Shop and Let Die (2 page)

Fortunately, I had already
written my report on the condition of the parking lot, so I didn’t
have to record that cigarette. But as I did one more mindsweep to
make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything important, I looked at the
dash clock. Kids. School. Go.

I peeled out in the
opposite direction from Donna Sommers to avoid any unintended eye
contact. Time to put Molly the spy away and become Molly the
supermom. Supermoms can leap through yellow lights and use the
special supermom warp speed to make the ten minute trip to school
in five minutes.

CHAPTER TWO

Life in the Carpool Lane

The shop had taken a little longer than I
planned—local traffic stalled by the vans and trucks setting up for
the job fair at the university that Seth had oh so casually
suggested I drop by. Fortunately, I was still five minutes early to
pick up Anna and her friend Sarah. Which was a good thing. Anna
worried if I was a minute late.

Once, in a misguided
attempt to coax her out of her fear with logic, I asked her what
she thought might have happened. I expected her to say a flat tire,
or that I forgot.

Nope. She described a
particularly gruesome car wreck—detailing the blood dripping from
my forehead, over my nose, to my chin. I realized logic would hold
no sway against an imagination that intense. Now I just made sure
not to be late. And I blocked the Discovery channel—those real
crime shows weren’t doing her any good.

I was third-mom-in-line
when I pulled up to the school. A prime spot in the line of parents
waiting to pick up their children, especially since Timmy Barlow’s
mom was first in line—she tended to park centered on the big yellow
no-parking zone right next to the front doors. Which meant, even as
third-mom-in-line, I was parked where the more cautious of us park
when we’re first-mom-in.

Parents aren’t really
supposed to park up so close, but we all do anyway. Well, all of us
who sit in the car and wait for our kids to come to us.

Some parents actually park
in the parking lot, get out of the car and let their children play
on the playground for a few minutes. Like Alice Belding, who waved
to me from the teeter-totter where her pre-school toddlers are
waiting for the bell to ring and free their big brother Ben from
kindergarten.

Alice is always smiling
and calm, despite the children tugging on her arm or shouting “Look
at me, Mom!” She doesn’t ever seem to worry about getting from one
place to another on time. I’ve seen the mindsweep look on her face,
though, when she’s gathering up backpacks and snack bags—or when
one child is temporarily MIA, hidden behind the trash barrel or
under the wooden platform in the middle of the
playground.

I waved back, tempted to
get out of the car and go catch up on the gossip that Alice has
undoubtedly accumulated since I talked to her last week. But just
then the bell rang.

Timmy Barlow was first out
the door—but he did not head to his mother’s car. Instead, he ran
to the slide, shedding his backpack as he ran so that he could
climb nimbly up and roar like a lion at the two boys who had
followed him and were halfway up the ladder, too. My stomach
clutched as he stood balanced at the top of the slide that was
three times his height, as if he didn’t know he could fall and
break something with just one wrong step.

Timmy’s mom didn’t get out
of her car. But she did honk. Once, quickly. And then again. Timmy
waited for the second sharp honk. Then he turned, swooped down the
slide, scooped up his backpack and ran to the car. My stomach
unclenched fully by the time his hand snagged the backpack up and
flung it over his shoulder.

Anna, only half listening
to her best friend, flowed out with the stragglers. I could see
Sarah’s lips flapping—they’re always flapping; that child could
talk a flea off a dog. I don’t know whether it was my mystery shop
heightened sense, or just plain supermom vision, but the first
detail I noticed was that Anna’s brow was knit like an old woman’s
as she ran past Timmy and his mom’s SUV, which couldn’t move until
the flow of children exiting the school ceased.

Timmy’s mom drove a huge
SUV, and parked a little crooked. I guess the SUV had blocked my
short little girl’s view of her mother’s car, setting off her worry
alarm.

To combat her worry habit,
I once explained that, if I were late, she could go to the office
and wait for me, or her dad. She’d asked, “But then what if you
come to get me and don’t see me and go home without me?”

