Grounds to Believe (14 page)

“T
wo weeks of sniffing around and this is what you come up with?” Harry Everett said incredulously the next morning. “I pay you time and a half and I still have no grounds?”

Ross tipped the wooden chair back and propped his boot heels on Harry’s steel-and-laminate desk. “In a nutshell.” He took another sip of his third cup of toxic coffee.

“What am I supposed to tell the lieutenant?”

“Just what I said. There is a superconservative bunch of people here that you could call a cult under some definitions. He ought to be glad they’re living in his town keeping the crime rate down. But there is no criminal activity.”

Everett glared at him with eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Your informant’s got you conned, Malcolm.”

Ross wasn’t offended. Harry really wanted to crash a cult and make a bunch of arrests—maybe even make the State News section of the Seattle
Post Intelligencer.
Too bad. It wasn’t going to happen. “There’s no child abuse in
general. No weird sacrificial rites. No black altars in their houses. Just a bunch of people living in a time warp.”

“‘In general’? What does that mean? You’ve got to have
something.
”

Ross lifted his boots off Harry’s desk and got down to business. “That’s the part that has me worried.”

“I’m warning you. Quit playing with me.”

“The Blanchard kid…I’m wondering how anybody can be sick so much and not have somebody figure out what’s wrong. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean? You’ve seen the kid’s file. It’s about a foot thick with everything that’s gone wrong with him since he was born. Of course it doesn’t make sense. Neither does cancer, but I don’t arrest John Doe’s family when John Doe comes down with it.”

“You might if it had been induced somehow.”

“Induced?” Everett looked as though disbelief were causing him physical pain.

“What if someone wanted him to stay sick?”

Harry leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “That’s the weirdest theory I ever heard, and trust me, I’ve heard them all.”

Ross shrugged. “It isn’t even a theory. It’s just a feeling.”

“Yeah, well, keep your feelings to yourself, and start coming up with facts. Bellville’s paying your expenses and he wants answers. And what’s with this expense report that showed up on my desk this morning?”

“I had to get some clothes. To fit in. Make it look like I’m conforming.”

“What do you think this is, Narcotics? They might have the budget for hot rods and gold chains, but we don’t. Or clothes, either.”

“You’ll sign it though, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll sign it,” Everett agreed unhappily. “Just keep the rest of this weirdness quiet, will you?”

Ross loped down the front steps of the station. What he ought to do was get himself out of Julia’s life and let the good folks over at Child Protective Services take over. They probably would anyway, once he could get something solid behind his hunch. But the thought of the sweet warmth in Julia’s eyes when she smiled at him, the honesty in every word she spoke…the mess he was going to have to make of her life…

“Hi, Ross!”

With a jerk, he oriented himself. Front of building. Main Street. Julia, standing on the sidewalk, tilting her head to look into his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Dimples dented her cheeks as mischief colored her smile. “What did they do, sentence you to life without parole?” With her chin, she indicated the police station behind him. “Did you get a speeding ticket or something?”

Cover story, quick! What else would a biker be doing in the police station? He couldn’t very well say he was investigating her family and daydreaming about her smile.

He took her elbow, and strolled in the direction of the bookshop. “I can’t believe anyone takes a thirty-mile-an-
hour speed limit seriously in this town. They got me coming down the hill the other day.”

She nodded sympathetically. “It happens to everybody. They hide behind that laurel hedge on the edge of the high school property and knock off tourists by the dozen.”

“And I fell for it.” He felt slightly guilty that she’d accept a shoddy last-minute lie like that one so easily. “What are you doing, footloose and fancy-free? Don’t you have to work?”

“I was at the post office getting stamps. It’s lunchtime.”

It had been ten-thirty when he’d gone to see Everett, and in between paperwork and trying to reach Ray and trying to convince Harry there wasn’t any criminal activity among the Elect, the morning had disappeared.

“Want to eat somewhere?”

She blushed. He noted with careful attention the way the blood rose in her neck and cheeks, then receded, leaving her skin creamy and soft. She had great skin, despite what the endless black wardrobe did to it. She’d probably never had a blemish in her life. But then, if a woman didn’t smoke or drink and spent her time hiking around the hills like something out of
The Sound of Music,
it wasn’t surprising.

“I wasn’t fishing for an invitation,” she said in a low voice.

“It wouldn’t matter if you were. I’d still like to have lunch with you. I went to a place yesterday that was pretty good. Some diner. Not very fancy but good.”

