A Sounding Brass (20 page)

“More like stew.” Claire shook her wet sneaker again. “Yuck. Come on, let’s go poke around in the trees. I’d rather swat flies
than mosquitoes any day.”

A brisk hike up the slope brought them to a granite outcrop that had broken down over time to produce a tumble of boulders.
Ray scrambled up on one and reached down to pull Claire up beside him. They sat on its flat top, legs swinging, and surveyed
the site.

“This is my last shot.” She took the picture and the camera buzzed as it rewound. “The view of the lake is beautiful.”

“It is from up here. The mosquitoes down there kind of spoil it for me.”

She nodded. “You’ve got to believe the Elders know what they’re doing. It must be workable or they wouldn’t have approved
something that’s never been done in the Elect before. We don’t believe in church buildings, you know. The Mission Hall is
just a room with a roof. Nothing fancy.”

No organization, no building, no written rules . . . How did these people function? Not that it mattered to him. If he were
going to approach God, he’d do it out in the woods and look up into the sky through the trees. Or maybe he’d cruise Ross’s
church one evening and see what the big attraction was.

“Didn’t Luke say they’d be renting out the space for corporate retreats and whatnot? So, it’s not as though it’s a building
strictly for worship. But still . . .” He gazed at the view. At the marsh and the water. At the absence of surveyors’ stakes
or septic lines. “It’s going to be a huge job. So is paying for it.”

“That’s what the prayer pledges are for. The down payment.”

“Yeah, I heard. Prayer every quarter hour with your donation.” He glanced at her. “Doesn’t that strike you as mercenary?”

“It’s all God’s work,” she said. “Though I do think we need to be good stewards and focus our efforts. I don’t see how we
can give to homeless shelters and have a mobile station and build a worship center, too. At least, not to start. Maybe later.”

“You’re giving to homeless shelters?”

She nodded. “That ten thousand would probably have bought the gate and a few feet of driveway. Not that I have any idea what
those things cost. But I suppose I will when the estimates start coming in. We have to hire a building contractor. I’m going
to need to set up accounts.” She clutched her head in mock dismay. “So much work, and here I sit on a rock, doing nothing!”

“But Claire, why do you have to deal with this? You work for KGHM, not whatever corporation will be formed to run the business.”

She nodded and her makeshift chignon began to unravel again. “I don’t know. Since Luke is spearheading it and I work for Luke,
I just assumed I’d handle it.”

“Well, money to support the station is one thing. Money to support the Elect’s community efforts is another. I’d be careful
to keep them separate.”

“Toby looks after the funds for running the station.”

“Will his church be getting a cut of some of it?”

She frowned and relocated some hairpins. “If he asked, I suppose it would. We’re supposed to broaden our horizons, but it’s
hard to change people’s minds when a hundred years of preaching has said that other churches are worldly and deceived. Personally,
I don’t see someone like Toby that way.”

“So you figure what the Elect collect, the Elect can disburse?”

“No, of course not. The homeless outreach in Idaho wasn’t affiliated with the Elect at all. God brought the need to Luke’s
attention, and we sent off a check, no questions asked.”

“How?”

A sidelong glance. “By mail, of course.”

“Very funny. How did God bring it to his attention?”

“I have no idea. His job is to reach the people. My job is to cut the check.”

“No auditing? No approval? Just like that?”

“I sent a letter with it requesting a receipt. My goodness, Ray, you are such a cynic. Don’t you trust anything?”

I trust you. I trust your faith in people. But that’s about it.
“I’m not in a job that promotes trust except in my team. Sometimes that can mean the difference between life and death.”

“Trust in God is like that, too.”

“I’d rather trust in something I can see, thanks. Like a partner.”

“I see God all the time. In people.”

“In the Elect. Yeah, I gathered that.”

“No, not just them. In Toby. In Ross, and the way he loves Julia and Kailey. God is alive and breathing all around me. That’s
why prayer is such a great thing. I can see Him and talk to Him, too.”

