Deck the Halls

by Mary Higgins Clark

  Regan was dismayed to hear from Vanessa only the same vague description of the man who had left the package. “Did he by any chance mention his name or say that he was a friend of my mother’s?”

  “He didn’t say anything except that he didn’t want to disturb her last night.”

  Regan tried to keep her tone casual as she said, “I guess whoever left it won’t receive a thank-you note.”

  “A mystery gift for a mystery author,” Vanessa said brightly. “Tell her I hope she feels better.”

  Regan hung up. “She gave the same physical description, but unfortunately didn’t add anything, Jack.” She turned to the receptionist and thanked her for her help.

  As they started to walk away from the desk, Jack pointed to the security cameras that ringed the lobby. In a low tone he said, “I’ll get last night’s tape. We should be able to pick him out with that big box he was carrying.”

  “Hello, you two.” Alvirah’s hearty greeting was unmistakable. Before they could respond, she spotted the object in Regan’s hand. With a worried frown, she said, “There’s got to be a reason you’re carrying that teddy bear in a plastic bag.”

  “Let’s go up to Nora’s room,” Jack suggested. “It’s easier to talk up there.”

  Five minutes later, when they walked into her room, Nora was hanging up the phone. “I called my broker. The million dollars is being debited from our securities account and credited to Chase Manhattan. From there it will go to the Federal Reserve. I said I was making an overseas investment.” She smiled wanly. “Pray God this is the best million dollars we will ever spend.”

  Jack nodded. “We’re doing everything in our power to see that it is.”

  Together he and Regan told Nora and Alvirah what little they had learned about the donor of the gift. “There was nothing outstanding about him physically. He paid cash. From what we hear, he certainly took his time, so he wasn’t nervous. And he was carrying a shopping bag from Long’s department store.”

  “Long’s!” Alvirah exclaimed. “Before I won the lottery I used to ‘long for Long’s.’ It’s like most of those discount department stores. You have to wade through a ton of junk to find a bargain, but sometimes it happens. Most people see it as a challenge.”

  She glanced at the frame. “Yup, that looks like a Long’s special. Do you want me to check it out for you, Jack?”

  Jack knew that Alvirah was a master at ferreting out information. She had an almost uncanny way of getting people to open up. Why not? he thought. Later, if they could get a half-way decent image from the security cameras, he would send one of his squad out to the store to see if anyone there could ID the guy.

  “I think it would be a great idea for Alvirah to go to Long’s,” Nora said.

  For a moment, Regan considered accompanying her, then rejected the idea. The store would most likely be packed with last-minute shoppers. If the kidnappers called her on her cell phone, she’d barely be able to hear them.

  There was something else. The look on her mother’s face told her that she was needed here.

  “I’ll get started looking into the security tapes,” Jack said.

  “And I’m off to Long’s,” Alvirah announced, glad that there was finally some action she could take.

  C.B. and Petey had had a busy morning. After breakfast, they left the houseboat and headed west to the isolated and rundown farm off Route 80 where Petey’s cousin allowed him to keep his outboard motorboat.

  As they rattled down the dirt road leading to the farmhouse, C.B. grumbled, “What a dump this place is.”

  Petey took offense. “It is my cousin’s after all. And thanks to him, I’ve had a place to keep the boat that’s going to collect our million dollars, Mr. Hoity-toity. Beggars can’t be choosy,” he admonished.

  “Are you sure your cousin’s away?”

  “It’s Christmastime, remember? Everybody’s going somewhere, including us—huh, C.B.? I drove my cousin and his wife to the bus station a few days ago. They should be at my aunt’s house in Tampa by now.”

  C.B. groaned again. “Don’t talk to me about relatives.”

  “Do you miss your uncle?” Petey chuckled, as he jammed on the brake of his paint-stained pickup truck in front of the barn door.

  C.B. did not deign to answer. If Uncle Cuthbert had done the right thing, I wouldn’t have to put up with this moron, he thought. The closer they got to putting their hands on the money, the more nervous he became that something would go wrong.

