Page 92 of Big Bad Wolfe

The child nodded glumly. “I guess.”

“Cheer up. Maybe while we’re there, we can find a toy.”

“A toy?” Casey’s face lit up. “Wow! Donnie Ray got a turbo-tank water blaster that’s really rad! They’d be sofunfor water-fights! Can I have one of them?”

“Deal. Let’s go.”

The little boy chattered about the toy all the way there. Zane pulled into the crowded Super Value-World parking lot which resembled a free-for-all destruction derby. A huge red banner draped across the front of the gray brick building announced:Super Value-World Super Summer Clearance Sale.

“Super,” Zane muttered. He parked in one of the two spaces left in outer Mongolia, and trekked with Casey toward the store. He shopped as infrequently as possible, and never for food. A housekeeping service kept his kitchen stocked with basics, but he usually ordered out anyway.

Four lone carts were wedged in a straggly group outside the store. The blasted things were stuck together as tightly as teenagers on prom night. After wrestling them apart, he attempted to steer one inside. Three of the wheels went straight, but the fourth wheel stubbornly veered to the left.

“Ya got a sidewinder.” Casey giggled. “That’s what Aunt Jelly calls them woggley carts.”

Chuckling, Zane shoved it aside and grabbed a second cart. As they entered the store, he tugged the list from his pocket. “Bread, milk, eggs. Casey, do you know where they keep the bread?”

“This way.” Casey took point and Zane wheeled the cart behind him, dodging a deluge of shoppers as a headache began to pulse behind his eyes.

“Can we get my turbo water blaster now? Huh? Can we?”

“Later.” Zane turned down the bakery aisle. He shifted from foot to foot in front of the stacked shelves. Who knew there were four hundred varieties of bread? Finally, he grabbed three different loaves and tossed them in the cart. “Milk?”

“Way over on the other side.”

Figured. He tried to turn in the narrow space and was rammed by another cart wielded with deadly accuracy by an eighty year-old woman in a neon pink muumuu.

“You blind, Hot Pants?” she snarled. “The eyeglasses are on aisle seven.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” Geez, these super shoppers were ruthless. On his way to the dairy section, he passed an end display of economy size extra-strength ibuprofen. Ibuprofen wasn’t on the list, but he grabbed a box and threw it into the cart.

Casey sprinted too far ahead of him and he lost sight of the child. “Casey!” he shouted. “Come back!”

Casey jumped into view from behind a tower of cookie packages at the end of the aisle. “Boo!Over here, Zane!” He grabbed a box of frosted animal cookies. “Can we get these? Huh, can we?”

Cookies weren’t on the list, either. Jillian usually made them. “Eh, why not?” Zane accepted the box and added it to the cart. Casey rocketed off again toward the dairy case. By the time Zane reached him, Casey had opened a carton of eggs and was zealously feeling each egg.

“Aunt Jelly checks to make sure they’re not cracked before she buys ‘em.”

“Don’t—” Zane intercepted the carton a second too late to stop three eggs from plopping onto the floor.

“Oops.” The little boy looked down at the slimy mess, then up at him, eyes wide. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

“I know. But don’t touch stuff. And stay with me.” He sighed and rubbed the knotted muscles at the back of his neck. He put two undamaged cartons of eggs and a gallon of milk into his cart, then found a harried clerk and informed her of the mess.

As she trumpeted, “Hazard spill team to dairy!” he wrangled the cart to the produce section.

He again passed the ibuprofen display and tossed in another box, and a six-pack of beer.

Absorbed in trying to figure out if he was supposed to buy the green bananas and wait for them to turn yellow, or buy the yellow ones that were already going brown, he heard a childish squeal accompanied by ominous rumbling. The sound of loud, wet splats quickly followed. He whirled to see Casey standing in the midst of a wrecked battlefield of smashed cantaloupes.

“Oops.” Casey cringed. “Them cant-elopes just fell down.”

He prayed for patience. “All by themselves? Imagine that.”

“It wasn’t on purpose.”

The sadistic hammer in his head pounded viciously. “Look, I told you to stay with me and not to touch anything. I meant it.”

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