Free Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath by Lauren Child Page A

chair by an evil count and almost buried in a ton of sand, all because someone had been listening in while she yacked away on the telephone to Clancy. She had every right to be cautious, even though the woman in question was actually Mrs. Frast from her mother’s bridge club. However, the worry of being overheard only made up part of her reason for keeping it zipped; the truth was that what Ruby really wanted to do was sit in her room and give the briefing some clear thought, puzzle it out.
    “Look, Clance, don’t take this the wrong way, but I just need to sit and churn a few things over. You understand, don’t ya?”
    “I guess,” said Clancy.
    They finished their drinks, and Ruby rode on home.
    She walked into the house and up the stairs to the kitchen. She was pretty hungry, and something smelled good. Mrs. Digby was nowhere to be seen. But on the bright side, there were some homemade pizza slices, just cooked, on the table, and a note that said,
Dig in, why don’t you?
    There was a PS. It said,
Mrs. Lemon called again. She wants you to sit for that fat baby of hers. I told her you had an infectious skin condition and it didn’t look like it would clear up for a week or two.
    Ruby smiled. “Nice going, Mrs. Digby.” She loaded her plate with pizza and poured some banana milk into a glass, then, holding an apple in her teeth, she maneuvered her way up to her room. She closed the door firmly behind her, retrieved her yellow notebook, and set about making lists, and then used the elements from the list to make a spider map. She always found it useful to see problems visually.
    First she drew a picture of a diver; he was at the top of the page. Then she wrote three headings:

    Spidering out from that heading she wrote every single incidence of confused shipping she had heard of.
    The next heading said:

    There were a lot of these too.
    The last heading read:

    Branching out from this were all the names of the people who had heard the strange whispering in the ocean.
    And then a question:

     
    Ruby sat staring at her own question for some minutes before catching sight of the time. She quickly reached across and switched on the portable TV that sat on her bedroom floor. The title music to
Crazy Cops
blared out, and the face of Detective Despo filled the screen. She sank down in her beanbag and let her mind concentrate on the life-and-death matters of a fictional cop.
    The great advantage for Detective Despo was that he had a team of TV writers who made sure his cases were all tied up neatly by the end of each sixty-minute episode. Right at that moment Ruby envied him; she couldn’t help wishing that she had a writer on board to make sure her latest case came out right in the end, but regrettably for her, she didn’t live in a fictional world.
     

     
    “Pirates! Pirates! They’ll rob us blind, cut our throats, and leave us for dead! They’ve already thrown that poor dog overboard.”
    On hearing this, Mr. Sylvester fainted.
    This all provided an excellent distraction, one that Sabina Redfort made good use of. She very quickly and very quietly made her way to the wheelhouse, snatched up the ship-to-shore radio, and sent out a Mayday call to the coast guard.
    “Mayday, Mayday. This is the
Golden Albatross.
Do you read me? Over.”
    She got no reply, but she wasn’t going to give up. Someone was bound to pick up the distress signal sooner or later.
    “Mayday, Mayday. This is the
Golden Albatross
. Do you read me? We are in deep over-our-heads trouble. Over.”
    Still no reply. This was very odd. The coast guard was supposed to answer immediately. Sabina’s voice rose louder.
    “Mayday, Mayday, I repeat, do you read me? Over.”
    “Yes,” said a voice — unfortunately not a voice from the radio, but rather a deep voice from just behind her. “It’s certainly over for you, lady!”
    Sabina spun around, and there, standing a few feet away, was a smartly dressed young man who looked like he would be more