Maybe it was the location. Maybe it was the company. But in a flash of self-analysis, Ray looked at his obstinate refusal
to have anything to do with God and saw it for what it was: loss. He didn’t have this. What he had was an emptiness he was
trying to soothe with work and socializing and friends, covering it over with a cynical outlook on life so people wouldn’t
see it. He was doing what his dad had done after his mom had left—covering up his real feelings so people wouldn’t think he
was weak.

“Does a person have to be Elect to have a direct line to God?” he asked.

Claire opened her mouth to reply, then seemed to change her mind about what she’d been about to say. “I don’t think so. And
I don’t even think it’s a sin to say that. If I say I can see God in Toby, it’s obvious he’s a praying person, too. How can
the Elect say other people’s prayers don’t even reach the ceiling?”

“They say that? Even mine, if I were to give it a try?”

“Don’t let what the Elect say stop you, Ray. Don’t wind up like me.”

Which, when it came down to it, was about as honest an answer as he could hope to get.

S
HE SHOULD NEVER
have said that. All the way home, sitting in Ray’s truck and listening to Toby read the six o’clock news, Claire kicked herself.
No matter what she did, she only managed to give an unfavorable view of the Elect’s way of life, thus pushing Ray farther
and farther away.

Which, of course, was what she was supposed to do from a personal standpoint. Despite all the changes, the fact remained that
he was an Outsider who was going to leave town one of these mornings, while she was stuck here until she was as shriveled
as an unwanted apple. She’d never see him again except maybe twenty years from now at the weddings of Ross and Julia’s kids.
They’d look at each other and remember a kiss in a dark parking lot and think,
Look what I was saved from.

“Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”
Saul’s prayer on the road to Damascus came into her mind as she gazed out the window. The promise of the clouds and wind
had turned into the reality of rain, and the wipers slapped back and forth.

She should just cut bait and stop torturing herself. Ray, funny and appealing and completely wrong about everything that was
important to her, had to go. Now, if she could just find the guts to tell him so and get on with her life.

Such as it was.

If Luke’s ministry took off the way it promised, she would get great exposure. People in radio would know her name. Maybe
she could convince Owen that her place was in Seattle or Spokane, enlarging the boundaries of the kingdom, and then maybe
the narrow little puddle that was her life would turn into a bigger lake of possibility.

They passed the enormous construction site where the apple processing plant had been and where now the steel and concrete
structure of the discount store was going up. Maybe in a few weeks the worship center’s site would look like that.

A few minutes later, Ray slowed the truck to take the turn into Gates Place. “Well, I can’t say this has been the best day
ever.” He spun the wheel and came to a gentle stop in Rebecca’s driveway. Claire deflated even further. Two of Dinah’s chickens,
wet but determined to get the last of the bugs under the rose bushes, ran from the truck and took shelter under a shrub near
the door.

“Between the mosquitoes and the swamp and the rain, I really know how to show a girl a good time.” He leaned on the steering
wheel and faced her. “Sorry about that.”

She had to stop taking things so personally. “Don’t be sorry. This was a business meeting, remember? A girl expects a little
adversity.”

He laughed and something in his eyes made her scramble for the words to the “I-can’t-see-you-anymore” speech. She opened her
mouth to say the words—
Ray, this was fun, but I can’t go out with you
—and instead heard herself say, “Do you want to come in for a hot drink?”

“Sure.”

And by the time he’d jumped out and come around to open her door her opportunity had passed.

She’d find a way to work up to it again. She had to. Because she couldn’t go on like this, feeling the blood jump in her veins
every time she saw him on the street, feeling her face heat when he looked at her. Next thing you knew, she’d be dreaming
about him and doodling his name on yellow sticky notes. And that just wouldn’t do.

She herded the two stray chickens around the side of the house and into Rebecca’s enclosed backyard, where they had a cozy
coop, then led Ray up the outside stairs and into her suite. He toed off his boots just inside the door.

“It might not be holy ground, but I don’t think you need any of the worship center’s mud in here.”

She smiled and pulled off her own shoes. Did he have to be so considerate? And did he have to look quite so tousled and damp
and appealing?

Argh.

