The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

She’s Not There by Steve Perry

Nobody is immune to Glamour.

In the ten years she’d had the talent, Darla had never come across anybody who had seen through it, far as she could tell. Old, young, men, women,-it fooled everybody, every time.

Not that she’d need it here: Fifteen feet away, the widow Bellingham snored fully-dressed upon her bed. The old lady had put down a bottle of very expensive champagne earlier at the party, and Darla could probably could bang a Chinese gong and not rouse her, but still…

She opened the last drawer of the jewel box, her movements slow and careful. The smell of cedar drifted up from the intricately-carved wooden box, which was probably worth more than Darla’s car.

Ah. Here we go…

It was an oval pin about the size of a silver dollar. Inset into the platinum were thirty-some diamonds, fancy yellows, the majority of them a carat or so each. Not worth as much as clears and nowhere near the value of the intense pinks or fancy blues encrusting the pieces in the top drawer, of course, but that was the point. These were good stones-good-but not outstanding, and with what she could get from her fence, plenty to keep her going for six months.

One-carat gems of this grade were easy to move.

She limited herself to a job every three or four months, enough to keep her below heavy police radar-or at least it had done so for eight years.

Truth was, it had been almost too easy. Never a really close call. At first, it it had seemed a grand adventure, but it wasn’t long before it turned into just a part-time job, no more exciting than shopping for fruit at New Seasons Market. Go in, pick out the organic apples you like, leave-without paying-and take a few months off, ta dah!

Disappointing in a way how easy it was, though certainly better than working for a living…

Six or seven million in fine jewelry here, and that just the dailywear stuff. The really good pieces would be in a bank vault somewhere…

Darla wrapped the pin in a square of black velvet and slipped it into her jeans pocket. She slid the jewelry box’s drawer closed.

As always, she was tempted to clean the box out, but she knew better. Unique pieces were hard to move, worth only what the loose stones would bring, unless you wanted to mess around trying to find a crooked collector, and that was risky. This particular pin? It might not be missed for weeks or months. The top-drawer stuff sure; the bottom drawer? Maybe the widow would never even notice. When you could go in and plunk down a million bucks for a brooch or a necklace without having to look at your checkbook balance? A pin worth a couple hundred grand? Shoot, that was practically costume jewelry…

So, she’d take just the one piece.

The perfect crime, after all, was not one where the cops couldn’t figure out who did it; it was one the cops never even heard about…

Darla uttered the cantrip just before she pushed open the stair door into the apartment building’s lobby. When she stepped through, she looked the same to herself, save for a slight bluish glow to her skin that told her the Glamour was lit.

The guard at the desk looked up. “Morning, Mr. Millar. Early start today, hey?”

Darla grinned and sketched a two-finger salute at the guard.

The armed man touched a button on his console and the building’s door slid open. As she left, Darla waggled one hand over her shoulder, in what she thought was a friendly gesture. Silently, of course. Her Glamour fooled the eyes, but not the ears-if she spoke, she would sound like a twenty-something woman and not the sixty-something man she picked as a disguise.

She had been careful coming down the stairs to avoid the surveillance cams, too, since her trick wouldn’t fool them, either.

When the real Mr. Millar exited for his morning walk, the guard wouldn’t say anything-he wouldn’t want anybody to think he was crazy…

It was a fantastic thing, her trick, even if it had a couple drawbacks: She had to touch somebody before it would work on them, and do that within a day, since the effects of the touch faded away after that. Still, it was impressive.

She had no idea why or how she had come by it. She had been found in a dumpster as a baby, raised in an orphanage. The words to the cantrip were from a dream she’d had on the night she turned sixteen. Eventually, she had come to realize that, somehow, the dream had come true.

Magic? No such thing, everybody knew that. But here she was. She’d wondered about it over the years. She’d cautiously nosed around in a few places, but never found any other real magic, only people faking it. Why did it work? How? She didn’t know. Still, you didn’t have to be a chemist to strike a match, and apparently you didn’t need to know jack about magic to use the stuff. Case in point.