I’d reassured her that if
I failed to see her, I would go to the office and have her paged,
and if that didn’t work, I’d call 911 and send out an Amber
Alert.

I thought knowing I
wouldn’t just up and leave would be reassuring. She thought she’d
die of embarrassment if I accidentally called an Amber alert when
she was in the bathroom. No wonder there are so many working
mothers—even a bad boss gives you more slack than your own
child.

Anna spotted me and her
frown eased, as she ran toward the car and hopped into the back. “I
didn’t think you’d be on time.” She clicked her seatbelt and double
checked it. I looked at her in the rearview mirror and put up my
left eyebrow in supermom-telepathy style.

She sighed, as if my
eyebrow was an annoying torture device. “Hi mom. School was
fine.”

Sarah shrugged off her
backpack and did up her seatbelt, too. “Hi, Mrs. Harbison. Guess
what we did today? We got to play the drums. Mrs. Lundy let us all
play, even Timmy Barlow, although she told him if he broke the
drums like he did the piano last week, he’d have to pay for
it.”

I’m lucky Anna and Sarah
are best friends, because I can take full advantage of the
mini-Wednesday free afternoon, when I know Sarah will come home
with us. Sarah collected the second grade gossip as naturally as
she breathed. “So, did he break the drums?”

“
No. We all watched, but
he didn’t this time. Maybe next week. We’re supposed to get to use
the cymbals next week.”

“
Cymbals. That sounds like
fun.” Or a migraine in the making, but no point in saying that to
the girls.

Every Wednesday I get an
update on Anna’s week, the scandals of the second grade—and a
reminder that there is a happy medium between not talking at all
and not ever hushing up. “I asked Anna, but she didn’t know. Are we
going shopping with you today?”

Ummm. Right. Not going to
make that mistake again. “Not today, Sarah.”

Not ever again. Last time
I brought Sarah with me, she very candidly scolded the clerk for
not smiling—“Don’t you know you get points off for that?” Since I
was supposed to come and go in super-stealth mode, I crossed my
fingers and hoped I’d get paid. And promised myself I would not try
to mix and match motherhood and mystery shopping again.

“
Oh. I hope we get to do
that again soon. You’re lucky to have an interesting
job.”

I smiled. “Your mom
catches real criminals, though. That’s more important than making
sure a store is sweeping its floor regularly.” Sarah’s interest is
always flattering, but her mother Deb was my best friend and a real
police officer with a badge and everything, even if right now she’s
stuck on paperwork duty.

Sarah’s face crinkled in
disagreement. “My mom doesn’t get any treats when she does her
detective work. She doesn’t even get to leave her desk.”

I suppressed a laugh. Life
from a child’s point of view. I agreed with Sarah about the
treats—I like getting a free latte, which tastes just fine after
I’ve stuck in a thermometer and weighed it on my handy dandy
scale.

I wish my own family
thought my job was interesting. But whenever I tried to talk about
it, the quiet around the table—or in the car—became intense. In my
family’s opinion, mothers are meant to listen, not to be listened
to.

Sarah bounced in the back
seat. “If we’re not going shopping, what are we going to do,
then?”

“
I thought we’d go to the
Discovery Museum. They’re having a two for one special for the
dinosaur exhibit.”

“
Cool.” There were times
when I wished Sarah were my daughter. Especially when she was
enthusiastic about my plans.

Anna frowned. “But Mom, if
we go to the museum, we’ll miss the new episode of Jelly
Rangers.”

I know other mothers who
forbid their children television. Sometimes I’m tempted. “It will
be rerun.”

“
But Jelly Pink is going
to find out what her special talent is.”

I tried a generous
application of supermom logic. “Who knows when the dinosaur exhibit
will come back here? It’s not like we live in a big city, Anna. We
Mainers have to take advantage of our opportunities when they
present themselves.”

