest arrived at 8:00, he was still in his study and the stamp album was still out.

For reasons unclear, Hall opted to leave the stamp album out of the safe, but to lock the door to the study. When he returned a half-hour later, the door was unlocked, the window was broken and one of the stamps was missing. The missing stamp was worth about $10,000.

The theory here was that some complete asshole party guest noticed that the door was locked, so he went outside, climbed a tree to get to the second-floor window, broke the window to get in, stole the stamp, unlocked the door, exited and went back to the party as if nothing had happened – probably because leaving the party early would be seen as suspicious.

This seems like a pretty easy mystery. According to the running theory, the party guest would have had to have been one of the first to arrive. We know that because the first guest arrived at 8 and Hall noticed that the stamp was gone by 8:30. Who arrived in the first half-hour? Among those people, who left for a few minutes; maybe to run to his car or to scale the building?

The Browns were left in the room to look for clues while Hall went back to the party downstairs. Apparently, his party was more important than the missing stamp worth $10,000. In the mess, Chief Brown noticed curved glass. The two of them figured that whoever broke in must have broken his eyeglasses in the process. Their plan was to go downstairs, mingle among the guests and look for anyone who was squinting or bumping into things must have been missing his glasses, and was therefore the thief. They would meet in the kitchen in a half-hour and trade notes.

My problem with this theory is that it was a costume party. As someone who normally wears glasses, I’ve spent costume parties without my glasses if it didn’t go with the costume. With the Browns’ theory in motion, the astigmatic party guest could be accused of stealing just because he didn’t want to ruin his Fred Flintstone costume by having to wear glasses.

Encyclopedia saw a bleary-eyed Humpty Dumpty, but when he fell out of his chair, Encyclopedia realized that he was just drunk. This guy was fall-down drunk by 10:00. Are we sure that this is an appropriate party for children? Sherlock was reading poetry to a ballerina. He was doing so without glasses, so he was out. Was the ballerina squinting? No, she was fluttering her eyelashes.

Awww, yeah. Sherlock’s gonna get some tiny dancer action; maybe in the bathroom in a few minutes. I really can’t stress enough how a boy Encyclopedia’s age shouldn’t be in this party.

The half-hour was up and he had nothing, and neither did his father. Then something clicked in Encyclopedia’s mind. It wasn’t eyeglasses that were broken, it was a magnifying glass.

Encyclopedia reasoned that Sherlock Holmes broke the magnifying glass for his costume while in the study. He thought he had cleaned most of it up, but he left one piece. But since his costume was now without a magnifying glass, he took the one in Hall’s study.

Let’s recount this evening from the point of view of Sherlock.

He arrived at the party soon after 8. Instead of mingling with the few other guests who arrived early, he made a beeline for the upstairs to check out every room. When he found that one of the doors was locked, he decided that the best course of action for him at that point would be to leave the party, climb a tree to get into that room by breaking a window. All of that just to see what was on the other side of the locked door. No one seemed to notice the grown man dressed like Sherlock Holmes climbing a tree and breaking into a home.

Fortunately for Sherlock, all of that effort paid off, because he found a $10,000 stamp in the room. Actually, he found an entire album of rare stamps, but he only cared about that one stamp, for some reason. The bad news was that he had broken his magnifying glass in the course of getting into the room. Should he just say that he forgot it at home? No, he should just take the magnifying glass in the room.

Okay, time to leave the room. Should he leave the party? No, that would be suspicious. He decided to stick around and hope that the host didn’t recognize the fact that someone was walking around with the magnifying glass that was taken from the room that had just been broken into. Time to hit on the ballerina.

It’s almost as if the guy was begging to be caught, but Hall was too stupid to figure any of this out. The guy could have just dressed up like a “rare stamp thief,” and he still probably would have gotten away with it.

Let me start off by explaining that I’m beyond asking why an organization such as the Worm Racers’ Club of America exists, and let me go straight to the rules for qualifying for a WRCA sanctioned event.

In yesterday’s mystery, there was an opening in the WRCA State Championships, so one of the group’s members, Thad Dixon, was given the task of finding a worm to fill that slot. In the course of events, we learned the specifics of how one qualifies for the state champions.

