Page 37 of The Forever Christmas Tree

“Personally, I always thought brokers did it with more interest than the average fellow,” Harry contributed while he worked on his second helping of bread pudding, not even bothering to look up. “My wife, Julia, on the other hand, knew the drill better than I did.” Julia had been a dentist.

“Ha, ha, ha. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for short men.” Elmer snapped his suspenders and winked. “Short in height, long in . . . well, you get the drift.”

Wendy and Diane exchanged grins. Who would have thought!

But then, Wendy’s aunt added to the madness. “I always believed that a man who danced well could do other things well. You know, the moves, the rhythm, the energy.”

Raul just bowed his head in acknowledgment of the compliment.

Oh . . . my . . . God!

JAM, Geek, and K-4 were enjoying the hell out of the discussion without saying anything explicit themselves. But they were thinking it, all right. If they let loose with their opinions, the remarks would be crude, to say the least.

Wait until this group found out about Geek’s invention, the “penile glove.” They would probably want a demonstration, or be checking it out on the Internet later tonight.

“And you said we would be bored,” K-4 reminded Wendy.

Throughout the meal, everyone spoke of Christmas traditions in their families, or special things that had happened in their lives during the yule season. It was the first Wendy had learned that JAM had been raised in an orphanage, where Christmases had been rather bleak.

Geek, on the other hand, came from a wealthy family who often spent Christmases on the ski slopes of Aspen or the Swiss Alps.

“My wife and I were so poor the first few years we got married that we spent the whole day of Christmas in bed because there was no heat,” K-4 said.

“Yeah, that’s your story,” Geek teased.

“And I’m sticking to it.” K-4 grinned.

“How did your wife die, Kevin?” Aunt Mildred asked, refusing to use their SEAL nicknames.

“Cancer.”

Several of them, including Wendy, nodded at his answer, having had personal contact with the Big C.

“When I was six, our dog, Betty, gave birth to a litter of six puppies on Christmas Day. There was dog shit and piss everywhere. The best Christmas ever. It was probably when I first got interested in becoming a veterinarian.” Elmer sighed at the memory.

Which made Wendy recall how Ethan had dreamed of becoming a vet someday. There hadn’t been an animal he didn’t love, from birds to Bassets.

“Well, I win the prize for best Christmas stories,” Diane declared. “It’s how I got my SEAL nickname of Grizz. I was home alone when I was eighteen because my family was off to church, but I had the flu. While they were gone, a huge black bear managed to get into our garage and went on a rampage. To the shock of my dad and brothers, who fancied themselves big game hunters, I shot that beast right between the eyeballs, and we ate bear meat all winter.”

“Is bear meat edible?” Aunt Mildred asked.

“Sure, and if cooked properly, it’s as good as venison or any other wild game.”

“In the South, we’re known to cook everything but the toes on any animal, and even those in certain parts of the bayou,” Claudette told them. “Mah daddy was especially fond of possum, bless his heart.”

Wendy went into the kitchen and brought back a fresh carafe of coffee for those who’d had enough of wine. “Okay, guys, tell us about your meeting with the Jinx folks,” she said, then added an explanation to the others. “There’s a treasure-hunting company for sale in New Jersey called Jinx, Inc., named after its original owner, the Jinkowsky family. The guys stopped off there yesterday to look it over before heading down here.”

“Very interesting,” Geek said. “Jinx makes the distinction of being a treasure-hunting company, not just a shipwreck salvage company. In other words, they search for all kinds of things, from lost Nazi loot to gold mines, and, yeah, sunken ships.”

“You wouldn’t believe some of their finds,” K-4 exclaimed with excitement. “Pink diamonds from some Atlantic shipwreck. Spanish coins buried by a famous pirate in a Louisiana bayou. Recovered stolen artwork. The walls of their warehouse and display cabinets are loaded with evidence of their successful projects. It’s like a freakin’ museum.”

“Not all their ventures have been successful,” JAM cautioned. “Treasure hunting is like high-stakes gambling.”

“JAM is right,” Geek said. “It can cost millions to engage in some of these searches, especially the deep-water shipwreck ones, that on top of all the hoops a company has to go through with state licensing and potential lawsuits from foreign countries claiming the ships and their contents belong to them, even though they’ve made no effort to recover them for centuries. Finders Keepers doesn’t apply anymore in the Law of Finds.”

“On the other hand, the rewards can be monumental, even if you give the other country their twenty-five-percent cut,” K-4 argued. “Do you know, there are still three million shipwrecks sitting on the bottom of the world’s oceans and seas? And that’s no bullshit—the statistic comes from a United Nations study. Three million! Of course, only about three thousand of those have the potential for big bucks. Still . . . three million!”

“Sounds like you’ve decided,” Wendy remarked to K-4.