Ruby Redfort 1 - Look Into My Eyes (6 page)

“Not yet, but listen — before that, this kinda chiseled guy turns up at our house and says he’s the house manager my mom requested, only of course my mom being my mom is calling him a butler.”

“You got a butler! Wow,” said Clancy, impressed, even though
his
family had never been without one his whole entire life. “What’s he like?”

“A total airhead,” said Ruby.

“That doesn’t sound good,” said Clancy. “You don’t want an airhead butler.”

“Well, technically he’s not a butler, he’s a household manager — whatever that means.”

Clancy whistled. “Mrs. Digby’s not gonna like that!”

“Yeah, well, luckily she’s with her cousin Emily right now, but you’re right. She’s bound to notice there’s something a little off about this guy.”

“How do ya mean — off?”

Ruby paused for effect. “I think there’s something sorta strange about him.”

“Like what, for example?” said Clancy, unable to keep the thrill out of his voice.

“He seems to know too much. Things he couldn’t know — well, not unless he was psychic or something.”

“So where did he come from?” asked Clancy. He was on the edge of his seat, or at least would have been had he been sitting down.

“London, supposedly. But who really knows,” replied Ruby.

“He’s English?”

“No, he was just living there — the people he used to work for have ‘suddenly’ gone off riding elephants for three years.” Ruby loved getting Clancy all wired about the possibility of some dark mystery.

“Perhaps he stole their money and did away with them,” he said earnestly.

“Well that
might
explain the flashy car — he’s got this silver convertible — but I am not sure it explains the
arm
injury.”

“The arm injury? You’ve got an injured butler? You don’t want an injured butler. He’s really injured?”

“Oh, yes,” said Ruby, nodding. “He looks like he was involved in some kinda accident.”

“Or shoot-out!” whispered Clancy conspiratorially. “You know what, Rube? I’ll bet he’s not even a butler. He’s almost certainly a hit man or something.”

“You’ve got some imagination, Clance my old pal!”

But she didn’t tell him the thought
had
crossed her mind.

Ruby wasn’t one to get in trouble unnecessarily, but she was finding it hard to concentrate and several times during class it was noted that she wasn’t paying attention. The thing was she just couldn’t put it together — what was the significance of fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents?

After lunch it came to her — she couldn’t believe she had been so stupid — it was the most simple kind of clue, the staring you in the face kind. So obvious you missed it. As Ruby all too often remarked,
PEOPLE OFTEN MISS THE DOWNRIGHT OBVIOUS {RULE 18}.

It was Mr. Walford who got her to see it. He used to be in the military and liked to be precise about things. He was a stickler for using the twenty-four-hour clock.

“Redfort, Ruby,” he barked. “It is precisely thirteen thirty-one, recess is no longer in progress, march your way swiftly to class please.”

Ruby stopped in her tracks, paused, and then suddenly turned to Mr. Walford. “Three forty-nine p.m.! Of course! Not fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents but fifteen hundred hours and forty-nine minutes — or put another way, eleven minutes to four.”

The price sticker is telling me to be at Joe’s Supermart at 3:49 p.m.

Mr. Walford looked at her as if she was a complete crazy but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered . . . oh, except for the school basketball tournament, scheduled to begin at sixteen hundred hours.

Darn it, Del is going to kill me.

Ruby would be sorely missed if she didn’t show. Del’s team, the Deliverers, was playing Vapona Begwell’s team, known as the Vaporizers, and there was always a lot of rivalry. Del Lasco would not forgive her unless she had a good excuse, and even then, she still might not.

Inspiration came during Phys Ed when Ruby dramatically faked a foot injury — everyone saw as she tripped down the outside steps. A stuntman couldn’t have done a better job.

“Jeepers! My toe, I think I just broke my little toe.”

Ruby knew that toes get broken all the time and that they don’t necessarily require a trip to the emergency room. More often than not you just need to ice it. She had no trouble convincing anyone that she wasn’t going to be playing basketball anytime soon — Ruby was an accomplished actress.

“Too bad Ruby, we’re really gonna miss you,” said Del, kicking furiously at a weed. This was no lie, Ruby Redfort
would
be missed because what she might lack in height she made up for in skill. She had the amazing knack of distracting the opposition and scoring before they knew that they had even lost possession of the ball.

“Yeah, Del, I know. I’m sorry,” said Ruby, wincing as she hobbled toward the nurse’s office.

Mrs. Greenford, the school nurse, couldn’t get either of Ruby’s parents on the phone, which was unsurprising since some time ago Ruby had changed their contact details in the school files. The numbers now sent any member of the staff to an answering machine with the reassuring message,
“If Ruby should need to come home early today, I am around, please put her in a cab.”
(Ruby could do a flawless impression of her mother.) This way, if ever she wanted to pull a stunt like this, her parents would not be informed.

Ruby limped off to the taxi.

“So I’m to take you to Cedarwood Drive?” said the cab driver.

“Nah, change of plan — Joe’s Supermart on Amster,” said Ruby.

The driver gave her a knowing look and nodded. “Yeah I was a kid once — don’t worry, my lips are sealed, sweetheart.”

WHEN RUBY ENTERED THE SUPERMART
her ears were assaulted by the tinny sound of the worst kind of Muzak. Ruby caught sight of old Mrs. Beesman, who was busy filling her cart with what looked like two hundred cans of cat food. It was rumored that she had somewhere approaching seventy-four cats, but as far as Ruby knew no one had ever been in Mrs. Beesman’s house to count them. She noticed Mrs. Beesman was wearing earmuffs.

