“Sorry,” Milo said. “That stuff just smelled so bad, I thought it was the socks I was looking for.”
“If you want stinky socks,” said Chip, “you should’ve had a whiff of the ones I smelled in here yesterday.” He shook his head. “I hope that guy was taking them out to be burned.”
Smelly socks? Yesterday? A boy taking them out? Chip must have seen the thief!
Milo said, “What did he look—”
“Help! Help!”
Milo looked up and saw Ethan sprinting toward him. Close behind his brother was a giant, furry cat wearing a blue-and-gold Westview Wildcats uniform.
“YOU LITTLE—”
“Wow,” Chip said. “I haven’t seen Wildcat Willie that ticked off since the head cheerleader’s Chihuahua wee-weed on his leg.”
Ethan rushed up and pointed back at Wildcat Willie. “It’s a sabre-tooth tiger! It was about to pounce on me. I clubbed it with my tail, and then I sank my teeth into its—”
Wildcat Willie roared. “WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU—”
Milo reviewed his choices. He could try explaining to the angry mascot that his brother was a dinosaur. Or he could—
Wildcat Willie loomed up in front of them, and Milo grabbed Ethan’s hand.
“Run!”
Milo raced around the corner of the school dragging Ethan behind him.
Frantically, he looked for a place to hide. Then he saw the Dumpster.
“Under there!” He pushed Ethan underneath and tried to slide in beside him. But it was too tight. He didn’t fit.
Wildcat Willie’s angry roars were getting closer. There was only one thing to do.
“Stay under there until I tell you to come out,” Milo told Ethan, “and don’t make a peep.” Then he scrambled up the side of the open Dumpster and threw himself in.
As he landed he heard footsteps pounding past.
“I’M GONNA—where’d they go?”
Milo sank a little lower, and felt something slimy and wet against his ear. Ugh.
Super sleuths were supposed to hang around in cool, swanky places like ski lodges and beach clubs. Not in Dumpsters.
If Wildcat Willie didn’t flatten Ethan, Milo might do it himself.
Then he heard a new voice say, “Dude, what’s the deal?”
“I can’t take this anymore!” Wildcat Willie howled. “It’s bad enough having to wear this stupid costume without getting chomped on by some crazy little kid.”
“Bummer,” said the other boy.
Wildcat Willie grumbled, “Being mascot sounded like a great way to meet cheerleaders, but all they do is pet my fur and say ‘Nice kitty.’ Then they go bouncing off to Beulah’s with some jock like Chip the Chimp or Thrillin’ Dylan.”
Thrillin’ Dylan! Milo thought. He must mean Jazz’s brother.
“I can’t wait for baseball season to be over. I just hope the team doesn’t make it to state finals. No way am I getting on a bus and . . .” Wildcat Willie’s voice faded as the two boys walked off.
Hmm. Maybe the thief wasn’t an Eagle after all. Wildcat Willie didn’t sound too friendly toward Dylan—and he wanted the team to lose!
Could he have stolen the lucky socks?
Once he was sure the boys were gone, Milo tried to pull himself out of the Dumpster. But even on tiptoes, he couldn’t reach the top.
Bending his knees, Milo sprang—and missed.
He lay on his back, the wind knocked out of him. Then he heard footsteps again. Oh, no. Had Willie come back?
A face appeared over the edge. It stared at him.
“What are you doing in there?”
Milo sat up, trying to look a bit more dignified. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for the socks, of course.” Jazz pointed. “You have old spaghetti on your head.”
So much for dignity. He brushed it off.
Jazz went on, “I figured, who would want to hold on to a pair of stinky socks? Whoever took them probably tossed them into the nearest trash can.” She grinned. “But you got here first. You’re smarter than I thought!”
Milo couldn’t think of anything to say.
“So, are they in there?” Jazz asked.
He glanced around. “Uh, no.” Not on top, at least. And as far as he was concerned, if the socks were deep down in the garbage, they could stay there forever. Even an ace detective had to have limits.
