by Lauren Child
‘They died from slipping on a bar of soap?’ said Ruby.
‘Yeah,’ confirmed Elliot.
‘Actually in that bathroom?’ she asked.
‘Not exactly in the bathroom but about an hour later in the emergency room at St Angelina’s, but it was the soap that did it.’
‘So why wouldn’t the ghost haunt the emergency room at St Angelina’s hospital?’ asked Del. ‘Why would it travel all the way back to the bathroom of its apartment?’
‘Because I guess it felt more comfortable there,’ said Elliot.
‘And how did it even get there?’
‘I don’t know, I’m not a ghost expert, maybe on the bus?’ said Elliot.
‘Oh man, that is the lamest story,’ spluttered Del. ‘Rube, is that lame or what?’
Ruby had stopped paying attention and was instead thinking about the evening at the Scarlet Pagoda; would Bug have followed her down that corridor, would his fur have stood on end? Red had certainly experienced something weird, something she couldn’t actually explain. But still she nodded at Del and said, ‘It’s the soap they should be scared of, not the ghost hanging out in the bathroom.’
On her way back from Del’s, inspired by the story of the soap ghost, Ruby turned her mind to the poetry ghost. She decided to call in at the City Library and see if she could borrow a copy of Mr Okra’s favourite book, A Line Through My Centre. However, as it turned out, this was easier said than done.
‘I’m afraid we don’t have a copy. We used to many years back but it’s long since disappeared and no one thought to replace it,’ said Mr Lithgo. He knew a lot about the books the library held, unsurprising because he seemed to have been there since the first stone was laid. Mr Lithgo made calls to the various smaller Twinford libraries, but none of them had ever owned a copy. ‘It was never considered very important and, I have to say, it is very rarely requested.’
Next stop for Ruby was Penny Books, a second-hand store that dealt in any kind of literature; popular, unpopular, in print or out of print.
Ray Penny shook his head. ‘I can do my best to track down a copy, but it may take a while.’
‘Call me as soon as you find one, would you?’ said Ruby. ‘I’ll come right over the second you call.’
‘Will do Ruby,’ said Ray. ‘Sounds real important.’
Chapter 19.
The fly barrette
WHEN RUBY GOT HOME SHE WENT DOWNSTAIRS to Hitch’s apartment and found him sitting at the table looking at some blueprints – she had no idea what they related to.
‘Look, I’m sorry about yesterday,’ she said. ‘I know it was irresponsible.’
Hitch raised an eyebrow.
‘OK,’ added Ruby, ‘I know it wasn’t too smart either.’
Hitch blinked a slow blink.
Ruby sighed. ‘OK, if it means so much to you, then I know it was super dumb. . . and. . .’
‘Look, before you begin with the grovelling, I have to tell you, I agree with Agent Gill and Doctor Selgood, and before you ask, no, I haven’t told anyone about your latest dumb-clutz behaviour. Those two Spectrum items you stole have been returned and Hal in gadgets said he’d fix them both on the quiet.’
Ruby said nothing.
‘You still think you being removed from training is unfair?’
Ruby shrugged, it was the sort of question that wasn’t a question.
‘Whether you do or whether you don’t it doesn’t really change my mind,’ he continued, ‘it’s just that I happen to know a few agents who caught the fearlessness bug and they all have one thing in common.’
‘You’re gonna tell me they’re dead, right?’
‘I don’t have to, you know it. Anyone with a grain of sense knows that if you keep playing Russian roulette, one day you have to run into a bullet. The odds begin to stack against you.’
They neither of them said anything for a minute, until Hitch took a small silver case out of his top pocket.
He slid it across the table. ‘It’s to keep you out of harm’s way,’ he said, ‘or at least so I have a way of tracking you when all else fails. You can’t rely on just one thing, the Escape Watch is not enough. And besides. . . LB might decide to recall it.’
‘You think she’d do that?’
‘I don’t know. Just take the gift, OK?’