I skipped over this detail yesterday because it wasn’t important to the case itself, but I had to share, because it was mind-blowingly insane. One sentence was devoted to explaining how a worm qualifies for the state championship race.

Wait, what? Are these the organization’s specifics? When has anyone ever used the unit of measurement of “hours per mile”? Never. Want to know why? It’s an absolutely useless measurement. 

It’s especially useless in this case because the purpose of the the qualifier is to see if a worm is able to travel a space of five feet under a specific time. By expressing the rate as hours per mile, the person observing the qualifier (in this case, a child) would need to do a complicated math problem to figure out what that would convert to.

So when the WRCA could have said “to qualify for the championship race, a worm had to travel five feet in under 34 minutes 5.45 seconds,” it instead gave the instructions in some bizarre unit that is so impractical, it never gets used.

And did they really devote nearly 35 minutes watching this worm go five feet? Why not save everyone the trouble and have see if it moved one foot in 6 minutes 49 seconds? It’s the same rate.

This got me thinking. How exactly how fast is 600 hours per mile? I mean in a useful unit of measurement.

Oh, 8.8 feet per hour. After doing all of this work, I realize I could have also just divided 5,280 by 600.

I know nothing about how fast worms travel. I’ve seen them in action, and while I’ve observed that they’re slow, I’ve never actually measured their speed. After reading this story one could imagine if an organization dedicated to the racing of worms used that speed as a the mark of whether or not a worm would get into the state championships, then it must be kind of fast.

According to the website All About Worms, not at all.

The qualifying speed is 8.8 feet per hour, which is less than one-third of the average speed of a small earthworm. Why even bother having a qualifier when even a remarkably slow worm could still breeze their way to the championships? It seems all a worm needs to qualify is to not be dead.

Thad Dixon paid a visit to the Brown Detective Agency. I don’t believe we’ve met Thad before. He’s known around town for his worm racing. His worm, Sis-Boom-Bah, had won the time trials and was headed to the state championships. That is, until, Thad accidentally killed Sis-Boom-Bah.

With an opening in the race, as a member of the Worm Racers’ Club of America – I’m not kidding, that was the name given to the organization – Thad was busy judging worms to fill Sis-Boom-Bah’s slot. It’s not explained why the WRCA didn’t just select the worm who finished the time trials in second place.

Thad was on his way to judge the performance of Hoager Dempsey’s Lightfoot Louie. I should point out that Hoager is a mean 12-year-old who hated animals and was only involved in this race because the winner would receive a $1,000 savings bond.

Thad didn’t want to go to Hoager’s alone, so he hired Encyclopedia and Sally. Encyclopedia is just a detective, but he regularly gets hired for protection. I find that amusing.

Encyclopedia, Sally and Thad were with Hoager to see if Lightfoot Louie would qualify. Thad explained that to qualify, the worm was given a certain amount of time to travel five feet (more on that tomorrow). Hoager got a foot-long tube and explained that his worm would travel the length of the tube, turn around and repeat until it reached five feet.

Thad started the stopwatch, but Lightfoot Louie didn’t move. Hoager explained that the worm wasn’t moving because it was too hot, so he covered it with a towel and watched from the opening in the front of the tube. Since only Hoager could see the “action,” he offered the play-by-play.

Lightfoot Louie supposedly finished the course with enough time and Hoager triumphantly pulled his worm out of the opening of the tube. Sally called Hoager a liar, and he responded by swinging at the girl. Sally punched him in the stomach.

It was obvious that Hoager’s worm didn’t move, because if it had traveled the length of the tube five times, it would have finished on the opposite side.

Did Hoager really believe the “you can’t see my worm, but believe me, it’s really moving” trick was going to work? The point of having a WRCA member come to one’s home to watch a worm race was to actually witness the worm move. If Thad was going to just take Hoager’s word for it, there was no point in him even showing up.

Even if Thad shirked his duties and allowed Hoager’s worm to enter the race, what was he going to do at the state championships? He had a worm that didn’t move. There was no way he was going to win that savings bond, so why did he even bother trying?

If he was smart, he would have just stolen a fast worm. He probably would have been caught, but at least that kind of cheating would have worked.

It was just another boring day in Idaville until Sally alerted Encyclopedia about a fight breaking out at Butch Mulligan’s house. Mulligan was a very large 18-year-old, so it seemed unlikely that someone would pick a fight with him.

