…remembered Mrs. Carpenter ran a lucrative boutique catering business from her pristine, oversized kitchen, specializing in elaborate, hand-painted fondant cupcakes for high-end parties. She was always bragging about her premium clients and how much she charged them.
A plan began to form. I created a new email address and posed as “Eleanor,” an event coordinator for a wealthy real estate firm. I sent Mrs. Carpenter an urgent inquiry, asking if she could fulfill a massive, last-minute order for a corporate retreat: five hundred of her most expensive, intricate cupcakes. The total bill came out to over $3,000.
I didn’t ask for a contract. I just eagerly agreed to her price over the phone, assuring her that a cashier’s check would be waiting for her upon delivery. Knowing how greedy she was, I banked on her rushing to secure the massive payday without doing her due diligence. She took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.
For the next four days, I watched from my kitchen window as Mrs. Carpenter worked herself to the bone. The lights in her house were glaring until 3:00 AM every night. Delivery vans dropped off bulk orders of premium flour, expensive vanilla bean paste, and fondant. Through her window, I could see her looking exhausted, stressed, and thoroughly miserable, up to her elbows in powdered sugar. It was beautiful to witness.
On the morning of the delivery, I watched her carefully load dozens of heavy bakery boxes into the back of her SUV. She drove off, heading toward the address I had provided—a completely vacant, overgrown lot right next to the county landfill.
Twenty minutes later, my burner phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Eleanor? It’s Mrs. Carpenter,” she said, her voice tight with panic. “I’m at the address you gave me, but there’s nothing here but dirt and seagulls. Where is the retreat?”
“Oh, Mrs. Carpenter,” I said, dropping the fake, overly-peppy accent and letting my real voice ring clear. “I’m afraid there is no corporate retreat. You see, this is a life lesson. You really should get these large orders in writing, and you should never, ever trust a stranger’s word over the phone.”
The silence on the other end of the line was absolute.
“You…” she finally gasped, her voice trembling with rage. “This is Lucy’s mother!”
“That’s right,” I replied smoothly. “And please, don’t worry about the hundreds of dollars in ingredients you wasted, or the sleep you lost this week. Like you told my fourteen-year-old daughter: hard work is payment enough.”
Before she could scream, I hung up, popped the SIM card out of the burner phone, and smiled for the first time all week.
Mrs. Carpenter avoided making eye contact with us for months. And funnily enough, a neatly sealed envelope containing exactly $220 in cash appeared in our mailbox the very next afternoon. I let Lucy keep it as a bonus. After all, she earned it.