Worrying over the reasons might drive her nuts if she let it, so she didn’t try any more. She just thanked whatever gods there might be for bestowing it upon her and that was that.

She had a car, but she seldom used it on a job where public transportation was available. She walk to the bus stop. The TriMet driver would see her as a white-haired Japanese man, since she had touched his shoulder earlier in the day when she’d ridden the bus in this direction. She would exit six blocks from her apartment and walk home. Nobody could connect Darla Wright to the expensive Portland penthouse occupied by the widow Bellingham, even if the woman ever did notice she’d been robbed.

Smooth as oil on glass, no muss, no fuss, just like always, and she planned to sleep in until at least noon.

Life was good.

Darla strolled into her neighborhood Starbucks, next to Fred Meyer’s, and inhaled the fragrances of brewed coffee and freshly baked pastries. She was scouting for a fattening cherry turnover she figured she’d earned, when she bumped into a good-looking guy about thirty who stopped suddenly ahead of her in the line.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, turning to steady her. “My fault.” He smiled. Nice teeth. Black hair, blue eyes, rugged features, pretty well-built under a dark green T-shirt and snug jeans. Three or four years older than she was, but that was nothing.

“No problem,” she said. She returned the smile.

Ice cream, she thought, looking at him. To go with the pastry, hey…?

No… She couldn’t. Not today. She had to meet Harry at two, and she’d slept past noon, so Ice Cream here would have to wait. Business before pleasure.

There were plenty of other men in the pond, and she was going to have free time to do a little fishing, lots of time…

Nothing as obvious as running a pawn shop, Harry had a guitar store, a hole-in-the-wall place twenty minutes from Portland, in Beaverton. Beaverton was where Portlanders went to buy fast food and shop at the 7-Elevens, a bedroom community that had once been swamps and filbert orchards and beaver-dammed streams.

The guitars at Harry’s ran from a few hundred bucks up to ten or fifteen thousand on the high end, mostly acoustic and classicals, and the place actually did a pretty good business. Today being Sunday, the shop was closed, but Harry answered the bell at the back door. She waited while the four big and heavy locks snicked and clicked, bolts sliding back, and the door, made of thick steel plate, swung quietly open on oiled hinges. Trust a crook to know how to protect his own stuff.

The shop smelled of wood, and some kind of finish that was not unpleasant, a sharp, turpentine-y scent.

“Layla. How nice to see you, as always.”

Even Harry didn’t get her real name. Darla was very careful.

“Harry. How business?”

“I can’t complain. Come in. Some tea?” He was seventy-five, bald, thin, and wore thick glasses that kept slipping down his nose. He thought she was hot, though he’d never made a move on her.

“Thanks.”

She sat at a table while Harry made tea. “Oolong today,” he said.

Eventually, he sat the steaming cup in front of her.

“So, kiddo, whaddya got for me?”

She produced the pin, opened the velvet wrapping.

“Ah.” He picked it up, pulled a loupe from his shirt pocket, held the pin up to the light. “Quality stones. Nice cuts, nothing outstanding. Say… fifty?”

“What, did I get stupid since you saw me last? Eighty,” she said.

He smiled. “Might could go sixty, because I like you.”

“It’s a steal at eighty, Harry. Two and a quarter for the bigger stones, and maybe another ten or fifteen for the little ones. Plus seven, eight hundred for the platinum. Pushing a quarter million, and you can pocket half that.”

“Honey, we both know it’s a steal at any price, but since I’ll have to fly down to Miami to move the rocks, sixty is a gift. You know how I hate air travel.”

“Miami? What’s wrong with Seattle?”

He pulled the loupe off and put the piece onto the table. “Too warm for Seattle. Even broken up, thirty stones this close will have to be moved a few at a time. Could take me months. Who has that kind of time at my age?”

“Warm? The, uh, previous owner doesn’t even know it’s gone.”

“Alas, dear girl, I’m afraid she does. Mrs. Bellingham, widow of the late Leo Bellingham, owner of steel mills and shipyards, right? Probably pays her boy toys more than this bauble is worth, but she has definitely missed it.”

