Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath (18 page)

AT ABOUT SIX O’CLOCK THAT EVENING,
Ruby was lying on her parents’ bed: her mother was sitting at the dressing table brushing her hair. Brant Redfort was choosing a necktie from his very large collection of neckties. They were all looking forward to a fun evening with the Runklehorns, who were expected within the next half hour or so.

“So,” asked Ruby, “what exactly did you learn out there — the whole history deal I mean?”

“Some pretty fascinating stuff,” said Brant.

“Oh, my! Did we ever,” agreed Sabina. Ruby waited for her mother to launch into the story of the treasure of the
Seahorse,
a legend she was prone to talking about whenever she got the opportunity. Sabina was very fond of this tale because the legendary treasure — in particular, a priceless ruby necklace — supposedly belonged to her great-great-great-grandmother, Eliza Fairbank.

Tonight Sabina was particularly excited because during the cruise Dora Shoering had confirmed that the story was a lot more than legend. It was all, most probably, true. The fact that Dora Shoering knew no more about history than the next man or woman didn’t seem to bother Sabina.

“Of course, they were my great-great-great-grandmother’s rubies.” Sabina paused. “Or were they my great-great-great-great-grandmother’s? Either way, people say they were the most stunning jewels this side of India.”

“What was the whole big deal about them?” asked Ruby, who of course knew the whole big deal, but her mother liked to explain, and Ruby was feeling kind enough to ask.

“They were flawless — crystal clear and
flawless
— big, too,” replied her mother. “They would have been yours, of course, eventually.” She sighed. “They would have gone so well with this Marco Perella dress.” Sabina was scrutinizing herself in her dressing-table mirror.

“Oh, you don’t need jewels, Mom,” said Ruby. “You always knock ’em dead — rubies or no rubies.”

Her mother smiled. “As long as I have my little Ruby Redfort,” she said, hugging Ruby. “Who cares about stones?”

Ruby didn’t usually go in for this sort of schmaltzy convo, but tonight, well, tonight her parents had come back from the dead, so Ruby
was
easing up on the teen attitude. She did actually
mean
every nice word she said, but she also wanted to get out of having to wear the flouncy yellow blouse her mother had picked out for her. It was touch and go as to whether this strategy would work, but it was worth a try.

“So,” said Ruby, “tell me again, what exactly happened out there?”

“Oh, come on, Rube!” said her mother, laughing. “We’ve told you at least four times!”

But Ruby couldn’t get enough of the story — she was kind of proud that her parents had survived such a dicey situation. There was of course another reason for wanting to hear it over and over; it was
RULE 14: VERY OFTEN PEOPLE NEGLECT TO TELL THE MOST IMPORTANT DETAIL.
She’d learned this from Detective Despo;
Crazy Cops
might just be a TV show, but if you wanted to learn about detective work, then this show was packed with an awful lot of good tips.

“Well,” said her father, “I woke up to hear that little dog yapping . . .”

They went through the whole terrifying ordeal again. How, as the pirates started shooting into the water, both of them had escaped the clutches of almost certain death by diving deep down under the boat and holding their breath.

“The pirates left us for dead, no life preservers, no nothing,” said Brant. “But we managed to grab onto Ambassador Crew’s luggage. The pirates had thrown it overboard. I think he might have been getting on their nerves; Lester can do that to people.”

“Yes, we were very lucky with the suitcase,” said Sabina. “It floated beautifully — it’s top-quality luggage, you know. Good luggage is always a good investment. The three of us, that’s Pookie, your father, and I, clung on for dear life.”

“Pookie?” said Mrs. Digby, who had just come in to collect the laundry.

“The yappy dog,” said Ruby.

“What kind of creature suits a name like Pookie?” sniffed the housekeeper.

“Pookie,” said Ruby.

“Well, I pray I don’t meet him,” said Mrs. Digby, picking up a basket and making her way back to the kitchen.

