“So,” Dixie said cheerfully, “I can steal anything I like from Hummelmeyer’s?”
“Anything. Up to and including the most expensive items, I should guess. That young man Harry who first picked you up today for shoplifting will be briefed to watch for you, follow you around while you’re in the store, and put the price of anything you steal on Mr. C. B. Miller’s bill. Isn’t that splendid?”
“Couldn’t be better,” said Dixie warmly. “I’ll have a ball.”
And have a ball she did. Knowing her predilection for the best and the costliest, I gave her no specific instructions, leaving it to her to select the items she purloined from Hummelmeyer’s in her role of Mrs. C. B. Miller, wealthy kleptomaniac.
My contribution to the operation at this point was the fencing, through channels long familiar to me, of the merchandise Dixie stole. Even at a third to a half of true market value, the cash sum thus accumulated in only a few days was quite impressive.
On the fifth day of our operation, a Friday, Dixie turned up at my apartment after dark with half a dozen Steuben old-fashioned glasses and an opera-length string of matched cultured pearls as her loot of the day. I congratulated her on her good taste, gave her an honest accounting of our profits thus far, and then warned her, “Hummelmeyer’s send out their monthly statements to charge customers on Monday, so I’m afraid we’ll have to finish up tomorrow. C. B. Miller’s sharp cries of anguish when he receives his bill this month will no doubt make the welkin ring merrily — as well as the ears of Mr. Conrad, Hummelmeyer’s credit manager. You and I must have disappeared by then, of course.”
Dixie nodded.
“I suggest that we would be wise to take a short leave of absence from the city until things quiet down a bit,” I said. “A vacation, you might call it. Not necessarily together, Dixie.” There is nothing physical between Dixie and me. “But a vacation out of the city.”
“O.K., Professor,” said Dixie. “Tomorrow’s the end of the operation if you say so. I’ll try to make it a red-letter day.”
She was as good as her word. I couldn’t believe my eyes when she strolled into my apartment the following evening about six o’clock. For although it was a very warm day in August, Dixie was carrying a heavy fur coat over her arm.
“What in the world is that?” I inquired, gesturing at it.
“What does it look like?” She dumped the coat on my sofa. “It’s a fur coat, Professor, as any fool can plainly see. I took it right off the display mannequin in Hummelmeyer’s fur salon, where it was being featured in the August for sale.”
“It doesn’t look like much,” I said. “It’s neither mink nor sable, with that long hair. Couldn’t you have selected something less bulky and more valuable?”
Dixie gave me her gamine grin.
“Look at the price tag,” she said.
I looked at it. “Well, well, I apologize, Dixie. Twenty-four thousand dollars! What is it?”
“Russian lynx. Very new, very smart, very fenceable,” said Dixie, dimpling. “Is there such a word, Professor? Fenceable? Anyway.” She groped in her shoulder bag. “That’s not all. Take a gander at this, if you want to see something pretty.”
She held out on the palm of one hand a circlet of platinum paved with diamonds and a pair of emerald-and-diamond earrings. Their price tags read, respectively, thirty-five hundred dollars and twenty-three hundred dollars.
“A red-letter day indeed, Dixie,” I complimented her. “I can t tell you—”
“Wait.” Dixie interrupted me. Her face turned sober and her dimples disappeared. “That’s the good news, Professor,” she said. “The rest is all bad.”
“Bad?” I asked, startled.
She nodded.
“What is it?”
“Just that we’re blown, Professor. Wide open. I’m sorry.”
For an instant I seemed to be struck dumb. At length I managed to whisper, “What do you mean, Dixie?”
“That store detective, Harry. Remember him? The one who caught me shoplifting the first day and has been following me around the store ever since?”
It was my turn to nod.
“Well, he knows I’m not Mrs. C. B. Miller.”
“What! How could he know that?”
“Because Mrs. C. B. Miller is his aunt,” Dixie said. “And he knows I ain’t her.”
I tried to absorb this calmly, but it was a telling blow. “Harry told you this?”
“Yes.”
“He may be lying.”
“I don’t think so. He knows more about the Millers than we do. A lot of stuff he couldn’t have made up—” she eyed me “—or found in a wallet. Like the prep schools his cousins go to. Like how much Hummelmeyer’s charged Miller for redecorating his new house on Cedarhurst Drive. Like that Mr. Miller’s brother Hubert has been running The Superior Drilling Supply Company since C.B.’s retirement. Oh, he’s telling the truth, all right. I know it.”
“Perhaps.” I tried to smile. “But it seems very quixotic of Harry, in that case, to permit our shoplifting spree to continue unchecked for a week without blowing the whistle on us.”
Dixie said, “I asked him about that. The truth is, Harry can’t stand his aunt. He says she’s a snob and a bitch and a bird-brain. And he dislikes her husband, C.B., even more. Harry’s from the poor side of the family, I gather. Anyway, he couldn’t care less how we sandbag Hummelmeyer’s and the Millers.”
I was still puzzled. “Then why reveal all this to you, Dixie?”
“He wants half our loot,” Dixie said. “That’s the bad news, Professor.”
Bad news indeed. Yet not total defeat. I said, “Even half our profits on this operation is still respectable. Half a loaf is better than none. Yet why shouldn’t we have the whole loaf? We need not take Harry’s blackmail demand lying down. We can be on a plane for Timbuktu or some other safe retreat in no time, Dixie. I can stop on our way to the airport to turn this fur coat and jewelry into cash.” I began planning rapidly. “I’ll shave off my moustache, wear a toupee, and put pads in my cheeks. You burn your wig and take out your blue contacts, get rid of those platform shoes and—”
Dixie shook her head. “No good, Professor. Harry’s waiting downstairs in the lobby for me right this minute. He’s given us fifteen minutes to make our decision before he goes to the fuzz.”
I looked at my watch. “We’ve still got time to leave through the back door of the furnace room and make the airport, Dixie—” I broke off. “How does he happen to be sitting downstairs in the lobby, for God’s sake?”
“He followed me here from Hummelmeyer’s and parked right behind me in your parking lot. That’s where we had our little talk. In your parking lot. I’m still dazed.” Dixie gave me an up-from-under look. “I haven’t told you about his other demand yet.”
“His other demand?” I sighed.
“He wants me to go out to dinner with him tonight,” Dixie said.
“To dinner? What on earth for?”
“He thinks I’m kind of cute.” Dixie blushed.
I was beyond surprise. I stared at her, this Dixie who wasn’t Dixie, with the wrong color hair, the wrong color eyes, the wrong height. I tried to see her as Harry must see her. I said sternly, “You’re not going to dinner with this... this — blackmailer, are you?”
Dixie fluffed her blonde wig. “Why not?” she said. “I think he’s kind of cute too.”
Death in Egypt
by Henry T. Parry