Deck the Halls

by Mary Higgins Clark

  “When do we get to work on the car she’ll be driving?” Gabe asked.

  “She’s bringing it in tonight. She knows we have to bird-dog it.”

  “We’ve alerted the Federal Reserve that we need the million by tomorrow afternoon. They’re working on it,” Keith informed Jack. “Does the family have any idea who might have done this?”

  “Reilly’s wife and daughter can’t come up with anyone. Rosita Gonzalez has an ex-husband who’s something of a troublemaker. His name is Ramon. Mrs. Reilly thinks he lives in Bayonne.”

  “We’ll get on that,” Keith said.

  “Rosita has two little kids. Regan Reilly is going there now to check on them and to get a fix on whoever is with them. Then she’s headed to her father’s office to talk to his associate.”

  Jack looked at his watch. “It’s a long story, but Regan met Alvirah Meehan today, and now she’s involved as well. Remember her? She’s the lottery winner who lectured at John Jay.”

  “Sure I do,” Keith said. “She was the one who got that baby back when all the cops in New York couldn’t find her.”

  Jack pulled the cassette from his pocket. “Well, she’s still on the ball. She managed to record the ransom call.”

  Gabe stared at the tiny cassette. “You’re kidding.” He picked it up and held it in his hand. “Does she want a job? I could use her.”

  “She’ll have my head if you don’t make an extra copy for her. But first, let’s hear this tape amplified. Maybe there’ll be something in the background that will help us.”

  As the machine was being readied, Jack felt his frustration building. They could study the tape. They could put a tracking device with the money. They could bird-dog the car. They could look for logical suspects. But until they were following Regan’s wired car to the point of contact with the kidnappers, they were mostly in a waiting game.

  The phone on Jack’s desk rang. He picked it up. “Jack Reilly.” There was a pause. “Good work,” he said decisively, then looked across the desk at Gabe and Keith. “They found the limo at Kennedy Airport.”

  At 9:30 that evening, Austin Grady locked the doors of the Reilly funeral home behind the last of the mourners of one-hundred-and-three-year-old Maude Gherkin, the local battle-ax. In his entire career as a mortician, he had never heard the expression, “It’s a blessing,” uttered more often or more fervently.

  Four times since her hundredth birthday, Maude had been snatched from the jaws of death. During her final hospital stay, a homemade sign had appeared over her bed: DO NOT RESUSCITATE . . . NO MATTER WHAT. The doctors suspected it was the handiwork of her eighty-year-old son, who after Maude’s fourth miraculous return from the long white tunnel, had been heard to shout, “Aw, give me a break!”

  Austin turned out the lights in the room where Maude was now resting. He sighed. Hard as they tried, they hadn’t been able to get the sour expression off her face.

  “Night, night, Maude,” he muttered. But the little ritual he had with the clients at closing time did not bring a smile to his lips tonight—he was much too worried about Luke and Rosita.

  Since Regan had phoned some hours ago, his suspicion that they had been kidnapped had become a near certainty. Why else would Regan have needed the limousine’s license plate and the E-Z Pass account number? Why else couldn’t she talk to him about it on the phone?

  An hour later, when Regan arrived with Alvirah Meehan in tow, his suspicions were confirmed.

  “The police have arranged to have these phones tapped,” Regan said. “There’s just a chance the kidnappers might call here.”

  They were startled by a sudden knocking on the window.

  “What on earth?” Austin muttered as he recognized the face of none other than Ernest Bumbles, his nose pressed against the glass, who smilingly held up the package he had been carrying earlier and waved it at them.

  Austin went over and struggled to raise the window.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Ernest said, clearly lying. “I saw your light was on and thought maybe Mr. Reilly was back.”

  This time Austin did not attempt to keep the irritation out of his voice. “He’s not here! If you want to leave that package, I’ll see that he gets it. Better yet, his daughter will take it home for him. There she is.” He pointed at Regan.

  Ernest stuck his head in through the open window. “I’m so pleased to meet you. Your father is a wonderful man.”

  I don’t believe this, Regan thought.

