Home Alone 3 Read online

  Later that day, Alex decided he was too bored to obey his mother's orders to stay in bed. He got up and dressed himself in a makeshift explorer's outfit, which consisted of a bathrobe, rubber boots, his Darth Vader helmet, and a toy ammo belt. Last but not least, he placed Doris the rat in a camera case and slung it around his neck.

  Looking for something to do, Alex aimed his telescope across the street and into old Mrs. Hess's living room. There was Mrs. Hess, walking through her living room with a glass of iced tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Alex could even see what was playing on the old lady's TV—at the moment, a commercial that starred a fat, yellow tabby cat.

  "Look," Alex told Doris. She poked her head out the lens opening of the camera case. Alex held her up to the eyepiece for a view of the cat. Doris squeaked and retreated into the case.

  Alex had an inspiration. Peeking into the camera case, he grinned at his rat. "You think that was amusing, wait 'til you see what I do next."

  He sneaked out of his room and into his brother Stan's. Except for the dumb posters of girls in bikinis, Stan's room was pretty cool, especially his collection of air rifles.

  "Awk! What's that flunky smell?" Stan's green parrot squawked when Alex tiptoed in.

  "Shut up, bird," Alex whispered, and gently removed the rifle scope from one of the air rifles.

  Back in his own room, Alex taped the remote from the TV to the rifle scope. His TV was the same brand as Mrs. Hess's.

  Alex went to his window. He took careful aim with the rifle scope. He could see right into Mrs. Hess's living room again. Now the old lady was standing in front of a cabinet, splashing a clear liquid into her iced tea. Alex smiled to himself.

  Alex held his aim steady and pressed the power button on the TV remote. Across the street in Mrs. Hess's living room, the TV went off.

  With a start, Mrs. Hess looked over her shoulder at the TV. She wore a puzzled frown on her face.

  Alex clicked the TV back on. Chuckling to himself, he hit the channel changer. Mrs. Hess's talk show disappeared and was replaced by a music video.

  Poor Mrs. Hess was now staring at her TV with a look of total bewilderment on her face.

  Alex felt deeply satisfied.

  8

  The living room of the ranch house was filled with surveillance equipment. There were cameras, scopes, transmitters, cell phones, scanners, dishes. On a long metal rack were a series of disguises. In a case on the floor was a set of untraceable handguns with all serial numbers filed off.

  Peter Beaupre sat at his laptop computer, going over stolen information, trying to narrow down the houses on Washington Street where an old lady might live.

  Four sleeping bags were spread out on the floor. Earl Unger sat on the red sleeping bag, eating a container of microwave soup with a plastic spoon. Jernigan sat on a folding chair, sharpening a knife with a whetstone.

  "What's your best guess on how long we're gonna be at this slumber party?" Unger griped.

  "No longer than necessary," Peter Beaupre replied.

  "That was helpful," Unger scoffed.

  Peter Beaupre was getting tired of Unger's complaining. He pointed at the door. "There's a door. You can use it any time you want, Mr. Unger."

  Unger backed off a bit, changing the subject to his less-than-satisfying meal. "I'm eating reconstituted alphabet soup for Pete's sake," he moaned.

  "Don't spill any on my bed," Burton Jernigan warned.

  "This isn't a bed," Unger snapped. "This is a bag. And it's mine."

  "No." Jernigan shook his head. "I picked the red one. You picked the green. Alice got blue. Mr. Beaupre took black."

  Earl Unger couldn't believe it. "Does it really matter to you what color your sleeping bag is?"

  Burton Jernigan nodded. "Yes. I like red."

  Peter Beaupre was getting really exasperated, "Please," he grumbled. "Can I have some quiet? I have work to do."

  "Mr. Jernigan, you're an infant," Unger stated with a sigh, as he relocated to the green sleeping bag.

  While Jernigan and Unger sulked, Beaupre continued his work. One wall of the ranch house was already covered with his research on the families in Alex's neighborhood. Next to an aerial photo of each family's house hung a list of family

  members, their ages and occupations, motor vehicle descriptions and license numbers, household pets, and other similar information.