“Yes, the three of us managed to paddle toward the Sibling Islands, though why they call them islands I don’t know; they’re nothing like islands, just big old rocks — there’s absolutely no sign of life there. You can’t even climb onto them, unless of course you happen to be Spider-Man.” Her mother was dusting her nose with powder.

“But I thought the waters near the Sibling Islands were supposed to be super dangerous, what with the currents and tides and all?” said Ruby.

“Well, that’s true enough,” said her father. “But the darnedest thing must have happened — the currents were still, totally still. Something to do with the moon, or is it the stars? I forget what causes it, but something up there.” He pointed vaguely above him.

Of course,
thought Ruby. He wasn’t exactly on the money with his explanation, but it was close enough.
The asteroid!
YKK 672
. She had read somewhere that large asteroids, passing close enough to Earth, could modify the local attraction of the moon and stop water currents for as long as the asteroid stayed near the atmosphere.

“It can last several days, or just a matter of hours, you never can tell,” continued her father. “For just a short window of time the currents calm, and you can actually swim without getting sucked under, and hey, presto! Your parents don’t drown!”

“Yes, were we ever lucky with that!” said her mother. “Your dad and I are excellent swimmers, but no one can swim in the Sibling waters when the currents are strong. What are the chances?” Her mother grinned and powdered her nose some more. “This happens once in a blue moon, and we get lucky. Who could believe it?”

Ruby could: her parents were born lucky.

“So how come you know all this info on the tides and currents an’ all?” asked Ruby.

“It all comes from his days aboard the
Sea Wolf.
You remember, your dad worked for that diver guy in Tuscany, Italy?” said Sabina. “Of course, he already had a free-dive scholarship at Stanton too.”

Ruby did remember this, but she had no idea Brant had actually taken any of it on board — her dad wasn’t exactly the smartest fish in the barrel.

“I studied under a genuine marine genius. Well, actually, I worked for his marine genius co-divers. Francesco Fornetti rarely spoke to me, I was too junior.” Brant sighed.

“He was a terrific breath-hold diver,” said Sabina. “Too bad about what happened to him.”

“Yes, too bad — he knew more about ocean life than just about anyone around,” added Brant.

“Why, what happened to him?” said Ruby. “Did he die?”

“Professionally, I guess,” said her dad.

“Meaning what?” asked Ruby.

“It happened in Twinford, actually. We’d seen him a couple of times. We went on . . . um . . . a sailing trip with him. Then he started jabbering on about something he’d seen, some weird creature, couldn’t stop going on about it. He got laughed out of the ocean by a bunch of marine-life experts. They all said he had gone crazy, swallowed too much saltwater or something,” said Brant. “It was too bad; he just sort of disappeared after that.”

“Anyway,” said Sabina excitedly, “I just wish he’d been there when we saw the worrying thing in the water. He might have been able to identify it.”

“What worrying thing in the water?” asked Ruby. This was a new detail — they hadn’t mentioned the worrying thing in the water before.

“Well,” said her mother, “there we were, just swimming around the Sibling Islands, trying to find fresh water — which you might think impossible.”

“Fortunately for us, it wasn’t,” said her father. “There was a natural stream that ran down the north side of the north rock into the ocean; we found an old plastic bottle that we filled to the very brim, and that’s what saved our lives.”

“Terrible how people litter,” said her mother. “Although we were very grateful for it at the time. Without it we might have perished of thirst.”

“But what about the thing?” asked Ruby, impatient for them to get to the point.

“Oh, yes, there was definitely a thing in the water,” said her father. “Pookie heard it — you know what a dog’s hearing is like.”

“Very sensitive,” agreed Sabina.

“But what was it?” asked Ruby.

“We didn’t exactly see it,” said her mother.

“I felt its vibrations,” said her father. “Like it was moving toward us. Our chances were looking really quite deathly, and then something really strange happened. This sort of indigo cloud — like dye — kind of appeared in the water.”