She opened the box. ‘A barrette?’ said Ruby. She picked it up – it was a blue barrette and attached to it, very realistically, was an enamel black and white housefly. ‘What does it do?’
‘It transmits a signal, helps me locate you, plus it has a tiny radio transmitter so we can communicate. I had Hal in gadgets make it up for me – it’s a prototype, he hasn’t had a whole lot of time to test-run it, but well, it’s better than nothing at all.’
‘I’ll wear it if it makes you happy,’ said Ruby, sliding it into her hair and checking her reflection in the dark window glass, ‘and it looks OK I guess.’
Just then, some toast popped out of the toaster. Hitch went over, looked at it, raised an eyebrow and slid it over to Ruby. Ruby looked down.
Redfort, Hitch, return to HQ immediately.
‘You think they know about. . . my recent. . . activity?’ said Ruby.
‘No idea,’ said Hitch. ‘Could be something else entirely.’
‘Maybe they saw the light, realised they’d made a big mistake and are ungrounding me,’ said Ruby.
‘Yeah, that’s right kid,’ said Hitch. ‘You stay hopeful.’
There was an air of unease in the briefing room and everyone at Spectrum seemed to be sitting on the edge of their seats.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Ruby. One thing was for sure – it didn’t seem to have anything to do with her.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Hitch, and for once Ruby believed him.
This time the briefing was led by Agent Dixie Deneuve, from Spectrum 9. She wore a suit and she looked serious; no time for light humour, nor even the faintest of smiles.
‘Is that a made-up name?’ hissed Ruby.
Hitch gave her a look which suggested she zip it.
The room went silent.
‘A highly classified prototype has gone missing from the Department of Defence development base,’ said Dixie Deneuve. ‘As yet we have not even a trace of a clue as to who could have perpetrated this act.’ She took a sip of water before continuing. ‘This item was being developed by Spectrum scientists in collaboration with the military, and was stored in a secure military location. Its disappearance is highly embarrassing for us. All Spectrum divisions have been alerted.’
An agent put up her hand and Deneuve nodded.
‘Are we to know what this highly classified missing item is?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Dixie Deneuve.
A murmur travelled through the briefing theatre, no one quite understanding what the point of the briefing was if no one was authorised to know what the missing thing actually was.
‘I cannot tell you because I do not know,’ said Agent Deneuve. ‘I do not know because I am not authorised to know, and if I am not authorised to know then I must assume that I do not need to know.’
‘So,’ ventured another agent, ‘how do we know that this item has actually been taken?’
Agent Deneuve peered at him disdainfully. ‘Take my word for it, Agent –’ she made a big deal of trying to read his name badge – ‘Dunst, that’s your job after all.’
The agent shuffled uncomfortably in his seat.
‘All Spectrum 8 need concern itself with is this: make sure security is kept tight and surveillance is maintained at the highest level. We need to bring these criminals in, and swiftly, without an almighty news story – simple as that.’
‘Given that Spectrum staff know the location of the DOD base and could potentially access the code to enter it, is it possible that the prototype has been taken by a person on the Spectrum team?’ asked Blacker.
Dixie Deneuve blinked. ‘Anything is possible, agent. But at present we are operat
ing on the assumption that it’s an outside job. Although the circumstances surrounding the theft are. . . troubling.’
She paused. ‘We know of various criminals who are interested in our research with the military. It is impossible to keep secrets from everybody. But as far as it is possible, we keep tabs on them, we endeavour to know roughly where they are at any given time. For now what we need to focus on is how the intruder gained access rather than why. If we knew the answer to that first question it might help lead us in the right direction.’
She clicked a switch and the slide projector came on. The first image appeared.
This face was familiar to Ruby – she remembered it all too well from her first case protecting the Jade Buddha of Khotan.
‘Nine lives,’ announced Agent Deneuve, ‘aka Valerie Capaldi. She’s dead, we know this for a certainty, but what we are interested in knowing is the whereabouts of her sometime sidekick.’
Click.
