Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Lenny looked at her and laughed. “I might want a big necklace,” he said. He reached across and took the cigarette from Eleanor’s hand. He tapped the long ash into the ashtray and set the cigarette in the corner of his mouth; he didn’t need his hands to smoke.

“But you said just a few things. One or two so no one would ever notice.”

“Well, now that I’ve gone to all this trouble...” Lenny folded the diagrams and stuffed them in his back pocket.

But the trouble had all been hers, not Lenny’s. “I’m the one risking getting caught by my mom,” Eleanor said.

“Listen, Eleanor Louise, I’ll be back in an hour and you can put the keys back in your mother’s purse. Okay?” Lenny shrugged into his leather jacket and shoved the surgical gloves and headlamp into a side pocket of the duffel.

Eleanor hated being called Eleanor Louise and Lenny knew it. “It’s not okay. If you take too much, they’ll notice. My mom might get suspicious.”

“Suspicious! You keep your little mouth shut or I’ll tell your goddamn mother exactly what you’ve been up to.” Lenny slung the duffel bag over his shoulder.

Eleanor sucked in such a big breath of air she thought she might pass out. “No! You can’t!”

But Lenny only snatched the keys off her finger and went out into the night.

It felt like hours. Eleanor tried not to bite her fingernails while she waited but it was too much to ask.

“Only babies chew their fingernails,” her mom would say. Fine for her, she didn’t have the stress of going to school and having a hot boyfriend. A boyfriend who threatened to tell her mother.

He couldn’t, he just couldn’t. Eleanor spat out the last hangnail and jumped up. In the tiny kitchenette she found plates, forks, and glasses. She set these on the table, along with a couple of folded paper towels to use as dinner napkins. She just hoped it would be Hawaiian or pepperoni, not something gross with artichokes or anchovies. She brought over the scarred wooden cutting board and the large chef’s knife and set these in the middle of the little table. There.

When Lenny knocked on the door Eleanor made herself walk slowly to it — no point in him thinking she was just sitting here waiting, holding her breath. Lenny pounded and she skipped the last step to open the door.

The first thing she noticed was the alcohol on his breath when he said, “Yeah, baby!” The second was the duffel; it looked full. He slung it inside where it landed on the cracked linoleum with a solid thwump.

“I’ll get the pizza,” he said, and turned back to the rental car, which was parked a few feet in front of their motel-room door. Eleanor held the door wide. She could hear the river a hundred yards behind the motel and the sound of a car fading down the highway. Lenny returned with the pizza and a bottle of whiskey and shut the door against the night.

“Yeah,” Lenny said again, and he sat at the table. His grin was so wide Eleanor could’ve fit a dinner plate between his crooked teeth. Lenny shoved the place setting roughly aside and replaced it with the duffel. “Yeah.”

When he opened the bag, Eleanor’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

The duffel was full of necklaces and rings and bracelets and watches and more. It sparkled and glittered and twinkled like a bag of birthday sparklers, as flashy as fireworks, as hot as hell. It was horrible.

It was Zamphir’s whole friggin’ stock.

“They’ll know the store’s been robbed,” Eleanor almost wailed.

Lenny sieved his hands through the jewels. “No kidding.”

“You said just a few. So they wouldn’t even notice. Or if they did, they’d just think it was a shoplifter. Now what?”

“Now what?” was another of her mom’s famous phrases, and it was usually hard to answer. Usually Eleanor just scowled if she dared; let her mother imagine all the answers Eleanor was keeping to herself.

Lenny was unfazed. “Now we celebrate.” Reluctantly he set the duffel down on the floor, close beside his feet. Taking the whiskey bottle, he filled the two drinking glasses Eleanor had set on the table. He picked up his, clinked it against Eleanor’s, and took a long swallow.

“Yeah,” he said again.

Eleanor didn’t touch hers. She hated the taste of whiskey and Lenny hadn’t even thought to buy mixer. She still stood beside the dinette; her bitten nails curling into her palms weren’t even long enough to hurt when she squeezed.

“Sit down. You’re acting like a kid.” Lenny flipped open the pizza box and pulled out the biggest piece. The strings of melted cheese stretched long, all the way to his plate, but he took a bite without seeming to notice.

Eleanor took the chef’s knife and cut through the strands. Then she cut cleanly through the rest of the pieces, grimacing at the chunks of greasy hamburger meat mixed with something that looked like olives. No doubt there were anchovies hidden in it, too.

“My mom—”