Shop and Let Die (5 page)

She had posted that little
tidbit shortly after 6 p.m. She’d had tons of replies, from those
who had done similarly hare-brained things to those who took the
opportunity to lecture on what she should have done to prevent such
an “outing” from occurring. As if their answers would do her any
good. Before she submitted her report, her scheduler had called to
tell her she was done shopping that store. Not that there wouldn’t
be plenty of newbie shoppers to take her place.

One of my most frequent
nightmares nowadays is being naked in a dressing room when the
store loudspeaker blares, “Molly Harbison is a Mystery Shopper!”
The booth slowly begins to rise around me. So far I’ve been lucky
enough to wake up by the time it reaches my knees.

I tried not to think about
being outed. After all, I’m used to feeling like an actress playing
a good mom, and none of the other PTA or Girl Scout moms seem to
have caught on to the fact that I’m not always on top of things at
home.

My first report went
smoothly, so it was no surprise when the second report kept kicking
me out every time I entered my data. Sigh.

I had a personal hissy fit
and killed the report in favor of scanning for job leads. I found
and applied for five: TESTING 1! 2! 3! BONUS$$; RETAIL SHOP, VT ME
NY AL MS TX; EASY VISION SHOP; FAST FOOD REVEAL SHOP; and, the best
of them all, because I could take the family, ENTERTAINMENT, ASAP.
I knew the company and knew that it would be for our local
miniature golf course, because I’d done the shop twice
before.

The last two times we had
done the shop Seth had made it clear he was underwhelmed with
getting two free paid passes plus a $15 shop fee. But he’d go and
enjoy himself. The kids loved miniature golf at this place. I put
my name in for the job as quickly as possible, hoping no one had
beaten me out yet.

Finally, just before I was
ready to give up and email an excuse to the scheduler of the job
that refused to let me complete my report, the site agreed to take
my answers without having a meltdown.

The third shop was really
quick: six screens, two questions each screen, with no long answers
that I’d have to carefully proofread. Work done. Time to
play.

I scanned my message board
threads, surprised at how many were warnings about the serial
killer — AVOID SERIAL KILLER - DON’T DO MALL SHOE SHOPS. Or
sporting goods shops. Or, some claimed, vision shops.

I marked all the
depressing serial killer threads read, so they’d disappear off my
screen, sent a few helpful replies and a riposte to someone’s
slightly off color mystery shopping joke. When I glanced at the
clock I was shocked to read 2:00 a.m. Darn. Seth was right, I
wouldn’t be much good without 8 hours sleep.

When I climbed into bed,
Seth was dead to the world. I had to wrestle the covers from him;
he’d curled up in them. I wrestled carefully, listening to his
breathing. At last I had enough covers, they were warmed from his
sleeping body, and I hadn’t wakened him. Point to Molly.

I snuggled in next to
Seth’s warm bulk and laid my head on the pillow, acutely aware that
I was going to be very tired tomorrow morning. Naturally, this
meant that I couldn’t fall asleep. Any other time I’d be out in
five minutes. I’m very regular about my sleep.

Seth turned on his back
and his steady breathing became a gentle snore. Great. I rubbed his
back. The snores continued. I shook the bed a little and for a
moment he stopped. I tried to talk myself into considering the
little snorting sounds a form of white noise, but as far as I know,
white noise doesn’t make you homicidal.

At last, I poked him in
the side with two stiff fingers—not enough to bruise, just enough
to make him startle awake. “What?”

I whispered urgently,
“You’re snoring. Turn over on your side.”

He turned. “I don’t
snore.” And then he was back to sleep. Snoring again.

I went to my personal
white noise device—pulling the pillow over my head and humming
loudly. If my brain hadn’t been in overdrive thinking about serial
killers in the mall, at the office, and under my bed, I’d have
fallen asleep despite the snores. But tonight, even the humming
didn’t help, so I went to the only place that would—the secret
place in my imagination that I kept hidden from everyone. The place
where I’m not a wife. Not a mother—stay-at-home, working, or
somewhere in-between.

In this secret place, I
pictured myself packing up a small suitcase and walking out past
the dishwasher full of dishes and laundry waiting to be folded.
Seth could do those. I was going to go to Tibet. Climb mountains.
Meditate in quiet solitude. Find the meaning of life.

But first, I had to walk
past the refrigerator full of leftovers. They wouldn’t starve as
long as there was peanut butter and macaroni and cheese.

Past the bikes in the
garage. Would Anna ever let Seth take off the training wheels if I
wasn’t there to push her, gently, through her fear of injury toward
greater independence? And who would wipe away her tears and bandage
her scrapes when she fell, as she must when learning to ride on
only two wheels?

I stopped, and traded
thoughts of Tibet and mountain retreats for those of car pool, and
one dinner menu to feed all.

As always, my secret
escape hatch faded away and I was held by the taffy thickness of my
family’s need for me. And me for them. And then, at last, I fell
asleep.

CHAPTER FIVE

Temptation on the Line

A bit groggy from my late night, I dropped off
the kids at school on auto pilot. There are some mornings when I
wish we lived more than a mile away from school. Then the kids
would take the school bus.

But we live half a mile
away, so no school bus. They could walk. There’s a crossing guard
on the busy street they’d need to cross. Sometimes I let Ryan walk
home with his friends, now that he’s older. But it is easier to
drive them in than deal with imagining every screech of tires is a
sign one of them has been hit by an inattentive driver.

“
Have a good day!” I said
as cheerily as I could.

Anna undid her seatbelt
and leaned into the front seat to give me a kiss on the cheek. “Be
careful, Mom.”

I could hear the
undertones of serial-killer-worry in her words. I was going to have
to ask Deb to talk to her. To explain that she didn’t have to worry
because the police were on the job and would catch this guy soon,
making the malls safe for moms once again.

