Maybe she could talk to Luke Fisher. He would know all about being between a rock and a hard place, and he would certainly know how Owen and the other Elders felt about—
“Claire, I need an answer,” Margot said sharply. “My regional manager is breathing down my neck on this one.”
“Let me finish out today,” she said desperately. “I need to talk it over with—with our leadership. I’ll let you know in the morning.”
Margot gazed at her through narrowed eyes. “You have to talk your clothes over with your church’s leadership? I have to say, I’m a little surprised. I had you pegged for moving into an assistant manager position sometime in the next year, but that calls for initiative and decision-making skills that I’m not seeing here.”
First her job was at stake, and now her future? The first flutterings of panic began to beat around Claire’s heart. “Please, Margot, it’s just twenty-four hours.”
“And then what happens? Either you can, in which case you would probably know that right now, or you can’t, in which case I’m going to have to start termination proceedings. Work with me, here, Claire. Give me a yes.”
“I can’t,” she said miserably. You couldn’t just throw your entire example out the window for your job. What was a job compared to your eternal salvation? And did she really want to work for someone who would put her salvation at risk like this? First clothes, then hair, then what? Next thing you knew, she’d be going to a casino for a team-building event, or taking an overnight trip with a male colleague.
No, an Elect woman’s example was directly related to her salvation, and that was that. No chipping away at it, no slippery slope of giving in.
“I’m sorry, Margot, but I can’t change the way I look for the bank. It’s a principle I can’t give up.”
A muscle in her manager’s jaw flexed. “I don’t have to tell you how sorry I am about this, Claire. And you do realize that under state law, you have no grounds for a lawsuit over your termination.”
Claire took a long breath. As if she would ever stoop to such a thing. “I understand.”
“We need to act quickly on this to stop the client trickle. Give me your keys to the cage and your access badge, and pack up any personal items as discreetly as you can. I’ll give you the two weeks of vacation you have coming, as well as two weeks’ pay in lieu of notice. Okay?”
“That would be fine.” She couldn’t wait to get out of here. She could hardly look Margot in the face.
Her manager stood and held out her hand. Claire took it in an automatic reflex, but there was no enthusiasm in the handshake. “Good luck, Claire. I really am sorry.”
“I am, too,” she said, and walked out of the office, acutely aware of Margot’s gaze on her back. She avoided the puzzled and annoyed glances of the two tellers when she made no move to give them the help they needed on the early lunch rush. Instead, she kept her gaze resolutely on her desk. Not many personal things there. A family picture, a neon-purple stapler an account rep had given her, a framed “employee of the month” certificate.
She didn’t even need a box.
* * *
CLAIRE HADN’T DRIVEN much more than a block when her hands began to shake so much she couldn’t manage the gear shift. She pulled over and rolled down the windows, then tipped her head back against the headrest and tried to breathe long, calming breaths. On the sidewalk, people strolled past the movie theater or lined up outside the ice-cream shop, and down the street the coffee bar was doing a roaring trade in iced lattes.
Kids were back in school, the town was basking in an Indian summer, and she was unemployed.
She’d never been in such a position. She’d earned her two-year degree in accounting and had gone straight to work, first for a landscaping company and then for the bank. And to be fired—well, she couldn’t very well say that when people started asking. She’d have to say she’d left on her own, which was true in a way. She’d stood up for her principles and chosen to leave rather than cave in and stay.
The executives used the phrase spin doctor, and she’d always wondered what it meant. Now she knew. She was doing it herself—putting the least embarrassing spin on what had happened. But the rent still had to be paid and you couldn’t eat off your principles, so since she couldn’t leave town, she was going to have to find another job.
She’d been stupid to take the bank for granted. Instead of being practical and buying bonds or something, she’d spent her money on great clothes and designer shoes, although every item that she purchased was black. Even if no one else in Hamilton Falls could tell an Ann Taylor from a Raggedy Ann, she knew. She supposed it sprang from the fact that her mom slopped around at home in T-shirts and jeans, clothes an Elect woman wasn’t supposed to wear. Her mom gave way to earthly desires in private, but Claire upheld the Elect standard in public with style, feeling somehow that she needed to even up the accounts.
What if you can’t get work here?
Of course she could. There was always Quill and Quinn, where there was still an open position, but that was a step backward career-wise. The only other options were to join the flood of people interviewing for jobs at the discount store, or get married.
Since most of her dreams since graduating from high school had involved getting out of Hamilton Falls and starting a real life, Phinehas’s decree that she had to stay had nearly crushed her spirit. But a person just didn’t tell a Shepherd to mind his own business and then call a moving van. No, an Elect woman took “bend and blend” seriously. She bent her will to those in authority over her, and did it with a smile full of grace.
Even if in private she pulled a pillow over her head and cried long into the night.
She comforted herself with the thought that if she left town, she’d be even more alone than she was already, without the security blanket of familiar streets that held friends and acquaintances on every block. If she moved to Spokane or Seattle she’d find Elect, but it would take months to get to know people and in the meantime, there she’d be in an empty apartment with a phone that didn’t ring.
