Encyclopedia and Sally went to Omar Boxlittler’s melon patch to investigate the theft of his watermelon, Milly-Dilly. Milly-Dilly was special because it weighed 164 pounds.
Of course, there wasn’t much money in selling gigantic watermelons. They’re too large to ship and no one wants to lug them from the stores. However, he could get some money selling the seeds, but not in the way you would think. I had assumed that the seeds of 100-pound watermelons were marketable to people interested in growing their own 100-pound watermelons. No, apparently people with these watermelons sell them to prize watermelon spitters. Ya know, for the national watermelon spitting championship in Wisconsin. It’s not explained why these seeds are better than others, or why someone in Wisconsin would need to buy watermelon seeds from Florida, but none of this is important to the watermelon’s theft, so let’s move on.
No, you know what? It actually is important. It’s assumed that Milly-Dilly was stolen for its watermelon seeds to be sold to someone in Wisconsin. So, everyone knew about the watermelon seed money that came in from Wisconsin? Exactly how much money did watermelon seeds bring in?
Omar suspected that one of the teens that live on one of the nearby farms stole Milly-Dilly. The only clue they had was a book found under the bushes near where Milly-Dilly was growing. The book was Fifty Greatest Baseball Players of the Twentieth Century. They figured that the thief was staking the area out for when Omar’s family left. He must have accidentally left the book behind when he stole the watermelon. The problem was that that wasn’t too great of a clue, because Omar knew that these three teens were big fans of baseball.
Each of the teens had their favorite players as well; Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Ted Williams. I don’t know why the favorite baseball players of these three people were such widely-known information, but it didn’t really help things because Ruth, Cobb and Williams had chapters devoted to them in this book.
Well, they were stuck. There was no way they could figure out who stole the watermelon. Or at least that’s what they thought, until Encyclopedia found a way that would apparently point to the thief.
He opened the book, held the book by the covers and let the pages hang. He did this several times, and he time he did it, the pages parted the same way between the pages about Ted Williams. The Williams fan was Clive Huey. He had read the chapter on Williams so much that he had worn the book’s binding.
Of course, Encyclopedia was assuming that that would be the only reason for the pages to part that way. But Encyclopedia was never interested in proving beyond a reasonable doubt that his accused were actually guilty.