“Oh, well. We’ll just have to try something else.” Jazz reached out to him. “Need a hand?”
Somehow this didn’t seem like the best time to argue about who was working on the case. Besides, he had to admit, searching in the trash was not a bad idea. Maybe she had more ideas. Maybe some that weren’t so gross.
Once Milo had climbed down from the Dumpster, he told Jazz what he had heard Wildcat Willie say.
She made a face. “Something’s fishy.”
“So you suspect him, too?”
“No, I mean something smells fishy—like old tuna. Maybe you shouldn’t roll around in garbage anymore.” She added, “But it’s great that we have a suspect. Now, if only we could find a witness. . . .”
Milo perked up. He’d forgotten about Chip the Champ!
Quickly he filled Jazz in on what Chip had told him in the locker room. Her eyes widened. “We’d better go find him right away!”
As they turned to go, a small voice piped up from beneath the Dumpster.
“Milo? Can I please come out?”
Chip wasn’t in the locker room. He wasn’t on the tennis court, either.
Milo thought. “Wildcat Willie said something about Chip going to Beulah’s with the cheerleaders. Maybe he’s there.”
“Great!” Jazz said. “Let’s go.”
All the teenagers hung out at Beulah’s Burger Barn. Everything about Beulah was big—her booming voice, her sky-high hair, her belly-busting chocolate shakes.
Milo spotted Chip sharing a booth with a redheaded girl in a tennis outfit. Leaving Ethan at the counter with money for an ice cream, they squeezed through the crowd.
“But enough about me,” Chip was saying to the girl. “What do you think of my tennis serve?”
Milo broke in. “Sorry to bother you, but—”
Turning to him, Chip wrinkled his nose. “Whoa! And you complain about my mousse? No offense, kid, but whatever you’ve got on, it smells like garbage.”
Milo sighed. “I wanted to ask about those socks.”
“They smelled like garbage, too.”
“The boy you saw taking them—who was he?”
“I don’t know,” Chip said. “I only saw him from the back.”
“What was he wearing?” Jazz asked.
Chip frowned. “A baseball cap, I think.”
“What color?”
“Blue and gold, of course. Wildcat colors.”
Milo caught his breath. Maybe the thief really wasn’t an Eggleston Eagle!
“Could it have been Wildcat Willie?” Milo asked.
Chip said, “I think I know the difference between a baseball cap and a gigantic furry head.”
The girl snickered.
Milo said, “I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, I remember one more thing,” Chip interrupted. “He was wearing a jacket with writing on the back.”
Now they were getting somewhere!
“What did it say?” Milo asked.
Chip shrugged. “I forget.” Tossing his hair out of his eyes, he checked himself out in the mirrored wall.
Milo sighed. If Chip would only stop admiring himself long enough to tell them what they needed to know!
“Think,” Jazz said. “Please.”
Chip thought. “Something about baseball, maybe? Something like . . . bat. Or base. No, wait, I know—it was mitt!”
Milo and Jazz looked at each other. Mitt?
“Are you sure?”
Chip nodded. “I remember now. Mitt. Like a baseball mitt.”
“That seems like a strange thing to put on a jacket,” Jazz sa
id.
“Yeah, well, baseball players aren’t exactly famous for their fashion sense.” Chip eyed his reflection again. “Now, a tennis star, on the other hand . . .”
Milo and Jazz made their escape, scooping up Ethan on their way out. He had pistachio ice cream smeared all over his face. And his T-shirt. And his hair. At least now he was sort of the color of a dinosaur.
“Mitt,” Jazz said as they left. “Why Mitt?”
“Maybe it’s short for something,” Milo suggested. “Is there anybody on the team named Mitchell? Or Mitt-something else?”
“I’ll ask Dylan.” She pulled a notebook out of her pocket. It was purple with gold stars.
“What is that?” Milo said.
“My detective notebook, of course.”
“Real detectives do not write in purple notebooks, Jazz.”