  He knew that the location he had chosen for the ransom drop was brilliant. It was just trusting Petey to get there in one piece that was the problem. But Petey had assured him that he could navigate the waters around Manhattan with his eyes closed—which C.B. figured was probably the way he usually did it.

  They got out of the car, and Petey ran to open the barn door. “Ta-daaaah,” he cried as he yanked a cracked and aging tarp from a decrepit boat, perched atop the trailer used to haul it to the water.

  C.B. almost burst into tears. He hated his uncle more than ever. “Are you trying to tell me that thing floats?”

  By now, Petey had scrambled up the side of the trailer and jumped into the boat. “If it had a sail, it could win the America’s Cup,” he yelled. He took off the painter’s cap, which was his chapeau of choice, and waved it at C.B. “Ahoy, maties!” he cried.

  “Get down here, Popeye.”

  Petey gave him the A-OK sign and scampered down. “This baby has really got the juice!” he bragged. “My cousin rebuilt the motor after I found it in a junkyard.”

  “Which is where it belongs. When was the last time that tub was in the water?”

  “I went fishing that nice day in October,” Petey said, scratching his neck. “Let’s see, was it Columbus Day? Or was it the weekend after?”

  “I bet it was Halloween,” C.B. replied. “Let’s hitch that wreck up to the truck and get out of here. It’s freezing.”

  Petey started backing up his vehicle, his head stuck out the window as he urged C.B. to give him some guidance. “How much more room I got there, brother?” he yelled.

  C.B. cringed. Before he could answer, Petey had clipped the side of the barn.

  After several failed efforts, they finally secured the trailer and went bumping back down the road.

  Petey blew his nose and dabbed at his eyes. “I may never see this place again.”

  “Consider yourself lucky.”

  C.B. pulled out his notebook, and they went over the plans for the evening. They’d lower the boat into the water in a cove Petey knew about, which was a half-mile south of the houseboat. They’d ditch the trailer there.

  At precisely six o’clock, Petey would board the boat and steer it north on the Hudson, through Spuyten Duyvil around the top of Manhattan, to the seawall near the pier at East 127th Street. That was where Regan Reilly would be told to deposit the ransom money. It should take Petey about half an hour to get there.

  C.B. would be stationed at the houseboat, and at six o’clock would make the first phone call to Regan Reilly, allowing her to speak briefly to her father and Rosita. He’d tell her to start driving through Central Park. Then he’d hang up before the call could be traced.

  He’d rush across the George Washington Bridge and down the East Side Drive, calling Regan several more times along the way with instructions as to where she should drive next. “It’s known as a delaying action,” he explained to Petey. “In case she called the cops, it’ll be harder for them to follow her from a distance. For all they know, we have her in sight.”

  The final instruction would be for Regan to cross Second Avenue at 127th Street and take the Marginal Street exit and drive onto the isolated dock. There she would be instructed to drop the duffel bag on the seawall and leave.

  Once the drop was made, Petey would scramble up, grab the money, hop back on board, and then, with no time to spare, race down to 111th Street, where C.B. would be waiting in the car they had rented under a false name.

&
nbsp; Petey would abandon the boat, which, thanks to the fact he never had bothered to register it, and that the motor had been bought in a junkyard, would be untraceable.

  After that, they’d drive back to the houseboat and amuse themselves by counting their money until their flight to Brazil the following night.

  “The storm they’re forecasting better not screw us up,” C.B. said, worried. “The sooner we get out of these parts, the better.”

  “Arriba, arriba! Cha-cha-cha,” Petey sang, tapping his hands rhythmically on the steering wheel.

  C.B. decided the best way to cope with Petey was to ignore him. He pulled one of Nora Regan Reilly’s early books out of his bag and turned to chapter eight, which was filled with his own notations.

  “I just want to go over this again,” he said, more to himself than to his partner in crime.

  Austin Grady arrived at the office early Friday morning and immediately began reviewing the big appointment book on Luke’s desk.

