License to Shop (13 page)

What was going
on?

When they came back, they
all three looked like death warmed over.

The Dean whispered quietly
to the library director, who then went to the mic and said, “I’m so
sorry. We’re going to have to stay here for a little while. It
seems the police have put the campus and the community on lockdown
for the time being.

The crowd started talking,
at first quietly and then more loudly, as we all realized what
lockdown meant.

I scooted over to
Dierdre’s side, hoping she’d know what was going on. Instead, she
took my arm, “Molly, I think we should do something to keep this
crowd happy. Do you think your mother would mind doing a little
crowd control?”

“
She’d love it,” I
said.

She smiled warmly, “Can
you introduce me?”

“
Of course.” I felt like
an idiot as I realized I should have done this before the program.
Sometimes I miss the social niceties because I was born a dork.
Even being raised by the Hands-On Homemaker couldn’t save me from
my inadequacies.

The library director was
talking quietly to my mother when we approached. She grew silent
when she saw us. I took that as my opportunity to butt
in.

“
Mom,” I said, “I want you
to meet Deirdre. She’s the wife of Seth’s college dean. And she’s a
heart surgeon.”

I might have continued on
in that fashion until I ran out of fascinating Deirdre tidbits to
share, if Deirdre didn’t rescue me by reaching out her hand to my
mother, and saying, “I’m so pleased to meet you Mrs.
Dobbs.”

“
Ariadne, please,” my
mother said graciously.

“
Ariadne,” Deirdre said,
cutting to the chase, “I think we’re going to need to calm this
panicked crowd.”

“
You’re right,” my mother
said.

“
How can I help?” Deirdre
asked. The library director, looking relieved, stepped up and
nodded toward my mother with a silent “Me too.”

The library director
consulted with my mother and Deirdre and then, all agreed, my
mother took the mic. She tapped it a few times, until the crowd
grew quiet.

My mother smiled her
patented let’s-make-everything-better smile, and said, “Everyone,
please. This is a bad situation, but I have a suggestion. Why don’t
we break into tables of six or eight, and play some games. The
library director tells me we have the old favorites, like Monopoly,
and Yahtzee, and Trivial Pursuit.”

Not wanting to give anyone
time to object, the director and Deirdre moved around the room and
handed out games to every table. They then deputized someone at
each table to be game monitor.

My mother beamed at all
the activity, and said cheerily, as she dug into one of her
Hands-On Homemaker suitcases, “Meanwhile, let me see what I can
whip up to feed us all.”

Having had no luck prying
what was happening from Deirdre, I went to Seth. “What’s going
on?”

“
Someone was found
murdered on campus. The police had a tip the murderer had fled into
town. They believe the culprit is long gone, but they have to
follow procedures. They should clear the campus in an hour or two,
and then the town. They called in help from the adjacent
towns.”

An hour or two?

Murdered? I thought of all
the people I knew who worked on campus, or took classes, or just
liked to walk the winding paths. My stomach clenched. “Do they know
who it was?”

I could Seth was doing the
same thing I had done — thinking of all the people he knew who
could be the victim. “A man is all I know. They aren’t likely to
release the name until the campus is cleared and they’ve notified
relatives and university staff.”

“
True.”

Deirdre and the dean came
over to us. Deirdre looked impressed. “Your mother is amazing,
Molly. She has everyone acting as if nothing unusual is going
on.”

“
That’s Mom,” I
said.

The dean smiled and said,
“You’re very lucky to be her daughter.”

“
You can’t even imagine,”
I replied, leaving him to think I meant it positively.

I suddenly spotted Kecia
at one of the tables, playing a game of Chutes and Ladders. She had
a little girl with her. I went to greet her. “Is this your
daughter?” I asked.

She looked up. “Molly,
your mother is amazing. I want to be her when I grow
up.”

“
Me, too.”

Kecia kissed her
daughter’s head. “Phoebe, this is Molly. I work with
her.”

Phoebe buried her head in
her mother’s shoulder and peeked at me shyly. She was a cutie, with
curly brown hair, big brown eyes, and two dimples when she
smiled.

“
Do you know what’s going
on?” Kecia asked.

“
Just what they told us. I
hope the lockdown doesn’t go on too long.”

Kecia nodded. “I’m just
glad your mother is here to make sure we have the best lockdown of
our lives.”

Everyone at the table
laughed.

It was almost two hours
later when the Dean’s phone rang. We all jumped and stopped what we
were doing to look at him.

He spoke quietly into the
phone, nodded twice, even though the person on the other end
couldn’t possibly see him, and then ended the call. He went to the
library director and whispered to her. They went to the front of
the room, where the microphone sat.

The Dean took up the mic
and said, “I’m sorry to say that an employee of the university was
murdered tonight. The campus, and town, were searched thoroughly,
but the murderer escaped.”

“
What does this killer
look like? Am I going to drive past him on my way home?” someone
asked. Several people nodded, as if they wanted the answer to that
question, too.

“
Please be careful as you
drive home tonight. There were no witnesses, so there is no
description of the culprit.” The Dean continued, reassuringly,
“There is no reason to believe the murderer is interested in
killing anyone else. The police believe this was a botched mugging,
as the victim had his wallet, his backpack, and a signet ring
stolen.

I immediately thought of
Robert Quartermaine, the Admissions Counselor and his big ring. But
that was just my imagination running wild. Wasn’t it?

Seth and Dr. Stubbs had
gone over to talk to the Dean. The three of them had their heads
together for a little while before Seth returned to me.

