A Sounding Brass

by Shelley Bates

  “We’re lucky tonight to have a new CD from Sixth Hour, who as you know, takes bluegrass where it’s never been before—straight to the throne of grace. Here’s the first cut, ‘Holy Grail.’”

  Ray’s hand froze on the radio dial. Hang on. The alarm signal in his head wasn’t about the music, it was about the DJ’s voice.

  And now he had to wait three minutes, or six or nine, before he heard it again. Instead, he heard a very talented guy fingerpicking a banjo, an instrument he’d always liked because his grandpa had played it at family hoedowns.

  Ray yanked his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and hit the first number on speed dial. His partner, Ross, picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Ray.”

  Ray didn’t waste time on opening remarks. The DJ might come on again, and the band was already into the second verse. “Are you at the office?”

  “No, at home, but I’m logged in to the interface. I wanted to get some stuff ready for the wiretap girls tomorrow.”

  “Can you get on the server and e-mail me one of the .wav files in the Brandon Boanerges folder?”

  “Sure, but can’t you log in from there?”

  “Nah, I’m in this tiny motel where there’s only a dialup. I don’t want to take the time to drive down to the local PD and use their connection.”

  “With the dial-up at a motel, it’s probably faster to take the drive than wait for it to download. But yeah, whatever you need.”

  Briefly, Ray tuned him out as the bluegrass song came to an end and something schmaltzy and slow came on. That was good. Another three minutes.

  “—it going?”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I said, how’s it going with the rape case? The papers here aren’t picking it up, and Julia’s going nuts waiting for news.”

  “I’m wrapped, but the girls still have to testify. The D.A. tried to cut this Phinehas guy a deal—twenty-five to life—but he turned it down. He honestly believes these women were making some kind of voluntary sacrifice to keep him preaching. Has no belief he’s committed a crime. The guy puts the i in twisted.”

  “Is the defense going to put him on the stand?”

  “I suppose, if Ortega doesn’t get fired first. I wouldn’t put it past this Phinehas guy to believe he can defend himself.”

  “More likely he’ll use the opportunity to preach. You might warn the D.A. that this kind of personality likes to grandstand, particularly if the gallery is full of good folk wearing black.”

  “Which it is. I’ll give him a call tonight, after I listen to this file. Is it on its way yet?”

  “I just hit Send. Give it a minute. It’s less than a megabyte.”

  “Thanks, Ross.”

  “Any hints what this is about?”

  “I just heard something that rang a bell, that’s all.”

  “Your bells are as good as other people’s fire alarms. See you.”

  Ray hung up and pulled his laptop out of the backpack. In a couple of minutes, he had downloaded the sound file of Brandon Boanerges, whom they’d picked up on the phone during his last con job. Ray had a good ear for sounds, whether it was music, birds, or people’s voices. Some people remembered names, some visual details, but he was a sound guy.

  “Send my love back, doubled,” Claire’s husky voice murmured in his memory. Ray shook his head, as if to dislodge it.

  Boanerges had made a brief career of conning women into relationships or even bogus marriages, being added to their bank accounts, draining said accounts, and skipping town. Unfortunately, the ladies were too embarrassed or too shy to press charges. One of them, however, had been sentimental—or cynical—enough to tape a number of their conversations, and being the kind of guy he was, Ray had converted one or two of the files to digital format to keep on the OCTF server. You just never knew when you might need something like that.

  The third song ended and the DJ came back on the air. “That last track by Jars of Clay was dedicated to Linda Bell, who runs a terrific Christian daycare right here in Hamilton Falls. She has a price far above rubies, and I’m not talking about her rates. Now we’ll take a break and hear from our sponsors.”

  Ray flipped the radio off and opened the sound file.

  “I can’t wait to come home to you, Barbara,” Brandon Boanerges crooned into the phone in exactly the tone Luke Fisher had used in talking about Linda the daycare lady. “You’re the woman I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

  Exactly the same tone. Ray didn’t need voiceprint software to tell him what his ears had already confirmed.

  His informant hadn’t been far off. Brandon Boanerges was alive and well, and playing Jesus rock in Hamilton Falls.

  * * *

  AT PRAYER MEETING Wednesday night, Claire was thrilled to note that Luke Fisher was seated right in the first row. She also noted that on the other side of the aisle, the first row was packed with single women and widows.

  Mentally rolling her eyes, Claire took her usual seat seven rows back. When Derrick Wilkinson slid in beside her, he elbowed her in the ribs.

  “Everyone who’s on the market is up there in front,” he whispered. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Pride,” she whispered back. “I hear it’s a sin. If you want a wife without any, go sit up there yourself.”

  He grinned and sat back, opening his Bible to a random chapter. She’d known Derrick her whole life, knew his weaknesses and his strengths. Among the former was his ambition to be Elder. What a shame the Wilkinsons hadn’t been among the families who, at the turn of the last century, had first accepted the gospel in the valley and given food and shelter to the itinerant Shepherds. If they had, Derrick might have been an Elder by now. As it was, his social aspirations had pretty much come to a screeching halt.

