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Chapter 7.

Don’t call us we’ll call you

WHEN RUBY ENTERED THE SUPERMART her ears were assaulted by the tinny sound of the worst kind of muzak. Ruby caught sight of old Mrs Beesman, who was busy filling her cart with what looked like two hundred cans of pet food. It was rumoured that she had somewhere approaching seventy-four cats but as far as Ruby knew no one had ever been in Mrs Beesman’s house to count them. She noticed Mrs Beesman was wearing ear-muffs.

Smart lady, this music could damage your brain.

Ruby walked slowly round the aisles, studying the shelves carefully until she saw what she was looking for. In the middle of a shelf displaying unnaturally vivid cookies and cakes, she saw an item that just didn’t belong. A box of very cardboard looking Real Health Crackers. They claimed to be ‘delicious nutritious yummy snacks – no sugar no eggs no wheat no additives’, but the truth was the packaging looked tastier than the contents.

Something wholesome in Joe’s Supermart, now that is unusual.

Ruby looked at the price sticker and sure enough, across the top it said, ‘Organic Universe’. The words of the mystery voice came back to her.

‘You can see when something is plum square in the wrong place.’

With the box of crackers under her arm, Ruby left the store and made her way across the street to Organic Universe. The wooden chimes jangled as she entered and the smell of sensible food hit her. She headed straight for the cookie aisle, and there, right next to two boxes of Health Crackers, sat a telephone directory. She replaced the box of Health Crackers she was holding, picked up the directory and carried it over to the phone booth by the door.

Now what? she thought.

Above the phone were hundreds of cards advertising all kinds of different health giving treatments, from colour therapy to Watsu, and then… a card which simply said, Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You.

Ruby took the card down from the board and looked at it closely, but apart from a decorative pattern round its edge, there was no other information. She sat down on the wooden stool by the phone booth and waited. After twenty-five minutes the man behind the counter was eyeing her suspiciously.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked in an extremely unhelpful tone. He was a young guy, nervous-looking with a nose which seemed too big for his face. The nose made his face look awkward.

‘No, I’m just fine thanks,’ replied Ruby doing her best to sound casual. ‘I’ll let you know if I need anything.’

The big nosed guy obviously didn’t want to get into an argument with a school kid but he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.

Ruby silently watched the minute hand tick slowly round the clock face, while the big nosed guy walked around the store, eyeing her furtively. If someone was trying to test Ruby Redfort’s patience, they were doing a good job, though patience was not a thing that Ruby had ever been short of.

However, she was relieved when at exactly two minutes to five, the phone rang. She jumped and almost knocked the receiver off its cradle. ‘Hi, hello,’ blustered Ruby.

‘Am I talking to Ruby Redfort?’ asked that same gravelly voice.

‘Yuh huh, yes,’ confirmed Ruby

‘Good, glad you made it this far. I have a job offer for you – let’s make a date… how about tomorrow night at eight for eight not a minute sooner not a minute later. And keep it zipped.’

‘Anything else you wanna tell me?’ asked Ruby.

‘Yes,’ said the voice. ‘Be lucky.’

No goodbye, just the dial tone.

I guess directions would be too much to ask for, thought Ruby, as she left the store.

On her way back home Ruby stopped off at the green. Up in the tree she found a neatly folded origami cuckoo. She knew what that meant without even reading the note.

THE CUCKOO: a parasite bird who takes over the nest of another by pushing the host’s eggs out and laying its own in their place. If necessary the cuckoo will devour the host-bird’s young.

In other words,

THE CUCKOO: a ruthless killer and imposter.

The cuckoo of course was Hitch. It was classic Clancy Crew – he was joking but kind of serious at the same time. He had a sixth sense for trouble. He was often saying, ‘the thing is Rube, I got a hunch about this’, or ‘trust me, I got a feeling I’m right about that’. He could never explain why he had a hunch or where it had come from but the remarkable thing was, he was almost always right. Ruby unfolded the bird and read the note.

vc spf jdyye l fucefy xrs, C ussxubu ds!

Ruby smiled. It wasn’t easy to fool Clancy Crew. Ruby tore a piece of paper from her notebook, wrote

zvuu lvh miv, dsps mpcxd zcf oiwswuzv?

folded it and pushed it into the knot.

When Ruby got home she saw the same police car once again parked in the driveway, and as she walked up the stairs she heard the familiar voice of Sheriff Bridges and also another voice, a police detective.

‘So you didn’t notice she was gone, Mrs R?’ asked Sheriff Bridges.

‘Well to be honest, Nat, what with everything else disappearing I just didn’t get around to noticing. I wasn’t surprised not to see her yesterday – she said she was going to stay with Emily – but Emily says she hasn’t seen her for two weeks.’

‘Emily?’ inquired the detective.

‘Her cousin Emily – lives in North Twinford. You see the thing is she was offended, she shouldn’t have been, but that’s Mrs Digby all over, she gets offended at the drop of a hat.’

‘Offended? By what, Mrs Redfort?’

‘You know, anything really, it can be the smallest criticism, one has to be so careful, the slightest thing can set her off; I ask her to dust, she thinks I’m criticising, I ask her not to, she thinks I don’t trust her with a duster…’

‘No, Mrs Redfort,’ said the detective, trying hard to hold on to his short temper. ‘I meant to say how did you offend her this time?’

