The Christmas Thief (14 page)

O
pal felt the way she had when she was under the anesthesia during her appendix operation. She remembered hearing someone say, “She’s coming out of it, give her more.”

Someone else said: “She’s had enough to knock out an elephant.”

She felt the way then that she did now—as if she were in a fog or under water and trying to swim to the surface. Way back when, during the appendix operation, she remembered trying to tell them, “I’m tough. You can’t knock me out easily.”

That’s what she was thinking
now.
When she went to the dentist, it took practically a tank of nitrous oxide to get through having her wisdom teeth extracted. She kept telling Dr. Ajong to turn up the dial, that she was still as sober as a judge.

Where do I get such high tolerance? she asked herself, vaguely aware that for some reason she couldn’t move her arms. I guess they strap you down when they’re operating on you, she thought as she fell back asleep.

Some time later she began to swim up to the surface again. What the heck’s the matter with me? she asked herself. You’d think I’d downed five vodkas. Why do I feel this way? The possibility came to her that she was at her cousin Ruby’s wedding again. The wine they had served had been so cheap that after only a couple of glasses she ended up with a hangover.

My cousin’s Ruby…. I’m Opal…. Ruby’s daughter is Jade…. All jewels, she thought drowsily. I don’t feel like anopal. Right now I feel like a pebble. The Flintstones. Somebody won a prize for suggesting they call the baby Pebbles. When I told Daddy I thought Opal was a dumb name, he said, “Talk to your mother; it was her idea.” Mama said that Grandpa was the one who called us his jewels and suggested the names.
Jewels.

Opal fell asleep again.

When she opened her eyes again, she tried to move her arms and immediately knew something was wrong. Where am I? she thought. Why can’t I move? I know—Packy Noonan! He saw me looking at the license plate. Those other two. They tied me up. I was sitting at the kitchen table. They bought diamonds with the money they stole from me. They stole the Christmas tree. But they don’t
have
the diamonds, not yet. The man on TV, the one with the scratches on his face, has them. What was his name? Wayne…I was sitting at the kitchen table. What happened? The coffee tasted funny. I didn’t finish it. She fell back to sleep.

Just before she woke again, she slipped into a dream in which she had forgotten to turn off a jet on the stove. In the dream she was smelling gas. As she woke, she whispered aloud, “It’s not a dream. I
am
smelling gas.”

A
lvirah and Willy reached the lodge before Regan and Jack.

“The ski patrol has covered all the trails at least once,” the clerk at the front desk told them. “There is no sign of her, but everyone is on the alert.”

Opal’s picture was prominently displayed on top of the desk. “Have a lot of people been checking out?” Alvirah asked.

“Oh, yes,” the clerk said. “As you can understand, we get a lot of weekend guests. We’ve pointed out the picture to everyone, but unfortunately nobody so far has had any information. A few people said they remember seeing Miss Fogarty in the dining room, but that’s about it.”

Regan and Jack came into the lobby.

“Oh, Regan,” Alvirah said. “I just
know
that Packy Noonan and Benny Como have their hands on Opal. I called the police to see if anyone reported anything, but of course no one has. They certainly would have contacted me.”

Willy voiced the thought that was on all their minds. “What next?”

Alvirah turned to the clerk. “I know you left a message for the ski instructor who was working Saturday afternoon. Could you try her again?”

“Of course I can. We left several messages, on her home phone and on her cell phone, but I’ll try her again. I know she’s a late sleeper on her days off. Or she could be out downhill skiing. I don’t think she has her cell phone with her all the time.”

“Late sleeper?” Alvirah exclaimed. “It’s past noon.”

“She’s only twenty,” the clerk said with a slight smile and began to dial.

As the clerk once again started to leave a message, Alvirah commented, “I guess we’re not having any luck there.”

“You mentioned trying to talk to the people who were in Opal’s ski group on Saturday,” Jack said. “They probably have a list of those names somewhere in the computer.”

“We do. I can pull that up,” the clerk told him. “Give me a minute.” She darted into the office around the corner from the desk.

They stood together silently as they waited. When the clerk came back out, she was holding a list with six names on it. “I know I checked out some of these people this morning, but let me look in the computer to see if any of the rest of them are still here.”

The lobby door was fired open. A redheaded boy who looked to be about ten years old charged into the lobby. His remarks to his weary-looking parents who were right behind him could not be missed by anyone on the first floor of the hotel.

“I can’t
believe
someone cut down that tree! I mean, how did they
do
it? Mom, can we have the pictures developed today so I can show the kids at school tomorrow? Wait until they see that stump! I want to go to New York to see whatever tree they get with all the lights on it. Can we go there during Christmas vacation? I want to take a picture of it so I can put it next to the picture of the stump.”

He only stopped talking when he noticed the picture of Opal posted by the front desk. “There’s that lady who was in my cross-country ski group Saturday afternoon!” Bursting with energy, he was bouncing around as he looked at the picture.

“You know this lady?” Alvirah asked. “You went skiing with her?”

“I did. She was really cool. She told me her name was Opal, and this was her first time on skis. She was really good—a lot better than another old lady who kept crossing the tips of her skis.”

Alvirah decided to ignore the “old lady” remark.

“Bobby, I
told
you,” the boy’s father said. “Say ‘elderly woman,’ not ‘old lady.’ ”

“But what’s wrong with ‘old lady’?” Bobby asked. “That’s what that lead singer Screwy Louie calls his wife.”

“When did you ski with Opal?” Alvirah asked quickly.

“Saturday afternoon.”

Alvirah turned to the parents. “Were you in that group?”

They both looked embarrassed. “No,” the mother said. “I’m Janice Granger. My husband, Bill, and I skied all morning with Bobby. After lunch he wanted to go out again. The instructor knows him very well and was keeping an eye on him.”

