Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath (17 page)

Then her parents had appeared, they were wading through the surf, calling to her, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She walked toward them, but no matter how many steps she took, she could not get any nearer. Then suddenly a huge wave engulfed them, and when it retreated, they were gone.

Ruby snapped the light on and reached for her glasses. She looked around for Bug, but he must have gone downstairs to his basket. She couldn’t shake the image from her head, so she climbed out of bed, and went down to the kitchen.

Bug lifted his nose and got to his feet, yawning.

“Hey there, Bug.” She stroked him behind the ears, trying to bring to mind exactly what Clancy had said.
Did he really have a hunch, or was he just being kind?

She switched on the radio. There was a late-night quiz show aimed at security guards and insomniacs; the questions were pretty dumb, but they were some distraction.

“WHAT WOULD YOU CALL A BABY WHALE?”

“A calf,” said Ruby automatically.

“WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IF YOU STEPPED ON A GERMAN’S TOE?”

“
Entschuldigung
,” said Ruby. “No, wait,
verzeihung
.”

“WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WERE A COOPER?”

“Make barrels.”

“WHAT WOULD YOU BE IF YOU WERE ON CHARON’S FERRY?”

“I know this one . . . what is it?”

Suddenly a news announcer’s voice broke in.

“WE ARE SORRY TO INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM FOR SOME BREAKING NEWS. TWO BODIES HAVE BEEN FOUND BY A FISHING CREW TWENTY MILES OUT TO SEA. THEY HAVE NOT YET BEEN IDENTIFIED AND AT THIS TIME WE CAN ONLY SAY THAT THEY ARE A MAN AND WOMAN OF APPROXIMATELY MIDDLE AGE.”

Ruby didn’t hear anything more of the broadcast; all she heard was the answer to the quiz show question pinging into her head.

“Dead,” she said.

She leaned back against the wall and let herself slide down to the floor.

RUBY DIDN’T SLEEP ANY MORE THAT NIGHT.
She sat in her bedroom in the dark just staring out of her window, waiting for dawn to come.

At 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, the phone in her room rang.
Clancy
, she thought, but she didn’t pick up. She couldn’t talk to anyone, not even Clancy Crew. Talking to people meant listening to them telling her it was going to be all right, and she knew it wasn’t. It wasn’t all right at all.

At 6:39, Hitch knocked on her door. He could tell just by looking at her face that she must be aware of the latest reports.

“I heard the news, kid.”

She blinked back at him.

“I agree it doesn’t look good,” he said. “But we don’t know, not for sure. No one’s been identified.”

She didn’t speak.

“I spent all night in the boat, and I found nothing. Doesn’t mean it’s over; ‘nothing’ can also be good. Zuko’s out in the chopper now; he’s a good agent with good eyes, good instinct. If there’s anything to find, he’ll find it.”

They went down to the kitchen, and Mrs. Digby came right over and kissed Ruby on the top of her head and squeezed her cheek, like she always did, always had done from the first day she was born.

“I’m not going to school,” Ruby said.

“Course you’re not, Ruby. You’re staying here with me,” said Mrs. Digby, nodding her head. “I’m making you French toast and proper English tea.”

The housekeeper didn’t want to let Ruby out of sight, but at about a quarter to noon Ruby managed to give her the slip. She wanted to be out in the fresh air where she could think, where she wasn’t surrounded by everything that was her mom and dad.

She took a walk down to Amster Green. She nimbly climbed the old oak, and when she reached the topmost climbing branch, she sat down. She felt around with her left hand, reaching for the deep knot in the bark. She pulled out a neatly folded origami turtle. The coded note said,

She took out her pencil, crossed out the code and wrote,

She climbed back down, got on her bike, and rode out to Twinford Harbor.

For some reason it was the only place she wanted to be. Maybe because her parents had always loved boats, had always loved the ocean, or maybe it was because this was one of the last places Ruby had seen them alive.

The Redforts had met in the ocean, and now they had died in the ocean. What had been the most romantic of beginnings was now the most tragic of endings.

Her parents had told the story so many times Ruby could almost hear their voices explaining how they had met off the Tuscan coast of Italy.

But as it turned out, she hadn’t needed to. They had met underwater, and it was love without words.

Somewhere far off, Ruby thought she could hear a dog barking.
A real yapper,
she thought.

“Could you give it a rest already!” A loud voice belonging to a woman scolded the dog, and the dog stopped yapping.

Then . . .

“Ruby Redfort! Ruby! Ruby Redfort!”

Ruby looked up, but the sun was shining directly into her eyes, blinding her. All she could see was a tall silhouetted figure, a woman in a long, voluminous robe who appeared to be waving.

“Ahoy there!” came another voice, deep and sort of fat sounding.

Ruby squinted into the bright light, trying to make out the callers.

