The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (22 page)

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.”