by Lauren Child
Chapter 41.
Toronto, Canada
WHILE RUBY WAS SEEKING ANSWERS, Clancy was climbing up and over a twelve foot stone wall which encircled the estate. It was a little harder than he had anticipated, but he dropped to the other side with no more than a grazed arm and a ripped sleeve, and began to search the grounds.
What he found first was an ancient turtle still puttering about in an ornamental pond spanned by a little fairy-tale bridge. The turtle looked happy enough, or at least too aged to mind. Some of the birds were still flapping around the aviary, content with the remaining birdseed and partial security, though the door was ajar and they were free to fly the coop.
Apart from the odd butterfly, all the other animals were gone. It wasn’t a depressing place, it was like a lost land in a way and certainly well kept; compared to the house, it was in good order, but there was no doubt Mountain Chateau was a place time had well and truly ticked on past.
Clancy was just preparing to get out of there when he felt someone grab his shoulder. He shrieked a high-pitched shriek and turned very slowly to face what could only be a member of Mr Flemming Fengrove’s security team.
This security guard turned out to be an elderly ostrich, but Clancy didn’t want to tussle with him much either and so scrambled up the wall at great speed.
Ruby was waiting for him on the other side.
‘You OK?’ she said.
‘Fine,’ said Clancy.
‘I thought I heard a scream.’
‘That might have been the ostrich,’ he replied. ‘So what did you discover? You think the old man lost his marbles and let his animals go or what?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Ruby. ‘In fact, I’m sure not. The guy’s all broken up about it; he’s been alone a long time and these animals were the only reason he had any marbles left at all.’
‘You’re telling me that he looked after all these creatures alone?’ said Clancy.
‘No, that’s the thing, until recently he had a keeper, someone called Ivan. He managed the animals, looked after them pretty well too from what Fengrove says.’
‘So where is Ivan now?’ asked Clancy, looking around as if the zookeeper might spring out from behind a tree.
‘Not in his cabin, at least that’s what Mr FF says, but we might as well go take a look for ourselves,’ said Ruby, moving towards the car.
‘I don’t think I want to,’ said Clancy.
‘What? You’re afraid?’ said Ruby.
‘Sure I am,’ said Clancy. ‘What if we find his dead body?’
‘Then he’ll be dead and that’s that.’ Ruby shrugged.
‘But what if he’s all strangled on the floor, murdered? I don’t want to end up in the same position.’
‘So you think the murderer will be hanging out in the house waiting for some nosy parker to come on by?’ said Ruby.
‘It might be Mr Fengrove who’s the murderer, ever think of that?’
‘Have you seen Mr Fengrove? He’s eighty-eight years old and looks more like he’s a hundred and eighty-eight; he couldn’t punch a fly if it was lying down.’
They arrived at the little house not ten minutes later. It was nothing much to look at, a simple, one-storey building constructed from clapboard. As Ruby had predicted, no one was there to answer the door and so she let herself in by way of a tiny device she pulled from the Bradley Baker escape watch; it took less than a second. The inside of the house was as modest as the outside; the owner had few possessions and his main interest seemed to be framed drawings of exotic creatures. He had some books on the same subject and there were old albums containing pictures of the keeper holding or standing next to animals both large and small.
Ruby discovered a ticket underneath some papers, stuffed at the back of a kitchen drawer. It was a train ticket to Toronto, Canada, unused and out of date by three weeks and there was a brand-new suitcase sitting in the wardrobe.
‘Looks like he was planning to split,’ called Ruby.
‘But you said that Flemming Fengrove said that he’d already gone,’ replied Clancy.
‘Exactly, so what made him change his mind about train travel?’ said Ruby to herself.
‘You should see this!’ called Clancy from the bathroom. A pretty expensive-looking watch dangled from his hand. ‘I found it in that washbag by the sink.’ He took it over to Ruby who was busy searching the bedroom. She looked up.
