Shop and Let Die

Book 1

Kelly McClymer

Copyright © <2014> Kelly McClymer

All rights reserved.

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Dedication

To all the secret shoppers out there keeping an eye on efficiency, courtesy, and cleanliness.

And sending a special happy birthday to Nancy Sakris, a mystery lover and reader extraordinaire, who is much loved by her daughter Kirsten.

Other Books by Kelly McClymer

Secret Shopper Mom Mystery series

Shop and Let Die

License to Shop

Once Upon a Wedding series

The Fairy Tale Bride

The Star-Crossed Bride

The Unintended Bride

The Infamous Bride

The Next Best Bride

The Impetuous Bride

The Twelfth Night Bride

FOR TEENS…and the young at heart…

Blood Angel

Getting to Third Date

The Salem Witch Tryouts

Competition’s a Witch

She’s a Witch Girl

Must Love Black

Must Love Halloween

CHAPTER ONE

Life in the Express Checkout Lane

The clerk wasn’t going to give me my receipt. Damn. She was just a kid, too. She had that glowing, wrinkle-free skin of the very young.

IRENE, the orange name tag—at regulation height, just above the baby blue smock pocket—read. An old fashioned name for someone who probably wasn’t yet legal to drink. I smiled, fiddled a moment with my bag of groceries, gave her every opportunity to remember the oversight. No go.

She’d done everything else on my checklist perfectly—greeted me in a friendly manner, asked if I’d found the items I was looking for, carefully scanned and packed my groceries, checked the eggs in the carton were not cracked or broken and the bread wouldn’t be crushed.

To crash and burn at the last minute was heartbreaking. For me. Irene wouldn’t find out the bad news until after her shift was over.

Okay, so I shouldn’t get so wrapped up in what other people do right or—in this case—wrong. But she was so close.

In one last ditch effort, I looked back at the mints and gum, as if thinking about adding some at the last minute. As I did, my eye caught the MISSING MOM flyer hanging just above Irene’s head, right next to the reminder that any customer who was not offered a receipt could get $5 off their next visit. The woman on the flyer looked a little like me — hair not perfectly brushed, eyes a little desperate. But her smile was genuine.

I broke script. Just a little bit. After all, it seemed like any normal customer would say something about that flyer. I hope she just ran off with the pool boy.

Irene glanced at the flyer. She has a nice smile, doesn’t she?

The woman behind me in line chimed in, Anything would be better than being the Shopping Mall Killer’s next victim.

Irene smiled at her and then glanced back at me. Would you like help with your bags, ma’am?

No thank you. I was forbidden to ask for the receipt. So now poor Irene went from a perfect score of 10, down to 7.

Receipts are worth 3 points. And anything less than a perfect 10 means the $25 gift certificate in my pocketbook stays in my pocketbook.

Sometimes I hate mystery shopping.

Irene the baby cashier flashed me a real smile. Have a great day. Yep, not one fine line around her eyes.

I gave my scripted customer-to-clerk reply. Thanks. You too. Feeling like a feckless double agent, I skulked away to snitch to the manager of the store, bag of groceries clutched to my chest, acutely aware I had no receipt to prove they were mine should anyone challenge me.

Unlike some of the kids who waited on me, Irene had meant her salutation. Have a good day. Poor thing.

I had meant mine, too. I never wished a bad day on anyone who risked carpal tunnel on a daily basis by running other people’s twelve-packs of soda through the beeper scan thingie.

Unfortunately, after I talked to Irene’s manager and showed him his Instant Store Score, she was not going to have a very good day.

I consoled myself with the thought that it wasn’t personal. I just had a job to do.

Molly the dime store secret agent strikes again.

Whenever a mystery shop goes wrong, I wonder why I do it. But I know the deep dark truth. When I was twelve, after a long summer day reading Harriet the Spy, I switched my career ambition from being a top fashion model to being a spy. The art of the mysterious has called to me ever since.

So why was I in our local SuperiorMart playing dime store secret agent instead of traveling around the world on the CIA’s dime? Simple. A husband and kids are not the best accessories for the trenchcoat lifestyle.

I stood outside the manager’s closed office door for a moment before I knocked. Channeling my Secret Shopper mojo, I took a moment to study the framed picture of the employee of the month. He had a jarring smile considering his picture was positioned just above another flyer asking for any information about the missing local mom. I knocked firmly.

The manager—she, not he—was an overworked, freckle-faced red head who looked up from what appeared to be a logistics schedule for a massive military invasion but was probably just the next week’s work schedule.

Her nametag was blue and gave her whole name, DONNA SOMMERS, Manager. Do the people at Corporate have name tags with all three of their names? Is that how to break the nametag code? More responsibility equals more names?

