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He meandered to the far corner of the store. He was well-dressed, had a nice watch on. I wasn’t worried about him shoplifting. At seven-twenty I was finally bored enough to open up a spreadsheet. That was when I remembered the weight discrepancies. I needed to go back and check the scales.

“Miss?” The man raised his voice. He was still in the back corner of the store.

“Yes?”

“There’s a figurine back here. I don’t see a price. Can you come help me?”

I sighed quietly. “Sure.”

When I made it to him, I saw he was looking at Miss Goddard’s ceramic pieces. I only ever got five a year. I kept them up high so children wouldn’t get to them. “The prices are on these panels in front of them. They’re hand-sculpted by Margaret Goddard out of Chattanooga. The one you’re holding is seven-hundred-and-ninety dollars.”

He gave me a cold smile. “I’ll take it.” He reached into his jacket and for the first time, all of Adam’s warnings hit me like a ton of bricks, but it was too late. I was a dead woman.

He pulled out his wallet. “Do you take American Express?”

All the air went out of my lungs in one relieved breath. “I do.”

He handed me his card. My hand trembled just a little as I took it from him.

No criminal would give me his credit card. I was out of my mind. Wasn’t I?

“I’ll ring you up. Why don’t I follow you up to the register?”

“Ladies first.”

Fuck!

I fast-walked in front of him to the register. I got behind the register, and calmed down when I was inches away from the panic button. “Would you like me to wrap this?”

“Just put it in a box.”

I did.

After I rang him up, he thanked me and left.

I was never so happy to turn my sign to Closed and lock the door.

As soon as I made it to the register, I hit the wall, slid down to the floor, and started to tremble.

“You get five minutes of this bullshit, then pull it together, Woman.”

I took a couple deep breaths, then stood up.

Okay, onto real work. I went to the back and went straight to the shipping station. Lance kept things really neat, which I appreciated. I looked at the scale. I used to use it, so I knew how to check the calibration. I just needed something to check it with. I zeroed it out, then found a shrink-wrapped package holding a five-pound box of handmade chocolates. I put it on the scale. The scale registered just over five-and-a-half pounds. No way the box and packing material weighed that much extra.

That’s weird.

I needed something else to weigh.

I looked around Lance’s area, then down in his cabinet, and found two more packages, both the exact same thing, both shrink-wrapped the same. I zeroed out the scale again and weighed them. Both went over what they should have been, one by just a pound, the other by a pound and a half.

“What the hell?”

I tore into the packaging. Pills spilled out. Hundreds of white, oblong pills.

“Holy fuck!”

“I wish you hadn’t done that.”