  Starting with the present, he studied Luke’s activities day by day, going back for two months. He found absolutely nothing that brought to mind any mention by Luke of a difficulty or problem.

  The references to the lunches Luke had had with the late Cuthbert Boniface Goodloe brought an unconscious smile to Austin’s lips and for a moment relieved the sickening tension that enveloped him. No bride ever planned her wedding with as much attention to detail as Goodloe had dedicated to his funeral, he thought.

  Wanting to ensure a full house for his final good-byes, Goodloe had issued specific instructions. If he died on a weekend, the wake was not to be held until Tuesday. He wanted two full days and nights of viewing, with the funeral to be held on Thursday. That was exactly how it had happened.

  “It takes time to notify everyone and get the obituary in the papers,” he had said. God knows that plant society got plenty of notice, Austin thought—now we can’t get rid of them.

  The phone on his desk rang. “This had better not be that Bumbles guy,” he muttered to himself. It was Regan. For an instant the sound of her voice gave him a quick hope that maybe she’d say that Luke and Rosita were safe. But, of course, that was not to be.

  He told her what he had been doing. “I’m going to keep at it,” he promised. “I’m also going to ask some subtle questions around here to see if there’s been a problem with any employee that didn’t reach our ears.”

  “Thanks, Austin,” Regan said quietly. “Who knows who could have done this. Right now the police are focusing on Rosita’s ex-husband. Apparently he has heavy gambling debts, owed to the wrong people.”

  “That’d motivate you to get your hands on a million dollars any way you can.”

  “Of course, this could be the work of someone who’s been mad at my father for the last ten years.” There was a brief hint of levity in Regan’s voice. “It’s like what they say about us Irish. We forget everything except the grudge.”

  “Don’t I know it, Regan,” Austin agreed, thinking of his grandmother, who never forgave her cousin for “stealing her thunder” by scheduling her wedding two weeks before her own long-planned nuptials. Grandma went to her grave sixty years later, still griping about it, Austin thought. The fact that her cousin endured a horrible marriage did nothing to appease her.

  “How’s your mother doing?” he asked.

  “She’s hanging in there. I’ll be here with her until late this afternoon.”

  He knew what she meant. “Give her my love, and take care of yourself, Regan.”

  “Will do,” Regan said. “Talk to you later.”

  Austin had barely replaced the receiver when the phone rang again. He picked it up, the hope always in the back of his mind that it would be Luke’s laconic voice saying, as he had at least a thousand times before, “What have we got going on there today, Austin?”

  “Austin Grady,” he said.

  “Ernest Bumbles!” The voice grated through Austin like fingernails on a blackboard.

  “Luke is not here,” Austin told him firmly. “And no, I don’t know when to expect him.”

  “I’ll keep trying,” Ernest said cheerfully. “Bye now!”

  Luke and Rosita wrapped the thin blankets around themselves as best they could. Even though there was a propane heater, it did little to dispel the bone-chilling dampness of the drafty boat.

  “If we get out of here, I’m taking my kids to Puerto Rico for a week,” Rosita said. “It’ll take me at least that long to warm up.”

  “When we get out of here, I’ll send you all, first class,” Luke promised.

  Rosita smiled wryly. “You’d better watch your cash flow. Your bank account just went south a million bucks.”

  “You owe me half.”

  “You have some nerve!” This time Rosita genuinely laughed. “As C.B. keeps saying, ad nauseam, if you hadn’t introduced his dear departed uncle to the Blossoms, he never would have changed his will.”

  “I couldn’t get anybody to go to that dinner,” Luke protested. “I had tables to fill!”

  “Do you think Mr. Grady might make the connection and have the cops check out our friend C.B.?” Rosita asked.

  Luke decided to be honest. “I don’t see why he would. C.B. kept his anger pretty well hidden at the wake, although I did catch him stuffing rotting foliage in his uncle’s coffin after viewing hours.”

  “Are you kidding? Did you tell Mr. Grady?” she asked hopefully.

