The Case of the Stinky Socks (2 page)

Milo stuffed the notebook and one of the special pens in his back pocket. He grabbed the spy shades, too, and went downstairs.

His mom was in the kitchen slurping green slime from a spoon. Gross, but not unusual. She ate a lot of yogurt, and her favorite flavor was key lime pie.

Still, he might be missing something. He squinted, trying to make his eyes sharper.

“What?” said his mom. “Do I have yogurt on my nose?”

Outside, Milo found his little brother, Ethan, playing pirates with a friend.

That was unusual. Usually Ethan played dinosaurs.

“How come you're not a dinosaur today?” Milo asked.

“I am,” Ethan said. “A pirate dinosaur.
Arrr!”

 

Milo sighed. His brother was a mystery, all right. But not the kind even a super sleuth could solve.

He could see that he was not going to get very far watching his family. He'd have to find someone else to observe.

A few blocks over, he saw a girl reading on her porch. She was in his class at school. Her name was Jasmyne, but he'd heard the other girls calling her Jazz.

That magazine she was reading looked familiar. . . .

Jazz glanced up. Quickly, Milo crouched down, pretending to tie his sneakers. What was she reading? If only he could get a closer look. This observing thing was harder than Dash made it sound.

 

Then Milo remembered the spy shades. Now was the perfect time to try them out.

He turned his back to Jazz and slipped the glasses on. They had little mirrors on the sides, just like a car.

Cool. There was the front walk. The porch steps. The porch. An empty chair, with a magazine lying on the seat. He tried to read the title on the cover, but the mirror lenses turned the letters backward—

Wait. An empty chair?

Where was Jazz?

Milo tilted his head a little farther, and the glasses fell off. As he dove after them, they hit the sidewalk, bounced, and landed by a purple flowered clog.

A purple clog?

Slowly he looked up. Jazz stared back down at him, fists planted on her hips.

“Why are you spying on me?”

 

Milo jumped up. “How could I be spying on you? I wasn't even looking in your direction. I was looking at—at—” He glanced around wildly. “That car!”

Jazz raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Suddenly her hands shot out. Before he could duck, her fingers clamped over his eyes. “What color is it?”

“Huh?”

“What color is the car?”

Milo tried to think. Uhh. . . . He had no idea. So much for the first step toward becoming a super sleuth. “Silver?” he guessed.

She took her hand away. The car was brown.

“I mean—kind of silvery brown. You know.”

Jazz crossed her arms. “I know you were spying on me. You even faked tying your shoelace.”

“What makes you think I was faking?”

She pointed at his sneakers. “Velcro.”

Milo scowled. She was a better observer than he was, and she hadn't even read Dash's lesson.

 

Jazz reached for the spy shades. Sounding friendlier, she said, “I saw these in
Whodunnit
magazine. Do they really work?” She tried them on and craned her head.

Ohh, Milo thought, she'd been reading
Whodunnit
! No wonder the magazine had looked so familiar. He said, “You like reading mysteries?”

She nodded. “And I'm good at solving them, too. When you're the youngest of four kids, no one tells you anything. So I always have to figure stuff out by myself.”

She handed him back the glasses. “So, what are you playing? Spy? Detective?”

Milo stood up straighter. “I'm not
playing
anything,” he said. “I happen to be a real private eye. In training. And I'm trying to solve a mystery.”

“Really?” Her eyes widened. “What is it?”

“Um, well . . . actually, I don't know yet,” he said.

She looked confused. “You're solving a mystery, but you don't know what it is?”

Milo explained about Dash Marlowe and his detective lessons.

“So now I have to come up with a real case to solve. But so far, I'm not having any luck.” He shook his head. “I'll bet there hasn't been a missing diamond or a stolen code in this whole town today.”

“You need to let people know you're a detective,” Jazz said. “Advertise.”

“You mean, like on TV?” Milo pictured himself bellowing into the camera like Crazy Larry, the car dealer.

Jazz laughed. “I was thinking more like putting up signs. That's what my sister did when she wanted a babysitting job.”

Signs. That made sense.

Milo followed Jazz into her house. She got out some paper and a purple glitter pen. They sat down at the kitchen table.

“So, what do you want to say?” she asked.“I don't know. . . . ‘Call me if you have a case'?”

Jazz shook her head. “It needs to be catchier. Something people will remember.”

He thought. “How about, ‘Milo can solve any case, even if it's from outer space'?”