Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

“Cut the act, Lou.” Mimi gave Rodney a glare, curled her lip. “Get on that phone and call the guests down here. Tell ’em to bring all their valuables. Tell ’em there’s a bomb and if they get outa line, Lou and I are gonna blow the stucco off this dump.”

Rodney started to chuckle, and ended up coughing into his fist. His eyes edged over to the attaché case, then blinked their way slowly back to Mimi. Finally they settled on the telephone.

He picked it up and phoned the guests. All three of them.

“Good boy, Rodney.” Mimi checked her watch. “I hope they move fast. We’ve only got nine minutes.”

Louis had bent and was easing the attaché case to the floor.

“Don’t put it down!” Mimi cried. “It’s triggered to blow when the handle’s released. You’re acting like an ass, Lou. Get with the program.”

Louis straightened cautiously. His hand had cramped gripping the case’s padded handle. Behind the mask, sweat streamed down his face in the hollows where there wasn’t any glue.

Mimi cracked her gum loud enough to jar her teeth loose. The noise made Rodney flinch. “If it blows you go with it,” he pointed out nervously.

“Lou and I don’t care anymore. We’re tired of being poor. Aren’t we, Lou?”

“Listen, lady—” said Louis.

Mimi cut him off. “If I were you, Rodney, I’d open that cash register.”

“Yeah. Right. Sure, Mimi. Okay...” Rodney punched a button and the computerized register’s drawer shot open. With trembling hands he gathered the bills, passed them over the counter into Mimi’s open shoulder bag.

The guests began arriving in the lobby. There was a fat middle-aged man whose suit looked as though he had slept in it. He handed over his fat brown wallet as though he were Santa Claus and Mimi an orphan. Next came a young woman with raven pigtails, glasses shaped like TV screens, and about half a ton of photographic equipment slung over her denim-clad shoulder. The young woman nearly strangled herself handing over her cameras. She was followed by a stocky young man in pajamas and bowling shoes. His prized bowling ball wouldn’t fit in Mimi’s shoulder bag, so she settled for a hundred bucks from his cheap money clip.

When the guests had hastily departed through the lobby exit, Rodney said, “Okay, dammit, turn that thing off.”

Mimi checked her watch again. “Relax. We still got three whole minutes. I’ll turn it off when Lou and I are safely upstairs in my room.”

“In your room?” sputtered Rodney. “What the hell kinda hideout is that?”

“The perfect kind,” grinned Mimi. “If the cops come, we set the bomb off. Be sure and tell ’em that when you call ’em. Okay?”

Louis could barely breathe behind the mask. In another few minutes it wouldn’t matter, though. In another few minutes he’d be blown to kingdom come. “Would somebody listen? I—”

“Come along, Lou. And remember, don’t set the case down.” Mimi spun on her heels, marched from the lobby. Louis, on shaky legs, followed her down the corridor to the rear stairway.

She took him to the room he’d woken up in. She led him inside and locked the door. A skeletal young man was seated stiffly in the armchair. He was totally bald, his lean face pitted and shockingly pale. On his long, pointed nose sat a pair of wire-rim sunglasses. He was wearing a suit several sizes too large. It was Louis’s suit.

The skeletal man’s smile was as charming as a surgical incision. Without rising from the chair, he offered Louis his hand. It was a bony hand covered with little red bumps that looked like chicken pox. Louis declined to accept it.

“Lou,” Mimi said. “This is Axel, my boyfriend.”

The skeletal man, still smiling, said, “I trust you have recovered from that bump on the head. I apologize for that, but I feared you might wake up and foil our plan.”

“So you’re the one who dragged me in here,” snarled Louis. “How the hell’d you get me past the night clerk?”

Axel breathed a laugh. “I’m the night clerk, you fool.”

“Isn’t he clever?” Mimi said.

The attaché case was still ticking. “Look,” said Louis. “Whatever’s going on here, there’s a bomb in this case, and I really—”

“No there isn’t.” Axel smiled. He licked his thin lips. “Really. It was just a ruse to frighten Rodney and the guests.” He fished the case’s key from a pocket, tossed the key onto the bed. “Go ahead, open it.”

“I’ll open it,” said Mimi. She grabbed the case from Louis, plopped it onto the bed. “He’s too chicken. That reminds me, honey, how’s your chicken pox?”

“Unbearable,” said Axel.

“Don’t scratch it.” Mimi sprang the latches on the attaché case, opened the lid. “See, Lou? No bomb.”

Louis peered cautiously over Mimi’s left shoulder. There was nothing in the case except a cheap alarm clock. From her loot-laden shoulder bag, Mimi dug out a device and the alarm clock stopped ticking.

Axel crossed his legs, folded his rash-covered hands on one knee. “A device of my own design,” he said, a slight trace of boastfulness in his tone.

“Axel’s an electronic genius,” said Mimi. She closed the attaché case and sat on the bed.