One #3
Wait. Was she really going to do this, or was this the martinis talking?
She was rusty, and she didn’t have the girls to poke holes in her theory until all four of them were convinced the idea was fail-safe.
But who would question an elderly woman falling in a grocery store?
No one. Absolutely no one. You practically expected elderly women to fall in grocery stores.
And if they did question it, she’d put it on social media, a little old lady done dirty by the big corporate grocery store. Her idea was foolproof.
Just like the good old days, she felt suddenly invigorated.
Even a little giddy. She would be breaking the gang’s cardinal rule, because no one was on the receiving end of this lesson.
And she recalled how harshly she and Edie had been chastised by Irene and Joan for that very thing when they’d pulled the scam at the convenience store.
But Frances could justify this as a practice run and necessary to her mental health.
A practice run? She’d gone from keeping the thief side of her dormant for years to suddenly needing a practice run?
For what, more scams? That was crazy! But then …
why not? Just the idea was giving her the kick in the pants she’d been needing for months.
What else was she going to do? Join another club?
Square-dance? Date some old dude with a bottle of Viagra and get an STD?
She was doing this. Watch out, supermarkets. Franny is back in town.
She and her squeaky cart veered to the left, away from the produce and toward the aisles with sodas or vegetable oil or industrial-sized containers of lotion.
She had to contain her enthusiasm for her con, making sure to walk slowly and carefully, so that anyone who might be asked later would remember seeing her dodder along.
The baking aisle with the oils was crowded with shoppers, so Frances moved on.
She ruled out lotion as the bottles were too small and it would take quite a lot to make a convincing mess.
She needed liquid and lots of it. She headed for the drink aisle, turning and wheeling her empty cart to the stock of two- and three-liter bottles of soda.
There was a woman with two small children in the aisle, so Frances dawdled by examining the brands.
Glasses. She needed glasses to see what she was doing.
She looked in her bag and couldn’t find them.
She took several things out and still couldn’t find them.
She patted down her pockets. No glasses.
What the hell had she done with them? She glanced at the woman with the kids.
She was heaving boxes of soda into her cart, but happened to look up at her, and Frances snapped her gaze away so quickly that the glasses she’d been looking for tumbled off the top of her head.
“Of course,” she muttered, and bent down to pick them up.
With her glasses on, she picked up a three-liter bottle.
Or rather, hoisted it, because it was heavy.
It had a twist-off top. With a couple of good shakes, this puppy would spew like Mt.
Vesuvius. She glanced over her shoulder; the woman with the kids was turning the corner of the aisle. Frances was alone. Go time.
She shook the bottle, then tried to twist off the cap.
It didn’t budge. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered.
She held the bottle under her arm and twisted again.
Nothing doing. She’d noticed a bit of arthritis in her fingers, but this was ridiculous.
Why was packaging so hard to get into these days?
She clamped the bottle between her knees for leverage and twisted with all her might.
The damn cap was not coming off, and if she’d been at home, she would have thrown it violently into the pantry to join the pickles, the salsa, and the honey, all in jars with immovable lids.
She ditched that bottle and grabbed another one.
She shook it up, put the thing under her arm, grabbed hold of the cap, and twisted hard.
This cap came off so easily that the soda exploded.
She quickly lay it on its side on the floor and watched as the dark amber liquid spread across the linoleum.
She considered how much of her body she needed to have in the spill to make it look authentic—she hated the thought of getting her nice athleisure wear wet and dirty—but the job called for it.
“Help!” she called faintly to no one. She began to position herself for a descent to the floor. “Help!” she said, a little louder.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
Frances was so startled by the arrival of another person that she jerked around, and when she did, her foot slipped in the spill. She felt herself going down and grabbed on to her empty cart for purchase, but the cart came with her, crashing on top of her as she fell.
Her head whacked against the shelving before all of her hit the floor, shooting blazing rockets of pain through her back and hips, her head and neck. “For fuck’s sake,” she managed to croak before the world turned blurry and faded away.