Mostly, he called in a regular order and the store had it waiting when he went to town to pick up supplies. Very rarely did he deviate from that order except to add in an extra case of Tecate when he was in a certain kind of mood. Ellery, however, moved around the store like a bumblebee with no path that was apparent to him and that seemed inefficient. Aimless. They’d been in the damned place for half an hour already and hadn’t even hit the frozen food section yet. He would have filled up the cart with frozen pizzas five minutes in. Then he noticed she talked to herself as she pushed the cart. Brainstorming and list-making aloud. She’d pick one thing only to put it back five minutes later and pick up two other things as if she was editing a menu as she went along. He hated to interrupt her mental meanderings—watching her was the most fascinating thing he’d seen since that last Ancient Aliens show he’d watched—but they’d passed the same stock clerk three times and he was starting to stare.