“
Do they know who it is?”
I mostly wanted to know who it was so I’d know it wasn’t anyone I
knew. Whenever I heard bad news that happened near where someone I
knew lived or worked, I held my breath until I was sure they were
okay.

But Seth blew that out of
the water when he said, “Robert Quartermaine. He works for
Henriette.”

“
I know who he is. I met
him at my second interview.” I tried to imagine that charming young
man dead on campus, but my mind refused to go there. It was just
too horrible to believe. “He said he took a physics course with you
when he was a student here.”

Seth frowned, as if he
were trying to dredge up a memory, but then shook his head. “He may
have.”

Deirdre came over, “Molly,
I think it best if we don’t attend the dinner party tomorrow. You
understand, all of this is going to give the dean a great deal of
work to do. Talking to reporters, students, parents. Given the
circumstances…”

“
Of course. Consider the
party postponed.” I reassured her in a daze. I had forgotten there
would even be a dinner party. Or a tomorrow. A young man — a
gorgeous young man who I had shaken hands with, joked with, hoped
would think I was the right person to be his colleague — had been
struck down. He was no more.

We all sat there stunned
to silence by the multitude of questions we were all struggling
with. One macabre thought kept spinning through my mind: Death was
the biggest identity thief of all.

On Friday morning, when I came down, my mother
was in the kitchen making animal-shaped pancakes with blueberry
eyes and whipped cream mouths for my children.

She’d used the blueberries
and whipping cream I’d bought for my blueberry mouse. I didn’t
chide her. The dinner party was off, for now, but the blueberries
needed to be used before they turned moldy.

“
Good morning,
sleepyhead,” she said to me.

I badly wanted to point
out that I had not even hit the snooze button on my alarm once. I
was, in fact, awake exactly when I planned to be. Exactly when I
needed to be, to roust sleepy children from their beds. Unless
their grandmother happened to be visiting and they suddenly turned
into traitors who willingly woke before my alarm went
off.

Years of experience in
such discussions guided me though, and I held my tongue. If I
thought 6:00 a.m. was the perfect time to rise, my mother would no
doubt extoll the merits of 5:00 a.m. No way did I want to get into
an argument that might convince me to feel guilty for not getting
up earlier. I didn’t need to hit the snooze alarm for an hour
because I’d been intimidated into setting my alarm too
early.

“
I thought we could
reorganize your kitchen today, since you don’t have to prepare for
the dinner party any longer.”

“
I like the kitchen
organized the way it is,” I said, mentally recalculating my
schedule. If I left her alone in the house, she’d go ahead and
reorganize, undoing all the good that Nancy had done to my
kitchen.

She offered another
alternative. “How about painting the living room? I think it would
be adorable in a pale peach, with electric white trim.”

I poured myself a cup of
the coffee she’d already made and scrambled to think what I could
do to keep her busy today.

While my brain waited for
the jolt of caffeine to get it started, I reflected I owed Bianca
for making sure that Saturday would be busy for my mother. From the
sound of it, half the town would be there Saturday, stuffed into
the high school lunchroom. Still, today it was on me to keep my
mother away from my cabinets.

We could do lunch. She
loved to do lunch. Not that she typically loved the lunch, but
critiquing the restaurant decor, staffing, and food, gave her great
pleasure. I knew just the restaurant, too. I could do a mystery
shop at the same time.

As the coffee started
working its magic on my brain, I realized I’d have to find
something to convince her to come with me to drop the kids off at
school. It didn’t take me long to do drop-off, but it would be
enough time for her to empty out all the nicely-rearranged
cabinets.

I sighed. “Mom, would you
like to come with me this morning to pick out a new tablecloth? I
think you’re right, mine has seen better days.”

“
That sounds like fun. I’m
so glad you listened to me, Molly. They don’t call me the Hands-On
Homemaker for no reason.”

No, they called her that
because she’d branded and trademarked the name. But I did not say
that aloud.

“
Great. And we can go to
lunch after. There’s this new burrito bar you will just
love.”

Yes, I had given in on the
point I dug my heels in on the previous day, when she had mentioned
my white tablecloth was worn to nubs and needed to be replaced. But
it was only a tablecloth. And once I had her in the store, we’d be
able to go right from there to lunch, and then it would be almost
time to pick up the kids from school. Surely by then I could invent
another errand to keep her in the car, with me, away from my
cabinets.

“
Burrito bar?” She looked
skeptical.

“
They do a salad burrito.
Very healthy. I want to see what you think of it.”

My mother nodded. “That
does sound interesting. And then we can go find a decent stylist to
fix that hair of yours.”

So much for finding
another errand to fill out the afternoon. I looked at Seth, who had
come downstairs and was holding Jasmine in his arms, safe from The
Hands-On Homemaker’s glare. We shared a commiserating glance. This
was definitely not a TGIF moment.

It was going to be a long
weekend.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Thought I Was the One

Friday didn’t go quite as badly as I expected.
Instead of mystery shopping, I did mother-daughter
shopping.

I followed my mother
around all the dollar and discount stores in the area as she
collected bits and bobs to replenish her supplies. The two-hour
lockdown at the library had depleted her stores considerably more
than she’d anticipated.

As promised, she did help
me fix my hair. With a practiced eye, she looked into the mall
shop, identified the stylist she liked, and dragged me in to get my
hair fixed. The poor stylist shuddered when she saw my hair, and
patiently listened as my mother told her, in detail, how to fix
it.

We all agreed, looking in
the mirror, that the two of them had done miracles.