Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath (27 page)

“Dad, what was the name of that diver guy you worked for in Italy?”

“Fornetti,” said her father. “Francesco Fornetti. Why are you asking?”

“You said he was a genius?”

“Oh, yes. He was a genius all right,” replied her father.

“What happened to him? You mentioned he was laughed out of town. If he was such a genius, how come he was discredited?”

“He sort of lost it, was raving about a sea monster and crazy stuff. He even wrote a book about it.”

“What was it called?” Ruby asked.

“I don’t remember. All I know is he went AWOL after that. Some said he had sunstroke or maybe had swallowed too much saltwater; perhaps he was hallucinating.”

“Did
you
believe him?” said Ruby.

“I didn’t know what to think. I never exactly
knew
the fellow, not really. I just admired his work.”

“But you spent time with him, right?” said Ruby.

“Only once after Italy. He happened to be in Twinford and we met while your mother and I were sailing around the coast. We were taking it easy because it was that crazy summer that your mom broke her arm and I dislocated my shoulder. Fornetti was free diving and joined us on our boat. Nice guy and . . . heroic too, but then I guess he just sorta went right off the rails.”

Heroic: now that was a strange word to use.

“Look, sorry, honey. I’m due in a meeting any minute . . .”

“OK, but just tell me — did
I
meet him?” asked Ruby.

Her father hesitated. “Not really. Sorta. You were just a tiny kid.” Ruby had the sense he was being cagey about something, which wasn’t like him.

“How old was I exactly?” she asked.

“You were a baby, no more than a toddler. You wouldn’t remember.”

It was true, she didn’t remember.

“So this Francesco Fornetti, would he recognize me if he saw me now?”

“No, how could he? Why are you asking?” said her father.

“Oh, you know, no reason,” said Ruby.

“Shouldn’t you be in school, by the way?” said her father.

“Yeah, you’re right. Gotta go.”

She hung up.

There were two certainties in Ruby’s mind, and both of them worried her.

One:
she was sure that Francesco Fornetti was following her.

Two:
she was sure that her father was keeping something from her — something that might explain why.

Was this guy dangerous?

AFTER PROMISING THAT SHE ABSOLUTELY WOULD,
on pain of death, call Clancy later, Ruby climbed back out of the third-story window and headed on down to the secondhand bookstore. It was named Penny Books after Ray Penny, the owner, but it had a sort of double meaning because a lot of the books were pretty cheap. It was one of those shops that was stuffed full of things that daylight would never see due to the sheer quantity of it all. Books stacked three deep one in front of another; books spread on rickety tables and piled in teetering towers on the floors of the narrow passages between the shelves.

Ruby started scanning the rows of paperbacks, hardbacks, and pamphlets, lost in a world of her own until she heard a raspy voice call.

“What are you looking for there?”

Ruby turned to see Ray standing at the counter, his broken glasses wedged on his nose. Ray knew Ruby pretty well and liked her a lot; she was one of his regulars, always in browsing, particularly the old graphic novels.

“I’m looking for a book by someone named Fornetti,” she said. “Francesco Fornetti.”

Ray scratched his cheek in a thoughtful sort of way.

“That name kinda rings a bell with me,” he said. This wasn’t surprising — Ray seemed to know most books; if you couldn’t remember the title, he could usually identify it just by a description of the cover.

“Fact or fiction?” he asked.

“Fact, I guess,” said Ruby.

“Subject?” asked Ray.

“Marine biology, the ocean,” replied Ruby.

“Oh yeah.
That
guy, I know. So which book were you interested in?” asked Ray. “If I remember correctly, he wrote a whole lot.”

“I guess the one I’m looking for he might have written around nine or ten years ago,” said Ruby. “It probably would have been the last thing he had published,” she added, thinking of what her dad had said about his reputation.

Ray nodded. “Can you just give me an hour or so? I need to search the back there.” He pointed to the area at the rear of the shop, the area where the floor disappeared under a cascade of paper.

“Sure,” said Ruby. “I’ll go get a fruit shake from Cherry’s. I’ll be back.”

Once she had paid for her beverage, she carried it across the road and sat on the low bench outside Penny’s, enjoying the sun and making the drink last.

Nearly three hours and five fruit shakes later, Ray called out, “So I found your book. It’s short, more of an essay really — it’s called
The Sea Whisperer.
That’s the one you wanted, right? Came out ten years ago. I made some calls — the guy hasn’t written a word since
The Sea Whisperer
was published.”