  He could always offer to go out as a Shepherd, and Claire often wondered why he didn’t. He had a dead-end job as a paralegal at the only law firm in town, and he wasn’t getting any younger. He was a decent guy, but this single-minded pursuit of the favored family girls hadn’t done his reputation much good among the singles. Who wanted to go into a marriage knowing she was just a consolation prize?

  After the first hymn and a prayer by Owen Blanchard, the congregation drew its collective breath as Luke Fisher got up and made his way to the podium.

  “People of God, thank you for allowing me to come back and talk to you again.” His smile was like that of a child at Christmas. Or at least Claire thought so—the Elect didn’t celebrate Christmas, so she couldn’t be totally sure. She’d seen plenty of happy kids at birthday parties, though, and Luke Fisher looked as though he’d been given the very best gift of his life.

  “I feel as though I’ve never left. That sense of oneness is still here, giving me confidence that the Spirit is working among us.

  “I give thanks today for those of you who called me at the station to encourage me, and even offered song suggestions. I can tell you right now that your participation in that ministry has borne fruit. In one hour alone, callers pledged almost a thousand dollars to help in God’s work.”

  Joyfully, he gestured as if to encourage applause, and people looked at one another uncertainly. No one applauded in Gathering. It was worldly. The gathering of God’s people wasn’t like a rock concert, now, was it?

  “Now, I know we’ve been taught that the right hand shouldn’t know what the left is doing, and our giving should be in secret so our Father can reward us openly,” he went on. “But I’m committed to keeping this ministry open to the scrutiny of everyone. Anyone can give, and anyone can know where the fruit of people’s generosity is going. So I’ll tell you now that the money is going straight back into the ministry, for music and equipment, to start. Our goal is to buy a van for a mobile station, so we can take our message on the road, to county fairs and other places, so that others can hear the Good News we know in our hearts to be true.

  “My friends,” he went on earnestly, “we can no longer minister to ourselves. The world is crying out for h
elp. We can no longer be in this world but not of it—we need to mix with the publican and the sinner as Jesus did, and tell them His joyful message.”

  He paused, and the congregation waited breathlessly. “I’ve spent a long time in prayer over this,” he said, “and so have your elders, Owen Blanchard and Mark McNeill. It’s been laid on our hearts that God’s people need to lower the barriers of separation between themselves and the world. By this we mean things like our appearance.”

  “What?” Derrick murmured, and Claire gazed at him with the same question in her eyes. This was impossible. Their clothes and hair were counted unto them for righteousness. If that were taken away, wouldn’t they be in danger of a lost eternity?

  Who were they going to believe—the Shepherds who had shown them the way and the truth, or Luke Fisher? In the next moment, that question was answered.

  “Phinehas, as you all know, has been the senior Shepherd in Washington for nearly forty years. He has always made sure that God’s people upheld the external standard. But folks, if what the police believe is true, Phinehas has been deceiving us about his character for just as long a time.” The audience shifted uncomfortably, and a quick glance to the side told Claire that Derrick was on the point of speaking out in protest. “So, if Phinehas’s character and service has proven to be faulty, who’s to say that his insistence on the traditions of men aren’t equally faulty? How much of Phinehas’s ministry can we trust?”

  Derrick could stand it no longer. He leaped to his feet. “Phinehas has not been proven guilty! Until he is, God’s people should stand by him. And by the standards he upholds.”

  Claire frowned. One of the women accusing Phinehas of rape was Dinah, whom gossip reported Derrick had hoped to make his wife. Was he now accusing her of lying? He couldn’t have it both ways. But of course, there was no way Claire could stand up and say that, because women were supposed to keep silent in the church.

  Luke looked down at Derrick from the microphone. “God’s people should try the spirits. That’s all I’m saying. Would it please God more for us to reach out in brotherhood to others, or to spend our time worrying about how we look?”

  Which is exactly what Claire thought every time she fought with her hair on a Sunday morning. But oddly, she didn’t feel comforted that their temporary leadership had voiced her unspoken thoughts. Instead, she just felt uneasy.

  Change was a disturbing thing.

  Chapter 3

  AT THE TAIL END of her lunch hour the next day, Claire saw the newspaper lying on the table in the break room. She turned to the County section, where Phinehas’s case was being reported in all its shocking details. A quick scan of the two columns told her Tamara and Dinah had both held up steadily under the defense’s questions, and it was practically a foregone conclusion that Phinehas would go to prison. But apparently he was to go on the stand himself today or tomorrow, so who knew what would happen.

  Personally, Claire thought Phinehas was as guilty as could be and no more deserved his congregation restored to him than Dinah had deserved his abuse all these years. But she was keeping her thoughts to herself. The Elect were taking sides—and so passionately that just having people over for dinner was becoming a risky proposition.

  Her manager stuck her head in the break-room door and Claire closed the paper hastily. “I was just coming.”

  Margot Emerson glanced at the paper. “Reading about the court case?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do your people think?”

  “My . . . people?” The topic of her religion never came up at work. Claire did her job well, got along with her coworkers, and always had a welcoming smile for the new clients. The bank wasn’t entitled to know or ask about her faith.

  “Yes.” Margo walked beside her back to her desk, which faced the street door. “The folks in your church.”