  Alvirah had turned toward the window so the sunburst pin wouldn’t miss a word.

  “I’m sorry I can’t come in, but my wife, Dolly, is out in the car. She’s not feeling that well. We were out singing Christmas carols tonight, and she strained her throat on the final fa la la la la la la la la of ‘Deck the Halls.’ ”

  That used to be my favorite Christmas carol, Regan thought. Not anymore.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow. I want to give this to your father personally. Bye now.” Like a game show contestant who has failed to answer the final question, Ernest vanished.

  Austin shut the window with a decisive snap. “That guy is a nut case.”

  “Who is he?” Regan asked.

  “The head of some plant society,” Austin said. “They honored your father a few years ago.”

  “I kind of remember that,” Regan said. “He’s active in so many organizations that he’s always being honored.”

  Regan realized that she was played out. There was nothing more she could accomplish here at the moment. Austin had told her that there was absolutely no one he could think of who would want to bring harm to Luke. In his memory nothing unusual had happened at any of the three Reilly funeral homes.

  “We’d better get going,” Regan said. “I’ve made arrangements to stay in my mother’s hospital room tonight, and I’ve got to get this car to Manhattan so the police can prepare it for tomorrow. Let’s talk in the morning.”

  “Regan, I’ll get here early and start going through the records from the last few months and see if there are any problems that I didn’t know about,” Austin promised. “I don’t think I’ll find anything, but it’s worth a look.”

  As the three of them started to leave, Alvirah noticed the discreet sign bearing Maude Gherkin’s name and an arrow pointing to the room where she lay in repose.

  Alvirah crossed herself. “May she rest in peace. Did you ever hear the story of the woman who was passing Frank Campbell’s funeral parlor in New York and had to go to the bathroom? She stopped in there and then felt she shouldn’t leave without paying her respects to somebody. So she popped into a room where there were no visitors for the poor soul in the casket, said a quick prayer, and signed the register. Turned out it was in that guy’s will that anyone who showed up at his wake got ten thousand dollars.”

  “Alvirah, you already won the lottery,” Regan said, smiling.

  “And believe me, you’d be wasting your time putting your John Hancock in Maude’s book,” Austin told her as they stepped outside and he shut and locked the door behind them. Hold down the fort, Maude, he thought.

  Friday,

  December 23rd

  “Rise and shine everybody! Time to start our million-dollar day,” Petey called out as he emerged from the bedroom, clad in striped pajamas, his toothbrush in hand. He switched on the overhead light. “This is sort of like camp, isn’t it?”

  Why doesn’t that idiot just let us sleep? Luke thought. The last time he had looked at the illuminated dial of his watch, it had been 4:00 A.M. He had finally fallen asleep, and now he was being jolted awake for absolutely no reason. He squinted at his watch. It was 7:15.

  He could feel the beginning of a dull headache. His muscles were aching from a combination of the damp, cold air and being forced to contort his body to fit on the narrow, short banquette. The increasing choppiness of the river was causing the boat to knock against the dock, increasing his overall sense of misery.

  A hot shower, he thought longingly. Clean clothes.
A toothbrush. The little things in life.

  He looked across the cabin at Rosita. She had pulled herself up on one elbow. The strain she was feeling was clearly visible on her face. Her dark-brown eyes looked enormous, stark against the increasing pallor of her complexion.

  But when their eyes met, she managed a smile and tossed her head in Petey’s direction. “Your valet, Mr. Reilly?”

  Before Luke could reply, there was a loud pounding on the door. “It’s me, Petey,” C.B. yelled impatiently. “Open up.”

  Petey ushered him in, taking the McDonald’s bags out of his hands.

  “And here comes the butler,” Rosita announced softly.

  “Did you remember to get me an Egg McMuffin with sausage?” Petey asked hopefully.

  “Yes, you moron, I did. Get dressed. I can’t stand looking at you like that. Who do you think you are, Hugh Hefner?”

  “Hugh Hefner gets a lot of girls,” Petey said admiringly. “When we get that million, I’m going to go out and buy a pair of silk pajamas, just like Hef’s.”