“Keeping an eye on me? I was keeping an eye on Opal.” He pointed to her picture.

“What do you mean, keeping an eye on her?” Alvirah asked.

“The instructor had taken us on a different trail because there was a bunch of really slow skiers ahead of us driving us all crazy. Opal had to stop and sit down to fix her shoelace because it broke. I waited for her. I had to tell her to hurry up because she kept staring at a farmhouse.”

“She was staring at a farmhouse?”

“Well, some guy was putting skis on the rack on top of his van. She was watching him. I asked her if she knew him. She said no, but he seemed familiar.”

“What color was the van?” Alvirah asked quickly.

He raised his eyes, bit his lip, and looked around. “I’m pretty sure it was white.”

Regan, Jack, Willy, and Alvirah, now absolutely sure that the person Opal had seen was either Packy Noonan or Benny Como, were all fearing the worst.

“Where was this farmhouse?” Jack asked quickly.

“Has somebody got a map around here?” Bobby asked.

“I’ve got one right here,” the clerk answered.

“We’ve been coming up here since Bobby was born,” the boy’s father said. “He knows his way around here better than anybody.”

The clerk placed the map of the trails on the front desk. Bobby studied it. He pointed to one trail. “This is a really cool place to ski,” he said.

“The farmhouse?” Alvirah asked. “Bobby, where is that farmhouse?”

He pointed to a spot on the map. “This is where the slowpokes were. We kind of looped around them this way. And right over here is where the elderly woman, Opal, stopped to knot the lace on her shoe.”

“And the farmhouse was right there?” Regan asked him.

“Yeah. And there’s a really big barn on the side of it.”

“I have an idea where that is,” Bill Granger volunteered.

“Can you show us the way?” Jack asked. “We can’t waste any time. This is an emergency.”

“Of course.”

“I’m coming, too,” Bobby said emphatically, his eyes wide with excitement.

“No, you’re not,” Janice Granger said.

“No fair! I’m the only one who knows what the farmhouse looks like for sure,” Bobby insisted.

“He’s absolutely right,” Alvirah said firmly.

“I don’t want Bobby near any trouble,” Janice said.

“Could you all just lead us there then?” Jack asked. “Please. This is terribly urgent.”

Bobby’s parents exchanged glances. “Our car’s right outside,” his father said.

“Yipppeeee,” Bobby cried as he ran out the lobby door ahead of them.

They all raced out to the parking lot. Jack got behind the wheel of Alvirah and Willy’s car. They followed the Grangers down The Trapp Family Lodge’s long winding hill on their way to the gas-filled farmhouse where a sleepy Opal was struggling to regain consciousness.

R
esolve was one thing. Success was something else. Lem was racing everywhere but getting nowhere. His promise to Viddy to recapture their tree was looking to be as much a possibility as jumping over the moon.

Lem was now driving down Main Street. When he saw the sign for his favorite diner, he hesitated and then pulled over. His stomach was growling so loud, he couldn’t think straight. A man can’t think when he’s hungry, Lem quickly decided. He justified his sabbatical from his quest by reminding himself that he hadn’t even had breakfast. I never got back to the house till we went there with those city folk, and, good as it is, Viddy’s hot chocolate can sustain a man just so far.

He got out of the truck, and a picture of a woman tacked to a lamppost caught his eye. Lem took a quick moment to study the photo of a lady holding up her winning lottery ticket. It reminded him of the time that he could have won the Vermont lottery but forgot to buy a ticket. The numbers he and Viddy always played came up that week.

Viddy was mighty cool to me for a spell, he remembered. Thank goodness it wasn’t one of those real big wins. I told Viddy the taxes they take out would knock your socks off, and then the phony salesmen would start coming around bugging us about buying things we didn’t need, like land in Florida that is probably nothing but a swamp filled with alligators.

There was something mulish in Viddy’s makeup. She just didn’t agree.

Lem’s eyes narrowed. The numbers you were supposed to call if you knew anything about that Opal woman were either the police or Alvirah Meehan’s.

Alvirah was at the house today. Fancy that. We’re both looking for something real important to us.

Lem went into the diner and sat at the counter. Danny was working the day shift. “Lem, sorry about your tree.”

“Thanks. I’ve got to make this fast. I’m gonna find that tree if it kills me.”

“What’ll you have?”

“Ham, bacon, two fried eggs, hash browns, O.J., and two slices of white toast. No butter. I’m staying away from butter.”

Danny poured him a cup of coffee. Over his head and to the right, the television set was on, but the volume was low.

Lem glanced at it. A reporter was pointing to a flatbed. Lem’s hearing was starting to fail him a bit. Like in the morning, if Viddy asked if he wanted more orange juice, he was likely to answer her by asking her, “What’s loose?”

“Turn that sound up, Danny,” Lem yelped.

Danny grabbed the remote control and hit the volume button.

“—the abandoned flatbed where the prints of Benny Como were found was a mess. But our inside sources tell us that among the potato chip bags, gum wrappers, and fast-food boxes, investigators found something quite odd, considering who was driving that truck.”

Lem leaned forward.

“A copy of a poem entitled ‘Ode to a Fruit Fly’ was found above the visor. The poet is unknown. His signature is impossible to decipher.”

Lem jumped up as though he had touched an electric wire. “That’s Milo’s poem!” he cried. “And it stinks! I am some dope!” He ran out of the diner and rushed across the street to his truck.

As he started the car and jerked out of the parking space, he got madder and madder at himself. I’m a dope! he thought again. It was as plain as the nose on my face, but did I see it? No. The guy that owns the dump Milo rents made his barn bigger years ago. Thought those mules he calls race-horses would win the Kentucky Derby. But the
barn! It’s big enough to hold my tree!