“Like squid ink?” asked Ruby.

“Well, sort of, but not,” said Brant. “It was like no squid ink I ever saw before. And blue, not black.”

“It got all over Pookie, and he didn’t like it one bit,” said her mother. “Kept trying to lick it off, and the more he licked, the more he yapped.”

“Boy, did that dog yap,” agreed Brant.

“Though thank goodness he did,” said Sabina. “Because the Runklehorns heard it — they were sailing past the far side of the islands, and the next thing we heard was Eadie Runklehorn’s voice calling, ‘
Ahoy there, Redforts! Just the people we were looking for. We need a couple to make up a bridge four! We’re getting very bored playing Snap on our own.
’”

Brant was laughing at the very memory of it. “You know Eadie,” he said. “Such an original sense of humor — there we are, clinging to a suitcase, practically drowning, and she makes a joke!”

Ruby was looking at them wondering if too much sun and saltwater had made them insane. Not many drowning people would see the funny side, but she guessed this was the old Redfort survival instinct kicking in; keep laughing and nothing can ever be as bad as it seems. She had read about this in the
SAS/Marine Survival Handbook.
It said there that the trick to surviving a life-and-death situation was ninety percent attitude — same as her Rule 20.

“So then what?” asked Ruby.

“And then, ta-da, they rescued us!” Sabina said this last part with a flourish of her powder brush, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be rescued from a sea monster.

“Yes, and back in time for cocktail hour,” said Brant.

“So if you got rescued at four p.m. on Friday, how come you didn’t make it back here until lunchtime the following Wednesday?” asked Ruby.

“Oh honey, you know what the Runklehorns are like,” said her father. “Wouldn’t put us ashore until we’d played a dozen rounds of deck quoits and several hands of bridge. Then, of course, we remembered the pirates.”

“You
forgot
them?” said Ruby.

“Well, it was all so exciting bumping into the Runklehorns like that,” said Sabina. “The pirates clear went out of my mind. Anyway, we all decided we had better sail the long way around since we didn’t want to get captured again, and that’s when that nice fellow with the helicopter showed up.”

“Supper was the only disappointment,” said her father. “The chef had been having trouble trying to catch a single fish. We ended up eating canned tuna.”

“I guess
something
was scaring the fishes,” said her mother.

Water, water everywhere and not a fish to eat,
thought Ruby. She remembered the other week when Mrs. Digby had threatened her with cod-liver oil because the fish store was out of fish.
Weirder and weirder still.

The doorbell chimed.

“Oh, that will be the Runklehorns,” said Sabina. “Go put on that nice yellow number, would you, honey?”

Ruby opened her mouth to protest, but before she could say anything, caught sight of herself in the mirror. The T-shirt she was wearing was printed with the word
duh.
She would make her mother’s day perfect and go change.

THE DINNER CONVERSATION WAS OF COURSE LIMITED
to the subject of pirates, rescue, and lost treasure.

“What gets me is why the coast guard didn’t pick up my Mayday call,” said Sabina.

“Yes, that is a mystery,” agreed Brant.

“And Bernie sent message after message when our engine went kaput, but no one responded,” said Eadie.

“It was pure chance that we got rescued. The guy in the chopper just happened to be flying by,” said Bernie.

“Shame, it was a lovely spot,” said Brant. “We were really having a high old time, weren’t we, darling?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Sabina. “A swell time.”

While her parents and the Runklehorns laughed, Ruby was beginning to put things together in her head. She was sure that the pirates had to be responsible for the lost Mayday calls: it made sense; this way they could rob and hijack vessels without being disturbed. But how were they doing it? From her mother’s description, they didn’t sound like the most sophisticated villains at sea, and surely, if they were going to all the trouble of blocking Mayday calls, they must have a bigger target in mind than cruise boats and cash.

Like Blacker said, it wasn’t like many pleasure boats sailed in those waters.