Page 8 of Until Joy

“You know, you’re not very subtle, Miss Laverne,” Joy groused.

“Well, that’s a good thing, since I wasn’t aiming for subtle,” she laughed as she gave me a wicked smile.

As I drove away, one thought kept circling through my mind. It was an intuition that I tried to always listen to. My life had just divided into before and after. Before I saw Joy Magill pulling that cake out of the oven, and after.

I knew down to the soles of my boots; there was no going back. And I sure as hell didn’t want to

Chapter 2

“Wait a minute, sir,” I called after the overwrought father.

He turned around and looked at me with a desperate expression. He’d already unloaded his life story, how he’d only had his four boys under the age of seven every other weekend, and how his ex-wife would blow her top if he was late for the handoff.

“I’ve really got to go,” he insisted.

He’d been a good customer, spending over two hundred dollars on auto parts, but his kids had been a nightmare. They’d wrecked my counter display racks and knocked over the spinner rack, sending LED flashlights, tire gauges, keychains, and sunglasses scattering across the floor.

I crouched in front of the boys, looking each one in the eye, including the three year old. Then I held out my hand, palm up.

“What’s this about?” Fred, their dad, asked.

“The boys know,” I answered as I looked up at him and shook my head. I was eight inches taller than him and was wearing my motorcycle cut. I knew he was intimidated, so I kept my voice soft but firm, and directed my glance at his boys.

“You’re going to call the powice?” the youngest boy asked, his green eyes huge.

“He won’t,” the oldest boy said, blond hair falling in his face.

I took my cell phone and scrolled through my contacts. “I’m friends with a police officer. He can be here in ten minutes. Is that what you want?”

“Look, Mr. Wallace, I don’t want any trouble. I can pay for what they took.” Fred was finally catching onto the problem.

“That’s not how this works,” I said. “These boys need to learn a lesson.”

I turned back to them. “If you give me what you stole, I won’t call the police.”

“You gots to give it back,” the middle kid—probably five—said anxiously, looking at his older brother. Then he turned to me. “Kenny don’t know no better. He’s a baby.” He wrapped an arm around his little brother. “Give him back the flashlight, Kenny.”

“Tattletale,” the oldest muttered.

The fourth boy continued to stare at the ground. A keychain was peeking out of his pocket.

I locked eyes with the ringleader. “How many times have you shoplifted?”

He frowned in confusion.

“How many times have you stolen things from a store?”

He clamped his mouth shut, lips turning white. I turned to the younger boys. “What about you? Are you thieves?”

The smallest boy looked confused. “Are you a robber?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He was close to tears.

“Give everything back, boys. Now,” their father ordered, his face red.

He stared at me belligerently with his mouth shut so tightly, his lips were almost as white as his oldest son’s.

I turned to the younger boys. “How about you? Are you robbers?”