Darla shook her head. “How could that happen? And how do you know it?”

He shrugged. “Maybe today was inventory day. Or it was a gift from a special friend with sentimental value. Who can say? All I know is, I talked to Benny the Nod this morning and he said the Portland cops had come to call upon him early, waving a picture of this very item.” He tapped the pin.

“Sweet Jesus,” she said.

“I doubt He would have any part of this, hon, though you can tithe if you want. So, sixty?”

“Yeah, well, I guess. Sure.”

They drank more tea and he prattled on about some new classical guitar he’d just bought, Osage Orange this, cedar that, Sloane tuners, a genuine Carrith, look at the little owl inlay here-it all flowed into one ear and out the other. How unlucky was this? That the old woman had discovered the theft within hours of it happening? That cost her at least twenty thousand dollars!

There was just no justice…

As Darla drove her British racing-green Cooper Mini convertible along TV Highway back toward Portland, she relaxed a little. Yeah, okay, her latest theft had been discovered too quickly, but she was still sixty thousand dollars richer, Harry’s cash, in used hundreds, was tucked away in her purse right there on the passenger seat. Life was still good. The sun was shining, the top was down, it was a lovely June afternoon, and she was free to spend the next few months lazing about, doing whatever she damned well pleased. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, hey?

She stopped at the light next to the Chrysler dealership on Canyon Road, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as the Beatles sang “Hey, Jude” on the oldies station.

A heavyset teenage boy in baggy shorts and a sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves, a brim-backward baseball cap pulled low, his feet shod in big, clonky, ugly basketball shoes, strutted across the road in front of her. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark shades he wore. Oh, please, kid! Who do you think you’re fooling?

When he was almost past, on the passenger side, he pointed behind her and said, “Holy shit! Look at that!”

Darla turned to see what had impressed this wanna-be gansta kid.

She caught a blur in her peripheral vision, and turned back just in time to see the kid snag her purse-

“Fuck-!”

Darla put the car into neutral, set the brake, and jumped out of the car. She chased the kid, but he had a head start and he was a lot faster than he looked. He put on a burst of speed and she lost him behind the car dealership.

And what what she have done if she’d caught him? Kick his ass? She didn’t know anything about martial arts. She had a nice folding knife, but unfortunately, that had been in her purse, too.

Son-of-a-bitch!

By the time she got back to her car, there was a line of traffic piled up behind it. She stalked back to the car, gave the finger to the fool behind her laying on his horn.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

Sixty thousand dollars!

The hell of it was, she couldn’t do anything about it! She could hear the conversation with the cop in her head:

Ah, you say you had sixty thousand dollars in cash in your purse? What is it you do for a living again, Miss?

Shit!

So much for the idea of six or eight months of goofing off. She was going to have to find another score. And soon. She was pretty much tapped out. She’d been counting on last night’s job.

No fucking justice…

Darla remembered a line she’d heard somewhere, when some reporter was interviewing a famous robber. “So, Willie, why do you rob banks?” And his answer had been: “Because that’s where the money is… ”

Probably never said that, but it made the point-you want to see who has the bling, you have to go where they flash it.

Which was why she was at a posh reception for some famous author at the Benton Hotel in Portland. Once she was past the gate keeper, having him see her as somebody who showed up at these things that he knew by sight, she became herself again, but she had to look the part, so she had dressed up for it. Heels, a black slinky dress, a simple strand of good black pearls, her short, dark hair nicely styled. Nobody inside would bother her, though the crowd was thick enough that somebody patted her on the ass as she squeezed through on her way to the bar. Apparently that cherry pastry hadn’t added enough weight to matter…

She got a club soda with lime, then started shopping…

She winnowed her choices to two possibles.

One was a forty-something woman with gorgeous red hair and a great figure she worked hard to keep looking that way. She’d had a little plastic work done on her face, very subtle, but offset by a botoxed forehead that might as well have been carved from marble. She wore emeralds-earrings, a necklace, a ring that had to run four carats, all matching settings in yellow gold. The dress was a creamy yellow that went with the jewelry. Quarter million in shades of green fire. Nice.

