A Sounding Brass Read online

  “It’s not just six anymore,” Claire said. “She made the mistake of going to the feed store and looking at the little peeps.”

  “I only brought home two.” Rebecca’s tone was virtuous. “We had chickens around here as children, but I’d forgotten how much fun they are. I’m having a little difficulty establishing that the rose bushes are out of bounds, but I’m sure I can convince them eventually.”

  Dinah laughed, but Tamara looked far away, as though the mention of Tamsen earlier had been hard for her. Claire was dying to ask how it had gone in court today, but outside the courtroom both girls were sworn to secrecy.

  The doorbell rang, its gentle peal shivering into silence. Rebecca put her napkin on the table and got up to answer it. “Why, Mr. Harper,” Claire heard her say in welcoming tones. “Come right in.”

  “Harper?” Dinah straightened in her chair.

  “Hey, Ray,” Tamara greeted him as Rebecca led him into the dining room. Claire wished she could be as casual. The guy was a couple of inches over six feet, with the kind of controlled power that no doubt came from chasing down criminals in dark alleys or arresting drug lords. His wavy brown hair flopped into eyes that didn’t miss a thing and only believed half of what he saw. They softened when he looked at Tamara.

  “Tammy,” he said. “How’d you make out today?”

  “Good,” she responded. “Nice job with the defense counsel. Mr. Daniels said they couldn’t get a thing past you.”

  “Sounds as though you were playing hockey,” Rebecca said. “Mr. Harper, have you eaten dinner?”

  “I grabbed a burger in Pitchford.”

  “Then please have dessert with us. I never met a man who could say no to my apple pie.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to, Miss Quinn. I can’t socialize with the other witnesses. Conflict of interest. I just stopped by to ask Dinah a few more questions and to drop something off for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Julia sent it.” Ray handed Rebecca a package. “It’s their wedding picture. She thought you’d like something besides snapshots.”

  Rebecca’s faced flushed with pleasure as she tore the wrapping off. “Oh, isn’t this beautiful.” She held up the eight-by-ten frame.

  “Look at that dress,” Claire breathed.

  “She’d never be allowed to wear something like that if she were still Elect,” Tamara observed. “Good for her.”

  In the photo, Julia sat with her wedding bouquet in her lap, Ross behind her with a hand on her shoulder. His other hand rested on the back of his daughter Kailey’s neck, and all three beamed at the photographer. Julia’s dress was a simple waterfall of cream silk that puddled on the ground at her feet. Her arms were bare from the elbows down, and she wore a string of pearls around her throat. She looked more beautiful than Claire could ever remember seeing her, and she regretted now that she hadn’t gone to the wedding.

  But how could she have gone? That would entail telling her folks and the people in Gathering where she was going. That might work when she could camouflage a visit under a business trip, but to go to a worldly wedding? It would be impossible to explain. Their own were sober affairs. A bride didn’t even wear a white dress, because there was nowhere she could wear it afterward. Her wedding outfit was a practical black.

  Cream silk and pearls. Claire sighed. Clearly, clothes were the cross she had to bear.

  “I appreciate this so much, Mr. Harper.” Rebecca set the picture on the sideboard and returned to the table. “Are you going to be with us long?”

  “Nope, I’m done. Should be heading back to Seattle after I make my final report tomorrow.”

  “Is it too late to say thank you?” Dinah asked. “After all, you interrupted the Testimony of Two Men that night and saved me from being Silenced for seven years.”

  “I have no idea what that means, but no, it’s never too late.” He gave her a smile that, to Claire, seemed out of place on the face of such a dangerous-looking man.

  “Dinah was about to be shunned for telling the truth about Phinehas,” Rebecca explained calmly while Claire tried not to choke on the last bite of her pie. Dinah was to have been Silenced? How come she hadn’t heard a word about it? “Fortunately the only people who know about that besides her mother and Owen are right in this room. And it will stay in this room.”

  She glanced at Claire, and her blue eyes and cloud of silver hair reminded Claire of the steely flash of a sword.

