“As I was saying,” said Mrs. Schneiderman, “Khotan was a Buddhist region up until the eleventh century when it came under the ruler Yusuf Qadr Khan and the religion changed. The famous explorer Marco Polo visited Khotan in 1274 — he had heard the stories about the famous Jade Buddha and wanted to see it for himself but discovered that it had long since been smuggled out of the country — no one knows when or by whom.”
“What’s the big deal, Mrs. Schneiderman,” said Vapona. “It’s just jade, right? My mom has jade.”
“Well, where to start, Vapona . . . “ Mrs. Schneiderman was flustered; to say that she found Vapona Begwell very difficult to teach was an understatement.
“Apart from the beauty and significance of the Buddha itself, it is important to remember that this isn’t just any jade, this is translucent jadeite jade — many people regard it as the most valuable kind. Though not the people of Khotan: they prized the milky-white nephrite jade found in the region — considered it more precious than gold. And that’s what makes it such a mystery — what was a jadeite jade Buddha doing in Khotan in the first place? How did it get there? Jade is found all over the world, but jadeite jade is not found in China.”
Vapona was yawning rudely. Red Monroe hated to see Mrs. Schneiderman’s feelings get hurt and so she did what Red did best, she pretended to take an interest. “So, Mrs. Schneiderman, where does jadeite come from?”
“Oh, good question, Red. It’s found in places as far away as New Zealand, and as local as California. It’s also found in Alaska, Guatemala . . . and of course Burma, which is the most likely place for the Buddha to have come from. You can tell the difference between jadeite and nephrite not only from their appearance but also because of course they have different chemical compositions.”
Vapona was by now resting her head on her desk and doing her utmost to look supremely bored.
Mrs. Schneiderman looked defeated.
But Ruby Redfort’s brain was working overtime. Of course, she thought . . .
“So, Mrs. Schneiderman,” continued Red brightly, “you say jadeite has a different chemical composition from nephrite jade — what might that be exactly?”
“Well now, let me think,” said Mrs. Schneiderman. “I believe it’s . . . sodium, oxygen, silicon, and what’s the other one . . . oh yes, aluminum.”
As she spoke, she picked up her chalk and began to write on the board but Ruby already knew.
NaAlSi2O6
Not a word, a formula.
Ruby’s hand shot up. “Mrs. Schneiderman, could I possibly be excused? I just remembered something really, really urgent that I must do.”
Mrs. Schneiderman looked bewildered. “But, Ruby, this is history. You are in class. How can I excuse you without a note?”
“Good point,” said Ruby, and she began to scribble something on a piece of Redfort headed notepaper. Then she handed it to Mrs. Schneiderman.
“But Ruby, you just wrote this, the ink is still wet.”
“Just wave it around a bit, it’ll dry in no time.” Ruby had already gathered up all her things and was heading to the door.
“But that’s not what I meant, I mean it wasn’t written by your mother.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Schneiderman, my mom would give you the big OK if she was here — look, it has her signature.”
Mrs. Schneiderman looked at the note, and indeed it did.
My daughter Ruby is to be excused from history if she feels
an urgent need to be somewhere else.
Yours faithfully, S. Redfort.
P.S. thank you for teaching my daughter about the
Jade Buddha of Khotan, lord knows I’ve tried.
By the time Mrs. Schneiderman could form a word, Ruby had already skidded down the corridor and was very nearly out of the school gates.
She ran and ran until she reached the pay phone on the corner of the street. Her call was answered after two rings.
“Hey, Hitch, you wanna know what I know?”
“That depends on what you know, kid.”
“Let me rephrase that,” said Ruby. “You WANNA KNOW what I know?”
“OK, now I get it — what have you got?”
“Something I just saw in the mirror,” said Ruby.
Silence.
“You still there, Hitch?”
“I’ll pick you up, kid.”
“Then I better tell you where I am.”
“I know where you are, kid, you’re on the corner of Lime and Culver.”
