Ruby Redfort 1 - Look Into My Eyes

IT WAS A CRISP OCTOBER DAY
on Cedarwood Drive, and a two-year-old girl was standing on a high stool in front of a huge picture window. She was watching the leaves fall, studying the patterns they made as they whirled their way through the air. Her eyes followed them until her gaze was caught by a single yellow leaf almost exactly the shape of a hand. She watched as it swooped down into the yard and then sailed up high over the fence and across the street. She watched as it danced up and down in the breeze and then slapped flat onto the windshield of a passing truck.

The truck pulled up in front of old Mr. Pinkerton’s gray clapboard house. The driver climbed out, walked up the path, and knocked on the door. Mr. Pinkerton stepped out onto the porch, and the driver produced a map. The two men struck up a conversation.

Exactly one minute later an elegant woman turned the corner, carrying a large green picnic basket. With a glance to the house and the slightest nod from the driver, the woman slipped out of her heels, scooped them up, and nimbly scaled Mr. Pinkerton’s fence. Mr. Pinkerton was busy studying the map and noticed nothing; the child saw everything. Forty-five seconds passed and the woman reappeared: she was carrying the same basket but it looked much heavier than before and its contents seemed to be moving.

The little girl attempted to grab her parents’ attention, but since her use of language was still limited she could not get them to understand. She watched as the woman pushed her feet back into her black shoes, walked to the rear of the truck, and disappeared out of view. Mr. Pinkerton chatted on. The girl jumped up and down, pointing at the window. Her parents, sensing she might be eager for a walk, went to put on their coats.

The child drew a truck on her chalkboard.

Her father smiled and patted her on the head.

Meanwhile, the driver folded his map, thanked Mr. Pinkerton, and returned to his vehicle, waving to him as he drove off. The yellow hand-shaped leaf fluttered to the ground. The woman, now minus the picnic basket, walked on by. She had a fresh scarlet scratch on her left cheek.

The child spelled out the truck’s license plate with her alphabet blocks.

Her mother put them away and dressed her in a red woolen pom-pom hat and matching mittens.

The family left the house and strolled down Cedarwood Drive. When they reached the gray clapboard house, the little girl paused to pick up the yellow leaf, and there underneath it, found a small tin button embossed with an image of something. What was it?

A sudden cry shook the stillness of Cedarwood Drive. A cry that cut right through the heart of the child. She gripped the button tightly and felt the pin dig into her palm. The neighbors came spilling out onto the street to find the kindly Mr. Pinkerton doubled up with grief. Despite the best efforts of the Twinford Crime Investigation Squad — a search which continued for sixteen weeks — Mr. Pinkerton’s prize-winning Pekinese dog was never seen again.

It was on that October day that the little girl resolved to dispense with the toddler talk and brush up on her language skills. More important, that was the day she set her sights on becoming a detective.

The little girl was Ruby Redfort.

WHEN RUBY REDFORT WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD
she won the Junior Code-Cracker Championships — solving the famous Eisenhauser conundrum in just seventeen days and forty-seven minutes. The following year she entered the Junior Code-Creator Contest and stunned the judges when they found her code impossible to break. In the end it was sent to Harvard University professors, who eventually managed to solve it two weeks later. She was immediately offered a place for the following semester but declined. She had no interest in becoming, as she put it, “some kind of geek freak.”

RUBY REDFORT WAS PERCHED ON
a high stool in front of the bathroom window, her binoculars trained on a cake delivery truck that had been parked on Cedarwood Drive for precisely twenty-one minutes. So far no one had emerged from the truck with so much as a blueberry muffin. Ruby gurgled down the last dregs of her banana milk and made a note in the little yellow notebook that lay in her lap. She had six hundred and twenty-two of these yellow notebooks; all but one were stashed under her bedroom floorboards. Though she had taken up this hobby nine years ago, no one, not even her best friend, Clancy, had read a single word she had written. Much of what Ruby observed seemed pretty mundane, but
EVEN THE MUNDANE CAN TELL A STORY
{
RULE 16
}.

Ruby also kept a vivid pink notebook, dog-eared and smelling of bubble gum, and it was in this that she listed her Ruby rules — there were seventy-nine so far.

RULE 1: YOU CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY SURE WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT.
A truth no one could argue with.

Ruby was a petite girl, small for her years — at first glance a very ordinary-looking kid. There was nothing particular to mark her out — nothing, that is, until you looked a little longer. Then you would begin to see that her eyes were ever so slightly different shades of green. When they looked at you, it was somehow hard to remember the point you were arguing. And when she smiled she revealed small doll-like teeth, which somehow made it impossible to consider her anything
other
than a cute kid. But the most striking thing about Ruby Redfort was that when you met her you felt a strong need for her to like you.