Encyclopedia Brown Cracks the Case by Donald Sobol Read Free Book Online Page B

phony. He was simply trying to make some fast money and pretending to be an astronaut was his latest scam. When he came across a doll’s space helmet—the perfect size to fit a duck—he got the idea for an astronaut duck. He used a computer to put the duck into the pictures so it would look like the duck had flown in space.
    The man set the duck free, and Moonboy kept the fifty dollars he was saving for space camp.
    Â 
    Encyclopedia noticed a clue that his father had missed.
    There was glass sitting on the small pedestal in place of the baseball. If someone had broken the glass case and then taken the baseball, the pedestal would not have had broken glass on it.
    Ace Harvey wanted to collect the insurance money and keep his baseball as well. Billy Turner was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Mr. Harvey walked in and found him with a piece of glass in his hand, he decided to frame him for the robbery.
    When Encyclopedia stated his theory, Mr. Harvey confessed. A couple of weeks later, he sold the ball to a baseball museum. By the next spring, he had moved out of Idaville.
    After Billy’s hand healed, he started catching fly balls again.
    Â 
    Dan was an experienced carpenter who had built houses in all fifty states. But after lunch he started fumbling and almost destroyed a tape measure. Encyclopedia realized that was because Dan was left-handed. He normally kept his nails in the right pocket of his apron, leaving his left hand free to hold the hammer. But the nails in the apron he wore after lunch were on the left side. The apron belonged to a right-handed carpenter.
    Dan had watched Mr. Freeman put money into his apron all morning long. When his boss stepped into the trailer after lunch, Dan decided to switch aprons. He slipped the money out of the apron and into his pocket when no one was looking. But his fumbling for nails gave him away. Both Mr. Freeman and Fred were right-handed and kept their nails on the opposite side of the apron as the left-handed carpenter.
    When Encyclopedia laid out the facts, Dan confessed and returned the money.
    Â 
    As soon as his father said the carpet was standard for a place like the convention center, Encyclopedia realized it had to have been a wall-to-wall carpet. Only the person who pulled up the carpet would know what the floor was like underneath. Mrs. Dwyer gave herself away when she said that she would never hide the stamps on a damp concrete floor.
    After dinner, Chief Brown and Encyclopedia confronted her and she confessed. She did worry about damaging the valuable stamps on the floor. But the Confederate stamps would have drawn a lot of people into her museum and store, so she decided to take her chances. She planned to return to the convention center and retrieve the stamps after the show was over.