The other prospect was a guy, maybe thirty-five, in an Armani tux. He was tanned and fit, with a little gray in his hair, and an easy smile, and though he wasn’t sporting any monster rocks, he did wear a Patek Philippe watch-she guessed it was a Jumbo Nautilus in rose gold, worth about thirty grand wholesale. He had one ring on his right hand, a gold nugget inset with a black opal the size of a dime, that flashed Chinese writing in multiple colors as the opal caught the light when he raised his champagne glass to sip. That good an Australian opal might go ten grand. She wouldn’t want either the watch or the ring, they’d be too hard to move, but he’d probably have other pieces laying around…

Men were both harder and easier for her. Looking like she did, she could get close to them and touch them enough to get feelings for somebody she could become. And more than a few rich men had offered to take her home-for their own purposes, of course, but still, it got her a lot of intelligence for a later visit.

So, the emerald lady or the opal guy?

Even as she thought this, the opal guy looked up and noticed her. He smiled at the man he was talking to, said something, and ambled in her direction.

Well, look at this. If he was going to do the work? Maybe that was a good sign…

“What’s a nice girl like you doing at a stuffy event like this?”

“Waiting for you, it seems,” she said. She gave him her highwattage smile.

He held his champagne glass up in a silent toast, as if to acknowledge her response to his pick-up line. “I’m Arlo St. Johns,” he said.

“Layla Harrison,” she said, giving him a name she’d made up for herself in the orphanage years ago. One of housemothers who wasn’t too awful had been a big fan of the English rock invasion of the early sixties, and had lent Darla her books about the subject. She had discovered that Eric Clapton had written the song “Layla” after having fallen for George Harrison’s wife, Patti. That woman must have been something, Darla had decided, since she had been the inspiration for at least three famous rock songs-“Something,” by Harrison when he’d been with the Beatles; “Layla;” and “Wonderful Tonight,” by Clapton.

Ran in the family, too-Pattie’s little sister had been Donovan’s muse for “Jennifer, Juniper,” and had gone on to marry Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac…

“Penny for your thoughts?” he said.

“Worth more than that, I think.”

“No doubt. Want to go get a drink or something somewhere a little less crowded?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“My place is much quieter.”

She smiled. “Why not? Seen one writer, seen them all… ”

St. Johns had a high-rise apartment downtown, and he drove them to it in a black Cadillac Escalade, still had the new car smell. Sixty, seventy thousand bucks worth of car. This was shaping up to be a fun evening. Guy was good-looking, well-mannered, was obviously doing well enough to drive a high-end SUV and to sport expensive, tasteful jewelery. Bound to have something laying around his place worth lifting.

She didn’t have a lot of rules in her biz, but one of them was that she didn’t get intimate-well, not too intimate-with her marks. Not that this was ironclad-she had slipped a couple of times-but it made her feel guilty stealing from somebody she’d slept with, and she didn’t need that. Darla had built a pretty good rationalization about stealing from the rich and their insurers who wouldn’t miss it; if she went to bed with somebody and had a really good time? It would feel wrong to take his stuff.

Pretending not to look, she easily managed to see the numbers he punched into the alarm keypad just inside the door. She committed them to memory, converting them to letters. The first letter of each word corresponded to the number of its position in the alphabet: Thus 78587 became GHEHG, which in turn became a nonsensical but memorable sentence: Great Hairy Elephants Hate Giraffes…

The apartment was gorgeous, decorated by somebody with money and taste. Oil paintings, fancy handmade paper lamps, Oriental carpets some family in Afghanistan must have spent years making. Upscale furniture, more comfortable than showy.

While St. Johns built them drinks at his wet bar, she went into the bathroom, took her cell phone from her purse, and programmed it to ring in thirty minutes. That would give them enough time to have a drink and talk a little, but not get to the rolling-around-and-breaking-expensive-furniture stage.

