"Well, for instance," he pressed on, "I rented the strangest movie last night. Did you know that Babes in Toyland was a Christmas movie?"

"Of course, what did you think it was?"

"Well, I thought, well — now it's your turn. What's your favorite movie?"

Lena leaned close to Tuck and searched his eyes to see if he might be joking. Tuck batted his eyelashes, trying to look innocent.

"Who are you?" Lena finally asked.

"I told you."

"But, what's wrong with you? You shouldn't be so — so calm, while I'm a nervous wreck. Have you done this kind of thing before?"

"Sure. Are you kidding? I'm a pilot, I've eaten in restaurants all over the world."

"Not dinner, you idiot! I know you've had dinner before! What, are you retarded?"

"Okay, now everybody is looking. You can't just say 'retarded' in public like that — people take offense because, you know, many of them are. You're supposed to say 'developmentally disabled. "

Lena stood up and threw her napkin on the table. "Tucker, thank you for helping me, but I can't do this. I'm going to go talk to the police."

She turned and stormed through the restaurant toward the door.

"We'll be back," Tuck called to the waitress. He nodded to the nearby tables. "Sorry. She's a little high-strung. She didn't mean to say 'retarded. " Then he went after Lena, snatching his leather jacket off the back of his chair as he went.

He caught up with her as she was rounding the corner of the building into the parking lot. He caught her by the shoulder and spun her around, making sure that she saw that he was smiling when she completed the turn. Blinking Christmas lights played red and green highlights across her dark hair, making the scowl she was aiming at him seem festive.

"Leave me alone, Tucker. I'm going to the police. I'll just explain that it was just an accident."

"No. I won't let you. You can't."

"Why can't I?"

"Because I'm your alibi."

"If I turn myself in, I won't need an alibi."

"I know."

"Well?"

"I want to spend Christmas with you."

Lena softened, her eyes going wide, the swell of a tear watering up in one eye. "Really?"

"Really." Tuck was more than a little uncomfortable with his own honesty — he was standing like someone had just poured hot coffee in his lap and he was trying to keep the front of his pants from touching him.

Lena held out her arms and Tuck walked into them, guiding her hands inside his jacket and around his ribs. He rested his cheek against her hair and took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of her shampoo and the residual pine scent picked up from handling the Christmas trees. She didn't smell like a murderer — she smelled like a woman.

"Okay," she whispered. "I don't know who you are, Tucker Case, but I think I'd like to spend Christmas with you, too."

She buried her face in his chest and held him until there was a thump against his back, followed by a loud scratching noise on his jacket. She pushed him back just as the fruit bat peeked his little doggie face over the pilot's shoulder and barked. Lena leaped back and screamed like a bunny in a blender.

"What in the hell is that?" she asked, backing across the parking lot.

"Roberto," Tuck said. "I mentioned him before."

"This is too weird. Too weird." Lena began to chant and pace in a circle, glancing up at Tuck and his bat every couple of seconds. She paused. "He's wearing sunglasses."

"Yeah, and don't think it's easy finding Ray-Bans in a fruit-bat medium."

Meanwhile, up at the Santa Rosa Chapel, Constable Theophilus Crowe had finally caught up to the fugitive Christmas tree. He trained the headlights of the Volvo on the suspect evergreen and stood behind the car door for cover. If he'd had a public-address system he would have used it to issue commands, but since the county had never given him one, he shouted.

"Get out of the vehicle, hands first, and turn and face me!"

If he'd had a weapon he would have drawn it, but he'd left his Glock on the top shelf of his closet next to Molly's old nicked-up broadsword. He realized that the car door was actually only providing cover to the lower third of his body, and he reached down and rolled up the window. Then, feeling awkward, he slammed the door and loped toward the Christmas tree.

"Goddammit, come out of the tree. Right now!"

He heard a car window whiz down and then a voice. "Oh my, Officer, you are so forceful." A familiar voice. Somewhere under there was a Honda CRV — and the woman he had married.

"Molly?" He should have known. Even when she stayed on her meds, as she had promised she would, she could still be "artistic." Her term.

The branches of the big pine tree shuffled and out stepped his wife, wearing a green Santa hat, jeans, red sneakers, and a jean jacket with studs down the sleeves. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail that trailed down her back. She might have been a biker elf. She rushed out of the branches as if she were ducking the blades of a helicopter, then ran to his side.

"Look at this magnificent son of a bitch!" She gestured to the tree, put her arm around his waist, pulled him close, humped his leg a little. "Isn't it great?"

"It certainly is — uh, large. How'd you get it on the car?

"Took some time. I hoisted it up on some ropes, then drove under it. Do you think there'll be a flat spot where it dragged on the road?"

Theo looked the tree up and down, back and forth, watched the car exhaust boiling out of the branches. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he had to ask. "You didn't buy this at the hardware store, did you?"

"No, there was a problem with that. But I saved a ton of money. Cut it myself. Completely totaled my broadsword, but look at this son of a bitch. Look at this glorious bastard!"

"You cut it down with your sword?" Theo wasn't so worried about what she had cut it down with, but from where she'd cut it. He had a secret in the forest near their cabin.

"Yeah. We don't have a chain saw that I don't know about, do we?"

"No." Actually they did, in the garage, hidden behind some paint cans. He'd hidden it when her «artistic» moments had been more frequent. "That's not the problem, sweetie. I think the problem is that it's too big."

"No," she said, walking the length of the tree now, pausing to jump through the branches and turn off the Honda's engine. "That's where you're wrong. Observe, double doors into the chapel."

Theo observed. The chapel did, indeed, have double doors. There was a single mercury lamp illuminating the gravel parking lot, but he could clearly see the little white chapel, the shadows of gravestones showing dimly behind it — a graveyard where they'd been planting Pine Covers for a hundred years.

"And the ceiling in the main room is thirty feet tall at the peak. This tree is only twenty-nine feet tall. We pull it through the doors backward and stand that baby up. I'll need your help, but, you know, you don't mind."

"I don't?"

Molly pulled open her jean jacket and flashed Theo, exposing his favorite breasts, right down to the shiny scar that ran across the top of the right one, cocked up like a curious purple eyebrow. It was like unexpectedly running into two tender friends, both a little pale from being out of the sun, a tad humbled by time, but with alert pink noses upturned by the night chill. And as quickly as they appeared, the jacket was pulled shut and Theo felt like he'd been shut out in the cold.

"Okay, I don't mind," he said, trying to buy time for the blood to return to his brain. "How do you know the ceiling is thirty feet tall?"

"From our wedding pictures. I cut you out and used you to measure the whole building. It was just under five Theos tall."

"You cut up our wedding pictures?"