The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection. Lauren Child

Ruby, very smart. Now that’s what I call keeping a secret.

      Froghorn walked into the room. ‘There’s a sandwich if you’re hungry – hope you like fish paste – I don’t, so I took the egg.’

      Jeepers, thought Ruby, remind me never to recommend your charm school.

      Ruby sniffed at her lunch, and cautiously took a bite; it wasn’t great, but she had eaten worse.

      She had almost worked her way to the very end of the very last file. There was another clipping which she translated as:

      Handover to take place at fountain –

      plan to be there at 18.00 hours.

      That was it, nothing else.

      Ruby had reached the end – but what did she know? Not as much as Lopez, that was for sure. She wished she could talk it all over – get a different perspective – but there was no use trying to talk to old Froghorn.

      She looked around the dingy office. She could hear him talking on the phone – he barely took a breath, and Ruby began to wonder how Lopez could have stood this. Day in day out, sitting in an office chair trying to figure out things which might in the end lead to nowhere – what kind of life was this? A lonely one.

      She caught her reflection in the glass of the adjoining door – she looked at the words of her T-shirt, help is at hand. She tore off a piece of packaging tape and stuck it over is at hand so the shirt now simply read, help.

      And then, like a miracle, Blacker walked in.

      He looked at her. ‘Did you get into a fight with the tape or are you sending some sort of SOS?’

      Ruby kind of smiled. ‘We’ll, let’s put it this way, your timely arrival may have prevented a major felony.’

      He motioned towards the little office where Froghorn was working. ‘You two not hitting it off?’

      ‘Oh me and Froghorn, we are getting along like cats and dogs – couldn’t be better.’

      ‘Yeah, well he’s an acquired taste that’s for sure.’ Blacker handed her a donut. ‘So I’m guessing you’ve cracked the case.’

      ‘Yeah, yeah very funny. I got as far as the fountain – did you ever work out where it was?’

      ‘ ’Fraid not, there must be more than a hundred fountains in the area. We knew it was likely to be in a town, ’cause most fountains are but which town is what we couldn’t figure out.’

      ‘So you didn’t follow it up?’

      ‘No way we could. Anyway, Lopez was feeling kinda itchy, couldn’t sit still, it was bugging her that we couldn’t work out who these people were – we’d sorta reached a dead end. We went and got a drink at Blinky’s bar and then at around four I dropped her off at that fancy salon off of Twinford Square – she was always in there getting her hair manicured or whatever – never a nail out of place!’

      ‘That’s not how I pictured her,’ said Ruby. ‘I guess I thought she might be kinda dowdy.’

      ‘Dowdy, oh no, not Lopez, always looked like two and a quarter million dollars, always perfect – well, apart from the week before she went away of course.’

      ‘How do you mean?’ asked Ruby

      ‘The day after I dropped her off at the salon, she came into work with only half a manicure.’

      ‘Did you ask her why?’

      ‘Who am I to comment?’ said Blacker pointing at his dirty finger nails. ‘A person wants to go about with nail polish on one hand but not the other, that’s up to them. But something wasn’t right – she was distracted.’

      Ruby thought about this. ‘I bet you miss her, huh?’

      ‘Yeah, I miss her all right, she was one nice person.’ He paused before saying, ‘I’ve just packed up the things she had with her when she died – got to mail them back to her family.’ He pointed to a small box, high up on the shelf by the door. ‘Doesn’t look like much does it?’

      Ruby could only agree.

      Blacker said goodbye and wished her luck. ‘Maybe I’ll see you on Monday Ruby. Just keep thinking, I know you’ll get there.’

      But Ruby wasn’t so sure. She had been looking forward to the challenge of finding the missing link, the final piece, but three and a quarter hours later she had found exactly zip.

      Back at Cedarwood Drive, Ruby went downstairs to find Hitch, who was sitting in his small but comfortable apartment, listening to music and reading some papers.

      He looked up. ‘Hey kid, long time no see – how’s the world of crime?

      ‘Oh, you know, full of criminals.’

      ‘But no one’s been tailing you? No strange or uneasy feelings, I trust?’

      ‘No,’ said Ruby, ‘no strange feelings.’ She decided to keep the uneasy ones to herself.

      ‘Know anything we don’t know?’

      She paused for a second, but, realising she had nothing to say, she shook her head. ‘Afraid not.’

      ‘That’s a shame,’ sighed Hitch, ‘we were all kind of counting on you.’

      ‘There’s still time though,’ said Ruby. ‘I mean, LB didn’t give me a deadline.’

      ‘She never does,’ said Hitch. ‘Likes to keep everyone on their toes. Yep, you could have hours before she fires you – let’s keep our fingers crossed.’

       Chapter 18.

      If in doubt, say nothing

      RUBY WENT UP TO HER ROOM, and ignoring the blinking light of her answerphone, she opened her notebook and began writing up the day’s interesting events. She had barely started when she heard the doorbell ring – she slipped off the window ledge and went to look at the door monitor. It was Clancy Crew, standing with his face right up close to the camera so that his eyes looked huge and ridiculous.

      Yikes, thought Ruby. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Clancy, it was just she didn’t know what to say to him. She decided to keep quiet – RULE 4: IF IN DOUBT, SAY NOTHING. Would Hitch answer the door? She waited a few moments. No, it seemed he hadn’t heard the bell over his music. There was no way Clancy could know that she was home, unless he had staked out the house and that seemed unlikely.

      Eventually she heard something drop through the letterbox and his footsteps as he walked back down the drive and through the wooden gate.

      Ruby went downstairs and picked up a carefully folded piece of paper. A snake.

      On it Clancy had written in code:

      ‘What is going on Rube??? You aren’t even answering my calls – is that butler guy holding you hostage?’

      She went back upstairs, heavy with guilt. Flicked the replay button her machine and listened to her messages. The first voice was Clancy’s. He was asking her if she was going to stop in at the Donut Diner on her way to basketball: ‘we could grab some french toast – hey, I’ll even pay.’

      There was a message from Del, who wanted to discuss the game: ‘we need to talk tactics man – Bugwart’s not gonna slam us again’. One from Red asking if she could borrow Ruby’s violin because she had accidentally sat on hers and it was now ‘in several pieces’ and ‘beyond fixing’ and her mom was going to ‘most likely kill her’ and another from Clancy. This time it just said, ‘Rube, it’s Clance, please call.’

      Ruby felt a little stab to her gut. She sat there for a while just thinking. She was in an impossible situation –