  Claire cleared her throat. “Absolutely,” she said.

  Not that this news mattered, anyway. Dinah had gone Out of the Elect, forsaking their fellowship, and now most of the Elect simply treated her with the casual formality they’d give to, say, a gas-station attendant.

  Claire had always been taught that an Elect person couldn’t have fellowship with someone who was Out, that there would be no freedom of spirit between them. But for some reason this didn’t seem to be the case. The more she knew of Dinah, the better she liked her.

  Ray Harper was a cat of a different color, though. He stood behind Claire’s shoulder, making her entire right side feel sensitized somehow, as though he was putting off a force field and her skin was tingling from it.

  Right, Claire. The man is here to do his job. You mean as much to him as the chair you’re sitting on.

  Not that that was a bad thing.

  “Would you like to use one of the empty bedrooms for your business with Dinah, Ray?” Rebecca asked.

  A glance at his witness told her she wouldn’t be very comfortable doing that. “Uh, no. Maybe we could go outside.”

  “It’s quite cool out there in the evenings. We’re at nearly a thousand feet in this part of the country.”

  “It’s too bad you can’t just relax and hang out with us for once,” Tamara said. “You never know. You might learn something.”

  He gave her the kind of big-brother look that made Claire’s lips twitch. “What, the latest tips in hair care?”

  “For a start. Yours is long enough to braid.”

  “It is not.” A little self-consciously, he fingered the hair that brushed his collar. “I’m undercover most of the time. If I had a regulation cut, the bad guys would see me coming a mile away.”

  “My kingdom for a regulation cut,” Claire heard herself say, and then wished she could grab the words back.

  Dinah laughed, and even Rebecca smiled. “You said it. I haven’t had the guts to cut mine yet. It seems . . . irrevocable somehow.”

  “Oh, come on, Di.” Tamara ran a hand through her short-cropped brown curls. “It grows back.”

  Ray had glanced at Claire after her remark, a look that took her in from crown to chin. “Why would you want it off?” he asked. “Your hair is pretty like that.”

  Don’t blush. Don’t. Oh, dear. Urgghh!

  “Aw, now you made her blush,” Tamara said with teenage insensitivity. “You’re such a charmer.”

  “But think of the hours of agony it takes to produce that look,” Dinah said calmly, making him look at her instead of at Claire’s scarlet face. “I would estimate twenty minutes just to get the front to behave, never mind the coil in the back.”

  “You would estimate right,” Claire said. Breathe. Don’t think about it.

  “So wear it down,” Ray suggested.

  Married women took their hair down for their husbands in the intimacy of the bedroom, but she wasn’t about to say that to a hard-bitten cop she hardly knew. “It’s part of our sacrifice,” she began, but Rebecca interrupted her smoothly.

  “Women in our church traditionally wear their hair up. Come on, you kids, leave Mr. Harper alone. He needs to speak with Dinah.”

  “Why don’t you go upstairs and use the kitchen table at my place?” Claire suggested, then wished she hadn’t. Good grief, when was the last time she’d cleaned? And were there items of clothing lying on the floor? At least she’d done last night’s supper dishes, but the bathroom was probably—

  “Thanks, Claire. Good idea.” Di
nah’s soft voice clinched it, so Claire had no choice but to help Rebecca clear the table while Ray followed Dinah up the outside staircase.

  Twenty minutes later, they heard light footsteps on the stairs and Dinah came in. Alone.

  “Claire, Ray wants to ask you a few questions, too.”

  “Me? What about?”

  “No idea. Go on. Don’t look so scared. He’s not going to arrest you.”

  Being arrested was the least of her worries. Being alone in her apartment with a man who gave her goose bumps definitely was.

  She thanked Rebecca for supper, said good night to everyone, and climbed the stairs. She found Ray sitting at the yellow Formica kitchen table that had been Julia’s when she’d lived here. She imagined a more appropriate backdrop would be a black leather couch, or at the very least a nice, manly corduroy chair. He probably lived in one of those loft apartments in the warehouse district, over a nightclub or something.

