She grasped the edges of a corner piece and began gently pulling, but to no avail. This called for yet another plan of attack. Frustrated, she backed off to think. At some point she became aware of laughter. Automatically her attention focused on the voices coming to her from outside.
“Gotcha!”
“Did not!”
“You’re it!”
“Uh-uh. You have to peg me solid first!”
“I’ll peg you then, birdbrain. How’s this?”
“Ow! My turn! Coward! I didn’t run away.”
“You can’t hit me. Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.”
“I’ll break your head, mouth-off!”
Suddenly she knew she’d better get out there before one of them hurt the other. She burst out onto the front deck just in time to see one of them sail a sizable piece of gravel at the other. She gasped, panicked, then Bolton Charles’s astute advice from the evening before came to her.
“Be firm,” he had said, “and be honest. You’re the adult, so you’re the one in charge. Kids aren’t comfortable when adults abdicate their control, and no one can trust deceit.”
Firm it was then. She took a deep breath, saying sharply, “Stop that this minute!”
To her relief, both froze, then subsided into sulks. “We didn’t do anything.”
“You were throwing rocks at each other!”
“It was just a game.”
“A very dangerous game,” she insisted. “Why aren’t you working? You’re supposed to be picking up trash.”
“We picked up some!”
She narrowed her eyes at them, determined to be stern. “Show me.”
Reluctantly they walked to the edge of the large, side deck, their steps dragging. One of them bent and picked up a large plastic trash bag. If it contained anything, it wasn’t apparent. He handed it to his twin, who thrust it at her in turn. She took it, opened it and looked inside. The bag contained perhaps half a dozen pieces of paper of various sizes, two rusty nails, an empty soft drink bottle and a molted feather. She thrust it back at them. “That’s hardly proof of a productive afternoon. Now get busy, both of you.”
A mulish little chin went up, and above it a wide, girlishly pink mouth set in a stubborn line. “You can’t make us do anything.”
The speaker was Rex—if Rex was the one with the scar in his eyebrow. She brought her hands to her hips and glared down at him.
“Oh, no? Let’s just ask your father about that, shall we?”
The mutinous gleam in ice blue eyes died down a bit. “The judge said you couldn’t export us.”
“Exploit. The judge said I couldn’t exploit you. That means I cannot profit by your labor without suitable compensation, force you to do anything dangerous or work you more than fifteen hours a week or three hours a day. One, you haven’t been here even one hour yet. Two, I don’t think picking up litter can be deemed dangerous. Three, you’re here because you’ve already cost me plenty, not to mention the business I’m losing because I couldn’t open when I planned. In other words, you owe me, buster. Now get busy.”
Defeat turned down the corners of his mouth. He grumbled something about “the hag” but bent and scooped up a smashed paper cup, dumping it into the bag. His brother joined him, but without the grumbling. Satisfied, Traci went back inside and tackled the broken window again.
She finally removed the corner piece by carefully working her screwdriver around the edge of the glass buried in the casing, loosening it. With the treacherous piece safely deposited in the bucket, she took a moment to check on the boys. She walked to the door that opened out onto the side deck and looked around. Nothing. Suspicious, she paused to listen. Again, nothing. “Boys?” she called. “Rex? Max?”
Shaking her head, she walked out onto the deck, careful to avoid the broken and missing slats. She reached the edge before she heard the stifled giggles. So that was their game. Calmly she walked down the shallow steps, around the corner of the building and across the grass to the tiny shed resting upon skids at the back of the shop. The snickering was clearly audible at this point. She listened a moment, decided, then bent at the waist, bringing her head within inches of the ground. They were lying on their stomachs between the skids beneath the shed.
“Hey, have you guys found that snake I saw go under there?”
They practically choked her with the dust they raised getting out. She could not keep a straight face, and that gave her away.
“Very funny!” Rex cried—provided that was Rex.
“Did you really see a snake go under there?” asked the other.
“Yes, I really saw a snake go under there,” she answered, “once when I was a teenager.”
“That’s crummy!” insisted the one with the scar.
“Crummier than hiding to avoid doing what you’re supposed to?”
He made no answer to that, just challenged her with a belligerent glare. The other one had the grace to look vaguely ashamed.
“Look,” she said, laying it on the line, “I didn’t ask you two to vandalize my place. I didn’t even ask for your help in putting it to rights. You got here all on your own, but now that you are here, it’s up to me to teach you a very valuable lesson. So get with it. I want this whole place cleaned up by the time your father gets back here. No more fooling around. Understand?”
One of them nodded. Max, she assumed.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” she warned, turning away. She could hear them softly arguing as she went inside, but a quick check moments later told her that they were at least making an effort to appear to be working. She went back to her own work with a smile. Firmness and honesty. Chalk up another one for the Reverend Bolton Charles, not that it was going to be easy by any means. She wouldn’t fool herself about that. She expected to be tested and tried at every turn, but it was a small price to pay for getting the shop open at last, and if she could help those two scamps in the process…Well, she couldn’t ask for much more. Now if only she didn’t have the disturbing Wyatt Gilley to thank for it. But, no, she wouldn’t think of him. She simply wouldn’t.
“Miss Temple?”
With carefully concealed exasperation, Traci removed her head from the interior of the display case motor compartment. The ominous clanking continued. Nothing she had done had made the least difference, and now she was covered in grease. Most frustrating, however, was the knowledge that the whole exercise in failure might have been accomplished in mere minutes if not for the many interruptions caused by those two Gilley scamps,