A job well done indeed.

In the living room, ice continued to clink in glasses. I heard laughter. The radio or the record player was pressed into service. More ice clinking. More laughter, a little more carefree now.

I stood there in the closet and found my thoughts turning inexorably in the direction of alcohol. I thought about the martinis, cold as the Klondike, three hearty ounces of crystal-clear Tanqueray gin with just the most fleeting kiss of Noilly Prat vermouth, a ribbon of twisted lemon peel afloat, the stemmed glass perfectly frosted. Then my mind moved to the wine. Just what white wine would be ideal?

“…beautiful, beautiful evening,” the woman sang out. “Know something, though? I’m a little warmish, sweetie.”

Warmish? I couldn’t imagine why. There were two air conditioners in the apartment, one in the bedroom and one in the living room, and she’d left them both running in her absence. They’d kept the apartment more than comfortable. My hands are always warm and sweaty inside my rubber gloves, but the rest of me had been cool and dry.

Until now, that is. The bedroom air conditioner was having no discernible effect on the air in the closet, which was not what you’d call conditioned. My hands were getting the worst of it and I peeled my gloves off and stuck them in my pocket. At the moment fingerprints were my least pressing concern. Suffocation probably headed the list, or at least it seemed to, and close behind it came apprehension and arrest and prison, following one upon the other in a most unpleasant way.

I breathed in. I breathed out. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, I could get away with this one. Maybe Crystal and her gentleman friend would be sufficiently involved in one another so as not to notice the absence of jewelry. Maybe they’d do whatever they’d come to do, and having done it perhaps they’d leave, or lapse into coma, and then maybe I could let myself out of the closet and the apartment. Then, swag in hand, I could return to my own neighborhood and-