This is always hard to say, but 'Kill your darlings' - if you feel that attached to a section of the text, it's there because you love it, not because it's right for the book. My initial reaction was that a thief would not put the money back. You could invert the phrase, eg: Feeling like a thief, I put it back, all the way back where it was, where nobody knew. Nevertheless, this is more like life support on a section that isn't working. It would be better for your book (and for your reader) if you rework it. If you don't, I suspect that over time it will become one of the parts of the book that you're least happy with.

It horrifies me that there are professional copy editors who don't look things up. When I worked in house, some colleagues would approach me to explain the rules - they claimed that CMS was too hard to use and they figured I'd probably know the answer. Surely this is an essential part of the job? As for 'whinge', it's commonly used in Australian English. I think editors should celebrate the diversity and texture of language rather than trying to homogenise it.