MATCHED SET

By Jan Christensen

Robberies were down last week in Chicago, partly because of me.  I wanted to rob the jewelry store on eleventh street, but things didn't go quite right.

Wearing my fur-lined jacket, diamond bracelet and department-store make-up, I'd pretended to be looking for a necklace to match the bracelet.

The snooty clerk brought out case after case of beautiful necklaces.  My father had lifted the bracelet thirty years ago and given it to my mother who passed it on to me when she died.  After searching years for a matching necklace, I decided it must be one of a kind.

You think I come from a dysfunctional family, being a thief.  But my parents had one of those story-book marriages where she adored him and he adored her and they both adored me.  I think deep down, she knew what he did on the side.  Even when he began to take me out nights to learn the trade, she pretended that he was really teaching me some tricks of the lawyerly profession.  He'd found out soon after graduating from law school that he wasn't capable of courtroom theatrics, so he had settled for mundane paper-shuffling, as he called it. 

One afternoon he'd been called to a residence filled with antiques and artwork to find an old man in a wheelchair who wanted to make out his will.  The man soon  confessed to my father that he'd acquired his pile through thievery.  Father was fascinated and began to ask questions.  Flattered and amused, the man became my father's teacher, and soon dear old Dad was robbing about one jewelry store a month. 

When I was ten, we moved uptown and had our own house filled with antiques and artwork.  Dad fenced what he stole so no one would find him with the goods.  But he made an exception for the diamond bracelet.  He said it suited my mother too well to give it up.  Now I used it when I cased cases of jewelry.

The clerk came to the last velvet-lined tray and set it on the counter.  And there lay the necklace.  With shaking fingers, I removed my bracelet while the clerk put the necklace on a velvet cloth. 

"I'll take it," I said, without asking the price.  Smiling for the first time, the clerk rang up the sale, and I wore the two beautiful items out of the shop.

I realized I didn't want to rob the store.  I didn't feel like robbing any more stores.  But, I wondered, what would I do for excitement?

Then I thought, well, if there's a matching necklace, there has to be a pair of matching earrings.  And I'd never be allowed to have any of them with me if I ended up in prison.  So, I'd simply go on looking for the earrings.

I'm sure Chicago's finest will be happy.  On the other hand, maybe they'd miss the excitement themselves.

THE END

Jan Christensen has had one mystery novel, "Sara's Search," published and  almost forty short stories, mostly mysteries, in such places as Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, Hardluck Stories, Red Herring Mystery Magazine, and Orchard Press, to name a few.  She can be reached at willwriteforfood@mindspring.com