‘Fenton Oswald, a renowned jewel thief, based in Berlin and as far as we are aware, still there – we had a confirmed sighting of him just yesterday. He without doubt has the ability needed to mastermind a plan of this nature.’
Click went the projector; more slides, more faces.
The Count Von Viscount; last seen walking along the seafront of Nice.
‘He has a hideaway there,’ said Deneuve. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he was involved somehow; he just feeds off a mystery and the stealing of this item is nothing if not mysterious.’
Next came Hog-trotter, and Agent Deneuve shivered and moved on. It seemed he wasn’t a suspect – ‘Doing a little jail time,’ said Deneuve, ‘a minor misdemeanour involving some unpaid parking tickets but enough to put him out of action.’
Up came another slide, another familiar face.
‘Babyface Marshall, still incarcerated and unlikely to be released this side of this century.’
Click.
‘Lorelei von Leyden was involved in our most recent case and her whereabouts are at this precise time unknown.’
Click. ‘But although we perhaps have many pictures of her. . .’
Click. A picture of a seemingly different woman came up. ‘We might just as well have none since she is a human chameleon.’
Click. Another woman, now with blonde hair. ‘We might know what she looked like yesterday.’
Click. Now she looked Chinese. ‘But we have no idea what she looks like today.’
Click, click, click. Eight slides, eight very different-looking women.
‘As for the Australian, aka the woman with the blue eyes, whom Agent Redfort almost lost her life to, she is still very much an unknown. Apart from one piece of security camera footage we are pretty much scratching our heads here.’ A very blurry image was projected onto the screen.
‘So let me get this straight, we have nothing?’ said Blacker.
‘For now,’ said Deneuve. ‘But all Spectrum agents in all Spectrum divisions in all departments are expected to work every line of intelligence.’
‘Looks like it’s going to be a long night,’ said Hitch.
‘Too bad,’ sighed Ruby, ‘there’s a Crazy Cops double bill on TV tonight.’
The transmitter was
buzzing and working its way
across the steel table top. . .
. . .He picked it up and accepted the call. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘I know what you’re up to, Birdboy.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You don’t think I read the papers?’
Silence.
‘You’re famous, Twinford is enthralled, all this breaking and entering, all this petty theft, yet no sign of who it could be.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I think you should stop lying, it’s embarrassing.’
‘I told you, I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘Just hand it over. . . or face the consequences.’
Chapter 20.
An emergency call
RUBY WAS DOWNSTAIRS EATING HER BREAKFAST – she’d had a bit of a late start having worked through the night and was enjoying just hanging out in the kitchen listening to Twinford Talk Radio. She had it turned up really loud and almost missed the sound of the phone ringing in her bedroom. She took the stairs two at a time and reached it just before it clicked through to answer phone.
‘Twinford pest control, we spray to kill.’
‘Rube?’
‘Roaches or rats, sir?’
‘This is no time for kidding around, I’m in deep trouble, I tell you, deep.’
‘What is it Clance, are you OK, are you injured or something?’
‘No, but I will be if you don’t think of something quick and by quick I sorta mean now!’
‘OK but first you gotta explain. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.’
‘OK,’ said Clancy, breathing hard, ‘so you know how I was meant to be searching the ads for a restorer to fix my mom’s Louis XV dressing table because it’s not looking so good on account of Minny’s hair dye?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ruby, patiently.
‘So I couldn’t get hold of an emergency repair service and I’m thinking Minny is going to get grounded for like the rest of her entire life and that kinda sucks. . . so. . .’
Ruby waited for him to finish his no doubt painful sentence; she could hear his arms flapping.
‘So I sorta stepped in. Minny got this stuff from the hardware store which was supposed to be some kind of restorer polish and I didn’t get around to reading the label to check she had got the right whatever it was, you know how it is with me and labels. . .’
‘Yeah, you never read ’em.’
‘Anyway, this stuff turns out to be some kinda paint stripper and now the Louis XV dressing table looks kinda. . . not so Louis XV if you know what I’m saying. . . my mother—’
‘She’s gonna kill you,’ said Ruby.