I could see in the rear
view mirror that I was having zero influence. Sarah patted her hand
and got right to the real objection. “It’ll be fun Anna—and they’re
not real dinosaurs, they can’t eat us.”

Anna looked at us both
doubtfully and sighed. “They could fall on us and crush us, even if
they aren’t real.”

“
We can run faster than
fake dinosaurs.” Sarah was absolutely certain of this, and I had no
intention of putting even a slight shade of doubt in her mind.
After all, I was supermom this afternoon, and if they couldn’t
outrun falling fake dinosaurs, I could.

“
What if the serial killer
is there?”

“
There are no serial
killers in Bangor, Maine.” I said firmly. Had she been watching
Discovery again without my knowledge?

Sarah answered my question
and Anna’s at the same time. “My mom is going to catch him.
Besides, he kills ladies in the shopping mall. The museum is not a
shopping mall.”

“
Fine. I do like
dinosaurs.” Anna gave in. She always gave in to Sarah. Sometimes I
wished she would be more flexible on her own. And sometimes I was
just content to let Sarah lead Anna into doing what needed to be
done.

“
What about Ryan?” Sarah,
bless her precocious heart, had a crush on my son—who considered
her no more than a nuisance he had to endure.

“
He went home with his
friend Stephen today.”

“
Too bad. He’ll miss the
museum.”

Yes, Ryan would be
heartbroken. He loved dinosaurs. However, he loved Stephen’s tree
house even more and, being a clever young man, he knew he could
leverage a trip to the museum with his father. Which was okay with
me. Chasing around two little girls was plenty, I didn’t need to
add a twelve-going-on-twenty boy or two.

The museum was, unfortunately, dinosaur lite. I suppose I
shouldn’t have expected more than that—it was aimed at elementary
school aged children, after all.

As the girls listened
raptly to the docent explain the scenario of a mother dinosaur
standing over a nest of hatching and newly hatched baby dinosaurs,
a heavily pregnant woman with an empty twin stroller plunked down
on the bench next to me.

Her belly moved beneath
the thin cotton of her sheath dress and I had to sit on my hands
for a minute to prevent myself from reaching out to touch. People
had done that to me and I hadn’t minded. Most of the time. But
other women did. Especially when they got as far along as she
looked to be.

She slipped out of her
comfortable flats with a sigh and stuck her feet out in front of
her, wiggling her swollen toes. “That’s the way to do it. Eggs. Pop
‘em out, let em crack open, and then the little buggers are on
their own.”

I smiled, keeping an eye
on Anna, Sarah, and the woman’s very cute and energetic tow-headed
twins, as they all tried hard to obey the docent and fight the
temptation to climb over the gate and ride the dinosaurs. “It would
be easier on the moms for sure.”

The woman closed her eyes
and I thought she’d fallen asleep, when she chuckled softly. “At
least the mama dinosaurs could sleep more than two hours at a
time.”

“
True.” I remembered the
days of two a.m. feedings and toddlers with nightmares, though
nowadays I only woke up once or twice at night to monitor the peace
and quiet before I slipped back into sleep. “But it’s only for a
few years.”

“
Years? No way? Not me.”
She shifted to find nonexistent comfort on the hard plastic bench.
“Six weeks. And I’m counting the days until I’m back to
work.”

“
What do you do?” As much
as I hate that question, it pops out anyway.

“
Tax law. Ferber and
James.” She doesn’t sound tired when she says the firm name,
proudly, as though I should recognize it.

I felt vaguely ashamed
that I don’t, but I can’t say why. Seth does our taxes and we don’t
have anything more complicated than a mortgage deduction and an
IRA. “Law. Wow. And three kids. I don’t know how you do
it.”

“
My mother. She’s a
saint.”

“
My mother lives too far
away.” To my ears, that sounded more like an excuse for why I’m not
a tax lawyer with three children, too, than a casual comment. Not
that she’s asked what I do. Yet.