Free The Christmas Thief by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark Page A

jam,” Packy explained, more to himself than to Benny. “That’s what these birds probably think we’re doing if they think at all.”
    There was more that he was worried about than getting back to the barn undetected—that branch lying on the ground, right below the area where the flask was hidden. That side of the tree was now exposed on the top of the flatbed. He couldn’t wait to start looking for his flask.
    It was exactly 3 A.M. when they reached the farmhouse. Benny jumped out, ran to the barn, and opened the door. He backed out their flatbed, making an ear-splitting racket as the remaining horse stalls broke into splinters. Milo came rushing out of the house and took over the driver’s seat of the flatbed from Benny. As Benny drove the van past Packy, he waved, smiled, and gave a light tap of the horn. Packy grunted while driving the stolen flatbed into the barn. As he climbed out, Jo-Jo was shutting the barn door.
    “Now I look for the red line I painted around the trunk at the spot where the branch with the flask is, and we’re halfway to Brazil. The way I figure it, now it should be about forty feet up.”
    Jo-Jo pulled out the tape measure Packy had ordered him to bring, and together they started to measure the tree from its base. Packy’s throat went dry when he saw a broken branch about twenty feet up. Could this be where that piece of branch on the ground came from? he wondered. Ignoring the sharpness of the needles, he pulled the remaining branch back and then yelled as a piece of jagged wire cut his finger. His flashlight was pointed at the trunk and the red circle around the base of the broken branch.
    There was no sign of a flask, only the remnants of the wire with which he had so carefully secured his treasure.
    “What?” he screamed. “I don’t get it! I thought my branch would be higher by now. We’ve got to go back! That flask must be stuck to the branch I saw lying on the ground by the ladder.”
    “We can’t drive the flatbed out again! We gotta wait till Benny and Milo get back with the van,” Jo-Jo pointed out.
    “What about Milo’s heap?” Packy screamed.
    “He keeps those keys in his coat pocket,” Jo-Jo answered. I should have stayed in Brazil and let Packy make salads at that dumpy diner, he thought for the third time that day.

19
    L em Pickens kept waking up. He was having bad dreams. He didn’t know why, but he kept worrying that something would go wrong, that maybe he had made a mistake after all about giving up the tree.
    Just natural, he told himself. Just natural. He had read in a book somewhere that any cataclysmic event in our lives brings fear and anxiety. It certainly doesn’t seem to bother Viddy, he thought as she continued to make the depth of her slumber known to him. Right now the noise she’s making is somewhere between a jackhammer and a chainsaw.
    Lem tried thinking pleasant thoughts to ease his anxiety. Think of when they flip the switch and our tree is lit up in Rockefeller Center with over thirty thousand colored lights on it. Just think about that!
    He knew why he was worried. It would be hard to watch the tree actually being cut down. He wondered if the tree was scared. At that moment he made a decision: I’ll wake up Viddy extra early, and after we have a cup of coffee, we’ll walk over and sit by our tree and say a proper good-bye to it.
    That settled, and feeling somewhat content, Lem closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep. A few minutes later the racket from his side of the bed was still no competition for Viddy, an Olympic snorer if there ever was one.
    As they slept, a tearful Packy Noonan was sitting on the stump of their beloved tree holding a machete in his hand, the beam of his flashlight pointing to the name visible on the handle: Wayne Covel.

20
    W ayne Covel was panting when he reached his back door, the piece of Lem’s branch with the crooks’ flask wired to it clutched in his hand. He laid the branch on the table in his