  “If I left it to you, we’d never get that million,” C.B. sputtered as he snapped on the radio.

  He looked at Luke. “I was listening to Imus in the Morning on the way over. He put a call through to the hospital. Your wife is going to be on in a few minutes.”

  Nora was a frequent guest on the Imus program. Imus must have heard about the accident and phoned her. Luke sat up and leaned forward, desperately eager to hear her voice.

  C.B. was twisting the dial, searching for the station. “Here we are,” he said finally.

  Nora’s voice came through the static. “Hello, I-Man.”

  “Where are the hash browns?” Petey was poking through the bags.

  Luke couldn’t help himself. “Shut up!” he shouted.

  “All right, already,” Petey said.

  “Nora, we were sorry to hear about your accident,” Imus said. “I fall off a horse and you trip over a rug. What gives with us?”

  Nora laughed.

  Luke marveled at how at ease she sounded. He knew that she was feeling exactly as he would if the situation were reversed. But she had to keep up appearances to the rest of the world until this thing was resolved.

  However it’s resolved, he thought darkly.

  “How’s the funeral director?” Imus was asking.

  “He’s talking about you,” Petey cried. “Whattayaknow!”

  “Oh, he’s just great,” Nora said, laughing.

  “He’s yachting,” Petey yelled at the radio, and slapped his knee, pleased as always with his own humor.

  Imus was thanking Nora for the children’s books she had sent his young son. “He loves it when we read to him.”

  Luke had a moment of acute nostalgia, remembering how he and Nora had always read to Regan when she was little. When Nora said good-bye to Imus, Luke swallowed over the lump he could feel forming in his throat. Would he ever hear her voice again?

  “Mrs. Reilly sent books to my boys for Christmas too,” Rosita told him, her voice gentle. “She told me that Regan’s favorite thing when she was a child was when you read to her.”

  And Regan had a favorite book, Luke thought, one book she always carried over to him. “Read me this one again, Daddy,” she’d say as she climbed on his lap. Oh my God, he thought, as he remembered which book that was.

  Luke’s mind began to race. He knew that C.B. had agreed to let Regan talk to him and Rosita this afternoon before she paid the ransom. Was there any chance he could somehow communicate to her a clue as to their whereabouts? Was there any way he could let her know that from where they were being held they could see the George Washington Bridge and the quaint red lighthouse perched beneath it?

  Her favorite book had been about those two famous structures. Its title was The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.

  “Bye, I-Man.”

  Nora hung up the phone.

  “Good job, Mom,” Regan said.

  Both of them had slept fitfully through the night, Regan stretched out on a cot that the nursing staff had sent in. There were times when she awoke and heard her mother’s light, even breathing, a sign that she was sleeping. Several times, though, she was immediately aware that Nora was awake, and they would talk quietly in the near darkness of the hospital room until sleep overtook one of them.

  At one point during the night, Nora said, “You know, Regan, they claim that at the moment you die, your whole life flashes before you. I have the oddest sensation that the same kind of thing is happening to me now, but in slow motion.”

  “Mom,” Regan protested.

  “Oh, I don’t mean that I’m about to die, but I guess when someone you love is in grave danger, your mind becomes a kaleidoscope of memories. Moments ago I was thinking about the apartment Dad and I had when we were first married. It was tiny, but it was ours, and we were together. He’d go off to work, and I’d hit the typewriter. Even when I kept getting rejection slips, he never doubted for one minute that I was going to make it. When I finally sold that first short story, boy, did we celebrate.”

  Nora paused. “I can’t imagine life without him.”

  It took a giant effort for Regan, who had spent most of the night reliving her own memories of her father, to say softly, “Then don’t.”

  At 6:00 A.M., Regan got up, showered, and changed into the black jeans and sweater she had picked up at the apartment before returning to the hospital.

  As she and Alvirah were driving back from New Jersey the night before, she had phoned Jack Reilly and learned that the limo had been found at Kennedy Airport. He told her it had been towed to the lab at the Police Academy garage on East Twentieth Street, where they were going over it with a fine-tooth comb, looking for clues to the identity of the kidnappers.

