Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath (21 page)

Martha was forgiven her ungodly lies because no one could doubt that she had been through a trauma so terrible, she could no longer speak the truth. Her mother dead, her inheritance lost. She never spoke one word more about those dark days of seafaring terror. And as for the story, it gradually became myth. The treasure, the
Seahorse,
the pirates? Perhaps the boat had just been hit by a terrible storm.

Ruby closed the book and sat back in her chair. She remained there for some time, quite still. She thought about Martha — her long, long-distant relative, her long-dead relative whose voice she almost thought she heard.
Believe me,
it seemed to say,
Listen, I tell the truth. I cannot lie.
Ruby opened her notebook and wrote:

Possible of course.

Ruby was well aware that asteroids can come back again and again, in very long orbits. Two hundred years didn’t seem impossible. And Martha did talk about seeing a falling star as she lay on the shore. . . .

Then, of course, there was the matter of the whirling thing.

It was certainly possible.

Perhaps the huge rock Martha heard crashing down covered the cave entrance so it could no longer be seen.

Maybe the lightning had conjured the illusion of a sea monster by casting strange shadows on the cave walls.

Just voices of woe and fear combining with the sound of sharp splitting rock as the cave collapsed and the water rushed in: no monster, no supernatural being, just weather and sea colliding.

The picture was getting less blurry. Ruby and Blacker’s theory about ships being rerouted to keep them away from the Sibling Islands, the calmed currents . . . someone out there wanted something from the Siblings waters, and if Ruby Redfort could believe in the treasure of the
Seahorse,
then maybe she wasn’t the only one.

Maybe, a mere two hundred years later, someone was trying to dive the wreck and secure its sunken bounty.

The only thing was how to prove it.

WHEN RUBY GOT HOME, SHE WENT IN SEARCH OF HITCH:
he was nowhere in the main house, so she guessed he must be downstairs in his apartment. She could hear him playing music — the clarinet, something he often did if he got more than a few moments to himself. He claimed it helped him think, but Ruby wondered if it didn’t help him block out the noise of the day, the tricky thoughts that must buzz endlessly around that head of his. The music was probably his own form of white noise.

He didn’t seem to hear her knock, but the door was ajar and Bug, who had followed her down, pushed his way in. Hitch continued to play until he noticed Ruby standing there in the doorway.

“Hey, kid, you not out riding the streets of Twinford fighting crime?”

“No, I’ve been at the library.”

“How very civilized. Any new books I should be reading?”

“Maybe an old one,” said Ruby.

“I’ve always enjoyed the classics. What’s it about?”

“Pirates, treasure, sea monsters — that kinda stuff,” she replied.

“Sounds gripping,” said Hitch.

“Yeah, it was,” said Ruby. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

“I look forward to it, kid. Oh, by the way, I got you the radio tapes, left them in your room.”

“Thanks,” said Ruby. “I’ll go check them out.”

She spent the rest of the night listening to the tapes, to the eerie music, the music that wasn’t quite music. Eventually, the cassette clicked off and she fell asleep, her head resting on Bug, and for a couple of hours they both slept well.

The next morning Ruby felt terrible; she was suffering from lack of sleep and was kinda grouchy. The tiredness was building up in her and she was finding school a chore. All she really wanted to do was prove herself right: this Chime thing had to be more than it seemed, it had to be a code. It was the only way to make sense of it.

She was sitting in Mrs. Drisco’s class listening to the noises in her earpiece. She had this neat little device, very discreet — a tiny tape player tucked into her satchel. In her exercise book she wrote the notes she was hearing. The tricky thing was that she kept having to stop and start the machine. This made a rather obvious clunking sound, a sound that did not escape the sharp ears of Mrs. Drisco.

Ruby felt a yank as the little speaker was pulled from her ear, and she looked up to see Mrs. Drisco’s face level with hers, the teacher’s eyebrows arched in an angry position.

“Can you explain yourself?” said Mrs. Drisco in a chilling whisper.

Ruby looked down at her satchel, and her alphabetic notes and excuses folder. She had a good one from Dr. Franton at the lice and flea clinic, asking her to please avoid all cheerleading activities or indeed anyone involved with cheerleading — but it wouldn’t really work for this occasion since cheerleading was not the issue. And the note from the president was far too useful to be sacrificed merely to prevent a detention.

Ruby paused. “If you could give me a little time, Mrs. Drisco,” she said. “I’m a little fuzzy today, so I might need a few minutes to come up with something good.”

“That’s it!” boomed Mrs. Drisco. “Principal Levine’s office, NOW!”

Ruby sighed. She would take the punishment; she could do with a little quiet time. What did it matter if it involved sitting in a dreary classroom on her own? But what she had forgotten was that the tape player, and more importantly the tape, would be confiscated by Mrs. Bexenheath. A schoolboy error on Ruby’s part.

Darn it, Ruby, you’re off your game.