  What was it to her, anyway? He was out of bounds, an Outsider, and she had no business speculating about a life that was practically on a different planet from her own. If she were going to think about anyone, it would be Luke Fisher and that smile that could light up an entire mission hall. Now, there was a man worth dreaming about. Equally out of her league, but at least he had been accepted by Owen Blanchard and he had grown up Elect.

  Luke Fisher would know what the ground rules were—the expectations between men and women. He would know that a dating couple could never be alone in a room with the door closed, or that sharing a hymnbook was a sign of an approaching engagement. He would know that engagement rings were worldly and a godly man gave his intended a wristwatch instead. Luke Fisher would understand the sacrifice behind the clothing and the hair, where Ray Harper probably just thought they were all weird.

  “Thanks for letting me use your space,” he said when she pulled out the other chair and sat down opposite him. He finished making a note in his notebook and glanced up. “Julia sends her love. I should have told you that before.”

  “Thank you. I guess the baby is due pretty soon, isn’t he?”

  “About a month. But you can’t tell that to Ross. He has two cell phones. One for work and one for Julia to call with baby updates. The guy is obsessed.”

  “Babies will do that to you.” As if she knew anything about it, really. She’d held lots of them and done her share of cooing and patting other people’s, but other than the arrival of her nephews a few years ago, she hadn’t had much experience.

  She was a bit of an anomaly among Elect women, choosing a career at the bank over home and family. But there seemed to be a sea change afoot among the Elect lately. Maybe in a few years she wouldn’t stand out so much. Then again, if a person could get a date in this town, she wouldn’t stand out so much that way, either.

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you and Julia sure seem different.”

  Claire glanced at him in surprise. “Of course, we’re different. She’s left the church. I haven’t.”

  “No, not that way.” He waved a hand, as if trying to catch the right word out of the air. “It’s not the external things. She’s a happy person.”

  “And I’m not?” Oh, great. Now perfect strangers were making judgments about her. And here she thought she only had Alma Woods and her bevy of critical cronies to worry about.

  “I don’t know whether you are or not. None of my business. She says you were best friends. Almost like sisters.”

  “Yes, we were.” Still were, on Claire’s side. But Julia had a family and a home and a new life to fill her heart. It wasn’t surprising that time and distance had amplified their differences instead of minimizing them.

  Suddenly Claire felt lonelier than ever. Thank you, Mr. Harper. Talking to you has just brightened up my whole day.

  “Tell Julia I send my love back, doubled,” she said. “So, you’re heading back tomorrow?”

  He frowned at his notebook. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. I’ve got a case with a connection in this neighborhood. I might follow it up, or I might take a couple of days off.”

  “What kind of a case?”

  He glanced at her. “Sorry. Can’t say.”

  Of course not. How silly of her. “Did you have some questions for me?”

  “No, I just wanted to let you know we wouldn’t be needing you as a character witness. Dinah and Tamara are pretty convincing.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” She hadn’t expected to be asked to testify, and in fact, other than an initial contact by an investigator from the D.A.’s office, she hadn’t heard a thing.

  She waited, but he only frowned at his notebook as if he were trying to decipher his own handwriting. “Um, would you like something to drink?” she asked. “Tea or coffee?”

  Her apartment seemed unusually quiet. She couldn’t even hear the girls talking with Rebecca on the floor below. A breeze moved the branches of the oak tree outside the window, and they tapped on the pane as though trying to get Ray’s attention.

  He looked up and shook his head. “No. Thanks.”

  “I’m not a witness. It wouldn’t be a conflict of interest.”

  What are you saying? You want this guy out of here, don’t you? Or would you rather just sit here and listen to him breathing?

  “That’s nice of you, but I have to go.”

  But he made no move to get up. Just when she was about to do so herself, to give him a hint that maybe a person would like to have her shower and curl up with a book, he looked up and she froze in his gaze.

  He had hazel eyes. Funny she hadn’t noticed that before.

  “Hey, you work in the bank, right?” When she nodded, he said, “There’s only one?” She nodded again. “So, you’re pretty familiar with new people in town, then, coming in and opening up accounts and whatnot.”

