Shop and Let Die (14 page)

I even forgot about the
mystery shopping link to the serial killer until I was on the way
home and heard the news soundbite on the radio announcing that the
FBI was on the case, and our local mom was an official victim of
the Shopping Mall Killer.

For some reason, all I
could see was a James Bond silhouette with a pair of vibrant green
eyes pointing a gun at a shadow at the entrance to the
mall.

I shivered, and shook the
image away. But I kept my fingers curled around my pepper spray as
I walked from the car to the house. The first rule of the Secret
Shopper Sisterhood was to be prepared for anything and everything
to go wrong.

I needed to get Celeste a
thank-you gift. Maybe a set of brass knuckles. She’d like
that.

The PTA fair planning meeting went longer than
I’d predicted, and the house was quiet when I came in. To my
surprise, the TV wasn’t on. Seth was sitting on the couch in the
dark, bathed only in the light of his laptop monitor. There was an
oddly still quality to his fixity, unlike when he was engrossed in
a game of World of Warcraft.

“
How was the meeting?” His
question was perfunctory politeness and I was quite sure I could
have said that Bianca, the PTA president, set me on fire and he
wouldn’t have heard me, or remembered that Bianca was in
Paris.

“
What are you
doing?”

At that, he looked up, a
sheepish grin on his face that made me worry I wasn’t going to like
his answer. Surely not pornography. Not Seth. He liked the
occasional foray into Playboy, and he was the only one who ever
looked at the Victoria’s Secret catalogs which clogged our mailbox
periodically. But online porn? Not unless he’d been taken by pod
people.

“
I checked our email.
We’re a hit.”

“
Really?” I shouldn’t have
been put out that he’d checked the site without me. After all,
hadn’t I done the same?

I should have been glad
that he was interested in my work at last. He had a glass of wine
next to him. Before I could really get worried, I noticed the
second glass of wine.

He patted the seat next to
him. “Come see what these millionaire losers have to say. It’s
pathetic. They’ve fallen for Serena’s siren song easier than
Ulysses and his men.”

“
Classic.” I’d already
battled the dowagers of the PTA, I had no more strength left to
protest that he’d usurped my job. “How long have you been
on?”

“
Not long.”

I could see the
time-online counter, he’d been on since 9:00. Wow, what was so
fascinating? I wondered guiltily if he’d been as curious about the
rich women on the site as I’d been about the rich men? I hit the
browser’s back button, and saw the profile of one Theona
Perkin-Pepper. Not a great beauty, but she had a very nice job —
wealth manager. “Wish you’d married someone like her?” I couldn’t
help but add sourly, “I bet she hires only the best nannies for her
children.”

“
She doesn’t have any
children,” Seth said. “She wanted to have her career in a solid
place before she settled down to a husband and
children.”

“
Well, I guess she’s done
that. Of course, let’s see her in a year after she’s got the
husband and the first kid. Money can make many things better—but it
doesn’t make morning sickness easier and it doesn’t make a newborn
sleep through the night.”

“
She knows it won’t be
easy.”

“
No one knows how not easy
it will be until the baby throws up on your best suit the same day
your boss needs a final report. Not to mention that your husband is
out of town on a business trip.” That was the day I quit my “real”
job. Without notice. Talk about burning bridges.

If I’d had a man for a
boss he might have understood. But I had a woman boss. Worse, I had
a woman boss with four children and a full-time nanny. She didn’t
understand why I let “these little things” interfere with my
responsibilities. I didn’t bother to explain. I just hoped she had
developed Alzheimer’s or empathy before I was ready to come back
into the workforce and needed a reference.

“
She waited until she was
the boss.” Seth smiled smugly. “When you’re the boss, you don’t
have to answer to anyone but yourself.”

“
Hah. Wait until she
becomes a wife and mother. That answering-to-herself stuff will
stop cold.”

“
Does she look like a
woman who will stop thinking for herself? She’s a self-made
millionaire.” There was definitely a hint of lust in his voice. I
didn’t like that.

“
True. She looks like a
woman who will marry a man long enough to get pregnant, find a good
nanny, and establish a case for child support.” I added, to appease
his sense of outrage. “And think the alimony she gets stuck with
fair exchange for the trouble.”

“
Since when did you get so
cynical, Mary Sunshine?” Seth flipped forward again, and I saw that
Serena’s mailbox had fourteen more messages, all read. “Or should I
say Serena Sunshine?”

I knew I should read them
all, but I was so annoyed—and tired—that I didn’t want to prolong
the agony. “Which are the top three?”

“
Depends on what Serena’s
looking for?”

“
According to us, Serena’s
looking for a man who will understand her ambition, drive for
perfection, and love of a good martini.” And maybe have a sense of
humor, like Hammond.

I opened a text file for
our report notes. “However, what the company that hired us wants us
to look for is anyone whose answer sounds perverse, scummy, or like
someone panning for gold.”

“
So the company’s cynical,
not you? Is that it?” Seth opened a message. “Well, then, this guy
should be in the running.”

I read the message
quickly. “Oh yeah. How did he get through? A man who can whip it
out for a photo shoot should want a broader audience than this
exclusive site.” I typed up some quick stats: name, handle, age,
and two select quotes from the email.

I made reference to the
picture attached, but did not send on. Interested parties could
pull up the man’s file…so to speak…when they made the very
necessary decision to kick him out of the exclusive
club.

“
Any other bad
boys?”

“
Depends what you mean by
bad. Does boring count?”

“
Nope. Boring is not one
of the screening criteria.”