Smart lady
,
this music could damage your brain
.

Ruby walked slowly around the aisles, studying the shelves carefully until she saw what she was looking for. In the middle of a shelf displaying unnaturally vivid cookies and cakes, she saw an item that just didn’t belong. A box of very cardboard-looking Real Health Crackers. They claimed to be
Delicious nutritious yummy snacks — no sugar no eggs no wheat no additives,
but the truth was the packaging looked tastier than the contents.

Something wholesome in Joe’s Supermart, now that is unusual.

Ruby looked at the price sticker and sure enough, across the top it said,
ORGANIC UNIVERSE.
The words of the mystery voice came back to her.

“You can see when something is plumb square in the wrong place.”

With the box of crackers under her arm, Ruby left the store and made her way across the street to Organic Universe. The wooden chimes jangled as she entered, and the smell of sensible food hit her. She headed straight for the cookie aisle, and there, right next to two boxes of Health Crackers, sat a telephone directory. She replaced the box of Health Crackers she was holding, picked up the directory, and carried it over to the phone booth by the door.

Now what?
she thought.

Above the phone were hundreds of cards advertising all kinds of different health-giving treatments, from color therapy to water therapy, and then . . . a card which simply said,
DON’T CALL US WE’LL CALL YOU.

Ruby took the card down from the board and looked at it closely, but apart from a decorative pattern around its edge, there was no other information. She sat down on the wooden stool by the phone booth and waited. After twenty-five minutes the man behind the counter was eyeing her suspiciously.

“Can I help you?” he asked in an extremely unhelpful tone. He was a young guy, nervous-looking, with a nose that seemed too big for his head. It made his face look awkward.

“No, I’m just fine thanks,” replied Ruby, doing her best to sound casual. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

The big-nosed guy obviously didn’t want to get into an argument with a schoolkid but he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.

Ruby silently watched the minute hand tick slowly around the clock face, while the big-nosed guy walked around the store, eyeing her furtively. If someone was trying to test Ruby Redfort’s patience, they were doing a good job, though patience was not a quality that Ruby was lacking.

However, she was relieved when at exactly two minutes to five, the phone rang. She jumped and almost knocked the receiver off its cradle. “Hi, hello,” blustered Ruby.

“Am I talking to Ruby Redfort?” asked that same gravelly voice.

“Yuh huh, yes,” confirmed Ruby.

“Good, glad you made it this far. I have a job offer for you — let’s make a date . . . how about tomorrow night at eight for eight not a minute sooner not a minute later. And keep it zipped.”

“Anything else you wanna tell me?” asked Ruby.

“Yes,” said the voice. “Be lucky.”

No good-bye, just the dial tone.

I guess directions would be too much to ask for,
thought Ruby as she left the store.

On her way back home Ruby stopped off at the green. Up in the tree she found a neatly folded origami cuckoo. She knew what that meant without even reading the note.

THE CUCKOO:
a parasitic bird who takes over the nest of another by pushing the host’s eggs out and laying its own in their place. If necessary the cuckoo will devour the host-bird’s young.

In other words,

THE CUCKOO:
a ruthless killer and imposter.

The cuckoo was of course Hitch. It was classic Clancy Crew — he was joking but kind of serious at the same time. He had a sixth sense for trouble. He was often saying, “The thing is Rube, I got a hunch about this,” or “Trust me, I got a feeling I’m right about that.” He could never explain why he had a hunch or where it had come from but the remarkable thing was, he was almost always right. Ruby unfolded the bird and read the note.

Vc spf jdyye I fucefy xrs. C ussxubu ds!

Ruby smiled. It wasn’t easy to fool Clancy Crew. Ruby tore a piece of paper from her notebook, wrote
Zvuu lvh miv, dsps mpcxd zcf oiwswuzv?
, folded it, and pushed it into the knot.

When Ruby got home she saw the same police car once again parked in the driveway, and as she walked up the stairs she heard the familiar voice of Sheriff Bridges and also another voice, which turned out to be a police detective.

“So you didn’t notice she was gone, Mrs. R.?” asked Sheriff Bridges.

“Well, to be honest, Nat, what with everything else disappearing I just didn’t get around to noticing. I wasn’t surprised
not
to see her yesterday — she said she was going to stay with Emily — but Emily says she hasn’t seen her for two weeks.”

“Emily?” inquired the detective.

“Her cousin Emily — lives in North Twinford. You see the thing is she was offended. She shouldn’t have been, but that’s Mrs. Digby all over, she gets offended at the drop of a hat.”

“Offended? By what, Mrs. Redfort?”

“You know, anything really. It can be the smallest criticism. I have to be so careful, the slightest thing can set her off; I ask her to dust, she thinks I’m criticizing, I ask her not to, she thinks I don’t trust her with a duster . . .”

“No, Mrs. Redfort,” said the detective, who seemed to be trying hard to hold on to his temper. “I meant to say how did you offend her
this time
?”

“Well, look, it’s like this, Detective,” interrupted Brant Redfort. “Sabina stepped into an argument between Consuela, our talented new chef, and Mrs. Digby, our much-loved housekeeper — some tomato juice was thrown and Sabina was understandably rather upset.”

“It went all over my new Oscar Birdet jacket. It’s most probably ruined — tomato juice is stubborn to get out,” said Sabina.