It actually wasn’t a fight, more of a one-sided ass-kicking. Mulligan was beating up a bunch of children. While I don’t have the stomach for adult-on-child beatdowns, the victims were Bugs Meany and a few other Tiger members, so this was a good kind of adult-on-child beatdown.

The children of Idaville share the same interest in seeing Bugs getting beaten up, because they had formed a crowd around Mulligan’s home, cheering him on. Encyclopedia asked Mulligan’s younger brother, Haystacks, what caused the fight.

It all started when Bugs tried to cheat Mulligan out of some calendars. Mr. Downing, a math teacher, had recently moved out of state. Before Downing left, Mulligan asked him for his collection of 25 calendars depicting scenes from the Civil War.

However, Bugs emerged with a note supposedly written by Downing that read the following:

Dear Butch,
I forgot that I promised the calendars to Bugs Meany. Therefore, so that you may each have the same number, please divide the 25 calendars by ½.                                                                                                                John Downing

Bugs had come to Mulligan’s home to divide the calendars up, but since 25 is an odd number, there was one left over. Mulligan and Bugs agreed to flip a coin to decide to go that final calendar. Bugs flipped a coin, Mulligan called heads, and Bugs said it had landed on tails without allowing Mulligan to look at it. Mulligan had had enough of Bugs’ crap so he threw Bugs and 12 of the calendars out of his door. Bugs got the Tigers to gang up on Mulligan, but Mulligan didn’t have a problem beating these children up.

Though Mulligan was ready to part with 12 calendars in the collection, Encyclopedia figured out that Bugs faked the letter. No math teacher would tell someone to divide 25 items by one-half, because dividing 25 by one-half gives you 50. He would have said “divide the 25 calendars by two.”

No, actually no one speaks that way. He probably would have said, “split the calendars amongst yourselves.”

Why is Bugs such an idiot? First off, he sucks at forging letters, as we’ve learned before. Secondly, why was he so interested in these calendars? He has pretended to be interested in the Civil War in the past, but even then, it was shown the he didn’t know anything about it. Bugs only seems interested in taking everyone’s prized possessions, just because they’re their prized possessions. That seems to be his only motive, and he’s willing to go to any lengths to ruin other peoples’ lives.

It’s one thing to cheat someone his own age out of a telescope, but to devise some sort of scheme to take calendars from someone much older and bigger than him? What is he getting out of that?

When he went to Mulligan’s home with some poorly thought out scheme, he ended up with 12 calendars that weren’t even rightfully his. Anyone halfway sensible would have walked away while he was ahead. But no, Bugs decided to get the help of his fellow Tigers to get Calendar #13. Even when they were completely powerless to Mulligan, they for some reason persisted. They kept coming back for more and Mulligan kept knocking them to the ground all so that Bugs could get one extra calendar.

And where are the police through all of this? It seemed as if every child in Idaville caught wind as to what was happening, didn’t any sensible adult figure it out? Wouldn’t one of Mulligan’s neighbors wonder why there was a group of children outside, cheering? And wouldn’t they find out that the reason they were cheering was because Mulligan, who is legally an adult, was beating a bunch of children? I don’t know, if I looked out my window and saw that, I’d probably call the police. Even if it was my neighborhood’s equivalent to Bugs Meany getting beaten.

Thank goodness my neighborhood doesn’t have a Bugs Meany.

Encyclopedia and Sally went to Mario’s Restaurant for some lunch. After placing their order, Encyclopedia studied each of the fifteen customers in the restaurant. That seems like extremely paranoid behavior for a typical 10-year-old, but this is Encyclopedia. Crime can’t help but follow him. He knows that at any moment, someone’s going to pull some shit and since the law enforcement in the area is shitty at best, he’s the one that’s going to be the one to have to figure it all out.

Obviously, since he took the time to study everyone in the room, something was about to go down, so I suppose I should give a brief description of everyone.

At one table, in the corner, was a middle-aged couple. The slender man sat in the corner and facing him was a “beefy woman in a tight brown dress.” Another table, near the window, had three men and “a very fat woman.” Another table had two men and two women. The men talked baseball while the women looked bored. At the fourth table were five young men dressed in the telephone company’s uniform.

We’re all up to speed? Good.

The slender man and the “beefy woman” paid their bill and left. As the five telephone company employees were paying, there was a woman’s scream from the back of the restaurant. Being gentlemen, they ran out of the store. Don’t worry, five young men, the screaming woman will just fend for herself.

When Officer Carlson appeared, Mario explained that his daughter, Isabel, went to the bank to make a deposit every Tuesday. Isabel went to the ladies’ room to freshen up before heading to the bank, when someone barged in, punched her and took the money.

According to Mario, only the employees knew of this bank routine, and they were all accounted for. John Rizzo had worked there as a cook, but he had been fired the previous week. There was no sign of him near the restaurant that day.

Also, there was the question of who could have beaten up Isabel. She was a tough little lady, so it was assumed that no woman could ever knock her out with a single punch. It must have been a man. But the door to the ladies’ room was visible to all of the customers. Someone would have noticed a man walking into the ladies’ room. Who was it?

Encyclopedia was clueless, but Sally had it all figured out. She wasn’t surprised that Encyclopedia didn’t know, because “boys today haven’t learned their manners.”

It was the “beefy woman,” who was actually John Rizzo dressed in drag. Sally knew this because proper etiquette dictates that when a man and a woman are sitting at a table, the man should have his back to the rest of the room and the woman should sit in the corner so that she can see and be seen. Since Mr. and Mrs. Rizzo were both cross-dressing, the female was sitting with her back to the wall; the only problem was that she was dressed as a man so it looked like the supposed taboo that I had never heard of was being broken.

Okay, I guess I understand why Mr. Rizzo would dress as a woman. First off, it’s a decent disguise. Secondly, it would give him access to the ladies’ room without turning any heads. I don’t understand why Mrs. Rizzo would need to dress as a guy. She’s not involved in the actual crime; she’s just along for the ride. There would have been nothing suspicious about two women eating lunch together at a restaurant, why go through that extra trouble?

But here’s where Sally’s case starts to fall apart. Everyone would have been able to see the ladies’ room door. That means that the customers would have seen someone enter the ladies’ room right before Isabel screamed. Was it the “beefy lady”? I’m guessing not, and here’s why.

She already left.  The story clearly says that the skinny man and the “beefy lady” paid their check and left. It didn’t say anything about her doubling back and heading to the ladies’ room. Way to go, Sally; you just accused one of the two people in the story who was not in the restaurant at the time of the robbery.

Here’s how I see this playing out. Based on Sally’s theory and the description the two detectives give, Officer Carlson will look for this “beefy lady.” He will find her, accuse her of being a man in drag and then proceed to ask her about a robbery that took place after she had left the restaurant. The “beefy lady” will be visibly upset, but Carlson would be relentless and demand to know why she wasn’t sitting with her back to the wall like any other respectable woman with proper manners. The “beefy lady,” who already had issues with her physical appearance because of years of being referred to as a “beefy lady,” explained that maybe she didn’t want everyone in the restaurant to see her ugly face. Carlson will realize that he accidentally offended a woman and try to make amends by complimenting her, but it would be kind of difficult for him, considering that he had just accused her of being a guy in drag. The “beefy lady” and the skinny man will then go file a complaint to Chief Brown who will then demote Carlson to what is referred to as “Bugs Meany duty.”

I don’t see this playing out any other way.

And Sally is pretty inconsistent about judging people who follow the rules of etiquette. When a woman screamed, five able-bodied young men immediately fled, moving as quickly as their ten cowardly little legs could take them. Sally didn’t think twice about the fact that maybe these men could have helped the woman in peril in some way. But when she spotted woman sitting with her back to the rest of the room, all sorts of alarms went off in her head. 

Brandon King owned the largest lumberyard in the area. When he died, there was a slight problem with the will – it was missing. Only King’s lawyer knew where it was, and he was sworn to secrecy. The stipulation was that if the will was not found within ninety days of his death, all of his money would go to the magicians’ union.

Yeah, that’s a lot of weird info to take in. Why the magicians’ union? Magic was a hobby of his. He even had framed enlargements of every card of the deck hanging out in his home. I guess that’s a sign of someone liking magic.

He hid his will because he wasn’t all that crazy about his inheritance going to his family. His wife had died, so the money would be going to his four sons. However, he knew that one of his sons was stealing from the company, so the will left that son out.