‘She’s gonna kill me,’ agreed Clancy.
‘Minny’s gonna kill you,’ said Ruby.
‘Minny is also gonna kill me,’ agreed Clancy.
‘Although the whole thing was her fault in the first place.’
‘Minny’s not logical like that,’ said Clancy.
Ruby said nothing, she was thinking.
‘Are you there?’ said Clancy, his voice raspy with panic.
‘I’m thinking,’ said Ruby.
‘Well, could you maybe hurry it up a little,’ Clancy urged.
An agonising pause.
‘I got it,’ said Ruby. ‘Sit tight, I think I have the solution, just stay away from any furniture that looks Louis-ish.’
Twelve minutes later Hitch’s car rolled up outside the Crews’ house. He was wearing dark glasses and carrying a black leather case.
Clancy was there to greet him and opened the door way before he reached for the doorbell.
‘When are you expecting her home?’ Hitch asked.
‘Um, maybe an hour and a half from now, maybe two.’
‘OK, so we’ll work with seventy-five minutes,’ said Hitch, activating the countdown on his Spectrum-issue watch. ‘So where is it?’
Clancy led Hitch to his mother’s dressing room and Hitch surveyed the damage. He winced, ran his fingers over the wood. ‘Pear and walnut, made in the French provinces.’
He opened the drawers and examined their construction. ‘Circa 1727, very typical.’ He looked underneath the table top; found what he was looking for. ‘Surprising.’ Then he took a magnifier from his bag, held it over the damaged wood of the table. ‘A quality piece.’
He forwarded all this information via his watch – a thorough description of the wood, the polish, the patina, the exact colour of the remaining gold leaf and the precise extent of the damage.
Less than seven minutes later three restorers arrived. Hitch let them in and directed them upstairs. They said nothing but immediately set to work. Hitch handed Clancy a sponge and Ruby, who had jus
t that minute arrived, a bucket of soapy water. He pointed to his car. ‘It will calm your nerves,’ he said. They didn’t argue.
When they were done washing the silver convertible they sat in the kitchen sipping the drinks Hitch had fixed – a couple of mint lemonade sodas. Hitch went up to check on the restorers. Sixty minutes after arriving, they had finished, their tools packed, dustsheets folded. Hitch took a fat wodge of twenty-dollar bills from his wallet, peeled off a large number and handed them to the guy in charge, shook them all by the hand and watched them leave. Then, reaching into his bag, he drew out a silver aerosol can, free of logo or label and sprayed it across the room.
‘What’s that?’ asked Clancy.
‘I think it must be an odour neutraliser,’ said Ruby.
‘I don’t smell anything,’ said Clancy.
Ruby looked at him. ‘Did the panic affect your brain? It’s to remove the smell – from all that polish and stuff.’
Done with that, Hitch picked up one of Mrs Crew’s perfume bottles, squeezed the atomiser and let it waft through the air. Now the room smelled as it should.
He checked his watch – seventy-four minutes gone. He took a final look around and, judging everything to be ship-shape, clicked his fingers, a signal that it was time to leave, then closed the door and walked speedily downstairs, trailed by Ruby and an awe-struck Clancy.
Before he exited, he turned to Clancy and said, ‘Don’t blow it by being all cute and nice to your mom. She’ll smell a rat in five seconds flat.’ He stepped into his car and turned the key. ‘Adios amigos,’ he called, then drove off in the direction of Cedarwood Drive. He had barely turned the corner of Rose when he saw Mrs Crew’s limousine sail by.
He glanced at his Spectrum-issue watch and smiled as the countdown hit zero.
Clancy watched as his mother pulled in through the gates. ‘Boy that’s some butler,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ said Ruby, ‘that was impressive.’
Mrs Crew was getting out of the car.
‘Hey there Mom, how are you? Can I help you with your bags? Get you some iced-tea?’ called Clancy.