‘Ivan doesn’t look like the kinda guy who could have afforded that kind of timepiece,’ said Ruby.
‘Coulda been given to him,’ suggested Clancy, ‘a gift from Mr FF, for services to animals.’
‘I doubt it very much,’ said Ruby. ‘Mr FF struck me as a person who keeps his wallet pretty close to his heart.’ She inspected the back. ‘There’s no engraving, and in any case who gives a gift like this with the till receipt?’ She picked up a piece of paper which had drifted under Ivan’s bed. It was a receipt for a sizeable chunk of change. The watch had been purchased at Melrose Dorff. ‘So now I’m thinking, why skip town without your new gold watch?’
‘Or your suitcase,’ said Clancy.
There were a lot of new and expensive things in the modest two-room home. It didn’t add up. It was looking more and more likely that the guy had taken off in some kind of hurry since he hadn’t even had time to gather his things – maybe he had got to Canada by some other means. Or maybe something had happened to him, which had made it impossible for him to get back to his home? Impossible to get to Canada. Perhaps he hadn’t actually left Twinford County.
Clancy was pretty quiet on the journey home. He felt sort of down, depressed even – how had this nice man Fengrove, who used to be so popular and sociable, ended up so alone and lonely? Ivan the zookeeper had abandoned him, possibly even released his animals – how spiteful was that? Mr Piper was definitely right: man was only interested in his own survival, born bad and good luck to anyone else.
The car took them back to town, travelling in from the northeast down Upper East Avenue, through the city centre and on westward. The plan to first drop Clancy back at his house on Ambassador Row and then head on to Cedarwood Drive. As soon as Clancy was out of the car, Ruby told the driver to turn around and head back the way they had just come, back towards the upper east side. There was something else she wanted to check out; something she didn’t want Clancy to get involved with. She had a creeping feeling it might turn out to be dangerous.
Chapter 42.
Leaving a trace
THE ONLY THING RUBY HAD TAKEN FROM IVAN’S CABIN was the receipt for the watch and the only reason she had taken this was because she wanted to check out something that was written on the back.
She hadn’t told Clancy what she was thinking of doing because she knew he would make a big old fuss and she didn’t have time for it.
She got the cab to drop her at East 23rd Street, a smart neighbourhood not far from the city centre. She paid the driver and watched as he moved off into the heavy Twinford traffic.
She looked again at the faint pencilled scrawl on the back of the receipt. Apartment 9, East 23rd Street. No name, just this address. She buzzed apartment 9: no answer; she waited and tried again: still no answer. She would risk it; it didn’t seem like anyone was there. It was easy to get in the building, the doorman was on a break, so she just pressed one buzzer after another until someone clicked the apartment block’s front door open. Apartment 9 was on the fourth floor. Ruby took the stairs; she didn’t want to risk the lift in case she bumped into one of the residents.
The building’s corridors were well maintained if old– fashioned; they were also quiet: she couldn’t hear a sound from anywhere. She knocked on the door, ready to run if she heard footsteps. For the second time that day she utilised the tiny lock-breaking tool. It wasn’t as easy as breaking into Ivan’s place, this door was pretty secure, but after a few minutes she figured out the trick to it and was in.
She stood listening, utterly still, but got no sense of another person
in the apartment. She looked around. She was standing in a generous lobby area where there was a small round table, on top of which sat a vase of fresh cut flowers. Ruby walked carefully across the hall to the nearest door and gently pushed it open. The room was shrouded in darkness; it had heavy drapes that were pulled not quite all the way across the windows. As her eyes adjusted, she began to make out the shape of a couch, an armchair, a fireplace and a desk.
On the desk sat a phone, nothing more. She looked in the drawer, but that was also empty, then she bent down under the desk and saw the wastepaper basket – it was pretty full with newspapers, magazines and, right at the bottom, envelopes. Most were addressed with the same looped black ink handwriting and all were delivered by hand, but none of them bore the recipient’s name.