Why not just expose that son and give the money to the other three sons? Well, because those three sons didn’t particularly work hard either. Why not just release a will that snubs all of the sons and gives the money to the union? Yeah, that’s not explained.

There was one clue that was left behind:

Four Kings worked for me, if badly.
One stole when I wasn’t about.
Still, I’ve willed all I have to three,
And left the odd king out.

All four sons went to Chief Brown’s house because they wanted the will to be located, but Chief Brown had no clue as to where it could have been. However, Encyclopedia assumed that one of the sons was only pretending to be interested. That son knew he wasn’t getting anything, but he didn’t want to be exposed as a thief.

That last line struck a chord with Encyclopedia, so he asked Chief Brown if there was one son that was different than the other way. Actually, the all had something different about them. Arthur was the only one stood at under six feet tall, Frank was the only one without a mustache, John was the only one who wore glasses and Charles was the only blond.

Encyclopedia figured it all out. The will was in the picture frame with the king of hearts. Why the king of hearts? That is the only king that doesn’t have a mustache. That also meant that Frank was the thief, because he was the only King without a mustache.

What? That’s a bit of a stretch.

There have been plenty of mysteries where Encyclopedia employed some majorly faulty logic that somehow ended up being right, but in those cases, I can follow his reasoning, however specious it was. This was the first time Encyclopedia’s reasoning made absolutely no sense to me.

I mean, if the will happened to be in the frame of the king of hearts, then great. Good for Encyclopedia. I still don’t understand why it would be there, but whatever. But I don’t like the way Encyclopedia just accused Frank based on what seems to be some random judgment of his physical appearance.

“He doesn’t have a mustache, just like how the king of hearts doesn’t have a mustache. Arrest him.” What the hell kind of investigation is that?

Bugs did the old “call Encyclopedia for a phony meeting in some isolated place so that he would be left without an alibi” trick again, only this time, he did it twice and included Sally in on it. And like every other time, Bugs showed up at the Brown Detective Agency with some hapless police officer who apparently had nothing better to do with his time.

This time, it was Officer Culp in tow, and it was very clear that he was awful at his job. Culp explained that Bugs accused Encyclopedia of feeding other people’s parking meters. He even showed Encyclopedia a car allegedly found a windshield of one of the cars. It read:

“Hi! You have just been saved from a $5 parking ticket by the Robin Hood parking aid. Your time on the meter had run out. Could you please send $2 so I may continue to bring you and others this service?”

Encyclopedia’s address was written on the bottom. If this card was to be believed, Encyclopedia had been feeding the meters for other people. However, Culp admitted that he had no idea if this was even illegal.

Okay, let’s hold on for a second. The police officer was unclear about what the law said in this case. I’m not faulting him for not knowing this. A quick Google search doesn’t really clear matters up. It seems to be illegal in some municipalities, but it also seems that it often goes ignored because it’s not that big of a crime.

My problem with Culp here is the fact that Bugs – who has a long history of filing fake police reports – accused Encyclopedia of feeding parking meters. Instead of looking into the city’s bylaws and finding out if this activity is even illegal, Culp just blindly followed this boy. If there was no law on the book saying that one can’t feed someone else’s parking meter; then there’s no reason for Culp to go to Encyclopedia’s. Culp could have saved himself a trip and saved himself from looking like he didn’t know what the laws that he was supposed to be enforcing.

There’s also the fact that Bugs had no proof that Encyclopedia had been doing this. Or did he?!

According to Bugs’ story, he had filmed Encyclopedia in the act. After it was developed, he and some of the other Tigers watched the film. However, after the film was over, Sally allegedly ran into the Tigers’ clubhouse and stole the film right off of the projector. Bugs chased after her, but he saw at some point that she wasn’t holding it anymore. He assumed that Sally must have thrown it somewhere.

These are where the detectives’ lack of alibis came in. When Encyclopedia had been accused of feeding the meter, he was at the Indian burial grounds and Sally was supposedly at the airfield when Bugs said she had stolen the film.