She went back into the living room.

St. Johns was funny, smart, and twenty minutes into their conversation over perfect martinis, she was thinking maybe she would sleep with him instead of burgling him. That would be okay.

But, she reminded herself, she was broke. She had a couple thousand in the bank, but her apartment rent was due, her car note, and her fridge was mostly empty. She needed the money more than she needed to get laid.

A shame. He really was fun. He was some kind of importer, specializing in Pacific Rim antiquities, he said, and there were a few pieces of Polynesian or Hawaiian or other island art carefully set out here and there that she suspected were probably worth a small fortune. Jewelry she knew, painting and sculpture, she didn’t have a clue.

He smiled at her. “So, what do you do when you aren’t attending boring social gatherings?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. When my parents died, they left me a fair-sized insurance policy. I had the money invested, so it brings in enough to keep the wolf from the door. I take classes in this and that, work out, travel a bit. Nothing very exciting.”

He smiled bigger.

She smiled back. Oh, this wasn’t just ice cream, this was Häagen Dazs Special Limited Edition Black Walnut, you could get fat just opening the carton. The temptation surged in her, a warm wave. She had enough to pay the rent and car note, barely, she could buy some red beans and rice and veggies, make it another week before she had to have some more money…

In her purse, her cell phone began playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

Crap! What to do? Shut the phone off and stay?

Because she wanted to do just that so much, she decided it wasn’t a good idea. A matter of discipline. If she slipped, that could lead her down a dangerous slope. Just because it had always been good didn’t mean it couldn’t go bad.

Oh, well. She smiled, fetched her phone, touched a control.

“Hey, what’s up?” A beat. Then, “Oh, no! That’s terrible! Are you all right?”

St. Johns raised an eyebrow at her.

“No, no, I’ll come over. I’ll see you in a little while.”

She snapped the phone shut. “I’m sorry. That was my girlfriend Maria,” she said. “Her fiancé just dumped her and she’s in a terrible state. I need to go see her.”

“I knew it was too good to be true. I’ll give you a ride.”

“No, I’ll catch a cab. She lives way out in Hillsboro, I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

“It’s no trouble. I don’t have anything else planned.”

“Really, I appreciate it, but no. Could you, uh, give me your number? I’d like to see you again.”

“Oh, yes.” He produced a business card that had nothing on it but his name and a phone number. “Take care of your friend,” he said, smiling. “And do call me. I’d love to see you again.”

“I will look forward to seeing you,” she said. Unfortunately, you won’t know who I am when I do…

“Let me call a cab.”

“Thanks, Arlo.”

“My pleasure.”

After he called, he walked her to the door, and rested his hand on her shoulder. There was a moment when she thought he would kiss her-and she wouldn’t have objected-but it passed.

Another road not taken.

Too bad, but that’s how life was. Sometimes, business had to come before pleasure.

Her taxi arrived. The night was warm, and she slid into the cab and gave the driver an address near a stop where she could catch a MAX train to a station near her place.

“Yes, madam,” the driver said. He looked to be about fifty, and from his accent, she guessed he was Indian, or Pakistani.

It really was too bad about St. Johns.

The cabbie was chatty, going on about the warm weather and how the Bull Run Resevoir was low for this time of year. She responded politely, already thinking of how she was going to burgle St. Johns’s apartment. If the Glamour had worked on voices, it would be a snap-she’d become St. Johns, tell the security guy she’d lost her key, and have him let her into the place. Take something the mark wouldn’t miss, and adios.

Too bad St. Johns wasn’t a mute-

Ah! Wait a second, hold on, she had something here…

“Beg pardon, Miss?” the cabbie said.

“Huh?” She looked at him.

“You made an exclamation? Are you in distress?”

She smiled. “Oh, oh, no, sorry. I was just thinking of something. I’m fine.”

The cabbie smiled and nodded.

Actually, she was better than fine. She had come up with a terrific idea. Why hadn’t it occurred to her years ago? It was so simple.