“Oh, yeah?” She pointed to a sticky pink spot on his shirt. “Do real detectives wear strawberry jam?”
While he scrubbed at the spot with spit, Jazz wrote in her notebook.
She tapped her pen against her teeth. “It could also be a nickname that has nothing to do with his name. Maybe it means that he wears a baseball mitt.”
“Don’t all the players wear a mitt?” Milo asked.
Jazz shook her head. “Most of them wear a glove. Only the catcher and first baseman wear a mitt.”
“So, the thief has to be one of those two players!”
“Or somebody nicknamed Mitt,” she reminded him.
Milo felt excitement bubble up inside him like one of Beulah’s root beer floats. He was so close. Soon he’d be writing to Dash Marlowe to reveal how he’d solved his first case!
As soon as Milo’s mom got home from work, he and Jazz dropped off Ethan, got their bikes, and headed over to the baseball field. Practice had just ended, and most of the team was packing up.
They found Dylan slouched on the bench. Another boy stood on the pitcher’s mound, hurling fastballs to the catcher.
“You don’t look too happy,” Milo said.
Dylan looked up. “My pitching was so bad today, Coach said he’s putting in a substitute. I don’t get to throw against the Eagles in tomorrow’s game.”
“That’s terrible!” Jazz said.
“It’s all because I lost my—” Dylan sniffed the air. “My socks! You found them!”
“No,” she explained, “Milo jumped in a Dumpster. But we might have a clue about who stole your socks.”
Milo asked, “Is there someone on the team named Mitt? Or anything that starts with Mitt?”
“Mitt?” Dylan shook his head.
“Can you tell us the names of the first baseman and the catcher?” Jazz asked.
“Oscar Molina and P.J. Boyle,” he said. “Why?”
“We think one of them took your socks.”
Dylan stared at his sister. “They wouldn’t do that. We’re on the same team.”
“Are you sure you didn’t do something to make them mad?” asked Milo.
“Oscar is one of my best friends,” Dylan said. “Besides, he wasn’t even here yesterday. He had to go to the dentist.”
That left only one possible suspect!
Triumphantly Milo announced, “Then P.J. Boyle must have been the one who stole your socks from the boys’ locker room.”
Dylan said, “But P.J. never even goes in there.”
“Why not?” Jazz asked.
Dylan called, “Hey, P.J.! Come here for a minute?”
The catcher stood up.
Jogging toward them, P.J. pulled off the heavy catcher’s mask and plastic helmet, and shook out a long ponytail.
P.J. was a girl.
“Yeah?” P.J. said.
Dylan looked at Milo and Jazz. They didn’t say anything. He turned to P.J. “Tell Tim he’s leaning back a little too far on the windup.”
“Okay.” She started to walk away, then turned back. “I wish Coach hadn’t pulled you off tomorrow’s game. You’re the best pitcher in the league.”
Dylan sighed. “Not without my lucky socks.”
P.J. shook her head. “You and those socks. Dylan, you don’t need luck. You just need to get your head back in the game.”
Dylan didn’t answer. He just sat there scuffing a cleat in the dirt.
Milo felt awful. He had been so sure they were about to nab the thief! If the Wildcats lost to the Eagles tomorrow, it would be all his fault.
“Maybe it was Wildcat Willie after all,” Jazz said as they left the field. “Or maybe it really was an Eagle.”
“But Chip said the thief was wearing a Wildcats baseball cap,” Milo said.
“Just because he said it doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“You mean Chip was lying?”
Hmm, Milo thought. Could Chip be the thief? Maybe he was jealous of Thrillin’ Dylan!
Jazz shook her head. “I mean, maybe Chip just didn’t see exactly what he thought he saw.”
Jazz might be right. But if they couldn’t trust what Chip told them about the thief, what did they have?
Nothing at all.
Milo and Jazz sat glumly in the stands. The cheerleaders were clapping and yelling as Wildcat Willie did cartwheels on the field. At least Willie was happy. The way the game was going, he didn’t have to worry about having to attend state finals.