At least here people cared enough to call. And since she was going to stay, even if the frustrated longing inside her was practically eating her alive, she’d simply have to find a different job.
Soon. Right after she’d had an iced latte.
She climbed out of the car and walked back down the block to the coffee bar, where she got the latte and shook chocolate sprinkles on the top—strictly for medicinal purposes. Out on the sidewalk, she took a long sip of the creamy liquid and let it fill up her senses as the sun warmed her face.
Roll up the scrolls of time
Eternity is mine.
I’m gonna do just fine
Safe with the Lord.
Five Wise sang their hearts out in a cross between swing and pop—two genres of music Claire was becoming more familiar with the more she listened to KGHM.
Say what you want to me,
I know where I’m gonna be.
You don’t control me.
I’m with the Lord.
If only she could say that herself. With a sigh and another sip of coffee, Claire leaned against the warm bricks of the building and realized the music was being piped over speakers onto the street.
Of course. The radio station was next door to the coffee bar.
“That was Five Wise, a quintet of talented ladies singing ‘Safe with the Lord.’” Luke Fisher’s beautiful baritone washed over Claire’s ruffled emotions the way the coffee had over her tongue, soothing and sweet. “They’ll be coming to the county fair,” he went on, “so if you’re in the neighborhood, be sure to check them out. Who knows—we at KGHM might even be there ourselves. Our listeners have been so generous that we could have our mobile station by then and could catch the girls for a live performance and an interview. What do you think about that?”
From somewhere among the tables on the sidewalk outside the coffee bar, someone said, “Yeah!”
Sipping her latt
e, Claire considered the storefronts along Main Street. Clothing stores. A hobby shop. The bookshop, the ice-cream shop, and the coffee bar. The lawyer’s office. Hmm. Lawyers billed by the hour, didn’t they? Maybe she could ask Derrick if they needed someone. There was the hospital’s accounting department, too. Only as a last resort would she consider retail or being a checker at the supermarket—no employer of the kind she wanted would look at her if that appeared on her résumé.
With a sigh, she turned away and caught sight of the bulletin board near the door of the coffee bar. She knew what was on it—business cards, ads for tree trimmers and massage therapists. Part-time jobs, such as delivering flyers. No real employer would post—
WANTED: Full-time bookkeeper. Must know spreadsheet software, be detail-oriented, meticulous. Two to three years’ experience and two-year degree. Sense of humor mandatory. Send qualifications and résumé to 98.5 KGHM, 254 Main Street, Hamilton Falls, WA. Attention: John Willetts.
Claire stood as if rooted to the sidewalk, her latte cooling her hand. The card was a little yellowed, as if it had been pinned there in the sun for at least a week.
Yellowed or not, it was a sign.
She leaned over and dropped her cup into the nearest trash can, adjusted her purse on her shoulder, straightened her skirt and her spine, and marched into the station.
* * *
THE ROOM WHERE Luke Fisher played the music faced Main Street and had a large picture window so passersby could see him behind his console. Inside, there was another large window between the entry hall where Claire stood and what looked like a library, where the walls were covered in bookshelves holding records and CDs. Most of the records looked as though they hadn’t been moved since they’d been shelved sometime in the sixties.
She looked through the window a little uncertainly. This wasn’t her world at all. She had gone from listening to the radio to walking into the station, all in a couple of weeks or less. A year ago, even a few months ago, she’d never have believed she would do such a thing.
Luke waved at her, and it was too late to back out.
“Use the door.” His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear his voice—maybe his studio was soundproof. She pushed open the door next to the window and walked into the library. At the same time, he came out of the studio, shutting that door carefully behind him.
“Hi.” He offered his hand, and she shook it. “I’m Luke Fisher, and you’re clearly one of my sisters in God. I remember you from Gathering. What can I do for you?”
You can stop thinking of me as a sister. “My name is Claire Montoya. I—I was reading the bulletin board next door and saw the ad about the station needing a bookkeeper.” She wished her voice wouldn’t wobble when she needed to appear professional and competent. But it was hard to be professional when Luke Fisher was standing directly in front of her, still holding her hand, wearing his Dockers as well as any L.L. Bean model and smelling of some yummy cologne.
He smiled and let go of her hand. “Come on back to the booth, Claire.” At the door to the studio, he looked over his shoulder at her. “There’s only one rule in here. You talk when the music’s on, and you don’t when I’m talking. Otherwise everyone in a five-county radius will be able to hear you. Okay?”
“Okay.” Wow. She hadn’t realized this little station could broadcast that far.
Luke sat in front of the console, slid some CDs into slots with his left hand, and with his right chose a switch from about a dozen on a board and slid it down its track to the bottom. “There.” He made some notes on a sheet of paper. “We’ve got ten minutes until I back-call these.”
Ten minutes to land herself a job. Well, she’d lost one in about the same amount of time, hadn’t she?
“Let me tell you how it works around here,” Luke said. “My show is eight to twelve, mornings and evenings. We sign off at midnight. Toby Henzig comes in at six A.M., turns the system on, and reads the early reports. Then he comes back at noon and hosts the open mic, reads the stock reports, plays what he wants until eight. You’d work during business hours, of course.” Luke leaned back in his chair as though he had nothing better to do than to gab the afternoon away. “Do you have a résumé?”