  Alice was on the floor of the ranch house, happily gluing Monopoly houses to a 3-D representation of the neighborhood. The gang was just about ready for action.

  9

  Alex stood at the top of the stairs, arguing with his mother. He had tired of tormenting Mrs. Hess, and now he was bored again. He wanted to join his mom in the living room. However, Mrs. Pruitt was not cooperating.

  "But I feel a lot better now," Alex told her.

  "I don't care," said his mom. "You're not coming downstairs. You're sick and you have to stay in bed."

  "Will you come up and talk to me?" Alex asked.

  "I've been up and down the stairs twenty times today, Alex," his mom said. "We talked and talked and talked. I have to finish my work. I have to make dinner."

  "Did you know that Mrs. Hess puts booze in her iced tea?" Alex asked.

  "Were you using your telescope to spy on Mrs. Hess?" his mom asked.

  "Obviously," Alex replied. "I'm not telepathic."

  "Knock it off," his mother said sternly. "It's rude. You wouldn't like somebody doing it to you. If you feel so much better, maybe you should start your schoolwork."

  Alex thought it over. "I don't feel that good," he decided.

  As if it wasn't bad enough to have the chicken pox, Alex also had to deal with his jerkface brother and dweebazoid sister. He was sitting at his desk that night when he heard them in the hall outside his room.

  "School really rocked today," Molly was saying. "It's so cool that we got money."

  "Yeah," said Stan. "Ten bucks just for showing up."

  At his desk in his room, Alex straightened up. They got ten bucks just for showing up at school?

  "It was enough to just meet the Chicago Bulls," Stan went on, "but to get ten bucks from them was just too cool."

  Alex felt his eyes go wide.

  "How come they did that?" he heard Molly ask Stan.

  "The government arranged it," Stan explained. "It's a one-time only reward for kids showing up at school."

  The Chicago Bulls! Alex jumped out of his seat and dashed into the hall.

  Both Molly and Stan looked surprised to see him.

  "You met the Bulls?" Alex asked, astounded.

  Stan nodded. "Guess it pays to stay healthy, huh?"

  "I can't believe it!" Alex cried in agony.

  "You didn't tell him about the slam-dunk contest, did you?" Molly asked.

  "Slam dunk?" Alex gasped.

  "One-on-one with Jordan," Molly said.

  He'd missed a one-on-one with Michael Jordan in his own school? Alex's knees suddenly felt weak. He leaned against the door jam. "I feel faint."

  Suddenly, Molly started to laugh. "He bought it! What a dork!"

  Alex straightened up. Stan was grinning evilly at him. "I didn't think chicken pox affected the brain. I was wrong."

  They'd been goofing on him, Alex clenched his fists. Kill!

  10

  The next morning, Alex lay in bed with the thermometer in his mouth again. He'd watched TV all morning. Now he was watching the weather channel, where an announcer was talking about a powerful front moving in from the west and picking up moisture from a low pressure area coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, a blast of Arctic air was going to sweep down from the Rockies. The result looked like a major snowstorm heading for Chicago.

  Excellent, Alex thought with a smile.

  His mother was coming up the stairs. Alex picked up his semi-automatic bubble gun and hid it under the covers.

  His mom came in. But instead of wearing slacks and a sweater, she was wearing her business cl
othes.

  Alex frowned. "How come you're all dressed up?"

  "I have to go to work for a little while, hon," his mom said apologetically, and took the thermometer out of his mouth. "You're just a hair over ninety-nine."

  Alex made a face. "Didn't you tell your boss that I'm desperately ill?"

  His mom nodded. Alex took out his bubble gun and shot a stream of water bubbles at her.

  Mrs. Pruitt smiled crookedly and took the gun away. "Thank you, hon. Yes, my boss knows you're sick."

  "What about the Family Leave Act?" Alex asked.