She would need to enlist the help of a couple of her friends. When Clancy came by the detention room (as she knew he would), she passed him a coded note under the door. He read the note, which told him all he needed to know, and immediately snapped into action.

Clancy knocked on Mrs. Bexenheath’s door and began some complicated story about a water bubbler that wasn’t bubbling in the lower hallway. He was halfway through this unnecessarily detailed explanation when Red Monroe knocked on the door, supposedly to tell Mrs. Bexenheath about a pigeon that was flapping around in the girls’ locker room, but in fact she was actually there to “accidentally” knock the large piles of carefully sorted mail onto the floor.

While Mrs. Bexenheath was picking it up and Red was apologizing and Mrs. Bexenheath was struggling not to curse, Clancy Crew was opening the “confiscation cupboard” and retrieving the tape player.

He ran to the window and threw it down to Del, who sprinted around the back of the building and passed it to Mouse, who was standing balanced on Elliot’s shoulders.

From there, Mouse managed to just about pass it up to the window of the room where Ruby was enjoying detention. A small hand reached out and took the tape player from Mouse and . . . mission accomplished.

Of course no one but Clancy knew what was on the tape. Mouse, Del, Elliot, and Red just assumed it was some music and that Ruby needed it to relieve the tedium of several hours of isolated study.

Ruby listened to the tape over and over. She worked hard and felt she was getting pretty close to cracking the code. She looked at her watch: forty-seven minutes before detention was over. Then she wrote her 3,000-word essay on why it was a good idea to pay attention in class — not an essay Mrs. Drisco was likely to enjoy.

When she was released, she went to meet Clancy at the Double Donut. He was moaning on about physics. “Mr. Endell just went on and on and on about
YKU 726
,” he said, slumping down in his seat and resting his forehead on the table.

“You mean
YKK 672
,” corrected Ruby.

“I mean he just went on and on about how super interested we should be because this only happens once in a blue moon.”

Ruby shrugged. “Well, I guess he’s right. It is kinda rare for a small part of the ocean to stop moving.”

“Yeah,” said Clancy. “It’s interesting to mention this
once, twice,
even
thrice,
but not like sixty-seven times.”

“Well, Mr. Endell is kinda obsessive,” said Ruby. “Did he mention how often
YKK 672
happens to pass by the earth?”

“Did he mention it? Are you kidding? He didn’t stop mentioning it! Once every two hundred years. That fact is now etched into my memory.”

Ruby smiled. Her theory was correct.

“So what were
you
doing while Mr. Endell was boring me to death?” said Clancy.

“Well, I was writing an essay about paying attention to Mrs. Drisco,” said Ruby.

“Yeah, but what were you ACTUALLY doing?”

“You remember how I was telling you about the Chime Melody interference?”

Clancy nodded.

“Well, what if it wasn’t interference? What if someone was using music to deliver a message?”

“What kind of message?” said Clancy. He was staring at her, his eyes saucer-like.

“Like locations, information, instructions,” said Ruby. “This someone is giving them all in code to someone else.”

“You think these someones are the
pirates
?” Clancy looked puzzled.

“No,” said Ruby. “I mean yes and no. The pirates don’t strike me as capable of thinking up this kind of code or of deciphering it — not from what my mom said anyway. Those guys sounded kinda Neanderthal.”

“So you’re saying there’s more than the pirates out there?”

“I’m saying there is more than likely someone who is kinda in with the pirates, but not part of their band. Someone super smart. Then there also must be someone else on the outside who’s issuing the orders. One supersmart person sends out the code on the Chime Melody airways and one super smartperson working with the pirates deciphers it.”

“So where have you got to? With the code I mean?” asked Clancy.

Ruby bit her lip. “That’s the thing, I
haven’t
got it yet. I’m just guessing at this point, and it’s making me crazy.”

Clancy patted her on the back. “You’ll get there, Rube. No doubt about that.”

“Yeah, but when?” She sighed. “Maybe only once it’s all too late.” She stood up and slung her satchel over her shoulder. “I better get going; got a lot to do.”

“You can’t go,” said Clancy. “It’s Friday night, we were gonna hang out, remember?”

“Clance, I got a job to do. It’s kinda important, you know?”

“Yeah, for your information, I do actually! The job is more important than anything else, including your friends, including me. I got that, OK? Loud and clear!”

Ruby felt guilt wash over her, but rather than say the
right
thing, she said exactly the
wrong
thing. She regretted it as soon as she uttered the words and saw him flinch.

Clancy didn’t reply. His face said it all, and Ruby just turned and left the diner, not once looking back.

By the time she made it home she had a horrible little voice jabbering in her ear, telling her what a crummy friend she was. She ignored it, and instead allowed the white noise of her busy brain to block it out. Up in her room, she turned on the mini cassette player and pulled on her headphones. The awful music played on and did nothing to ease her mind.

Then at about half past four that morning she got it.