Just then, she tsked me,
just like her dad. “Mom, your phone is buzzing. You have four
messages.”

I looked to where the
phone was vibrating madly, setting its nest of cords, and change,
and receipts into a bizarre dance. “I think I need to pay you to be
my assistant, Miss Observant,” I joked, kissing her on the nose. I
dug a dollar out of the nest. “Here. Get an extra chocolate milk on
me.”

Her eyes lit up and I was
glad to see the worry chased away by pride in her own helpfulness.
But then she frowned, “Remember, don’t talk on the phone when
you’re driving. It’s against the law.”

I wanted to see the
carefree light in her eyes again, so I nodded. “I’m going to park
before I listen to the messages. Promise.”

“
Good.” She climbed out
and watched me anxiously as I left the drop-off area and
deliberately found a spot where she’d see me, parked and safe. I
waved at her and she waved back before she hurried onto the
playground to join her friends.

I figured out how to
retrieve messages after a few tries. The first three were Seth, no
doubt reminding me about the job fair. I deleted them all without
listening to them.

The last one was my
favorite scheduler. “I need you, Molly. Call me back…it’s Sue with
PSS. 555-298-6622. I’m desperate. Bonus involved.”

Sue had recently started
passing me good assignments, so I dared to hope she had something
that would pay more than $10 to $15 a pop.

The Secret Shopper
Sisterhood message boards spoke of $150 massage therapy
assignments, but I’d never seen one offered on any of the sites.
Rumor had it those went only to the scheduler’s pets, unless there
was an emergency.

I waited to call Sue back
until I was home, so I could load the dishwasher and start it
running, my normal first task of the day. We used an inordinate
amount of dishes for breakfast—Seth made his healthy egg and turkey
bacon surprise, I made my one egg and a little cheese omelet, Ryan
fried two eggs over easy with a splash of Tabasco.

Only Anna ate
cereal—usually Cocoa Krispies, although sometimes she’d eat Frosted
Mini Wheats when she was on a health kick. She used a bowl and two
glasses, however. One for the orange juice with her cereal, and one
to pour the chocolate milk left after the cereal was
done.

I’d hit on that as a
tactic after an argument with her about finishing the milk in her
bowl. She didn’t want to use less milk because she liked her
Krispies to float. I didn’t like to see the milk (the healthiest
part of the meal) go to waste.

The extra glass to wash
was a small price to pay for the knowledge that all the milk was
making her bones strong, not washing down the kitchen pipes and out
to the sewer system.

After about a month
punching buttons—both dishwasher and phone—I had the dishwasher
whooshing away and the phone menu tree connecting me to Sue. “Hi
Moll!”

She sounded super
cheerful. She always sounded super cheerful, so it was difficult to
know if she had something that would pay $60 or something that
would pay $6.

“
Got your message, Sue.
What can I do for you?”

“
I’ve had a last-minute
cancellation for this mega-important client of ours. I really need
someone to pick up the assignment.”

“
It isn’t a fabulous day
at a massage spa by any chance?”

She laughed. With me, not
at me, I hoped. After all, she had always given me top scores for
the shops I did for her. But I could have simply been disingenuous.
Maybe she scored everyone high.

“’
Fraid not.” She dipped
into pseudo sorrow after the laughter. “But you can do it from
home. Frees you from worrying about the serial killer.”

“
You too? Seems like
everyone is worried about him.” She had piqued my interest in the
job, though. Even a low paying assignment from home would be worth
my time.

“
Tell me about it. I’m
paying more bonuses for shops at the mall this week than I have in
months. And if you think the shoppers are talking, you should hear
the schedulers. No one wants to be the scheduler who assigned a
killer shop.” She laughed uneasily.

“
That would be horrible.”
I shuddered in sympathy. “What’s the job?”

“
It’s an online
vendor.”

“
Goodie.” I liked those. I
could use them to prove to Seth that our monthly Internet
connection fee was worth paying.

“
All you have to do is log
on, run through a scenario, and then log on to the client site and
complete your report.”

I listened for what she
wasn’t telling me. The tricky thing about mystery shopping is how
long each part of the shop will take. Sometimes a shop will only
take five minutes—but the report will require a dissertation on the
cleanliness, friendliness, and quality of the customer service
experience. So I asked the most important question. “How long is
the report?”

“
Not long. Maybe two
pages. Short answer all the way.” Sue had been a scheduler for
quite a while. She knew what mattered to shoppers, as well as
clients.

There were only two
questions left to ask. “What’s the bonus?”

“
Twenty bucks.”

Wow. The biggest bonus I’d
managed to snag before was ten. “What’s the base pay?”

“
Ten bucks.”

Not a lot, without the
bonus. So I asked the last question on my list. “When does it have
to be completed?”

“
You have to do the shop
within the hour. Then you have to do the report immediately.” She
sounded apologetic. I wondered suddenly how many others had turned
her down for this shop.

I looked at the clock.
Unless I picked up another urgent job, the only other thing on my
to do list before picking Anna up was the job fair, so why not make
thirty bucks? “Sounds good to me.”

“
Great, I’ll email you the
rest of the info. I know you’ll do a great job.”

“
Still, I would have
preferred that massage.”

“
Listen, you’ve done me
such a favor here, maybe I’ll save a massage shop just for
you.”

“
I’ll hold you to
it.”

I took out the garbage before I started the
urgent job for Sue. The good mother in me wanted to leave it for
Ryan. Trash was supposedly his job…as if he didn’t know it was
easier for me to take it out than nag him to do it fifty times. But
I’d thrown out some moldy oozing broccoli at breakfast time, which
had made the kitchen smell like decomposing broccoli. I’d be a good
mother next time the trash was full.