Shimmy Bang Sparkle(48)

Stella nodded. “Whenever he acquires a jewel, it goes in there.” She then pulled the identical briefcase from the top shelf of the safe. She slid it across the carpet. “That’s for you, safecracker. Show me what you got.”

Whoa shit, I liked that tension in her voice. Pushing me a little, getting serious—not so sweet anymore. “Can you?” I shot back.

“Yeah, I can,” she said. “Locks are trickier for me, but rotating dials are easy peasy lemon squeezy.”

“I’ll show you easy peasy,” I said, and I got to work, making my way through the first digit. She snuggled up next to me to watch, leaning in with anticipation—or maybe to pressure me. The first Safeco I’d ever busted into was bolted to the back of a Suburban with spinning rims as sirens got closer with every turn of the dial. That was pressure.

She gently placed her hand to my thigh. I paused, midturn. That was its own kind of pressure. The kind I always wanted. Breaking into the safe was the work of literally sixty seconds, yet having her so close made me wish it had taken me an hour. But dial combinations were my jam, and soon enough I’d lined up the numbers and the hinge locks popped open.

“That. Was. Awesome!” she said, clapping softly and beaming. “Ruth’s record is two-twenty. I clocked you at sixty-one!”

The joy in her eyes hit me hard. It was the first time someone I knew, and someone I actually cared about, seemed proud of me. It was a weird feeling, but a good one. If all my shitty decisions added up, finally, to getting to see that happiness in those eyes, I might not have any regrets at all. If she was the pot of gold at the end of my shitshow, it might’ve all been worth it. “All in a day’s work, ma’am,” I said, and slid it back to her.

Coming up off her knees, she walked over to the bookshelf. She got up on her tiptoes, straining with the effort so that her panties rode up an inch, revealing more of her ass, making the elastic pucker along her curves. She grabbed a big jar of something next to a houseplant. Kneeling again, she placed the jar on the carpet in front of me. It was a huge bottle of glitter, as big as a jar of mayonnaise. Its silver particles stuck to the inside of the plastic jar, and all I could think was, Yeah, this is gonna be a huge mess.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Open that.”

Glitter made no sense right then, but I trusted that she was up to something. And I was damned sure going to find out what it was. If she wants me covered in glitter, she’s gonna get me covered in glitter. But when I unscrewed the bottle, I found it wasn’t full of glitter at all. It only looked like it was. Same trick as the dog shit outside. I tipped the bottle into my hand, and out slid out what looked like three credit cards, held together by a rubber band. They were fake IDs. One for Roxie, one for Ruth, and one for Stella. I held hers up, and the hologram shimmered. The name under her beautiful face was Elizabeth Rutherford, with an address in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Organ donor, Gemini.

I’d seen a shitload of fake IDs in my day. Some so bad that you could peel the laminate right off with your fingers. Some so good they fooled the DMV. It was one of the best I’d ever seen. Heat sealed, precise, professional. “You do this?”

She pressed her lips together, and I saw that sweet dimple. “I loved doing the little buffalo on the crest.” She took it from me, between her thumb and forefinger, and set it on her bare thigh. “But what I really loved doing were these.” She tapped the glitter bottle in her palm, and a second stack of IDs fell out. These were vertical, with what I recognized immediately as the Ritz-Carlton logo. That gold lion was unmistakable. Underneath each made-up name it said HOUSEKEEPING. Stella ran her finger over her own badge and over the lion in the logo. She inhaled and exhaled hard, making her cheeks puff out a bit. “We did some recon on it in early August. Ruth, Roxie, and I drove out there and stayed at a little RV park with cabins up the road. We snuck through the conference center entrance to case the place.”

“On-the-job training. Nothing better.”

“We went to the pool and ate the world’s most expensive hamburgers while the sheikh trounced a little boy in floaties at pool basketball.” She rolled her eyes at the ceiling, but she was still smiling. I liked her style; her approach to getting the intel was straightforward and easily explained—just three girlfriends hanging out poolside. They would have been able to get the lay of the land and the basics about their mark. No hocus-pocus, just old-school observations. If they’d been caught, I could just imagine her explaining themselves to the guard—It’s just so beautiful here! We’d always wanted to say we’d been to the Ritz!

“And you were going to go in as maids for the real score?”

Stella nodded and let her shoulders fall slightly. I could tell she was bummed, and I understood that. All that fucking anticipation, all those plans—gone. But when she looked back up at me, there was still a little sparkle in her eyes. “Want to see?”

Her, in a maid’s uniform, showing me her skills? Why was that even a goddamned question? “Fuck yes, I do.”

“OK. I’ll get changed,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “You go get in bed.”

Christ almighty. I was a stubborn motherfucker. But that was one thing she’d never have to tell me twice.



She knocked on the door and said, “Linen service!”

Here we go, I thought, smiling to myself and propping my head against the headboard with a pillow. “Come in.”