“
Then most of them pass
muster.”

I checked the screening
sheet. “Any mention of rule-bending or breaking?”

“
Such as?”

“
Trying to set a date in a
private venue—”

“
What’s wrong with that?
Does everything need to be public these days?”

“
First dates at this club
do. Everyone signs the agreement to abide by the rules. There
aren’t many.” I counted down. “Only six. My mom had at least
ten.”

“
Your dad only had one.”
He grinned and for a moment he was nineteen again, just like the
first time I met him.

“
Not that you abided by
it.” I felt a flush of memory. Had that reckless young couple
really been us? Impossible. It had to have been some movie we saw,
once long ago at a black-and-white film festival.

“
Okay, what are the six
criteria these pathetic pusses are supposed to abide
by?”

“
Public first date. No
mention of salary—”

“
Uh oh.” He opened a
message. “This guy not only mentioned his salary, he mentioned his
job title and the golden parachute he would get should his company
ever realize he had overreached his abilities by a job level or
two. I think he was being humorous, though.”

“
Still, he broke the
rules.” I quickly noted the guy in my text file of notes and moved
on to the rest of the criteria. “No separated-but-not-divorced,
nothing kinky—”

“
Does a trip to the
bondage club after drinks count?”

“
You’re
joking.”

He opened up the file
right in front of me.

I know we must meet in a
public place. May I suggest Club ChiChi? Then, if things go well,
we’ll only be a few steps from Dark Designs, a wonderful adult
playground.

I didn’t recognize the
name of either of those places. “How can we be sure—?”

Seth didn’t look at me,
but kept his eyes on the screen as he answered. “It was in the
student newspaper. Dark Designs specializes in S&M. They run an
ad almost every issue.”

“
Yuck. You’d think
students would have better things to do.”

“
And to think I was going
to suggest we spend our next anniversary there.”

“
Me on top, I
hope.”

“
I believe they call it
Dominant, not on top.”

The thought that he spoke
with too much authority flipped through me at the speed of light.
No. Not Seth. He’d probably stopped at reading the ads with avid
interest.

“
What do they call the
bottom?” I half hoped he wouldn’t know the answer.

With alacrity, he said,
“Submissive.”

“
Well, that’s out for us
then, neither of us could be called submissive.”

“
True. Do you think this
guy is breaking the rules?”

“
I’m not the one who has
to make the final call. But I’ll report his email and let those who
wrote the rules decide.”

“
Sounds like a perfectly
mysterious decision to me.” He looked at me curiously. “Does it
ever bother you that you are like a spy, sneaking around snarking
on people?”

I tried not to bristle. “I
prefer the term secret agent to spy. And I report the good things,
not just the bad. Besides, I represent the company, not the
employee.”

“
Molly Bond, secret agent?
I guess it has a ring to it.” He smiled. “I can see how this could
get addictive — getting a look into other people’s lives. Wish I
had a million bucks. Heck, I’d be happy with a couple thousand
extra.”

I always hear his wish for
more money as a direct complaint about my lack of income-producing
work, but I didn’t want to ruin the nice mood we had going to fight
about it. “Anyone—wait, let’s check out the last two rules.” I
consulted the list. “Make phone contact without explicit
permission? Or solicit for investments or political
candidates?”

“
No. Phone’s been quiet
all evening. Your friends must have all been at the PTA meeting.
Political candidates? You’re kidding?”

“
Nope. Very strict
rule.”

“
Makes me wonder if a
ringer got on the list just to work for their candidate once. Oddly
specific rule,” he mused. “Politics and romance are definitely not
compatible subjects. Must be an interesting story.”

I nodded. “Unfortunately,
we’ll never know what it is—that is the fate of the lonely mystery
shopper.”

“
What do you do with all
those?” He pointed to my text document full of notes.

“
I cut and paste into the
second part of the assignment sheet and submit it.”

“
And then they pay you
part of your fee? Did you get paid for the first part
yet?”

I would have preferred not
to answer, but there was no way to avoid the question. “They’ll pay
me all at once. In sixty days.” Or ninety, if they felt like
it.

“
Two months?” He was
instantly angry. “That’s ridiculous.”

“
That’s the way it is in
this business. The client solicits the shopping company, who hands
out the assignment to the scheduler, who finds someone to do the
job, who does the job and turns in the report to the company, who
turns it in to the client, who then pays the company, who then pays
the scheduler, who then pays the shopper. More red tape than a
Fourth of July parade.”

“
Do you think any of the
people on this list got where they are by agreeing to sell
themselves short like that?”

“
Accepting the realities
of the business is not selling myself short. It’s a flexible job,
with relatively low pay, I know. But it can be fun and I learn a
lot about how businesses run. If I ever need to get a real
job—”

“
If?”

Oops. Hit a sore subject.
After fifteen years of marriage we had quite a few buried land
mines to watch out for. Sometimes I wondered what our conversations
would be like in twenty years. Maybe that’s why older couples never
seemed to say much to each other.

“
Ryan’s dyslexic, not
disorganized, Seth. He needs lots of help and support to learn to
handle this. You wouldn’t believe what I need to do with him—like
read all of his math word problems to him because he just guessed
at the operation and pulled the numbers from the problem without
reading it.”

“
He needs to get it
together. He’s too old for that nonsense.”

Sometimes I forget that
Seth doesn’t really believe in dyslexia. He thinks Ryan could read
better if he only worked harder. His refusal to read any research
on the subject infuriated me. He’s a scientist, after all. He lives
and dies by data points.