“No, I was passing by and decided on the spur of the moment to come in. But I can bring you one later today.”
“No problem. Give me the condensed version.”
Claire took a deep breath and told him about her education, her career—or what passed for a career for an Elect woman in a small town. It was better than a résumé that held nothing but, say, assisting at Linda Bell’s daycare, which is what the womanly ideal seemed to be. “I was employee of the month recently,” she concluded, “and I passed the Management Potential course in Seattle with flying colors.”
He was silent for a moment. She noticed that he hadn’t made a single note on his sheet of paper, though he’d been rolling his pen between his fingers the whole time she’d been talking. Maybe he was just killing time in between songs. Maybe she was fooling herself that she was any kind of prize on the job market. Maybe—
“Why’d you leave the bank?” he asked at last.
She’d known she’d have to field this one; she just wished she’d had a little more time to prepare. As in, more than an hour after the event. But Luke was Elect—or had been—or was going to be. She was a little confused on that point. But it seemed that he would understand. She’d always been honest with herself so there was no point in whitewashing anything now.
“My manager said our new-client metrics were down because people were associating me with . . . with a court case going on in Pitchford right now.”
“With Phinehas.”
Of course, he would know all about it. Probably better than she did. “Yes.”
“You know that’s illegal, right?”
“Apparently not. There’s a provision about people who cause an undue hardship to the bank. It doesn’t matter anyway. Everyone signs an ‘at-will’ agreement when they’re hired. You can be fired at any time for no reason at all.”
“And you can be hired at any time for the best reasons in the world. When can you start?”
She blinked at him. “Sorry?”
“I’m willing to wait if you wanted to take a few days off.” He clicked his pen into action. “Give me a start date, and I’ll have your office cleaned up by then. At the moment, all the offices are full of crates and farm magazines and thirty years’ worth of dead spiders.”
Claire finally got her mouth closed and her brain in gear. So what if he didn’t need to see her résumé or check her references? He was obviously a man of action—look at what he’d already accomplished. She’d be crazy if she did anything but jump at this opportunity—and who knew how far it would go?
“I can start right now, if you’d like,” she heard herself say.
“Perfect. I’ll ask John Willetts, the owner, to put you on the payroll while you go home and get out of your Bank Lady suit. Come back in something you can take on the dead spiders in.” The song that had been playing finished, and with his left hand he took the CD out while his right slid the switch back up its track.
“That was U2 and ‘Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,’” he said into the microphone. “Fortunately, I can’t say the same. Folks, God is good. KGHM now has an accounting expert to keep us on the straight and narrow. If you were planning on moseying down here to apply for the job, you’re too late. But don’t despair. I hear they’re still hiring at the discount store.”
* * *
RAY HARPER PARKED his truck on Main Street across from the radio station and shut off the engine. The other night he’d discovered the station had no Web site, and therefore no way to figure out its programming and when Boanerges aka Fisher might be on the premises. He could call and ask, of course, but he’d rather not do that in case Fisher was as good with voices as he was himself.
The one call he’d had to make yesterday was to Sergeant Harmon, after he’d listened
to all four hours of Fisher’s show the night before and fallen asleep with Fisher’s voice echoing in his ears. Unfortunately the good sergeant hadn’t been all that keen on him hanging around in Hamilton Falls.
“I’ve got a guy here killed by a falling object, Harper. I think that investigation is more important than your hanging out in Hick Central, listening to the radio.”
“What kind of falling object?” Knowing Harmon, it probably wasn’t a random tree branch.
“A refrigerator. The Skulls are feeling cranky about their guy finking on them on that cocaine case, and we have to shut ’em down.”
“Biker gangs aren’t my assignment. Teddy Howitz has that detail.”
“You telling me my job, Harper? Teddy Howitz needs a boatload of help, and you have some empty spaces on your dance card.”
“Sir, you know how long I’ve had that file open on Boanerges.”
“I don’t know why. None of those women would press any charges.”
“So, he’s getting away scot-free to do whatever he wants. I don’t know what the deal is with this radio gig, but something tells me he isn’t saving his money to go back to college.”
“One week,” Harmon said. “I’ll give you one week of motel bills and meals, and if you don’t scare up anything on this guy, leave him alone. We’ve got bigger fish to incarcerate here.”
Ray had to admit the truth of that. He slouched in the driver’s seat of the truck and contemplated the picture window behind which the DJ sat. If this really was Brandon Boanerges, Ray could see why the ladies had gone for him the way geese go for bread. Even though he sat there all by himself, you could tell he was putting on a one-man show. Animated movement, pantomimed conversations with passersby, and once in a while, a little air guitar when he got carried away by a song.
Ray turned the key one degree in the truck’s ignition and turned the radio on.
“—find this and all kinds of other literary gems at Quill and Quinn, our local headquarters for quality fiction. And speaking of quality, here’s Casting Crowns with ‘Voice of Truth.’”
A Sounding Brass Page 5