hand it looks a lot like a loyalty card.’
‘Exactly what I thought,’ said Ruby. ‘So what if it’s both? The window image is telling us it’s the calling card of the thief who comes in through the window, and the grid markings are also telling us how many things he’s going to take.’
‘So why are the boxes all empty?’
‘You got me,’ sighed Ruby.
‘Give me a minute,’ said Blacker, he walked to the intercom and paged the lab technician.
Two minutes later, SJ was back.
‘Something happened?’ said SJ.
Blacker pointed at the card.
SJ peered at it first with her eyes and then through the magnifier.
‘Very interesting,’ she said. ‘It reacted to heat, so you are wondering what else it might react to?’
‘Yup,’ confirmed Blacker.
SJ wasted no time and began setting up various tests using a number of liquids – mild acids, alkalis, various other substances. Drop by drop they fell onto the card, but revealed nothing.
Black light revealed more nothing.
X-rays revealed nothing too.
Same when they took the card to a dark room and dunked it in a developing bath, as if it was photographic paper.
Finally SJ took off her goggles, peeled off her gloves and sat down. ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ she said with resignation. ‘Not sure what else I can throw at it.’
‘Looks like that’s all folks,’ said Blacker. ‘Rube, go on home and put your head on a pillow, we can look at this again in the morning.’
It was disappointing to make one breakthrough with the grid lines, only to get no further, but since they had hit a dead end, they decided they all might as well head on home.
Once back at Cedarwood Drive, Ruby watched some TV but she couldn’t concentrate. Her book wasn’t holding her attention either.
Finally she gave up and went to bed. But – and not for the first time – she found it difficult to sleep; she just couldn’t turn off that brain of hers. She pulled out her notebook from the doorjamb and wrote down a couple of questions that she really needed answers to.
The first being:
If we are right in our theory that the thief is leaving loyalty cards in place of stolen items, then why has the Okras’ card been left blank?
If this robbery is connected to the shoe theft, then why no loyalty card there?
No answers were popping into her exhausted brain so she went down to the kitchen to find herself a snack. She made herself a pastrami bagel and while she ate she flicked through an ancient copy of the Whispering Weekly which she found in a stack of old newspapers that Mrs Digby used to protect the table when she was polishing the silver. The Whispering Weekly was not a very entertaining magazine, unless you were a person who particularly enjoyed reading about other people’s misery, both public and personal.
In this particular issue there was a feature on famous people who had been spotted wearing hairpieces – not hairpieces worn to add to the celebrities’ general glamour but hairpieces to prevent men from looking bald.
Geez, thought Ruby, why contaminate your mind with this junk. She stuffed the gossip mag back in the pile and went back to her room to find something better to occupy her brain. What she chose to read was one of her encoding books, in the vague hope that she might stumble across some clue as to what this whole mystery was about. She climbed into bed with a copy of Sherman Tree’s Unlock My Brain and read until she nodded off.
It was 4 am when Ruby’s eyes suddenly blinked open and she sat bolt upright, feeling around for her glasses.
Quite out of the blue she felt an urgent need to get hold of the latest issue of the Whispering Weekly.
RUBY GOT OUT OF BED and pulled on the clothes that happened to be piled on her chair (her new jeans and a T-shirt announcing keep your distance).
She crept downstairs, her satchel slung over her shoulder, tiptoed into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, took a quick slug of peach juice, called to Bug and then set off for Marty’s minimart.
Ruby skateboarded along Cedarwood, Bug running along beside her, speeding together down Pecan until they reached the little store where four busy roads met. Sure enough, Marty’s had what she was looking for. Ruby paid for her copy of the Whispering Weekly along with one green apple and one blueberry slushy and some bone snacks for Bug, then she went and sat on the bench outside the store.
Looking at the pictures of poor old Jessica Riley and the way the camera had revealed something the mere naked eye could never have seen, made Ruby believe in her theory all the more. But she was halfway through her slushy when tiredness took a hold of her – lack of sleep the night before had finally caught up. She placed the Whispering Weekly shock-horror journal under her head, curled up on the wooden seat and closed her eyes. Just a five-minute nap, she told herself. Her dog sat watching, never taking his eyes off her.
She woke to the clank of Mrs Beesman’s shopping trolley. Today it was full of soup – cans and cans of the stuff – and two war-torn-looking cats.
Bug’s fur stood on end, he was wary of one-eyed felines with chewed ears – they could be unpredictable: they had nothing to lose.
Ruby rubbed her eyes and adjusted her glasses.
‘Hi Mrs Beesman, how are you this morning?’
The dishevelled lady peered at her and grunted.
Mrs Beesman had never said one friendly word to her, not that Ruby minded that. Today she appeared a little more cranky than usual, which might have something to do with the yellow paint sprayed in an arc across her shopping cart. There was even a little on the cat’s tail. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing she would have done herself, so Ruby figured it was vandals or bullies. Mrs Beesman tended to run into a lot of them.
It was the first day of a new school year at Twinford Junior High, and Clancy was feeling sort of OK about it, not exactly eager for the new term but happy enough to put some distance between himself and recent past events of the summer break.
As far as the happy stakes went, the summer had been a mixed bag. On the one hand, great weather, a few precious weeks with no school, and even more importantly, no Madame Loup, so that was good. It had been exciting solving a crime and saving an almost extinct wild animal from a miserable end, so yes, that had also been a plus.
Less fun on the other hand was the being abducted and nearly murdered by psychopaths, which, combined with the almost being burnt alive by a ferocious forest fire, made the summer break far