Culp drove the three children to Bugs’ house to look for the reel of film. After a few minutes, Bugs had said he had found it in the bushes. Bugs then set the film projector up to show Culp the evidence. After some scenes of the Tigers showing off their muscles on the beach, the film cut to a boy dressed similar to Encyclopedia putting a dime in the meter and slipping a card under the windshield wiper. We’re made to believe it was Encyclopedia, but the film doesn’t show the boy’s face, so it’s not proof that it was him.

Bugs’ case is shoddy, at best. If the film doesn’t show Encyclopedia’s face, how is Culp supposed to believe that it was actually Encyclopedia? Culp can’t just go on Bugs’ word.

However, it was obvious that Bugs was lying because when he had supposedly found the film, it had been at the beginning. If Sally had stolen the film from the projector, only to be discovered right before being played again, it would have needed to be rewound. If they played it as it was, the images would have appeared upside-down.

Bugs went through all of this trouble to create phony evidence and filed yet another phony police report to accuse Encyclopedia of something that may not have been illegal in the first place.

And yet, the Idavile Police Department are more than happy to put its resources towards investigating each one of Bugs’ phony stories.

Dave Foster came to the Brown Detective Agency suspicious that Bugs had cheated him out of money. This seemed very likely, so Encyclopedia heard Dave’s story in which Bugs charged Dave one dollar to teach him how to hypnotize a lobster.

It started when Dave walked past Bugs and the Tigers at their clubhouse as they were enjoying a lobster feast. He told Dave that he had caught eleven lobsters after hypnotizing them. He gave a demonstration for Dave, in which he hypnotized a lobster and had it balance a ping-pong ball on its tail as it balanced on its head. He offered Dave some lessons for a dollar. I guess Dave was so seduced with the idea of being able to hypnotize lobsters into being caught that he didn’t stop to think that Bugs was one of the least honest people in the entire town.

Dave took a lesson, but when he tried to hypnotize the lobster himself, it didn’t work. Bugs explained that one cannot just learn lobster hypnotism in one lesson, and offered to enroll Dave in a course for ten dollars.

At that point, Dave began to suspect that he was being cheated, because the only thing he had to show after a one dollar lesson was a Polaroid of Bugs and Dave with the big red lobster.

Encyclopedia and Dave went to the clubhouse to confront Bugs. Bugs was unable to perform more lobster tricks because he had eaten the last one. With all of the lobsters gone, Encyclopedia wasn’t able to prove Bugs was lying.

Except he still had the photo of the lobster, which showed that it was red. Lobsters are brown. They don’t turn red until they’ve been cooked. Bugs didn’t hypnotize a lobster to do his bidding; he was just moving a dead lobster around.

Seriously? Bugs made up some story about being able to hypnotizing lobsters in order to make a quick buck? Where does he come up with this nonsense?

And now that it’s obvious that he didn’t hypnotize those lobsters in order to catch them, I’m curious about how he got his hands on eleven lobsters. Did he actually catch them out of luck, or did he buy them in a store? If he was that adept at catching lobsters, then he could make lots of money selling the lobsters he was suddenly able to catch. If he could afford a lobster bonanza, then he obviously had some money coming in. Either way, he didn’t need to defraud children out of money through some lobster hypnotism scheme. 

Encyclopedia and Charlie Stewart were on another one of their camping trips when Charlie thought he heard a gunshot. Though they were unsure if it was an illegal hunter or a murderer, the two boys went to find out what was going on. After all, how dangerous could it be for two children to chase after a murderer?

They discovered a dead male golden eagle. Nearby was a nest with two eggs. Encyclopedia reasoned that the mother had flown away at the sound of the gunshot and would probably be in danger of being shot when she returned to tend to her eggs.

Encyclopedia immediately suspected Mike Bailey. The previous year, two golden eagles were killed in the same area and a scoutmaster saw Mike in the area. There was a full moon that night, so the scoutmaster was able to see that Mike had been carrying a rifle.

That appears to have been the extent of the investigation from that incident. A scoutmaster identified a teen with a rifle in the vicinity of where two eagles had been illegally hunted, but no one seemed to care enough to take any further action.

The boys looked around and they found Mike at a campsite. Near his tent was a rifle. Mike explained that he had the rifle in case he saw a rattlesnake. Encyclopedia explained about the dead eagle and the gunshot and he said that he wanted to smell Mike’s rifle for gunpowder. Mike told Encyclopedia not to step near his rifle or he’d break his leg. Way to maintain the image of innocence, Mike.