“How’d ya know that?” asked Ruby, genuinely amazed.
“I have this little device that tells me which pay phone you are on and exactly where it is,” replied Hitch.
“Creepy but cool — I must remember never to lie to you about my whereabouts. Better be quick, I just ditched school and there could be consequences.”
“I’ll handle that. Be with you in ten.”
Eight minutes later Hitch’s car pulled up.
“You’re early,” said Ruby.
“Watch must be fast,” replied Hitch. “So what’s this all about?”
“Buy me a soda and I’ll tell you.”
Hitch shrugged. “You drive a hard bargain, kid.”
When they reached Blinky’s Corner Café they sat down at one of the lemon-yellow booths at the far end where it was quiet.
“OK,” said Ruby in a low whisper. “You know how I thought Lopez might have taken the code with her up that mountain?”
Hitch frowned.
“Well, now I got proof, the only thing is you’re not gonna be too happy about how I got it.”
Hitch raised an eyebrow.
“I know, I know, LB’s gonna be mad as a snake but you can just tell her I cracked the code. ‘I saw it in the mirror and it all made sense.’”
“You’re telling me you cracked the Lopez code?” said Hitch.
“I sure am,” Ruby nodded.
“And how did you do that, kid?”
“OK, well, you gotta promise not to freak out.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Hitch.
“Well, it gets worse; the thing is, I know Lopez worked out the fountain was the Fountain Hotel, and I know she went there herself, and what’s more I know she was spying on a woman in a hat with a veil — the same one from the bank, I think — and that she picked up a piece of paper she wasn’t meant to pick up. I also know that she got caught doing it.”
Hitch’s eyebrow was working overtime. “And how do you know all this?”
Ruby shrugged. “Let’s just say I did some research. You see I began to wonder if this avalanche was really an accident — I mean, maybe someone wanted her dead.”
“I’m beginning to see your point of view,” said Hitch.
“Now for the tricky part,” said Ruby.
“The tricky part? I thought you playing at detective was the tricky part.”
“No, you’ll see — it gets worse. I needed to find the piece of paper and I had a feeling that Lopez might have had it with her when she died, and thinking about Lopez and how smart she was made me think she would never have left it just lying around in her hotel room — she had to have it on her.”
“Kid, I don’t like where this is going — please don’t tell me you took a look through her things.”
“It was the only way to know for sure,” said Ruby. “And it’s not like I didn’t ask.”
Hitch frowned. “Go on.”
“Well, I found one thing that didn’t make sense — why would she take a powder compact mountain climbing?”
“And why would she?” asked Hitch.
“Because she used it to hide this.” Ruby placed the ratty piece of notepaper on the table. Hitch looked at it.
“Looks like a lot of lines to me — like a maze puzzle . . . some kind of plan or map?”
“Yep, that’s what I think it is — I’ll bet it’s a map of the Twinford City Bank vaults.”
“So? We knew they had that,” Hitch said, shrugging.
“But,” continued Ruby, “when you look at it in the mirror like . . . so, it becomes a map of the City Museum basement — Jeremiah Stiles designed the two buildings as mirror images of each other.”
Hitch said nothing — just waited for her to continue.
“And you see this writing in the far corner here — NaAlsi2O6?”
Hitch nodded. “Is it a storage room number? A code number for one of the antiquities?”
“Not exactly — it’s a formula,” said Ruby.
“A formula for what?” said Hitch.
“A formula for something that the people of ancient China considered more precious than gold.”
“Jade?” whispered Hitch.
“Those creeps aren’t coming for the gold,” said Ruby. “They’re coming to steal the Jade Buddha of Khotan.”
“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Hitch.
“Lopez got confused — got the whole thing the wrong way around. She was sorta right but wrong — until she saw it in the mirror.”
“I think it’s time you explained all this to LB,” said Hitch, dropping some bills onto the table. He patted her on the back. “Kid, you’re a genius — a soon to be dead genius, of course, but a genius nonetheless.”
