The Encyclopedia Brown Encyclopedia

Tyrone Taylor was always hitting on the town’s 5^th grade girls. Sounds really creepy, until you realize Tyrone was 10 years old. Taking that into account, the creepiness factor decreases, but doesn’t completely disappears.

He was pissed off because he was trying to woo Betty Holden, but Stingy Stetson snaked Tyrone’s love interest. Stingy, as the nickname suggests, was a cheapskate. Tyrone saw Stingy at Mr. O’Hara’s drugstore with Betty. Stingy had bought her an “Idaville Special” with three scoops of ice cream.

Tyrone had no idea why Stingy was suddenly making it rain, so he assumed the worst. He accused Stingy of stealing money. He even dropped a quarter at the Brown Detective Agency so that Encyclopedia could find out what was going on with Stingy.

Encyclopedia reminded Tyrone that accusing someone of stealing money just because he stole his woman isn’t very nice. Tyrone explained that he had actually seen Stingy outside of the Medical Building the previous day. What was he doing there on a Sunday? It was closed.

Now, what happens next is needlessly complicated. Tyrone was hanging out by the Medical Building (by the way, that’s capitalized, which leads me to believe that that’s the actual name of the building) when he saw Stingy and his older brother, Pete, doing some weird walk across the parking lot to their truck. He couldn’t see the lower half of their bodies, but he could somehow tell that they were walking funny. Encyclopedia figured out they were walking along the white lines that marked the parking spots.

Encyclopedia later asked his father if the Medical Building had been robbed the previous day. Wouldn’t you know it, yes it was. About $200 was stolen from petty cash boxes in several offices. The thieves snuck into the building, but the security guard spotted them. Well, he spotted their feet as it turned a corner up the stairs. The guard went to chase them, but when he reached the top of the stairs, they knocked him out. When he regained consciousness, he saw a service truck for Mac’s Service Station – the same truck Tyrone saw – drive away out of the parking lot. The guard called Mac’s and found out that Pete Stetson normally drove the truck on Sundays, and some days he took his little brother along on some calls.

This is an open and shut case for the Idaville PD, right? No. Because when Pete and Stingy returned to the station, they were wearing shoes.

Are you kidding me? That’s their alibi? No, the thieves were barefoot and these two were seen several minutes later wearing shoes. There’s no way they would have been able to put on their shoes at any point between leaving the Medical Building and returning to the service station. It looks like this one is unsolvable.

Well, no. Encyclopedia figured out that the reason why they were walking along the white lines of the parking lot was because they were barefoot. They walked along the lines to keep from burning their feet on the hot blacktop.

To review, this kid planned to steal some money from a bunch of doctor’s offices and decided the best partner for that kind of crime would be his 10-year-old brother, the little brother used the money stolen to pick up chicks and the only reason why they got caught was because a horny 10-year-old was pissed about losing his would-be girlfriend. Also, the Idaville PD is enormously terrible at police work.

But we already knew that.

Since the Idaville PD had such an excellent record solving crimes, Chief Brown was sometimes called to neighboring towns to help out their police. One evening, he and Encyclopedia went to Ocean City to respond to a home invasion and robbery reported by a Mr. Bevan.

“Chief Brown,” Chief Moore of the Ocean City PD must have said at one point, “I don’t know how you do your police work back in Idaville, but here in the fine town of Ocean City, we insist at least one 10-year-old boy is present for the investigation of serious crimes.”

The problem was that Bevan didn’t remember anything between getting hit over the head and waking up in the hospital. The robbers may have taken his ring or he may have hidden it. He had no idea.

Two masked men forced their way into Mr. Bevan’s home in an attempt to steal a ring that once belonged to King Louis XIV. When the robbers asked him where the ring was, Bevan lied and told them that it was in his bedroom with his wife’s jewelry. One of them hit Bevan over the head and they began to tear the house apart.

Luckily, the police were able to find a typewritten note hidden in the house. It read:

Two men tried to steal the diamond ring. They hunted all over the house, raving about like madmen. They even split open the cat! When all failed, they beat me, but I didn’t tell and so they hunted a little while longer. I may be dying. I hid the ring in the vane.

They pieced together that Bevan must have typed this entire note after being hit in the head, but it didn’t really make any sense. He didn’t have a cat, so no felines were murdered during the search for this ring. And there was no way he would have climbed to his roof to hide the ring in a weather vane.

That’s when Encyclopedia figured out that being hit appeared to have affected his ability to type, as he was confusing his ‘c’s and ‘v’s. They weren’t raving about, they were racing about. They didn’t rip apart a cat, they ripped apart a vat of wine in the basement. And the ring wasn’t hidden in his weather vane, it was hidden in his cane.

So, to review, after being hit in the head, Bevan knew to hide the ring. He also knew he had to write a quick note and then hide that note from the robbers. Instead of writing a quick, “I hid the ring in my cane,” he went to the typewriter and typed out a pretty detailed account of the entire crime while leaving out any description of the intruders. Then he hid the note and then he passed out?

And what kind of head injury causes such a side effect? He was able to type properly except for confusing two keys that are next to each other on the typewriter? That’s a pretty specific head injury.

Best of all, there’s no mention in the story about whether or not the robbers were apprehended. I guess the police didn’t really care about catching the guys who invaded a man’s home and beat him unconscious.

There was a fire at the Glade Theater, so Encyclopedia and Sally went to check it. No, don’t get excited, Encyclopedia wasn’t about to investigate an arson. No, this turnes into another “someone sneaked up behind someone else, hit them over the head and robbed them” case.

Mr. Jorgens, who owns the beauty parlor, emerged from the alley saying that he had been robbed. Officer Wilson questioned Jorgens, who then gave the report to his superior, Chief Brown, who then divulged all of the details to his son over dinner.

Jorgens usually went to the bank on Fridays, but he decided to make a special trip on this day because business had been particularly good. The only person he told about his plan to go to the bank was his wife. There were three customers in the beauty parlor at the time, but they were under the loud hair driers at the time and they wouldn’t have been able to hear what Jorgens was saying.

Encyclopedia said that this case was easy. All they needed to do was find out which of the three customers was deaf, and that was the robber. He reasoned that someone who was deaf would be able to see what Jorgens was saying by reading his lips.

Sure enough, Mrs. O’Brien was deaf and caught that Jorgens was going to go to the bank. Knowing that he would be taking a shortcut through the alley and that everyone would be paying attention to the commotion at the theater, she seized the opportunity. After leaving the beauty parlor, she waited in the alley for him and hit him over the head and took his money.

I think it was kind of a good guess though. Yeah, deaf people are likely to be able to read lips, but it’s not a skill only held by the hearing impaired. The Idaville PD is lucky that O’Brien was actually the one who committed the crime. What if it was random? What if it was another customer, who was able to read lips despite being able to hear? That would look bad if they just arrested someone because she happened to be deaf and at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mr. Clancy, a local plumber, was robbed and his assistant, John Morgan, saw the whole thing. Morgan said that he and Clancy were driving Clancy’s truck when it broke down. Morgan stayed in the car while Clancy popped the hood to take a look.

That’s when, according to Morgan, a hobo came out of nowhere, ran up behind Clancy, hit him over the head with a lead pipe, robbed him and ran for the woods. Chief Brown was sure that the tramp and the money were far from town.

Encyclopedia pointed out that Morgan probably did it. First of all, it was a little fishy that he was able to describe every detail when he was sitting in the passenger seat with the hood up. He probably wasn’t able to see anything.

Not mentioned in the story: is it a complete coincidence that a homeless dude happened to possess a lead pipe and that he used it to hit a plumber? Where would this guy have gotten a lead pipe?