Encyclopedia brought up the incident the previous year and Mike said he had had nothing to do with that either. Again, he had wanted to protect himself from rattlesnakes, which is why he had his rifle. Yes, he was in the area, but only to observe the full moon over the ridge in the western sky.

That’s when Encyclopedia knew Mike was lying. Full moons don’t appear in the western sky in the nighttime. So clearly, the moon wasn’t where he said it was a year ago, that means that he must have shot three birds.

How does that prove that he had shot the eagles, but an eyewitness seeing him with a rifle at the location of the killings didn’t?

Since Mike realized that Encyclopedia had figured him out, he confessed. He promised not to shoot any more eagles and Encyclopedia and Charlie promised not to tell on him.

WHAT?!

This kid gave absolutely no explanation for killing these eagles, so we’re left to assume that he was doing it for fun. This doesn’t bother Encyclopedia or Charlie? At all? They often say that children who needlessly kill animals could grow up to become serial killers. But what kind of deranged mind allows those types of killings to go unpunished?

Let’s also not forget that Charlie collects teeth, so I guess we’re not dealing with the most rational of people.

Ziggy Ketchum is a 16-year-old idiot who works at Hector’s Department Store. He’s the good kind of idiot, though; not the “I’m terrible at lying, but I’m going to lie anyway to cover up some sort of illegal activity” kind, which seem to be a dime a dozen in Idaville.

Ziggy went to Brown Detective Agency in a panic. He needed to find his salami sandwich before he got fired. He explained that his co-worker, Al Noshman, always stole Ziggy’s lunch. (Ha ha! Get it? Al NOSHman, who likes to steal people’s lunches.) Al sounds like a complete asshole, if you ask me. To avoid having his lunch stolen, he would hide his lunch in the shoe department. More accurately, he would hide his lunch in a shoebox; like, with a pair of shoes. Each day, he’d hide it in a different box.

That Monday, Ziggy hid his lunch so well that he forgot where he put it. He worried that if the manager found the sandwich before he did, he’d lose his job. Encyclopedia, Sally and Ziggy took the bus down to the department store, which had recently been robbed by people posing as window dressers, to look for this sandwich.

Ziggy also explained that each week, he made up a list of where to hide the shoes. He still had the previous week’s list, for some reason, and he showed the detectives. It read, “Brown 7½, Brown 7, White 7½, Tan 6, White 6½” That’s easy enough to figure out. For example, on Thursday, he had hidden his lunch in a box holding size 6 tan shoes. I don’t know how he knew which pair of size 6 tan shoes it would be in. A department store is likely to carry several pairs of many different styles of one shoe. Simply noting the size and color doesn’t seem to be enough information.

Sally looked at the list and said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Yeah, that’s great. This is last week’s list. Do you have this week’s list?” Ziggy’s eyes lit up as if the idea of looking at that week’s list never even occurred to him. He ran down to his locker – which apparently doesn’t lock, otherwise he’d just hide his lunch in his locker… I guess? – and returned to that week’s list.

“Black 6, Black 6½, Tan 7¼, Red 7¾, Natural 7½”

Since he misplaced Monday’s lunch, it must have been in the box with the size 6 black shoes. Encyclopedia probably rolled his eyes as Ziggy looked in every box carrying black shoes in a size 6. When the search turned up empty, Encyclopedia explained to Ziggy where his lunch was.

With sizes and descriptions like “Tan 7¼” and “Red 7¾,” it was obvious – or it should have been – that shoes don’t come in quarter-sizes, but hats do. Ziggy looked in a box with a size 6 black hat, and found his sandwich. And then he put the box back, in case the store got any customers who wanted to buy a size 6 black hat that smelled like days-old unrefrigerated salami.

Let’s review. To avoid getting his lunch stolen, Ziggy devised a plan that involved hiding it in shoeboxes that was so complicated that even he couldn’t figure it out. One week, one of two things happened. Either he decided to switch things up and hide his lunch in a hat box and just forgot or he didn’t realize that when he opened the box (which, one would think, would be in completely different department) he didn’t even realize that there was a hat in the box and not a pair of shoes.

I’m surprised a kid this stupid is even able to hold down a job in the first place.