  "I just have to pick up some work, sign some papers, and show my face," his mom explained. "I'll be gone an hour at the most. I've called Mrs. Hess and told her you were going to be alone. She—"

  "You called Mrs. Hess?" Alex wrinMed his nose. "She knows I'm going to be alone?"

  "She said if anything comes up, she'll come right over," Mrs. Pruitt explained. "She wasn't happy about it, but she agreed."

  "What if she gets tanked up on iced tea and comes over and makes me smoke cigarettes?" Alex asked apprehensively.

  "Don't be ridiculous," his mom said. She reached behind him and fluffed up his pillow. Alex didn't want her to go.

  "Did you know that there are an awful lot of safety hazards in the average home?" he asked. "I just watched a show on the subject. It was really frightening."

  "That's why I want you to stay in bed," his mom said.

  "If something happened, our family could be the subject of an embarrassing and lengthy television tabloid news inquiry," Alex went on. "We could get the nod to represent the fraying of the family fabric, which is a hot topic today."

  His mom gazed at him and pursed her lips. "Alex, don't do this to me. I have to go. I don't have a choice."

  But Alex wasn't ready to give up. "What if there's a tornado?"

  "They don't happen in the winter," said his Mom.

  "Hurricane?"

  "We're not on the ocean."

  "Earthquake?"

  "In the Midwest? Not for millions of years."

  "There's a blizzard coming in from the mountains," Alex said.

  "Not in the next hour," replied his mom.

  "Social unrest?" he was grasping for straws.

  She smiled. "I don't think so."

  "Boredom?" Alex ventured. "I hear it's deadly in old folks."

  His mom kissed him on the forehead. That was always a bad sign. She stood up and started toward the door.

  "What about crooks?" Alex gave it one last try. He was surprised when his mom actually hesitated for a moment. "I don't think that's a problem during the day, honey. At least, not around here."

  But her hesitation gave Alex hope. "Why not?" he asked. "Nobody's home during the day. I'm only eight and I figured that out. Don't you think a grown-up crook could figure it out, too?"

  "This is a very safe neighborhood," his mother replied patiently. "The doors will be locked, and you have numbers where you can reach me. I'll be home as soon as I can."

  She was backing out of the doorway.

  "Hey, Mom," Alex called after her. "What about dragons, giant spiders, mummies, the living dead, and other figments of my imagination?"

  "Sorry," she called back as she went down the stairs. "I can't help you there. Only you can control your imagination."

  Alex lay back on his bed and considered that. Actually, it was a scary thought.

  11

  His mom left. The house was empty except for Alex, Stan's parrot, and Doris the white rat. Feeling just a bit nervous, Alex decided to keep an eye on things around the neighborhood with his telescope. Outside on the street he watched a lady he'd never seen before walking a solidly built brown-and-black dog.

  Maybe they were new to the neighborhood. Then he saw a jogger. That was weird, too. Washington Street was a dead end. All you could do was run up to the end, then turn around and run back.

  Maybe the jogger didn't know.

  Still, curious and wanting to see more, Alex decided to take the telescope up to the attic on the third floor and look out the dormer window from up there.

  A few moments later in the attic he could see more of the neighborhood. And the first thing he saw was that jogger again. Only now he was in the alley behind the houses across the street. And he wasn't jogging. He was talking into his hand.

  Alex swung the telescope around. That blue van had pulled into the street. And the strange lady with the dog was standing on the corner, staring at the Steffans' house across the street and two doors down.

  Alex aimed the telescope at the Steffans' house. The scope was powerful enough to allow him to look in the windows. Suddenly, Alex caught his breath. There was a strange man in Kerry Steffan's bedroom! He was wearing white latex butt-inspection gloves and pulling Kerry Steffan's window shade down.

  Burglars! Alex ran downstairs to his parents' room. He quickly dialed 911. A dispatcher answered and he told her about the stranger in the Steffans' house.

  "Are you by yourself?." the dispatcher asked.

  "Yeah," Alex said. "My mother just ran out for a few minutes. I have the chicken pox."

  "Can I have your address please?" the dispatcher asked.

  "The burglar's not in my house," Alex tried to explain. "He's in the Steffans' house. Seven twenty-four Washington Street."

  He heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway downstairs. It must have been his mom! Alex hung up on the dispatcher and ran downstairs to the back door. He yanked it open just as his mom appeared.

  "There's a burglar in the Steffans' house!" he cried. "I saw him with my telescope. There was a woman and a dog and a jogger and a blue van. I didn't recognize any of them. And nobody around here has a blue van. So I called the police."

  Mrs. Pruitt blinked in astonishment. "You called the police?"

  Alex nodded. His mom hurried past him and into the house. Alex followed her to the living room. Through the window they saw a police car pull up in front of the Steffans' house. Two officers with guns drawn got out of the car and hurried toward the house.

  Alex waited for the policemen to come out with the burglar.

  But they came out alone and got back into the patrol car. Alex couldn't understand it. What had happened to the burglar?

  The next thing he knew, the police were parking in front of his house.

  Alex backed nervously from the window. He had a feeling he was in trouble.

  12

  At the regional bureau of the FBI in San Francisco, Bureau Director Albert Stuckey sat back in his chair and let out a weary sigh. His gray metal desk was littered with files and field reports covering everything from truck hijackings to high-tech thefts of valuable computer chips. All of it was urgent, but none was more urgent than the file he was now looking at.

  An Axus Defense microchip had been stolen. That little piece of plastic and metal circuitry, not more than two inches square, was the key to building one of the most dangerous weapons known to humankind—a stealth nuclear missile, undetectable by radar.

  In the wrong hands, that chip could be devastating. An entire city could be wiped out without warning.

  There was a knock on Stuckey's door.

  "Come in," Stuckey said.

  The door opened, and a young agent named Rogers came in with a gray folder. "This just came in, sir."

  Stuckey took the folder and opened it. Inside were the photos and rap sheets of a gang of burglars associated with high-tech crimes like the Axus chip theft. The gang was led by a suave-looking dark-haired gentleman named Peter Beaupre. Beaupre was a master thief who specialized in this kind of crime. Stuckey and the rest of the FBI had been trying to catch him for seven years.

  "So these are our suspects," Stuckey surmised.

  "Yes, sir," Rogers said.

  "Do I assume they've high-tailed it to some third-world country by now?" Stuckey asked.

  "No, sir," Rogers reported. "They were ticketed under aliases, but didn't board their Hong Kong flight."


  Stuckey sat up, surprised. "You mean, they're still in this country?"

  "Yes, sir," Rogers said. "As far as we know, they're still here."

  Stuckey actually smiled. "Well, for once, luck seems to be on our side. Now let's find them, fast."

  13

  The police officers stood at the Pruitts' front door, talking to Alex's mother. Alex stood behind his mom and listened.

  "The burglar alarm was on and working in the Steffans' house," one of the policemen was saying. "There was no one in the house. Nothing appears to have been taken. I don't know what your boy saw, but it wasn't a burglar."

  "I'm very sorry about this," Alex's mom apologized. "My son's home with the chicken pox. I had to run out for a moment. He thought he saw something."

  "You'll talk to your neighbor about the damaged door?" the policeman said. Apparently they'd kicked the Steffans' kitchen door in. Alex wished he could have seen that.

  "Yes, of course, absolutely," his mom said.

  The policeman looked past Mrs. Pruitt at Alex. "False alarms are no joking matter, son."

  "It wasn't a false alarm," Alex insisted. "There was a guy in the house. He had two lookouts and a driver in a blue van."

  "He's been running a fever," his mom tried to explain.

  "You might want to remind him that this is a serious business," the police officer said.

  "He knows," said Mrs. Pruitt. "We got him a police set last Christmas. It had a badge, hat, and whistle, and he took it very seriously. He went around the house arresting us for various crimes. Not real crimes, but things like snoring and not putting the toilet seat down."