As she searched through them, smells wafted out. Some still contained their letter, but, as Ruby pulled each from its container, she discovered every single one to be blank. Every piece of paper came from a different hotel. Each was branded with the hotel’s name or logo.
Ruby carefully replaced the newspapers and other trash, and placed the writing paper in her purse, hoping that they would not be missed. She was about to move on when she saw another envelope which had fallen beneath the chair. She turned it over and realised this was the same envelope dropped by the businessman in the department store; she knew this because it was printed with the same decorative seal. The eye gazed up at her and Ruby wondered whose faces it had seen. How had it got here, whose apartment was this? She left the drawing and wandered to the kitchen, a tidy room, no clutter, no mess, but on the table she found a small bottle, clear and almost full of some kind of liquid. She unscrewed the top and the smell that wafted out took her straight back to her chemistry lessons: it was ether.
Diethyl Ether a dense, gasoline-smelling liquid used as a solvent, or for anaesthetising people and knocking them out.
Now why would someone have a chemical like that on their kitchen table?
She didn’t have time to find out.
Ruby heard the sound of the elevator and heels stepping out into the passageway. She didn’t wait for the key in the door; without hesitation, she tiptoed to the window, pushed it open and climbed onto the fire escape, only pausing to gently close it behind her.
Lorelei Von Leydenopened
the door to
her apartment
She put down her bags and walked to the study; she needed to make a call. On entering the room she paused and sniffed the air. What was it she could smell?
‘Bubblegum?’ she said.
Chapter 43.
Drawing a blank
THE NEXT MORNING, RUBY WOKE UP EARLY. She was still cursing her carelessness – she’d only just got out in time, before the occupant caught her.
And just who was the occupant? She didn’t know. All she had now were some pieces of scented paper. Bozo, she thought.
She was about to close her eyes and have another twenty or maybe thirty minutes’ dozing time when she remembered something very important that she had to do. She was going to need to enlist the help of Red Monroe. She stumbled out of bed and looked at her own weary face in the mirror; she still wasn’t looking the picture of health. She scrabbled around in her bathroom cabinet for some vitamins – she looked like she might be missing a few important ones. She swallowed a couple and picked up the soap bar phone and dialled Red’s number. Red answered it as her mom had already set off for work.
‘Hey Red, could you do me a favour?’
‘Sure, what dya need me to do?’ Red always said yes; she was a nice kid that way.
‘When you get to school, could you go to the secretary’s office and distract Mrs B so she comes out into the hall? I need to get something from behind her desk.’
‘No problem,’ said Red, ‘I’ll be there at 8.15. Just let me know how long you need her out of the way.’
Red made a great decoy: she had such an innocent face that no one, not even the suspicious Mrs Bexenheath, could ever quite believe she could do anything even mildly bad. Second best at this was Mouse, but she was a little more nervy than Red, and if she was being totally honest with you she preferred to stay out of trouble’s way, choosing to keep a low profile. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help, it was just that she didn’t need the heat.
By the time Ruby arrived at the secretary’s office, Red was already speaking to Mrs Bexenheath. She was complaining about something she had seen in one of the lockers.
‘I think it’s a raccoon,’ Red was saying, ‘but you see it could be a marmot, to be honest Mrs Bexenheath. What with all these weird animals showing up all over the place, I’m just not sure.’
Mrs Bexenheath was looking worried until Red said, ‘I heard there’s a reward if the animal is exotic, I mean if it’s something like a chinchilla, which it could be. I didn’t get a good enough of a look.’
Mrs Bexenheath looked a little more animated; she even got up off her chair. Mrs Bexenheath liked sitting down and only stood up if her duties demanded it.
‘I heard that you even get your picture taken and put in the Twinford Mirror,’ continued Red.
Mrs Bexenheath put down her coffee cup.
‘I’d better come and look,’ she said. ‘Someone is going to have to take charge.’
Ruby signalled seven minutes with her fingers and Red nodded, no problem.