She paid the cabbie, gave him a nice tip-what the hell, she’d be flush again in a couple days, right? She walked to the MAX station. A light rail train arrived, and she got on, along with several others. She exited at the stop near her house. An old lady dressed in khaki slacks and a tie-dye T-shirt and running shoes got off the train and set off at a fast walk ahead of her. The woman had long, steely gray hair and a lot of smile wrinkles and was obviously in pretty good shape from the pace she set. You could do worse than to be somebody like that when you got old, Darla decided. But not for a real long time…

St. Johns needed to be out of the building, so she had to risk using her car. She parked near the exit to the garage early, and waited to see St. Johns’ caddy leave.

At about nine in the morning, the Escalade pulled out.

Okay, kid, here we go…

Darla approached the building’s street entrance. She put a hand on the doorman’s sleeve as she asked to see the security man on duty.

Inside, she was conducted to the security desk. The man behind it looked up.

“Help you, Miss?” He stood and moved to the counter.

“Yes, I saw a car parked out front and there were two men in it who seemed to be watching the entrance,” she said. “Probably it’s nothing, but I thought I should say something about it.”

“Two men? What kind of car? They still there?”

She shrugged. “I’m not good with cars. Like a van, maybe an SUV? Dark, kind of old, muddy? But they left.”

“Uh huh. You get get the license number, ma’am?”

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

“Ah. Well. Listen, we appreciate it. We’ll, uh, keep an eye out for it.” Probably thinking was a twit she was. Two men in a car, right…

She reached out and touched his arm. “Probably it’s nothing,” she said. “But these days, you can’t be too careful.”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s true.”

Darla stepped into a doorway in the next building and lit the Glamour. Show time…

“Morning, Mr. St. Johns,” the doorman said. He opened the heavy glass door.

Darla smiled and nodded, knowing that her disguise was perfect.

She walked to the security desk.

“Mr. St. Johns. How may I help you sir?”

She shook his head and touched her throat. In a raspy voice as low as she could manage, Darla said, “Laryngitis.” She coughed.

“Oh, sorry to hear that.”

“Forgot my key,” she said. Her voice was a passable imitation of a sick frog.

“No problem, sir.” The guard opened a wide drawer, scanned the contents, and produced a door key. “Here you go. Drop it off whenever.”

Darla smiled, nodded, and coughed as she took the key.

Perfect. She didn’t have to sound like St. Johns, she had set it up that her-his-voice was gone. Very clever, if she said so herself.

People were coming and going, and the guard’s attention veered away from her.

There weren’t any cameras on the elevators, at least none she’d seen the night before, but she lingered until a couple other people arrived to ride up. They would see her as Darla, and if there was a hidden camera on the elevator, the guard would see three people in it. How much track would he be keeping?

So far, it ran like a Swiss watch.

She opened the door, stepped inside-it wouldn’t do for somebody to see her instead of St. Johns, though they might assume she was his special friend, since she had a key.

Inside, she shut the door and reached for the alarm pad, but realized that it was green. He hadn’t even bothered to set it.

She shook her head. Man didn’t turn on his alarm? He deserved to have his stuff stolen. Lordy.

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 oneounce ingots, and several sets of cuff links and tie pins, 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 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 into 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. Non-sequentially 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 Glamour…

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 Glamour.

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 running!

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 lead 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 of 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 stunned to speak.

“Are we having fun yet?” he said.

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?”

She considered it. Yes. That would be something.

“Plus there are some other perks.”

He shimmered and turned into a studly young movie star that Darla much admired.

“Or maybe… this?” He morphed into another young man, this one a match to a well-known rock star.

“We have a world of choice to offer each other, don’t we?” He shimmered again, and reclaimed St. Johns. “Not that I think I would get bored with you as you stand. You are stunning, you know, but you also have a kind of variety to offer no other woman does.”

She smiled back at him. “Even though I stole your money?”

“Because you stole my money. What do you think?”

She found herself nodding. Yes. There was an attraction, no question, and if she got tired of looking at him?

Well, he could fix that in an instant.

Because nobody was immune to Glamour…