Free Philip and the Thief (9781619500648) by John (COR) Paulits Page B

over the TV.
“Come here, Emery.”
    Emery joined him.
    “ Take a sniff,” said Philip.
    Emery sniffed. “Something smells funny.”
    The two boys circled the TV sniffing like two
dogs searching for a lost bone. Finally, Philip bent over the back
of the TV and gave a long sniff.
    “ Yuck! It’s in here, the smell. Go on,
smell.”
    Emery checked. “ Eesshh . Smells like something’s burning. Now
we’ll really need to get a new TV.”
    Philip looked at Emery. “No, I don’t think
so. I know where your Superball is.” He pointed at the back of the
TV.
    “ In the TV?” said Emery. “It’s in the
TV? How could it get inside the TV?”
    “ I’ll bet your mother put it down on
top of the TV and it rolled into this hole.”
    A space gaped where the top of the TV met the
back; a space large enough for a Superball to drop through.
    “ I better tell my mother,” said Emery
and he ran into the kitchen.
    Fifteen minutes later Emery’s father had
taken the back off the TV and extracted the Superball.
    Emery rubbed at a black mark on it. “It got
burned a little,” he said as his mother and father engaged in a
lively discussion over which one of them had put the ball on the TV
in the first place.
    “ Let’s go outside,” said Philip as
Emery’s parents talked louder and louder.
    “ Let me see the ball,” Philip said when
he and Emery sat down on the front step. He rubbed at the black
spot. “It should still bounce all right.” He threw the ball down
and sure enough, it flew into the air at a crazy angle.
    “ Watch it,” called Emery, and he and
Philip jumped up to follow the ball.
    Emery picked it up from the grass and smiled.
“It works great. Hey, you are a good detective.”
    Philip had a sudden thought. “Emery, why
don’t we start a detective agency?”
    Emery stopped smiling. “A detective agency?
What do I have to do?”
    “ You help me solve crimes. What
else?”
    “ Like I helped find my
ball?”
    “ You didn’t help find your ball. I
found it.”
    “ You wouldn’t have found it if I didn’t
turn on the television.”
    “ Anybody could turn on a
television.”
    “ Yeah, but I did. So we found the ball.”
    Philip knew he had found the ball alone, by himself, without
Emery’s help, but he figured arguing with his partner was a poor
way to begin his new detective agency.
    “ Yeah, right. We found the ball. So you
want to start a detective agency?”
    “ Sure,” said Emery. “I’m really good at
finding things.”
    Philip bit his tongue and didn’t respond.
“Put the ball in your pocket. Let’s go to my house and talk things
over. It’s quieter there.”
    “ Okay,” said Emery and he slipped the
ball into his pocket as the boys headed off.
     
     

Chapter Three
     
    When Philip and Emery reached Philip’s house,
they talked over what they needed to do.
    “ We’ve got to let people know we’re
detectives,” said Emery. “Otherwise, they won’t ask us to solve
their mysteries.”
    Philip frowned at Emery. “I know we do, but
how?”
    “ On TV they rent an office,” said
Emery.
    For a moment, Philip wondered whether he’d
picked the right partner for his detective agency. “Rent an office?
You think we should rent an office?”
    “ They do on TV,” Emery said with a
shrug. “We could put a big sign in the window.” Emery spread his
arms to show how big the sign should be.
    “ I don’t know if my Mom’d like a big
sign in the window,” Philip said with uncertainty.
    “ Why would she care?”
    “ Why would she care? It’s her
house.”
    “ Her house is our office?”
    “ What office? What are you talking
about?” Philip’s voice began to rise, as it often did in
discussions with Emery.
    “ The sign. We put the sign in the
office window.”
    “ What office window?” Philip
cried.
    “ Our office window.”
    “ We don’t have an office. We don’t need
an office to have a sign, do we?”
    “ No, but that’s why we should get
one.”
    “ Signs are