  “I’m the new accounts rep, as a matter of fact.”

  “No kidding.” He leaned forward. “How many do you get?”

  She shrugged, trying to figure out where this was going, then gave up. “A couple a week. The southerners from California and Oregon are discovering us. The dot-com people are buying up the acreages, like the one Dinah used to live on. Plus a big discount store is opening up on the edge of town, so people are moving in because of that.”

  “The name Brandon Boanerges sound familiar to you?”

  Claire thought back through a couple of weeks’ worth of new-account applications. “No. It’s an odd name. I’d have remembered it, especially since it’s biblical.”

  “Biblical?” He flipped open the notebook and clicked his pen.

  “The disciples James and John were named Boanerges. It means ‘sons of thunder.’”

  He wrote it down, and the frown lines between his eyes grew a little deeper.

  “Can I ask why you need to know this? Is this guy a witness in Dinah and Tamara’s case?”

  Snapping the book shut, he got up, then reached across the table and shook her hand. “No. Something else. Thanks for the info and for letting me work up here. Good night.”

  She watched him thump down the stairs and climb into his truck. As he drove off, she found herself shaking her head. Why on earth was the strong, silent type so popular in those romances in the used-book section in the back of Rebecca’s bookshop? It was completely impossible to hold a conversation with one.

  * * *

  RAY HARPER TOSSED the backpack with his case files in it—he wasn’t a briefcase kind of guy—onto the small, round table in his motel room. He toed off his boots and fell on the bed in a tired, loose-limbed heap.

  Could he have acted any dumber or failed to impress any more . . . impressively?

  With a sigh, he punched up the bag of wood chips the motel called a pillow and stared at the ceiling, where Claire Montoya’s wide green eyes and flawless jawline seemed to be superimposed over the light fixture.

  It wasn’t like he was a total zero as far as ladies were concerned. He’d had his share of girlfriends and had even managed to su
stain a live-in relationship for two years before she got disgusted with all the double shifts and left. So, why had he reverted to Mr. Neanderthal when he’d been alone with Claire? Not that he was interested or anything. But hey, it was natural for a man to want to impress a pretty, intelligent woman, and she was certainly all that.

  Too bad she belonged to this whacked-out religion Julia had come out of. Julia was the nicest person he knew—a woman without a malicious bone in her body when, in his opinion, she had good reasons to bear malice. Claire seemed to be cut from the same fine cloth, which was probably why he’d tanked in the good-impressions department. He just couldn’t think of a thing to say. For Ray Harper, who had a reputation in the OCTF for having the fastest comeback in the department, that was just plain ridiculous.

  This motel room was way too quiet. He needed something to distract him until he was ready to reread the files to see if a clue to the whereabouts of either Emile Johan Rausch or Brandon Boanerges popped out at him. The clock radio on the nightstand picked up a grand total of one station—KGHM. Some guy on quaaludes was reading stock reports—did people still care about the price of pork and beef? He supposed out here in ranch country, where the grassy foothills rolled up to break against the Rocky Mountains, they did.

  The guy’s voice was like listening to a history professor drone on about the factors contributing to the Boer War, a class Ray had suffered through on the way to his degree in justice administration. The OCTF didn’t take anyone without a four-year college degree, and five years as a street cop hadn’t cut it with the recruiting officer. So, Ray had gone back to school at the ripe old age of twenty-six. Funny how different an education looked on the dark side of twenty. He’d never regretted it.

  At eight o’clock the stock reports ended, and an electrifying bass voice said, “Good evening, Washington! This is Luke Fisher coming to you live from KGHM in Hamilton Falls, where from eight to midnight, we’ll rock and God will talk!”

  Something screamed in Ray’s head, and he reached automatically for the off button on the radio. If there was anything he couldn’t stand, it was “Jesus rock.” He could tolerate a nice hymn sung in four-part harmony at somebody’s funeral, the way he tolerated history lectures and any attempts to explain modern art, but Jesus rock? Run away! Far away!