"Cleopatran Cocktails" by William Burton McCormick

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March-April 2018, p. 88-91

In two-and-a-quarter pages of first-person present tense narration, author McCormick gets into the mind of a woman obsessed with world records as she works up the nerve to break a museum display case and steal a pearl necklace worth $30 million.

Her goal, though, isn't to keep the prize but to dissolve the pearls in vinegar and drink them—surpassing Cleopatra VII of Egypt's drinking a single $15 million pearl, which the narrator calls "the world's most expensive breakfast."