‘Well look, it’s like this Detective,’ interrupted Brant Redfort. ‘Sabina stepped into an argument between Consuela our talented new chef and Mrs Digby our much loved housekeeper – some tomato juice was thrown and Sabina was understandably rather upset.’

‘It went all over my new Oscar Birdet jacket. It’s most probably ruined – tomato juice is a stubborn one to get out,’ assured Sabina.

‘The thing is,’ continued Brant, trying to keep the conversation on track, ‘Mrs Digby felt Sabina was taking Consuela’s side – she’s very high-strung.’

Ruby was by now standing in the doorway quietly observing. The detective was writing something on his notepad, obviously thinking very hard.

‘What is it?’ asked Sabina.

‘Could just be that your Mrs Digby is somehow involved in all this – have you thought of that?’ He waved his arm to indicate the now furnitureless house.

‘Oh now come on Detective! Nat, you’ve seen Mrs Digby – you really think a little old lady is capable of stealing every stick of our furniture?’ Brant was appalled by this suggestion.

‘Well as it happens, I don’t, but as the Detective says, we have to follow up every lead.’

‘Maybe she wasn’t acting alone,’ said the detective.

‘Oh, you must be out of your mind – Mrs Digby practically raised me,’ exclaimed Sabina. ‘That’s an awful thing to say.’

‘Maybe I am, and maybe it is, but you have to admit it’s quite a coincidence her disappearing at the same time that you lose all your million-dollar stuff, wouldn’t you agree, Mrs Redfort?’

‘Well yes, but, but…’

‘I’m just saying, we need to look into it,’ said the detective, closing his notepad. ‘Thanks for your time.’

He left by the back door.

‘Sorry not to come with better news,’ said the sheriff.

Just then his radio crackled. ‘Nat, you there? We got a problem at the City Bank.’

The sheriff sighed and spoke into the radio. ‘Not again! OK, I’ll get over there right away.’

He looked up at the Redforts. ‘Darn it, this gold delivery’s causing mayhem – the new alarm system keeps triggering. It better be fixed before that shipment arrives.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘Look, I’ll let you know if I get any more leads. You take care. Remember, get those locks changed!’

‘What’s left to steal?’ said Sabina, closing the door.

Ruby glanced over at Hitch. He looked far from the suspicious character Clancy wanted him to be – he was busy making cocktails and seemed not the slightest bit interested in this latest development. Was he listening? It was hard to be sure – he seemed a lot more concerned about squeezing limes than he did about a little old lady who was missing, presumed felon. Maybe there was nothing sinister about him at all, maybe he was just a bit dumb.

Handsome but probably not a lot going on upstairs, thought Ruby.

Brant caught sight of his daughter. ‘Hey, Ruby honey, what happened at basketball?’

‘Oh, you know, bounced a ball, shot some hoops, came home. What’s going on?’

‘Well that… detective fellow wanted to interview Mrs Digby about the robbery, but no one can find her.’

Ruby took a breath. ‘Do you think it’s possible…’ her voice was hushed so her mother wouldn’t hear. ‘Do you think it’s possible that Mrs Digby was stolen, you know, along with all our stuff ?’

Brant Redfort smiled, ‘That’s a good one Rube!’

But Ruby wasn’t joking.

‘I’m serious Dad, perhaps she was kidnapped?’

‘If she was kidnapped then we would know about it,’ said Brant.

‘Not necessarily, the kidnappers might be waiting a while before they make contact – you know, to build up the tension.’

‘You know what?’ said Brant conspiratorially.

‘What?’ said Ruby

‘You watch too much TV.’ He laughed, patted his daughter on the head and walked into the living room. Ruby sighed as she straightened the barrette in her hair.

‘And you guys probably don’t watch enough’, she muttered under her breath. This kind of situation was always coming up in Crazy Cops. Ruby had learned a lot about the workings of the criminal mind from watching this show. It was on tonight and if Mrs Digby were here they would be watching it together – side by side on the couch. Except there was no couch. Wherever Mrs Digby was now, Ruby wondered, was she watching Crime Night?

Ruby’s sleep was fitful that night – she had a hard time dozing off, and when she did, she dreamt dreams which gave her no rest. Dreams where the telephone rang and the voice on the other end spoke in riddles. Dreams where her mother was taken hostage by a dangerous toast eating butler and her father was shot at by crazy furniture thieves, and all the while the voice of Mrs Digby called out to her from some faraway prison cell. She was woken by her own voice calling, where are you Mrs Digby?

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Mrs Digby, a criminal? That detective was a prize bozo. Mrs Digby would never commit a crime – well, not a crime against the Redforts anyway. Ruby’s mind began sifting through worries, exploring solutions, hitting dead ends and double-backing to square one. She consoled herself with RULE 33: MORE OFTEN THAN NOT THERE IS A VERY ORDINARY EXPLANATION FOR THE ‘EXTRAORDINARY’ HAPPENING.

But it was no use, she was wide-awake.

She got up, pulled on a sweatshirt and quietly made her way downstairs – she didn’t want to wake Bug. But Bug was already awake and staring intently at the man sitting in the kitchen. Ruby froze: from her vantage point she could see Hitch, perched on a stool, his right shirtsleeve rolled up high to reveal a bandage at the top of his arm, which he slowly began to unwind.

She held her breath and became as still as the walls.

She watched as gradually all the gauze was removed to reveal what could only be a gun-shot wound.