The substitute pitcher, Tim, was not doing too well. By the bottom of the fifth, the score was Eagles 7, Wildcats 2.
An ambulance was parked at the far end of the field. “What’s that for?” Milo asked. “In case the Eagles die laughing at Dylan’s sub?”
Jazz didn’t even smile at his joke. “Oh, they have an ambulance at all the games, just in case.” She stared at the bench. “Poor Dylan.”
Milo didn’t want to think about Dylan or the socks. His very first case, and he had failed.
His gaze wandered to the ambulance again. , it said in big letters across the hood. Mirror writing. Just like when he had tried to read the cover of the magazine on Jazz’s porch. Only this time, it was the other way around. The letters were painted backward so that drivers looking in their rear-view mirrors would see it the right way: AMBULANCE.
Suddenly a thought hit Milo like a baseball to the head. Looking in mirrors. That was it!
“Jazz,” he said, “what does Chip love to do?”
“Play tennis?”
“Besides that.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, what?”
“Chip loves to look at himself,” Milo said. “Whenever there’s a mirror nearby, he looks in it.”
“So?”
“So, there’s a big mirror in the boys’ locker room. What if he was looking in it when he saw the thief?”
Seeing Jazz’s puzzled look, he pulled his notebook out. Borrowing her purple glitter pen, he wrote the substitute pitcher’s name in big block letters:
“What does that spell?” he asked her.
“Tim, of course. What is this, kindergarten?”
Milo wrote:
“How about that?” he asked.
She frowned. “It doesn’t spell anything.”
“Yes it does. It spells mitt.”
“Mitt has two t’s.”
“I know that,” he said. “And you know that. But does Chip the Champ know that?”
Jazz stared at him. But then she shook her head. “Nobody could make a mistake like that.”
Milo thought about Chip glopping M-O-U-S-E into his hair, and grinned.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Somebody could.”
Together they ran down to the dugout, where the coach was talking to the players.
“Maybe you should put Dylan in,” P.J. was saying.
Tim looked angry. “You can’t take me out, Coach! This is my chance to pitch. I won it fair and square.”
“No, you didn’t!” Milo said.
Everybody turned to look at him.
“You stole Dylan’s lucky socks,” he accused Tim. “You wanted to mess up his pitching so the coach would put
you in his place.”
Tim scowled. “That’s stupid.”
“Not as stupid as a thief wearing a jacket with his name across the back,” Jazz said. She smiled. “We have an eyewitness. Chip saw you take the socks.”
All the players stared at Tim.
Tim stared at Milo. His hands balled into fists.
Milo took a step back.
Then Tim’s shoulders slumped. He kicked at the dirt on the dugout floor. “I was going to give them back after the game.”
Now everyone looked at Dylan.
Dylan was quiet for a moment. Then, after a glance at P.J., he laughed.
“They’re all yours, Tim,” he said. “What do I need with a pair of stinky old socks? Coach, put me in!”
After the game, Dylan insisted on taking Milo and Jazz to Beulah’s for sundaes. When they walked in, a cheer went up.
Wildcat Willie stopped by their booth, out of costume. “Nice game, Thrillin’ Dylan! Way to show those Eagles!” He thumped him on the shoulder.
Milo recognized the redheaded girl with Willie. “Hey, where’s Chip?”
“Chip the Chump?” She laughed. “Probably home kissing himself in the mirror. I thought I’d try spending some time with somebody who looks at me.”
Smiling, the two walked off.
P.J. slid into the booth with a burger and fries. “I knew you’d pull it off,” she said to Dylan.
Dylan grinned at Jazz and Milo. “I owe it all to these two here. The Sherlocks of Socks.”
“Milo’s the one who solved the mystery.” Jazz pointed her spoon at him and said, “You know, for a kid who rolls around in Dumpsters and tries to tie Velcro shoes, you’re pretty smart!”
The Case of the Stinky Socks Page 2