LB GAVE RUBY QUITE A DRESSING-DOWN about breaking in to the Maverick Street office.
“You had no right to break in to a Spectrum department,” she said.
“It wasn’t technically a break-in,” Ruby had countered. “I mean technically you did give me the key code — I just let myself in is all.”
“If you want to get technical, Redfort, you took something that wasn’t yours, and technically that’s stealing.”
LB wasn’t too happy about the trip to the Fountain Hotel either. “Why in the name of good sense didn’t you tell Agent Blacker about your hunch and let him handle it?” Of course Ruby had her reasons, reasons that involved not ratting on Lopez, reasons that involved wanting a piece of the action, but she couldn’t see a whole lot of point in going into them.
All in all, Ruby got quite an earful, but despite the rap on the knuckles, she thought she could see something different in LB’s eyes, something approaching respect perhaps. But all she said was, “Nice going, Redfort.”
Then she turned, picked up her phone, and started issuing a million orders.
Ruby guessed she had been dismissed.
It was strange for Ruby returning to Twinford Junior High the very next day. She felt a sense of elation as she biked the short distance to school, but once she walked into her homeroom and sat down at her desk, she felt a steady lowering of her spirits. She had a lurking sense that whatever thrill had come her way was most probably over. Yesterday she still had something, something she had to solve to convince Spectrum she was worth the trouble, but now that she had, what was there?
“‘Nice going’? That’s all she said?”
Clancy had been pretty indignant when Ruby met up with him that evening. He couldn’t believe that his pal, the smartest person he had met in his whole entire life, Ruby Redfort, was being treated like a nobody.
“You have to remember, Clance, it isn’t like normal life. LB does this kinda thing every day — for her it’s probably no biggie.”
“No biggie!” said Clance. “You save the Jade Buddha of Khotan and it’s ‘no biggie’?”
“Well, my folks will be pleased, anyway,” said Ruby. “Not that they will ever know, of course.”
“Yeah,” said Clancy, “that’s the problem with being a superhero, no one ever knows how super you are.”
When Ruby got home she went to find Hitch. He was packing up his room.
“Leaving already?”
“Not right away but soon — just waiting to get my orders.”
Ruby looked around — there wasn’t a lot to pack up, yet somehow, as he moved his things into boxes and trunks, the soul seemed to disappear from the room.
“So what’s happening at Spectrum? You must be lining up some heavy-duty security for this whole museum launch.”
“Apart from the laser lockdown system we are about to install, we also have the whole security team that was assigned to the bank, and of course Spectrum agents will infiltrate the guests — oh yes, and Ambassador Crew has generously loaned the museum his personal security staff.”
“Clancy’s dad is lending his security staff? Wow, this Buddha must be important.”
“Well, kid,” said Hitch, lightly punching her on the arm, “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it is the Jade Buddha of Khotan.”
“Oh yeah, now that you come to mention it, I think my folks might have said something about that.”
He winked and continued to slip shirts from hangers.
“Anything you need me to do?” asked Ruby hopefully.
“I think you can consider yourself off the payroll, kid. You did what needed doing, somewhat unconventionally it must be acknowledged, but we folks at Spectrum are grateful to you. Now you can go back to what you do best.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?”
“Bugging the heck out of poor Mrs. Drisco.”
“Oh, sure. That’s what I live for.”
Ruby went upstairs to the kitchen and whistled — from nowhere Bug was by her side, wagging his tail.
“At least I still have my old pal Bug. I don’t suppose you’ll ever dump me, right? At least, not while there’s food in the refrigerator.” Bug licked her on the cheek.
“Your breath could be fresher but thanks anyway.” She scratched him behind the ears.
Ruby and the dog made their way down the back stairs and left the yard by the back gate. It was a beautiful evening. The sun was getting ready to set and the breeze that touched her face was warm — but for Ruby it might as well have been thunder and hail, for she felt nothing but cold stinging disappointment, a feeling Ruby Redfort was simply not used to.