Ruby paid for the book: it was indeed a slim volume, a flimsy paperback; the dog-eared and torn cover was orange, and an image of a sinister black tentacle trailed across it.

Ruby returned to her bench and sat in the fading sun reading it, cover to cover, over and over.

The book made for more than merely
interesting
reading; it was gripping. The author described an encounter with a creature he identified as the Sea Whisperer, the very creature all the legends spoke of. He had met it quite by chance when sailing off the Twinford coast: it was a giant octopus, spanning fifty feet, by far the biggest he had ever recorded.

At the time, he had told no one about what he had seen. He himself had found it hard to believe his eyes as he watched it pulse its way back down to the deep. He wanted evidence and became obsessed with the monster and spent every waking moment searching for it, and just six weeks later he was lucky enough to spot the octopus again. He had tracked it into waters north of the Sibling Islands. He had watched it attack huge prey — an eleven-foot shark.

Fornetti was busy taking pictures of the giant when it released a cloud of indigo into the water. He became disoriented, dropped the camera, and felt the creature pull the breathing apparatus from his mouth. Fornetti gulped in water and ink, stabbing at the creature with a knife — tiny by comparison with the monster’s bulk. Perhaps the creature could not be bothered to fight this miniature man, perhaps it simply wasn’t hungry, but Fornetti was lucky to live to tell the tale.

And tell the tale he did: in fact, he couldn’t stop himself. He claimed that the ink he had swallowed acted as some sort of truth serum and so he blurted the story of the sea monster to everyone and anyone. He became the butt of every joke. No one took him seriously.

It wasn’t this that Ruby found odd though. No: Ruby felt it strange that the diver’s
first
encounter with the creature was described so sketchily. Why had he dived into the ocean in the first place? He mentioned something about being on a sailing trip. But why had he not bothered to put on his scuba gear?

However, despite the missing details and blurry facts, there was something about the passionate way the story was told that made Ruby believe every word of it.

So that’s why this guy’s been lurking around Twinford,
she thought.
He’s trying to find the Sea Whisperer and prove that he’s not a crank.

But why is he showing up every place
I
go? What have I got to do with any of this? Why would he be interested in following me?

WHEN RUBY WAS DONE READING,
she stuffed the book into her satchel and rode back as fast as she could to Cedarwood Drive. She ran in to the house and called out to Hitch.

No reply.

She ran downstairs and knocked on his door, but he wasn’t there. She tried contacting him via the rescue watch, but her signal was not answered. She walked slowly back upstairs.
Where was he?

The sound of singing was coming from the living room. It was her mother’s voice.

Ruby entered the room and saw her mom sitting on a chair rocking a sleepy baby; it was the neighbor’s kid. Her mother smiled and said in a hushed voice, “Babysitting Archie. Elaine had to get her hair done; an emergency.”

“A
hair
emergency?” said Ruby.

Sabina held her finger to her lips. “He’s so cute. Wanna hold him?” she asked.

“Ah, not right now,” said Ruby. “You seen Hitch?”

“Not all day,” said her mother. Then she started up with the lullaby again. It was the one Sabina used to sing to Ruby when she was small.

By the time Ruby had reached her room, the song had caught and was playing around and around in her head, and like a fly buzzing in a sealed room, she couldn’t get rid of it. She had heard the song sung to her so many times when she was little that she knew it by heart even though she hadn’t heard her mom sing it for many years. Around and around it went:

Ruby shook her head, as if it might be possible to shake the song out of her brain.

She needed to make contact with Hitch. She had to tell him about Fornetti’s book. It had to be relevant, didn’t it? This sea monster — it could be what had killed Agent Trilby; it could be what had scared the sharks. Something struck her: it was probably what her parents had seen too, when they were floating around the Sibling Islands. Hadn’t they said that Pookie got covered in indigo ink?

Ruby was just about to try contacting Hitch again when she saw a message sitting there on her desk. It was a collection of musical notes, a piece of music. At the top of the page, written neatly in ink, was a message from Hitch:

Ruby quickly decoded it and saw that the musical notes read:

Underneath, Hitch had written:

Ruby sat back in her chair. So that was where Hitch was. The case was wrapped up. Spectrum had gone to arrest the pirates and whoever was on their way to meet them, the mastermind behind the whole operation. She breathed out a long sigh, but not one of satisfaction: something was still bugging her.

She looked at the spider map, working her way through each incident, each clue.