  Regan knew from her own experience the kinds of painstaking tests they would undertake and the carefully defined procedures they would follow. They would check any unidentified fingerprints they might find against the millions of prints stored in the FBI computers. They would collect any traces of fibers or hair for analysis. She had been involved in many cases where a minuscule, seemingly innocuous object turned out to be the Rosetta stone that led to the solving of the puzzle.

  Jack had also filled her in on what the E-Z Pass records revealed. “. . . which as you know isn’t necessarily significant. They could have been switched to another car.”

  Regan looked at her mother’s breakfast tray, which was virtually untouched. “Why don’t you at least drink the tea?” she asked.

  “Irish penicillin,” Nora murmured, but she did pick up the cup.

  News of her accident had resulted in a deluge of flowers from the Reillys’ friends. After the first few bouquets had been placed around the room, Nora requested that the others be distributed throughout the hospital.

  There was a tap on the door, and a smiling volunteer asked, “May I come in?”

  She was holding a box tied with a bright Christmas ribbon.

  “Of course,” Nora said, attempting a smile.

  “First delivery of the day,” the woman said sweetly. “It was left for you last night, but the girl at the desk stuck a note on it saying it should be held until the morning. So here it is!”

  Nora reached up to take the box. “Thanks so much.”

  “Don’t mention it,” the woman said. She turned to Regan. “Make sure she takes good care of that leg of hers.”

  “I will.” Regan knew she sounded abrupt, but she was anxious to keep unnecessary people out of the room. If the kidnappers happened to call before the agreed-upon time, she wanted to be able to speak freely and to record the call with the sunburst pin Alvirah had lent her.

  “I always keep a backup,” Alvirah had explained as she thrust the tiny recording device into Regan’s hands. “Even though the cops have your phone covered, with this you’ll have your own tape of any calls that come in.”

  Nora was sliding the bow off the box.

  “Bye, now,”
the volunteer smiled. She walked out leaving the door slightly ajar.

  As Regan was closing it, she heard a gasp from her mother and spun around.

  “Regan, look at this!” Nora cried, her voice panicked.

  Regan hurried over and stared down at the now open package. Inside, nestled in the arms of a stocking-capped, fluffy brown teddy bear, was a picture of her father, wearing a tuxedo and smiling warmly. But it was the lettering around the tacky red-and-green frame that shot a cold chill through her body. I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS, it read across the top. . . . IF ONLY IN MY DREAMS, completed the sentiment at the base of the frame.

  There was an envelope in the box. Regan ripped it open. On an ordinary get-well card the sender had printed: “Nora, thought you’d like to have a pic of your sweetie.” It was signed, “Your number-one fan.”

  “Let me see that.” Nora took the card out of her hand. “They’re threatening us, Regan!”

  “I know.”

  “If anything goes wrong and they don’t get the money . . .” Nora whispered.

  Regan had already begun dialing Jack Reilly’s number.

  Jack had been up all night directing the frenetic activity that was the modus operandi of the Major Case Squad when involved in a breaking case.

  The lab had lifted prints from the limo, and while there were many different sets to run through their computers, so far no match had been found. A few strands of polyester black hair suggested that one of the kidnappers had been wearing a disguise. The short length of the hairs indicated a fake mustache rather than a wig. The only other discovery of possibly great significance was a few tiny flecks of paint that had been found on the limousine’s floor, around the brake pedal.

  Suspicion for the abduction was beginning to center on Rosita’s ex-husband, Ramon Gonzalez. A check with the police in Bayonne had revealed that he was well known to them. A compulsive gambler, he was rumored to be heavily in debt to local bookies and had not been spotted recently in his usual haunts.

  Of potentially vital importance was the fact that Junior, his younger brother and fellow gambler, was a sometime housepainter. They shared an apartment in a run-down, two-family house. The landlord, who also lived in the building, said that he had not seen them in a couple of days and complained that they were behind in their rent.