  “Unfortunately, no,” Luke said. “I felt kind of sorry for C.B. Over the years I’ve encountered a lot of understandably emotional people, acting out of character at the time of a death.”

  “Then he showed up at the funeral and the luncheon, and I guess behaved himself. Since you didn’t make it to the funeral, they probably realize now that we were already missing. So no one would tie him to this,” Rosita concluded.

  Luke nodded in agreement. “They wouldn’t have any reason to.”

  “I guess there’s no way anyone would give Petey a second thought either,” Rosita continued. “You being your usual unflappable self, Mr. Reilly, never even let on to him that you were less than thrilled with the job he did.”

  “I felt very flappable, but it was easier to pay him off and send him on his way. And you must admit, we did get a lot of laughs out of it.”

  “We sure did.”

  “That reminds me, Rosita. If you had gone out on that date with Petey, we might not be here.”

  “I’d rather be here.”

  Luke chuckled. “I’m forced to agree.”

  They fell silent for a few minutes; then Rosita said, “I wonder who’s with my kids?”

  “Regan will make sure they’re well looked after.”

  “Oh, I know that,” she said quickly. “It’s just that they’re probably with someone who doesn’t know them, and it always takes a while for Chris and Bobby to feel comfortable with a new baby-sitter.” She paused. “I’m sure they’re missing me, but they’re also probably mad that I haven’t come home yet. They’ve had enough to deal with this past year and a half, with their father deserting them.”

  “Once you’re home, things will be back to normal faster than you think,” Luke said, trying to reassure her.

  “What bothers me,” she said hesitantly, as if she didn’t want to vocalize her deepest fear, “is that it’s so unbelievable that someone like C.B., who seems so ineffective, would plan and actually pull off a kidnapping. I can’t help but wonder what else he’s capable of doing, if he decides he doesn’t want to leave witnesses.”

  Luke started to speak, then closed his mouth. There was always the chance the cabin was bugged. He wanted to tell Rosita about his plan to try to communicate to Regan that they were in the vicinity of the subjects of her favorite children’s book, the one about the bridge and the lighthouse. He knew it was a stretch, but it was the only card he had to play.

  Rosita was absolutely right. C.B. might be capable of a final act of vengeance.

  Alvirah hurried past Macy’s, hea
ding for Long’s department store, around the corner. The traffic had been so heavy she had gotten out of the taxi and jumped into the subway to get downtown. Despite the cold, last-minute holiday shoppers were out in force. Normally she enjoyed window-shopping, but today that was the last thing on her mind.

  Alvirah knew that it would be almost impossible to track down the man who had bought the cheap picture frame, but still she was determined to try.

  She barreled through the revolving door of Long’s and then paused and looked around, getting her bearings. I haven’t been here for a while, she thought. Truth to tell, I haven’t missed it. But she remembered the layout as though it was yesterday. Men’s Department first floor, just like every other store. Retailers know that men hate to shop. When you finally lasso them into the store, the clothes better be popping out at them.

  Junk like the frame would definitely be in the basement. There was a line waiting to get on the down escalator. The woman ahead of Alvirah had three small children in tow and looked frazzled.

  “Tommy, I warned you not to tell your brothers there’s no Santa Claus,” she hissed in the eldest child’s ear.

  “But there isn’t!” he protested. “Ma, you don’t think that joker in the toy department is really Santa, do you?”

  “He’s helping Santa out!”

  “I heard somebody call him Alvin.”

  “Never mind,” his mother said as she guided her children onto the steps of the escalator.

  Precocious, Alvirah thought, amused. But then watching the mother with her children reminded her of the two boys in New Jersey, waiting for their mother to come home.

  As they descended into the basement, a banner with the word SALE came into full view. The first floor had been crowded, but down here was a madhouse! Boxes of picked-over Christmas cards were now marked half price. Tables were piled with tree ornaments, Christmas lights, tinsel, and gift wrap. That frame had to come from here, Alvirah decided, when she spotted a counter straight ahead that was covered with a bewildering array of Christmas knick-knacks.