Martin Greenberg - Crime Spells

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 had 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 of drawbacks: She had to touch somebody before it would work on them, and she had to do it 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 she 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 anymore. 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 walked 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 of 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, turpentiney 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 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 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 Carruth, 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?