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Just a little over an hour ago, an operative stepped out for a little mid-afternoon shopping and found herself face-to-face with America's Most Suspicious Expectant Mother™:

I was walking out of a stationery store on Melrose when a person burst in front of me with a camera and yelled out, "Katie!" I looked behind me and sure enough, squeezing through the doorway with her 9 months pregnant self was none other than scientology baby incubator Katie Holmes. She was walking in to the store as I was walking out, otherwise I could tell you why she was there (birth announcements, hand calligraphered 'silence is golden' signs?) I would almost feel sorry for her, those photographers really are like locusts, but surely she has minions willing to run errands for her, especially since she's due to give birth any second now?

The paparazzi photos that will be released later should fill us in on some more details of the trip (i.e., if sunglasses hid the desperation in her eyes, which combination of maternity blouse and false stomach was appropriate for a trip to Melrose, etc). But for now, we're still a little confused about the purpose of these sudden, very public shopping displays, other than to prove that there are at least a couple of hours a day in which Holmes isn't handcuffed to the frame of her bed, learning to love the taste of her scream-squelching binky.