Once the secretary had vacated her room, Ruby was in.
She knew where Mrs Bexenheath was likely to keep the test paper: she kept anything of any importance in her locked cupboard. She kept the keys to this on a keyring which she wore around her neck and it seriously weighed her down; the secretary had a lot of keys.
The Bradley Baker watch tool made easy work of the lock and Ruby was in in no time. Finding the test wasn’t difficult either since Mrs Bexenheath was a very organised woman. Ruby removed the original Clancy essay and placed it in the shredder. Then she opened her satchel and pulled out an essay written in not too perfect French: it was all about the circus. The handwriting was Clancy Crew’s, at least it looked like Clancy Crew’s, and no one, not even his mother, would think to argue otherwise. It was neatly written, but not too neatly. There were a few crossings-out, but not a lot.
It was a brilliant forgery: not too good, but good enough.
Satisfied, Ruby left the room, pulling the door closed behind her. The whole thing had taken just under six minutes and having fixed Clancy’s essay she thought she might take advantage of Dr Harper’s sick note and take the day off.
She decided to go and hang out in Central City Park, do some thinking, which was just as well because a couple of hours later she got a buzz on her watch and was unsurprised to see Hitch’s light had flashed on. She radioed him.
‘Harper says she should take another look at your foot; those stitches should be about ready to snip.’
‘Really?’ moaned Ruby. She had hoped to get the chance to study the writing papers she had lifted from the East Avenue apartment; she had packed them in her satchel and been intending to call in at the library where it was cool and quiet. But instead she reluctantly headed off towards the toddler playground.
Lorelei took her
jewelled telephone dialler
and dialled. . .
. . .the young man answered. ‘Lorelei?’
‘Yes, it’s me, where have you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night.’
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Something happened?’
‘You were right to be concerned; it turns out the little snoop knows more than we thought.’
‘You want to do something about it?’ said Eduardo.
‘You bet I do. I’ll use a lure, it shouldn’t be difficult, think Hansel and Gretel.’
‘You’re going to use candy?’ he asked, a little puzzled.
‘Not exactly,’ said Lorelei, ‘but sort of.’
Chapter 44.
SJ
‘IT’S HEALING OK,’ was Dr Harper’s first remark, ‘b
ut you don’t look so good.’
Ruby wasn’t feeling so good either; this was the worst cold she had had in a while and nothing she did made it any better.
Dr Harper reached to open one of her desk drawers – as she rummaged around for the tablets she was looking for, Ruby noticed a curve of broken glass wrapped in paper. It looked a little like a crystal ball, like a fortune teller might use, though this crystal ball seemed to contain not fortunes, but the Eiffel Tower.
Dr Harper handed Ruby a card of tablets and said, ‘Take two in the morning; they might help.’
Ruby thanked her and got up to leave.
‘Take it easy kid,’ was Harper’s parting advice, ‘and come back if you start to feel like you might be dying.’
‘ That’s good advice,’ said Hitch when Ruby reported back the doctor’s words. He looked at her more closely. ‘Actually, you really don’t look so good. I’ll drive you back after my meeting with LB.’
So Ruby sat in the Spectrum canteen, took out the envelopes and sat there wondering what they might mean.
Maybe, just maybe, someone here at Spectrum might be able to take a look at them. Hitch’s meeting seemed to be going on a long while so what was the harm in doing a little investigating? After all, she had time on her hands.
Ruby knew the Spectrum lab was somewhere in the lower level complex, she wasn’t sure where as she had never actually been taken there.
Spectrum was arranged without a directory: you either knew where departments were or you didn’t. If you didn’t, then you probably had no business going there. However, if you could work out where a department was simply by using your brain and your knowledge of Spectrum, then you probably deserved to find it. Each door in Spectrum was a different colour and each corridor was made up of shades and hues of reds, oranges and yellows, then greens, blues and indigos on through the colour spectrum.