I introduced myself, using the script I had been given. One blink was all it took before Donna realized I was not a customer registering a complaint.

Her eyes narrowed and her shoulders squared. I was from Corporate (in an indirect way—corporate hired the company that hired the person who hired me…but still…). And she was going to deal with me professionally and efficiently, just like she’d been trained.

I politely nodded and made sympathetic noises as she assured me she had trained all her employees to follow procedure properly, stressing this was just an oversight. I couldn’t bear to meet the efficient and sincere gaze. Definitely some wrinkles there. They probably deepened when she smiled, like mine did. Maybe. She didn’t smile for me.

I broke script a little—how could I not?—I emphasized, studying the pictures of Donna’s three happy freckled kids taped above her desk, how close Irene had come, if only she’d given me a receipt. And I glossed over the fact—I was required to tell her, or I wouldn’t have been able to bring myself to do it—that she herself would have been rewarded with a gift certificate if Irene had scored a perfect 10.

By the time I got to the third part of the instant store score—cleanliness—Donna Sommers had checked her watch four times. I started talking faster, but that only made her prop her arm so she could pretend to look at the score sheet while she was really watching the time.

Am I keeping you? I wasn’t supposed to keep management from their appointed rounds. I’d scheduled my shop during the slow time, just like I’d been told. But slow times aren’t always slow.

She blushed bright red, to match her hair, and her freckles got darker instead of blending in. Interesting. Her sincere, steady, efficient tone of voice lowered to a whisper. I have to pick my kids up from school.

I stood up. Of course.

She stammered, still in a whisper, It’s my break you understand, I don’t use company time.

She didn’t have to explain to me, but the Corporate cachet attached to my presence forced it out of her.

I raised my hand. Just let me cover these last two points quickly. I delivered my spiel so fast there’s no way she understood what I said. But it wasn’t rocket science. She knew the most important part. Her instant store score wasn’t perfect.

There wasn’t a lot of sympathy in Donna’s blue eyes as we shook hands—she’d have liked a gift certificate, too.

Who knows what she might have brought home for those smiling children if she’d gotten a gift certificate. Maybe a box of cookies. Or cinnamon buns. They made good cinnamon buns at Superior Mart—which was why I needed to lose 30 pounds.

Out in the parking lot I dismissed the warning that my cell phone battery was low, found the evaluation form app with the gray trench coat icon, checked to make sure there was no one nearby to see what I was doing (spies—and secret shoppers—are not supposed to get caught) and quickly filled in my notes.

The clerk wore a blue button down shirt under her neatly pressed apron. Her nametag was placed just above the store’s logo, as it should be. She had short blond hair and a small tongue stud. And eyes clear of any worry that she’d forgotten something important because she hasn’t had children yet (no I didn’t really put in that last part—but I noticed it).

Ever since I started mystery shopping, I’ve been noticing how many mothers are out there in the working world. It’s eerie how easy it is to tell who they are. They’re the ones who have a haunted, I’m sure I’ve forgotten something, look in their eyes.

Like Donna Sommers as she waited politely at her desk for me to leave first, fingering her keys like worry beads.

Like the woman on the MISSING flyer, come to think of it.

I know that look. I see it in the mirror every time I brush my teeth and my hair. I try not to. But I do. We pretend we have it together, we mothers. But there’s always that periodic lurching mindsweep: What am I forgetting?

In fact, I had one of those moments as I finished the mystery shop and looked at the form and the twenty questions I had to answer in detail in order to get paid. For a minute, my mind went blank. Utterly and completely blank like a memory black hole.

This happened to me often when I started a report. Falling off a cliff would have felt better…at least until I hit ground. Secret shoppers live and die by the details we can remember and record in our reports. Don’t want to report a yellow name tag if it was blue. Or accidentally rename a clerk Sam when his name is clearly Stan.

Fear of failure, my fellow shoppers diagnosed, with great sympathy, when I told them. Only one other shopper confessed to suffering from the black hole effect, though.

So far, at least with mystery shopping, all the necessary details have flooded in and I’ve gotten excellent scores on my mystery shopping reports. Oh yeah, we spies who rate others get rated too. Life’s fair that way sometimes.

With the contents of my memory safely recorded on my smart phone, I got behind the wheel and started the car. I didn’t pull out right away because I didn’t want to attract the notice of Donna Sommers, who had just come out of the employee door, moving at the speed of a supermom, and climbed into her beat up SUV.

She didn’t close the door immediately. Instead, she lit a cigarette, leaned over, closed her eyes, and took three deep drags. Without exhaling, she then tossed the smoking remains to the asphalt, closed her door, and backed out of her parking space at warp speed.

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