SOLUTIONS
The jewel thief was forgetful. Mrs. Brown suspected he might have written his hiding places down, and she was right. As soon as Encyclopedia learned about the onion juice he was able to shed some light on the situation.
Onion juice can be used as an invisible ink. The words, but not the smell, disappear as soon as the juice dries on the paper. Encyclopedia realized that while the thief had used a regular pen to write what seemed like ordinary letters, in between the lines, he wrote with onion juice. The thief knew that his mother would keep all his letters. She never dreamed of the secrets they contained.
Encyclopedia and his father carefully heated the letters under a 150-watt lightbulb until the secret writing appeared. Each letter revealed a hiding place for a secret stash of jewels.
Chief Brown called the police chiefs in each and every town, and soon all of the stores had their jewels back.
Bugs may not have signed the book, but he gave away his trick when he penned the author’s name for Encyclopedia. He got the name right, but he spelled it wrong. Alice in Wonderland was written by Lewis Carroll, not Louis Carol.
When confronted with the proof, Bugs admitted that he saw Taffy on Melissa’s front lawn and thought the tiger would make a great mascot for his clubhouse. He went home, found the old book, and had Rocky sign it with the author’s name. He made up the tiger thief story when Melissa didn’t want to trade.
If Bugs’s baby cousin hadn’t cut pictures out of the book and ripped out the title page, they would have known the correct spelling of Lewis Carroll.
Luckily for Melissa, they didn’t.
Bugs gave back Taffy the Tiger and apologized—gritting his teeth the whole time.
Bugs wanted to get even with the boy detective who always outsmarted him. He wanted revenge on Sally who always out punched him.
He watched the detectives help Sonia close up her lemonade stand and noticed that no one locked up the money. He pretended to be Sonia on the phone. Then he watched as the detectives walked right into his trap.
Bugs’s plan might have worked except for one thing. He talked too much.
Bugs said that he caught Encyclopedia and Sally red-handed. Later he said that he watched them grab the money.
But that was impossible.
If Bugs had really caught the pair “red-handed,” the money would still be in their hands when Encyclopedia and Sally were swept up in Bugs’s trap. The money was still stacked neatly on the shelf when Bugs added his dime.
When Encyclopedia pointed out the flaw in Bugs’s story, the bully confessed.
Officer Muldoon drove beside Encyclopedia and Sally as they biked to the First National Bank. They deposited the money in Sonia’s account.
Encyclopedia knew Wilford Wiggins was no historian with a million-copy best seller up his sleeve. But he didn’t know how to prove it until Wilford brought out his “most important artifact”—George Washington’s letter to Martha Washington.
Encyclopedia knew something Wilford didn’t. George Washington wasn’t one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. As Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, he was in New York fighting the British, not in Philadelphia signing the Declaration.
When Encyclopedia pointed out this truth to Wilford, he admitted that all of his “revolutionary antiques” were fakes. For the letter, he soaked a piece of paper in tea to make it look old. Then he added the words and the signature himself.
The neighborhood kids kept their money, and Wilford gave Mark Goldberg his savings back. Mark got to keep the rusty lantern, too, just in case the British ever decided to invade Idaville.
Encyclopedia suspected Mrs. Sweeney the minute she asked about fingerprints. Her shoulders slumped in relief, not sadness, when Chief Brown told her the thief’s fingerprints would only be useful if the thief’s prints were on file.
But Encyclopedia was sure as soon as he flashed the light on the tree outside the window. Mrs. Sweeney said the crook had climbed down the tree. But if that were true, Mrs. Monarch and the other club members in the living room would have been alerted to trouble when the butterflies took flight. And they would have seen the masked man through their binoculars.
When confronted with Encyclopedia’s theory, Mrs. Sweeney admitted to slipping the brooch into her pocket.
Mrs. Sweeney left the Butterfly Gardener’s Club and Idaville in disgrace, and Mrs. Monarch put the butterfly brooch in the bank—except for very special occasions.
An assistant brought fresh water to the judges after each tasting. But Encyclopedia noticed that judge number two made sure her water glass was full before tasting Joey’s cookie. She knew it would taste awful and wanted to have a glass of water at the ready.
When confronted with the evidence, she confessed. Judge number two wanted her cousin Mary to win the contest and was afraid Joey’s cookies would be impossible to beat.
She was right. Joey remixed his cookie dough with the right ingredients. He walked away with the blue ribbon for first prize, a check for fifty dollars, and a chance to have his recipe published in a cookbook.
Encyclopedia wondered why a real NASA astronaut would have to raise money from schoolkids, fifty cents at a time. He suspected the astronaut was a fake the minute he started talking about top secret missions. But he didn’t know for sure until he saw the duck.
If that duck had truly flown in space, it wouldn’t have lived to quack the tale. Ducks need gravity to swallow. It would have starved in a weightless space capsule.
The man admitted that he was a 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.
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.
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.
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.