Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath (10 page)

So Ruby tapped out another that went:

And in return got this back from Clancy:

Boy, was he the most stubborn kid she had ever met.

Mrs. Courtenay-Clack rapped her conductor’s baton crossly on the side of her music stand.

“When you are quite ready, Ruby, Clancy — we are all waiting.”

Ruby looked around the room. It was true: everyone was waiting for her to lead into this rather modern piece by Fenton Schreiber.

She picked up her stick and banged out what were meant to be the first few notes of
Elastic Movement in G,
but was in fact another message for Clancy.

He smiled.

*CLICK HERE
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT RUBY AND CLANCY SAID!

The teacher rapped her baton again.

“Ms. Redfort, will you please get with the program!”

“Sorry, Mrs. Courtenay-Clack,” said Ruby, pretending to leaf through her music score. “I think I skipped a page.”

THAT TUESDAY AFTERNOON WAS MARKED
by another Twinford Junior High swimming-related event. It seemed someone (probably Dillon Flannagon) had thought it would be amusing to dress a mannequin in the school mascot costume (a squirrel suit) and place it in the pool. The janitor got quite a shock when he saw a giant squirrel in the Twinford Junior High pool floating facedown in the water.

On a board drifting next to this unusual scene, the culprit (surely Dillon Flannagon, it really looked like his handwriting) had written in huge letters, A
NOTHER
T
WINFORD
B
AY
C
ASUALTY
. To make matters worse, the blue paint (believed to be toxic) that the giant sign was written in was dissolving into the pool water. This made it a health and safety concern, and therefore the pool would have to be drained.

Principal Levine had not seen the funny side. Whoever it was, was really in for it. When Ruby passed Dillon in the corridor, she whispered, “Run, Flannagon. Run.”

After class, Ruby and Clancy fetched their bikes and wheeled them out of the gates and along the sidewalk. Clancy didn’t have the energy to pedal; he was too depressed.

“Oh, brother! What am I going to do about the swim meet? There’s no way I’m getting in that bay. No way.”

“I’ll look out for you, Clance,” said Ruby.

“Oh, yeah?” said Clancy. “There are gonna be like a hundred kids all swimming out there in the bay. No way you can keep an eye on me the whole time.”

Ruby looked at him hard. “You can do this, Clance. It’s just mind over matter is all.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” grumbled Clancy. “The water doesn’t bother you — nothing bothers you.”

This wasn’t true of course. It was just that Ruby had spent a whole lot more time thinking about this stuff. She had a notebook full of rules, and one of them was
RULE 12: ADJUST YOUR THINKING AND YOUR CHANCES IMPROVE.
She had learned this from Mrs. Digby, a wise old buzzard if ever there was one.

“All I’m saying, Clance, is your chances are better if you go into it in the right frame of mind.”

“Don’t you get it, Rube? My chances are a whole lot better if I never get in that ocean in the first place. My chances of having a heart attack are greatly reduced if I don’t even get my feet wet.”

Ruby gave him a reassuring pat on the back. “Your chances of suffering a lifetime of grief from Coach Newhart increase by about a thousand percent if you don’t.”

“I know,” sighed Clancy mournfully.

“Come on, let’s go get a fruit shake,” said Ruby, pulling him toward the Cherry Cup. “On me.”

When they got to the Cherry Cup, they took the high stools at the counter and Ruby reached for the drink menu. Clancy was swiveling his seat distractedly and muttering to himself.

“Hey there, you guys, what can I get you?” called Cherry.

“I’ll take a Strawberry–Pineapple-Fiesta, and I reckon Clance could do with a tranquilizer.”

Cherry looked hard at Clancy. “You all right, pal?” he inquired kindly. “You look kinda strung out.”

Cherry was a man in his late fifties — graying hair and the sort of face that made people want to confide in him.

Clancy spilled the beans about the swimathon while Cherry blended fruit.

Meanwhile, Ruby thought about Spectrum. She was thinking about the briefing.
Is there a connection? Is there something in the deep blue ocean causing disruption to sea life? Possibly. Could it be caused by the moon, the tides, an earthquake on the other side of the world even? Possibly.

But the shipping confusion? That has to be man-made. The question is, is it man-made by accident or man-made by design? If it isn’t an accident, then one can only conclude it has to be sinister.

She was jolted from her musings by Clancy.

“So have you been into Spectrum yet?”

“Could you keep your voice down, buster? I’m not supposed to talk about this stuff,” hissed Ruby.

Clancy looked around. “No one’s listening,” he said, pointing at Cherry’s busy establishment. Everyone was chatting or engrossed in their magazines or menus.

“That’s what you think,” said Ruby. “How do you know that woman over there, the one with the little curly kid, isn’t keeping track of everything we say?”

“I can tell,” said Clancy. “I mean, look at her — all she’s interested in is her baby.”

“That’s how much you know,” said Ruby. “I happen to be aware that she is a sector seven agent and that old curly top is just a cover.”

Clancy’s eyes grew to saucer size. “No way?” he said. “Really?”

“No, not really, Clance, but don’t just assume that someone’s not listening just because they look like they’re not listening.”

It was one of her rules, and an important one.

RULE 9: THERE IS ALWAYS A CHANCE THAT SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE IS WATCHING YOU.

Or, in this case, listening to you.

Ruby had ignored the rule a few weeks ago and had ended up tied to a chair by an evil count and almost buried in a ton of sand, all because someone had been listening in while she yacked away on the telephone to Clancy. She had every right to be cautious, even though the woman in question was actually Mrs. Frast from her mother’s bridge club. However, the worry of being overheard only made up part of her reason for keeping it zipped; the truth was that what Ruby really wanted to do was sit in her room and give the briefing some clear thought, puzzle it out.

“Look, Clance, don’t take this the wrong way, but I just need to sit and churn a few things over. You understand, don’t ya?”

“I guess,” said Clancy.

They finished their drinks, and Ruby rode on home.

She walked into the house and up the stairs to the kitchen. She was pretty hungry, and something smelled good. Mrs. Digby was nowhere to be seen. But on the bright side, there were some homemade pizza slices, just cooked, on the table, and a note that said,
Dig in, why don’t you?

There was a PS. It said,
Mrs. Lemon called again. She wants you to sit for that fat baby of hers. I told her you had an infectious skin condition and it didn’t look like it would clear up for a week or two.

Ruby smiled. “Nice going, Mrs. Digby.” She loaded her plate with pizza and poured some banana milk into a glass, then, holding an apple in her teeth, she maneuvered her way up to her room. She closed the door firmly behind her, retrieved her yellow notebook, and set about making lists, and then used the elements from the list to make a spider map. She always found it useful to see problems visually.

First she drew a picture of a diver; he was at the top of the page. Then she wrote three headings:

Spidering out from that heading she wrote every single incidence of confused shipping she had heard of.

The next heading said:

There were a lot of these too.

The last heading read: