Crime Spells

In the bedroom, it took all of ten seconds to find the jewelry box-it was leather, trimmed in brass, and it sat atop a dresser made of what looked like ebony.

Darla opened the box.

My. There were gold coins, loose gems-mostly diamonds, but a couple of emeralds-a diamond-studded money clip that held three thousand dollars in hundreds. There was a banded 5K stack of hundreds next to that, but the band was broken and two were missing. There were a dozen platinum coins and ten platinum one-ounce ingots, and several sets of cuff links and tiepins, done in assorted gems-rubies, emeralds, sapphires…

Quickly Darla decided what she could remove without it being immediately noticed. There were thirty-two gold coins, Eagles, and she took two of those. Nineteen loose stones, fourteen of which were one or two-carat, round-cut blue-white diamonds. She took one of the two-carat stones and one of the single carats. She took two hundreds from the money clip, three from the banded stack. One of the platinum coins, one of the ingots. She considered the tie tacks and cuff links and decided they were too easily missed.

Okay, a quick total: couple of gold Eagles, probably worth eight hundred each. The platinum eagle was worth fourteen, fifteen hundred, probably, the ingot a little less, say twelve hundred, and that was money in her pocket, since they didn’t have to be fenced. The diamonds were clean and clear, figure six, eight thousand on the smaller one, and at least twenty-five or thirty on the bigger one. Less Harry’s cut on those, so say they were worth twenty thousand to her total, if she was lucky. With the cash, she’d net about twenty-five grand total. Unless St. Johns did an inventory, he likely wouldn’t notice anything was gone, and she’d buy herself three or four months of lie-about time. Not nearly as good as what she had gotten from the widow’s place, but she had that laryngitis trick, and that would come in handy.

Once again, it was tempting to scoop it all into her pocket-there was enough here to keep her from having to score again for a couple-three years, maybe longer. But, no. Better to stick with what had kept her out of jail for all this time; greed was a killer. She sighed and closed the jewelry box.

As she turned to leave, she noticed the corner of a box jutting out from under the bed. A bed with black silk sheets on it, she also noticed, and neatly made.

She stopped, bent, and pulled the box from under the bed. It was long, wide, and fairly flat, as big as a large suitcase, if shallower. She opened the box.

It was full of thousand dollar bills, stacked in rows, fifteen across and eight down, and the bills were loose and mostly used.

Holy shit!

She picked up one stack, her breath coming faster, and counted it. Then another stack. A third. The first had thirty, the second twenty-eight, the third, thirty-three. Nonsequentially numbered.

She did some fast math. A hundred and twenty stacks, say thirty bills in each stack on average.

Three million six hundred thousand dollars.

Oh, man!

What was St. Johns doing with this much cash under his bed?

Darla stared at the cash. If she took one or two bills from each stack, he might not even notice! She could take a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, and unless he did a count, he wouldn’t be able to tell. And even if he did that, she was pretty sure this wasn’t money he wanted anybody to know about-it had the smell of something not quite legal.

Of course, she couldn’t just walk into a bank and plunk down a couple hundred thousand-dollar bills and expect that to fly without raising questions; but Harry knew people who could move big notes without batting an eye and he’d take ten or fifteen percent, no more than that.

Two bills from each stack. Two hunded and forty thousand dollars, she could give Harry the two-carat blue-white for his cut and-no, she decided, she’d put all that back. No point in risking this much for petty cash. With two hundred grand in her pocket, she could take a long damn time before she had to make another score.

Yes. That’s how she would do it. Put the coins and gems back, pack a quarter of a million into her pockets-no more carrying it in purses, thank you very much-and walk away with a big smile under her Glamor.

Darla drove toward her place, using a long and winding route, to make sure she wasn’t followed. She was almost home when she heard the sound of a police siren. She looked into the rearview mirror and saw a plain, tan Crown Victoria with a blue light flashing on the dashboard behind her.

“Oh, shit!” she said. An icy wave washed over her, as if she’d been drenched in liquid nitrogen, turning her stiff with fear.

She pulled to the curb. This wasn’t a traffic stop.

A tall, heavyset, balding man alighted from the car. He wore a cheap, badly wrinkled suit and brown shoes, and a tie that failed to reach his belt. Might as well have had a neon sign over his head flashing out the word “Cop!”

He walked to her driver’s door.

“Would you step out of the car, please?”

“What’s the trouble? Was I speeding?”

“No, lady, I’m a detective, I don’t do traffic tickets. Out here, please, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Dead. She was dead. She had considered it over the years, what she would do if she was ever caught, but it had never seemed real to her, it had been so theoretical.

What was she going to do?

The Glamor.

Of course! In her panicked fear, she had forgotten she had a perfect weapon. She’d touch him, and when the moment was right, she’d distract him, change, and that would be that!

The woman? she’d say, when he turned around and saw an old man there, She went that way, she was ru

Okay, she’d be okay, she could do this. He’d have to pat her down, and that would be enough, his hands on her would be fine. A touch was a touch.

“Over on the sidewalk, please,” he said.

She obeyed.

“What did I do?” she asked.

“You don’t need me to tell you that. Step in there, please.”

He pointed to a gate that led to what looked like a small garden.

“Excuse me?”

“We don’t want to do this out here.”

“Do what out here?!”

The panic she’d felt came back. What was going on?

“Open the gate, please.”

She did. He shut the wrought iron behind them. “Wow, look at that,” he said.

She turned. “Wh-what?”

When she turned back to look at the cop, he was gone.

In his place was an old woman.

Darla frowned. She knew this woman from somewere… ah, it was the old lady on the MAX train…

“Or this?” the old woman said, in a decidedly masculine voice.

The woman shimmered, and in a moment, Darla found herself looking at the cab driver who had taken her home from St. Johns-

And then, like a strobe light blinking on and off, the cab driver became the teenager who had stolen her purse, the good-looking guy she’d seen in Starbucks, and finally, St. Johns.

Blink, blink, blink.

Darla was too stu

“Are we having fun yet?” he asked.

She realized her mouth was open. She closed it.

He chuckled. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”

The meaning of it hit her. “You-you’re like me,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Yep. What you see isn’t what you get, necessarily.”

He laughed again. “I don’t rob houses. My ambition is a little bigger than that, but I do okay. As you noticed when you spotted my cash box. How much did you take, by the way?”

“Two bills from each stack.”

“Smart. I like bright women.”

“Why are you-what-?”

“Well, I’ve been watching you for a while, Darla. Far as I can tell, you and I are the only two of our kind. I’d propose a… partnership.”

“Partnership?”

“Well, more than that, maybe. I mean, you are gorgeous and careful and clever, but there there are some advantages to what we can do together. Between the two of us, we could do bigger and better things than either of us can do alone. Imagine how much easier it would be be if we could be a couple that looked like anybody we wanted?”