  Was this some kind of trick question? “It’s pretty clear he deceived a lot of people for a long time,” she answered cautiously. It was safe to say something like that to Margot—she wasn’t likely to turn up at the dinner table of anyone Claire knew.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute, Claire?”

  Claire glanced at her desk, where a couple of new-account applications sat ready for processing. Her workload hadn’t been very heavy lately, and with all the customers in the line, she should really put her old teller hat back on and give the other girls a hand. “There’s a lot of traffic today and—”

  “Just for a moment. Five minutes.”

  Well, Margot was her boss. It wasn’t like she was going to write her up for slacking off.

  Claire followed her into her office and closed the door as the other woman went around the desk and sat. Then she sank into the guest chair in front of it. “What’s up?”

  Margot folded her hands and took a moment, as if she were arranging words in her head before she said them. “Claire, you know you’re a valued member of our team, don’t you?”

  She didn’t, actually. She hadn’t been in her new position all that long, so she hadn’t seen an evaluation yet. “Thank you. I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Your numbers are good, your rapport with the customers is good . . . for the most part.”

  “My rapport with them is always good,” Claire protested. “Why, has someone complained?”

  Margot looked at her hands again, still clasped on the desk, then raised her gaze. “How committed are you to the . . . how should I put this . . . external standards of your religion?”

  The way she looked on the outside was a natural outgrowth of the sacrifice that she was making on the inside, but that was a little difficult to explain to an Outsider. “What do you mean?” she said at last.

  “I mean your dress and the way you have your hair styled.”

  Claire touched the smooth chignon at the nape of her neck—the one that had taken thirty agonizing minutes to beat into submission this morning. Talk about sacrifice. She didn’t know a single Elect woman for whom her hair wasn’t as heavy a cross as any Jesus had had to bear.

  Which took her back to what she’d heard at Gathering last night. After Luke Fisher had dropped his bomb about the possibility that the standards for appearance might change, people had gone away in little groups, talking a mile a minute. Nothing would happen right away, of course. It would take prayer and fasting and probably several levels of discussion among the elder Shepherds.

  In fact, she probably wouldn’t see changes like that in her lifetime. Unfortunately.

  But Margot was still looking at her. “Would you consider changing your look a little? Wearing something other than black, for instance, and getting a stylish cut?”

  She stared at her manager, for once in her life completely speechless. This conversation was illegal. You couldn’t reprimand someone for how they looked. Besides, it wasn’t as if she were wearing a nose ring and flaunting her midriff in public. She wore business suits and high-necked blouses, for goodness sake. What was going on in Margot’s head?

  “Why would I do that?” she asked at last. “No one has ever remarked on how I look.”

  “Maybe not, but since this Phinehas person went to trial over in Pitchford, surely you’ve noticed the slide in our new accounts.”

  Claire’s eyes widened as she connected the dots. “I would think that had less to do with my clothes and hair than with the branch’s ability to market to the new residents.”

  “It’s the black, you see.” Margot unclasped her hands and laid them flat on the blotter, as if to suppress what she’d just said. “Folks have been reading about your group’s customs in the papers, and you’re being associated with this man Phinehas by the way that you dress. He’s clearly a criminal. Not only that, there was a child abuse case in the papers awhile ago, and this is bringing that up again. It’s bad for the bank.”

  “But I have nothing to do with Phinehas or the other case!” she protested. “I just told you, I think he deceived everyone.”

  “Yes, but prospective investo
rs with our bank don’t know that. In the last few weeks I’ve had four prospective clients tell me they’d rather bank ten miles away in Plum Valley because they don’t want to bank where the employees belong to a group that harbors criminals. One corporate account has pulled out and another is threatening to go to Pitchford. I know it’s harsh, but I need to ask you to modify your appearance. To keep people from making the connection they’re making.”

  “Margot, I don’t think you can ask me to do that. It’s not legal. If I were from India, you couldn’t ask me not to wear a sari. The principle is the same.”

  “Yes, but if you were wearing a sari it wouldn’t associate you with a rapist and a group that is clearly supporting him in large numbers.” Margot’s voice had lost its usual smooth calm. “I don’t want to do this, Claire, but the success of this branch is on my shoulders. The law clearly states that if an employee is creating an undue hardship on the business, that employee can be terminated.”

  “Terminated?” Her own voice was a terrified squeak.

  “Please. Tell me you’ll go shopping and get some new things, and you’ll do something different with your hair. I won’t insist on makeup or jewelry. Just those two things that will break the connection. What do you say?”

  What on earth could she say? Suddenly Claire knew what the Christians must have felt like when the Romans demanded they recant or be fed to the lions. How many sermons had she sat through where the Shepherds had urged the congregation to turn the other cheek, to take rejection for the gospel’s sake, even as Jesus did? Well, here was her opportunity, but somehow the feeling of being uplifted in righteousness was missing. She just felt flattened and scared and misunderstood.

  “Can I have some time to think about it?” she asked.

  “Why would you need time? A simple yes or no is all I need.”

  She needed counsel. She could talk to Owen or Rebecca. She couldn’t just make a decision like this on her own. It was a matter of her example, and that meant her salvation.