She put the kettle on and found a box of Dutch Almond hot chocolate mix in the back of the cupboard. It had been there since
she’d received it for a white-elephant present at the bank the previous December. Company holiday parties always made her
feel awkward, not just because she looked so plain in her black suit when everyone else was glittering in their festive dresses
and earrings that lit up like Rudolph’s nose, but it had literally not occurred to her that she needed to go out and buy a
present. Consequently she’d been grateful to get somebody’s standby present of hot chocolate mixes instead of something expensive,
like the silver salt-and-pepper set Margot had oohed and ahhed over.

When the kettle boiled, she stirred up the mugs of hot chocolate and carried them over to the couch. “You’re probably used
to something stronger after a cold day in the swamp,” she said a little diffidently. An Elect boy wouldn’t think twice about
hot chocolate, but it occurred to her moments too late that Ray might want something like a brandy. Isn’t that what people
drank when they came in from skiing?

“This is great.” Ray took the mug and sipped from it cautiously, steam rising past his nose. “I’m not much of a drinker. Cops
tend to polarize—either they drink every chance they get or they abstain. But alcoholism killed my dad about thirty years
too soon, so it doesn’t appeal that much to me.”

To Claire’s knowledge, her dad had never touched a drop. Could any two people have less in common?

“I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly. There wasn’t much comfort a person could offer. Even if Ray believed in God, she couldn’t
very well say she was sorry his dad had gone to a lost eternity, now, could she?

“Thanks, but it happened a long time ago, when I was in high school. He was a cop, too.”

“Is that what made you go into law enforcement?”

Ray shrugged. “Maybe. One of the things he instilled in me was a strong sense of fairness. Maybe I wanted to be a cop to even
things out a bit. Make sure ordinary folks got a fair shake.”

“You could have been a lawyer.”

“Nah.” He grinned at her. “They don’t get to sit in dark alleys late at night or kick drug dealers’ doors in. Or walk through
swamps, for that matter.”

“A real thrill seeker, you are.” She smiled behind her mug.

“Yeah, surveillance is a thrill a minute.” He snorted and took another sip of chocolate.

“This sure doesn’t seem like much of a vacation for you.”

Slowly, he lowered the mug and gave her a long look, as though he were making up his mind about something. “To be honest,
it’s not. I’ve been working. Doing surveillance,” he said.

She sat up in surprise. “Surveillance on what?” Her chocolate lurched in her mug before she settled back down. “Or on whom?”

“A guy named Richard Brandon Myers. I’ve been chasing him for awhile now, and I finally tracked him down.”

“Why are you chasing him?”

He shrugged. “He’s a ripoff artist. Preys on vulnerable people, and I hate that. So, I’ve just been doing the usual—surveillance,
license-plate checks, and background work. All I’m waiting for now is for him to make a move.”

“Like, commit a crime? Rip somebody off?”

He nodded. “But I’m running out of time. If something doesn’t break by Saturday, I’m going to have to pull out. My lieutenant
wants me back in Seattle Monday morning.”

“Monday?”

She didn’t even have to make the speech. All she had to do was wait until the weekend and he’d be gone. Easy.

Then why this sense of panic rising under her ribcage like a flock of frightened starlings?

“Do you have a problem with that?” His voice was soft. He put his mug on the brass-bound trunk she used as a coffee table
and took hers out of her hand.

“A—a problem? You have to do what you have to do.”

“So, I can hitch up my pony and ride off into the sunset and it won’t bother you?”

“I—”

“Because it’s really going to bother me.”

Oh dear. Here was the moment for the speech. Here was her opportunity to say,
Ray, it’s good you’re going home because there is no way we could ever have anything together. Have a safe trip.

Say it.

“Ray, it’s—”
It’s good you’re going home. Come on.

“It’s not really this case keeping me here,” he went on when she choked on the rest of her sentence. “I could have handed
the details over to the Hamilton Falls PD and skated on home a couple of days ago. But I didn’t. Ask me why.”

“Why?” she whispered.
There is no way we could have anything togeth—

Somehow, instead of sitting in opposite corners of the couch, they were now practically sharing a single cushion. He touched
her chin with one finger.