wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mom,’ warned Ruby through a mouthful of mackerel. But Sabina was not to be deterred. She opened the door just as Mrs Digby took aim with a pitcher of tomato juice. Consuela ducked and Sabina found herself covered in red gloop.
‘Mrs Digby! What has gotten into you!’
Mrs Digby quickly reached for a large dishcloth, put it down and picked up a towel.
‘That’s the second time today that someone has thrown a drink over my Oscar Birdet suit!’ exclaimed Sabina.
‘Really? Who was the first?’ inquired Ruby, who was by now standing in the doorway, and chewing on a carrot.
‘Some frantic little man at the airport – spills my martini all down my front and now this! Boy, this tomato is never going to come out.’
‘Let me clean it up, Mrs R,’ said Mrs Digby, who was looking rather pale in the face.
‘I’ll thank you not to touch it Mrs Digby, it’s dry-clean only!’ replied Sabina, these last words coming out rather more sharply and with more volume than she had intended.
‘Is never gonna be clean again Mrs Redfort, no way José,’ said Consuela giving Mrs Digby a smug look. Sabina was about to try and calm things down when Mrs Digby got in first.
‘Well, I can see whose side you are taking in all this, and me a person you’ve known your whole entire life. I see thirty-six years of service and loyalty count for very little round these parts. Maybe I’ll just go and pack the few sorry possessions I own and get out of here for good! No doubt cousin Emily will take me in.’
‘Oh Mrs Digby! Please don’t… ’ pleaded Sabina, but it was no use. Mrs Digby was already making her way downstairs to her housekeepers apartment – there would be no pancakes for breakfast, that was for sure.
Ruby was relieved when the telephone rang.
‘Redfort high drama society. You want drama, we got it.’
She hoped it would be Clancy Crew, he would certainly lighten the atmosphere – but it was Marjorie Humbert.
The following words were delivered by Ruby at super high speed to avoid conversation.
‘Hello Mrs Humbert yes I’m weller than you could begin to imagine I would love to chat but I know my mother is on the edge of her seat at the prospect of talking to you – bye, bye, bye!’
Ruby handed the phone to Sabina. ‘Gotta walk, Bug,’ she said, and whistled to the dog.
Jeepers, could I use some air.
Ruby and Bug left by the back door and made their way down Cedarwood Drive, turning right on Amster Street. Ruby decided to stop by the tree on Amster Green; a large oak in the middle of a triangle of grass. It stood there surrounded by blossom trees; a wooden bench sat directly under it. The oak tree was old, with branches that twisted towards the ground and swept up again. It was perfect for climbing. Ruby and Clancy liked to sit up this tree and watch the people down below; when the tree was in leaf it provided perfect cover.
Ruby jumped on to the bench, swung herself onto the lowest branch and from there made her way quickly up to the highest climbable limb. Finding the hole in the bark, she felt around with her hand and pulled out a piece of elaborately folded paper. A perfectly formed origami turtle. Ruby and Clancy had got into the habit of leaving each other tree notes, written in code and usually folded in this complicated way as it meant they would be sure to know if someone had got there first – origami was impossible to re-fold without knowing how, and very few people knew how. Clancy had obviously written the note on his way back home because it said,
wvitp xrauuziv vuwp eofyboc efivrlw ay va mq vcwpw *
Ruby smiled, scribbled something on a bubblegum wrapper,
nsyq ltszsjyk wvy ptrwayoe
pushed it into the hole in the tree and climbed back down. When she got home, she found her parents were still discussing the tomato gloop incident. Her mother was saying, ‘I hate for Mrs Digby to be unhappy but we can’t lose Consuela, she is a dietary genius.’
‘Why don’t I call that house management agency?’ said her father, ‘see if they can’t send someone to sort of keep control.’
‘I guess it’s worth a shot,’ replied her mother.
The telephone began to ring.
‘I’ll get it!’ called Ruby, she was sure this time it would be Clancy complaining about all the smiling he had had to do at his dad’s dinner, but disappointingly there was no one on the end of the line.
*CLUE 1: THIS IS A VIGENERE CIPHER. YOU WILL NEED TO FIND THE KEY. THE EYES HAVE IT.
Full of nothing
THE NEXT MORNING RUBY WAS JUST fixing her barrette the way she always fixed her barrette, when the phone in her bathroom rang.
It will be Clancy, she thought. I’ll bet he’s calling to complain about his hives.
She picked up the receiver.
‘Twinford sewage plant, how may we assist?’
But there was no reply.
‘Weird,’ muttered Ruby, replacing the handset.
There was no sign of Mrs Digby – no doubt she was still smarting about the tomato incident. So Ruby swallowed a large glass of orange juice in a single gulp, grabbed her school bag with one hand and a chocolate peanut cookie with the other, and shouted goodbye to her parents, who didn’t hear because they were engaged in a fascinating discussion about which drycleaners might best remove a tomato stain from a silk jacket.
BRANT: ‘Honey, take it to Quick Clean, then you’ll have it back in no time.’
SABINA: ‘Are you kidding, Brant? This is an Oscar Birdet jacket! Do you even know what that means? I’ll take it to Grosvenors.’
RUBY: Oh brother.
Ruby’s bike had a flat so she was taking the school bus this morning.
Twinford Junior High School was two buildings really. One old, grand and in some ways beautiful – a little run-down on the inside but somehow comfortable. The other starkly modern, stylish and sterile. Ruby sauntered into class just before Mrs Drisco, her homeroom teacher, called out her name. Mrs Drisco made the same comment she always made when Ruby was late, and Ruby made the usual faces behind her back.
The truth was Mrs Drisco found Ruby Redfort ‘rather full of herself, utterly unmanageable and impossible to teach’. Ruby Redfort found Mrs Drisco ‘a royal pain in the derriere’.
They were both right.
When it came to teaching the cleverest student in the history of Twinford Junior High, Mrs Drisco was out of her depth. On the other