“Nice of you to come meet us.” It was Bernie and Eadie Runklehorn, friends of Ruby’s parents.

“Look who we fished out of the drink!” bellowed Mr. Runklehorn.

And then two other figures came into view, followed by a little dog.

“Hey, honey. How did you know we would be sailing in today?”

“
Mom? Dad?
Are you really alive?”

Her father glanced down as if checking. “Last time I looked,” he called back.

IT WAS AGENT ZUKO WHO HAD SPOTTED THEM.
The Runklehorns’ yacht’s engine had failed, and due to the lack of wind, they were making slow progress back to shore. Zuko had landed the sea chopper on the water and fixed the engine. Not long after this, the yacht cruised into the harbor. Everyone safe, everyone sound. Brant had swung Ruby up over his shoulder and mussed up her hair in the way he always did, always had done since she was just a little kid — but for once she really didn’t mind one bit.

“I owe you one, pal,” said Hitch, shaking Zuko’s hand.

“Hey — easy job. You owe me nothing,” said Zuko.

When things had calmed down and Ruby and Hitch were alone, she said, “Hey, you know — thanks.”

“All part of the job,” he replied.

“No,” said Ruby. “I know it’s not, so thank you.”

He winked at her. “Consider it my pleasure, kid. I happen to like your folks a whole lot. Your mother can be a little persnickety, and I can’t stand your father’s whistling, but on the whole I’d rather not do without them.”

Of course, it was important that Brant and Sabina should be debriefed as soon as possible, before they forgot anything that might prove vital to catching those responsible for their near-death encounter. Both the police and the coast guard were keen to get some kind of description of the assailants, but the interview was not going well.

Ruby sat in on the debrief. Partly because it was so nice to see her not-dead parents, but also because she was intrigued to hear what they had to say.

“He had terrible dental work,” said Sabina, wrinkling her nose. “I mean, he went to the trouble of having five or six gold teeth fitted, but the front one was very discolored, and a couple of the lower ones were missing altogether, and talk about halitosis. I don’t think he had so much as sniffed a bottle of Mint-Mouth his whole criminal life.”

The police detective felt Sabina was getting sidetracked by teeth and tried to bring things back to more useful territory.

“Try, Mrs. Redfort, if you will, to focus on the overall appearance of the man — how tall he was, for instance. Was he stocky? Was he lean? How was he dressed?”

“Oh, he was dressed appallingly. Nothing went together. Lots of things that didn’t make sense, very tasteless; not that the clothes themselves were all bad, but they didn’t work as an ensemble.”

Brant thought it might be time for him to chime in.

“I think what Sabina is getting at is that the man had a somewhat haphazard appearance. He was small yet tough; no one doubted his strength. His clothing suggested that much of it was stolen — or acquired. Maybe he saw things, took them, and wore them.”

“Yes, well put, honey,” agreed Sabina. “That’s exactly it! He’s not a shopper.” She stopped as if remembering something important. “But his colleague was.”

“Colleague?” queried the detective.

“His cohort, accomplice, whatever you call these pirate types.” Sabina waved her arms. “What I’m trying to say is that there was a fellow on board who did not look one bit like a pirate, yet he was in with them.”

“So what did he look like, Mrs. Redfort?” asked the detective.

“Sort of collegey, educated, respectable, nicely dressed, kinda like Brant,” said Sabina.

Now, this was interesting.
What was a guy like that doing with a bunch of pirates?
thought Ruby.

“And how many of these pirates would you say there were?” asked the detective.

“Forty, I’d say, at least. Would you agree, Brant?”

Brant nodded. “Give or take — perhaps more like twenty.”

“And would you say that these pirates were even slightly interested in kidnap and ransoms? I mean, did you think it crossed their minds?” the detective asked.

“No, that wasn’t my impression,” said Brant confidently. “They had no idea who Ambassador Crew was, and they seemed to have not one jot of interest in us, just our wallets.”

“And jewelry,” added Sabina, looking down at the ring still firmly jammed on her finger, her finger still firmly attached to her hand.

“And their boat?” asked the detective. “Could you describe that?”

“Pirate-like,” said Sabina.

“What do you mean,
pirate-like
?” said the detective.

“The sort of vessel,” said Brant, “that you might expect a pirate to sail in. It was dramatic, sort of corny almost.”

“Like in a film,” said Sabina. “Old-fashioned. Lots of rigging and sails — you know, crow’s nests and the like — all it was lacking was the Jolly Roger.”

The detective wrote that down. It was something, and they didn’t have a whole lot to go on.

Old-fashioned
, thought Ruby. Wasn’t that exactly the way the fishermen had described the boat they spotted in the distance, the one that failed to pick them up? Ruby found herself mulling this final fact over and over in her mind. There was something intriguing about it.

Like in a film,
she said to herself.