Just like that, Ruby’s life in the fast lane had hit a dead end.
RUBY WAS GLOOMIER STILL when she arrived at school the next day only to find Clancy out sick.
“Toothache,” said Red.
“But they extracted it. How can he have a toothache?”
“Infected,” said Mouse. “That’s what I heard Mrs. Bexenheath saying to Mrs. Drisco.”
“Tooth decay: one of the top-ten reasons for all absent days,” said Del.
“So what, now you’re some kind of tooth statistics expert, Del?”
Del put her hands on her hips and looked hard at Ruby. “Redfort, what’s your problem? You’ve been acting sorta weird for a while and now you seem to have a bug in your behind.”
Del liked to use last names when she was making a point.
Ruby was annoyed. She was annoyed with Del and she was annoyed with Clancy. No one was saying that was fair, ’cause it wasn’t, but that didn’t stop her from being annoyed. As far as Ruby Redfort was concerned it wasn’t fair that she had managed to work out what eight top undercover agents hadn’t been able to work out — yet where had it gotten her? Back in junior high, where every day was the same.
After class Ruby walked out of the gates and saw her mom parked across the street. Why is she here? Darn it! Ruby had planned to head over to Clancy’s.
“Hey, Mom, what’s going on?”
“I thought we could go shopping — I want you looking pretty at the museum do,” said her mother. “And it wouldn’t hurt to get something for our party tonight — heaven knows what you are planning on wearing.”
“What are you saying? What’s wrong with my clothes?” said Ruby indignantly.
Sabina looked at Ruby’s attire. “Where to start?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh honey, do you have to wear those T-shirts? You could look like a regular girl if you tried.” Today Ruby’s T-shirt bore the words, a bozo says what.
Ruby got into the car.
“What?” said her mother, staring hard at the words on Ruby’s shirt.
“Exactly,” said Ruby.
/>
“What does that even mean?” Sabina sighed as she pulled away from the curb and into the traffic. “I have the prettiest daughter in town and all she wants is to look ‘different.’”
“Why would I wanna be the same?” said Ruby.
“I’m not saying exactly the same — just a bit the same.”
“A bit the same?”
“More normal, like other people want to look,” said Sabina firmly.
“You want me to look more like her?” said Ruby, pointing out Vapona Bugwart’s best friend and sidekick, Gemma Melamare, a glossy girl with shiny blond hair and more makeup than a department store cosmetics counter.
Sabina shivered. “No siree, Bob.”
They drove in silence for about fifteen seconds, before her mother perked up again. “Oh yes, Ruby, I have to tell you — turns out there is a rumor going around that there was a big conspiracy to steal the Jade Buddha of Khotan. Can you believe it?”
“Are you kidding?” said Ruby.
“Yes, it wasn’t the bank at all.”
“So, what, will they be bringing in some top security staff?”
“Oh, yes! Only Ambassador Crew’s top expert people, that’s how important this —”
“Yikes, Mom!” screamed Ruby as a maroon car overtook them at great speed and swerved into the gap in front of them.
“Jeepers!” screeched Sabina. “Some people’s driving! What was the point of that?” She honked the horn to show her displeasure. “Anyway, as I was saying, it is absolutely impossible to break in to the museum now they have all these lasers and the lockdown system. Isn’t that something?”
“Yeah,” said Ruby.
“I’m so excited! Your father’s going to bid for a chance to look the Buddha in the eye at the stroke of midnight. It’s the chance of a lifetime — imagine, not only the opportunity to halve his age but the chance to double his wisdom. What do you think, Rube?”
“Will we even notice?” said Ruby.
Sabina looked in the mirror — there was a black car edging closer and closer to their bumper. “What’s that nut behind me doing? She’ll end up in our trunk if she gets any closer!”
The black car started honking.