didnât seem like the Bombshell type at first. Sure, she grew up in Philadelphia, but she was a gentle ministerâs daughter. Sometimes, though, true wildness simmers just below the surface. Nancy started singing country music in biker bars before she graduated from high school. And yes, Dad was there, sitting in the front row, watching over his little girl! She graduated from college with a degree in psychology and promptly moved into the inner city, where she found work dragging addicted inner-city teenagers into drug and alcohol rehabilitation. She then moved south to Atlanta and worked as the director of a substance abuse treatment program for court-ordered offenders.
When the criminal life became less of a challenge, Nancy turned to the final frontierâparenthood. This drove her to writing. Nancy lives in North Carolina, rides with the police on a regular basis, raises two hooligan teenage boys and tries to keep up with her writing, her psychotherapy practice and her garden. She hopes youâll love her third âchild,â Stella Valocchi, and thanks you from the bottom of her heart for reading this book!
It was 3:00 a.m. and freezing. I was lying next to my partner, Jake, belly deep in pig shit and trying to remind myself that repo is an art form. A good repossession requires creativity and ingenuity. Repo, like art, is not always comfortable or warm. It is messy. Artists are, by their very nature, required to suffer. I took a deep whiff of Mama Pig and knew I was truly suffering. But it wasnât the agony that bothered me really, it was my karma. This job could ruin my karma for all time. You see, we were robbing Santa Claus.
Jake hates it when I say that, but itâs true. Okay, so itâs not exactly true, but try to tell that to any good Italian-American in Glenn Ford and see where it gets you. We were huddled up inside Santaâs pigpen, waiting for our Golden Moment, the time when the coast was clear and Jake could bring the tow truck up the driveway.
âNothinâ good is gonna come of this,â I muttered.
âStella, you were a cop. âSanta,â as you so lovingly refer to him, is a crook. Heâs a dope dealer. He didnât pay for the sleigh, despite having the cash, so weâre taking it back. Clear and simple. Itâs a job, Stella, nothing more.â
I stared up at the moon and shuddered. Joey âSmackâ Spagnazi, aka âSanta,â did have a bad reputation. He hadnât served time. He hadnât even been convicted, but every man, woman and child in tiny Glenn Ford knew he was âconnected,â in a mafioso sort of way. Everyone thought he was Chester County, Pennsylvaniaâs, drug kingpin, but so far, the police hadnât been able to catch him. He was just too slick. But Joey Smack had his good side, too.
âMaybe he used the payment money to send more kids to that summer camp of his,â I offered.
Jake snorted, ever the cynic. âYeah, right, save kids with cancer so you can later introduce them to a lifetime cocaine habit. Stella, I donât get you. Usually youâre the one giving me the soft-heart lecture.â
âAllâs Iâm saying is, Joey Smack doesnât mind copping to running numbers, loan-sharking or an assorted list of criminal activities as long as your arm, but he says drugs arenât his thing. What if heâs telling the truth and weâre robbing Santa Claus?â
âJesus.â Jake moaned. âListen, we took the job, letâs just do it. If Joey Smack wants a sleigh so bad, let him pay for it. We donât have a dog in this fight, all right? We work for Lifetime Novelty. We are not the judge and jury for Joey Smack!â
I studied my partner. Good-looking, in a tall, dark and handsome sort of way. Smart, on most occasions, and resourceful when smarts failed. Why was he so stupid about humanity?
I mentally slapped myself. He was, after all, a man, wasnât he?
Jake was staring back at me, the impatience leaving his face as something else replaced it, something smoldering hot and, up until now, unrealized between the two of us, unfinished business that had been on the back burner for years. Yep, Jake was a man all right, the kind of man that makes you tingle all over and slowly come to a steady, about-to-boil-over-if-you-touch-me simmer that I found frankly maddening.