Philip and the Fortune Teller (9781619501317) by John Paulits Page B

make the phone
call, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah, but I made the phone call.”
    Emery could see he wasn’t going to get the
credit he thought he deserved. He gave up and said, “Let’s go watch
the police take them away.”
    The boys hurried down the midway and paused
at the entrance. The gypsy and the pharaoh were already seated in
the back seat of the police car behind the two policemen. The car
started up and drove away.
    Philip and Emery turned to one another, wide
grins on their faces.
    “We’re safe,” Emery declared.
    “I hope so,” Philip echoed.
     
     

Chapter Eleven
     
    Philip and Emery spent the rest of Saturday
as nervous wrecks. Twice the telephone rang in Philip’s house, and
he was sure the police were calling to ask for him. He watched his
mother’s face each time she answered the phone, hoping his stomach
wouldn’t explode from the tension he felt. But no calls came from
the police. When he went to bed that night, Philip hoped tomorrow
would go by fast so the circus could get out of town. There was one
last show at two o’clock.
    Around ten the next morning Philip looked up
from reading the newspaper comics as his mother answered the phone
again. His stomach took a roller coaster ride at his mother’s
words.
    “How wonderful,” Philip’s mother said. She
covered the mouthpiece of the phone and called to her husband, who
lay on the sofa looking at other parts of the newspaper. “It’s Mrs.
Faraday. She says they found Mrs. Healy’s missing jewels. At the
circus, no less.”
    “I know,” Philip’s father answered. “I’m just
reading about it.”
    Philip nearly gagged. The newspaper had the
story! He bent his head over the comics so his eyes wouldn’t meet
his parents’ gaze. They could usually tell when something bothered
him. He kept listening to his mother’s conversation, but all she
kept saying was, “Really” and “Oh my” and “I see.” He knew she’d
report the conversation to his father as soon as she hung up, so he
waited, staring at the comics page, but reading nothing.
    “Mrs. Faraday seems to have the whole story,”
his mother said after she’d hung up the phone. “You’ll never
guess.”
    “I bet I can,” Mr. Felton said. “It’s all
here in the paper. Gypsies and pharaohs and mysterious phone calls.
Mrs. Healy must be happy.”
    “I’m sure she is, but she won’t be back in
her house for a while.”
    “Why not?”
    “Mrs. Faraday says she has two sons, and
she’s going to live with one of them while the other tries to do
something about her house. Clean it out so she can go back there
and live. It must really be filled with junk.”
    “Junk to you; valuables to her.”
    “I guess, but still . . . Oh, well. Another
neighborhood adventure comes to a successful end.”
    Philip’s father raised the newspaper in front
of his face, and the house grew quiet.
    Philip knew he had to read the newspaper
article, but his father didn’t look like he’d be done with the
paper anytime soon. Emery’s two baby sisters always kept Emery’s
house disorganized. Maybe he and Emery could get the newspaper
section they needed from his newspaper.
    Philip rose and announced, “I’m going over
Emery’s awhile. Okay?”
    “Sure,” came his father’s voice from behind
the newspaper.
    Philip headed out the door.
     
~ * ~
    Fifteen minutes later Philip lay on his
stomach in Mrs. Logan’s bushes trying to get the speckles of light
coming though the leaves to fall properly on his newspaper so he
could read.
    “Lemme see, too,” Emery insisted.
    “Oww! Watch your elbow. Stop pushing. Go over
there. I’ll read it to you, if you let me get the light on it.”
    Emery scuttled out of the way. “I saw the
headline. Jewel Robbery Thwarted. What’s thwarted? Somebody
had warts?”
    “Your brain has warts. Quiet and listen.
     
    “ Police have thwarted a daring jewel
robbery— thwarted has to mean they caught the bad
guys —thwarted a daring jewel robbery yesterday