“Ross, that’s all the way at the other end of town. I have to be back at work in forty-five minutes.”

“It’ll take two minutes if we ride.”

“Plus twenty for the speeding ticket.”

“Be nice.”

“I can’t ride with you in public. It would break the rules.”

He grinned down into her eyes. It wasn’t even his lady-killer grin and look—there was nothing quite as rewarding as having a woman stare at your mouth like it was all she wanted in the world. “You’re breaking the rules just being seen with me.”

“Not any more.” She sounded a little dazed. “You have the official stamp of approval.”

He stopped at a Chinese café and held the door for her. “Why’s that?”

“Melchizedek called me last night when I got home and asked if I thought you’d be coming with me to prayer meeting Wednesday. I said I didn’t know.” The waitress handed her a menu and she buried her nose in it.

Oops. Last night. He’d better clear that up right away. “Hey, Julia, about last night…” Instead of taking the menu and sitting across the table, he slid into the booth beside her.

She wriggled aside to make room for him, but kept her attention on the soup of the day. “It’s all right, Ross. You don’t have to explain.”

“I ditch you in front of all your friends and I don’t have to explain? That’s taking submission a little too far.”

She blushed again. He’d never had this effect on a woman before.

“It’s got nothing to do with submission. I don’t have any claims on you. We came to the service separately. You can do what you like.”

Ross frowned. This wasn’t like Julia. He wasn’t going to get anywhere if she spent any more time talking to Melchizedek. Obviously they’d discussed more than the guest list at Wednesday’s prayer meeting.

“You invited me somewhere, and I accepted. I owe you an explanation for cutting out in the middle,” he said gently. “I had to talk to someone about something important, and there wasn’t time to find you.”

“Talk to whom?” she asked, plainly puzzled. She knew how many of the Elect he’d met, after all. He would tell her the truth…as far as he dared.

“To Dr. Archer.”

Her eyebrows went up, and she politely refrained from staring at him, turning her attention back to the menu instead. “Really?”

“We got to talking in the men’s. It got kind of involved, and I didn’t want to stop. A professional, educated man’s perspective. You know.”

He’d let her think he meant the life of the Elect. That he was considering joining up. On such allusions and omissions were cover stories built.

“Oh.”

Somehow, he didn’t have that feeling of satisfaction that weaving a good story usually gave him. In fact, he felt downright crummy about it.

With an internal sigh, he looked at the list of dishes marching down the laminated page of the menu and tried to concentrate. The waitress appeared to take their order, and when she’d gone, Ross deflected the subject.
“So there’s a prayer meeting Wednesday? What does that involve?”

“What you’d expect. Prayer.”

“I haven’t prayed since the last time I laid a bike down, and I was twenty-two then.”

“Is that the only time you pray? When disaster is about to strike?”

Conversations with his Father were as much a part of him as breathing. Ross often struggled with the knowledge that, much as he wanted to direct his own life, it wasn’t a good idea without getting input from on high first. Something as simple as a conversation could sometimes have life-altering consequences without God’s guidance. And sometimes even more with it.

But that wasn’t part of his cover story. And if his experience with cults was any indication, he would need a little divine guidance now.

“I lost the knack about the time my wife was killed,” he said. “How do you pray?”

Julia hesitated, and glanced around. “It’s not really proper to talk about it here.”

“What’s wrong with talking about something you love?”

“It’s private. We’re not like the scribes and Pharisees, praying in public.”

“I don’t want you to actually do it. Just tell me about it.”

“Well, all right.” She lowered her voice. “First, we pray for Melchizedek and Phinehas and the other Shepherds. For their missions and well-being. Then for the other members of the Elect, which believe me, can run to quite
a list. Then last you pray for yourself, for what you need to stay true to Melchizedek’s words.”

Lord, they’ve put you in a box and expect you to work miracles from inside it. Help me now.

“What about other people?” he asked. “You know, others who believe in God who aren’t Elect. Do you pray for them?”

“Worldly people? We pray that God will direct a Shepherd to them.”

“So someone outside the Elect can’t be saved unless they come through a Shepherd?”

“It says, ‘Who shall be saved except them that hear the gospel.’ And the Shepherds carry the gospel.”

“But many pastors and priests do. Do you really think that all the people in the world have to come to God through a Shepherd?” The whole body of believers were not saved because they hadn’t come to God through the Elect’s leaders? Ross was torn between disbelief and pity.

“It’s not up to us to say,” she said, but she sounded less sure. “That’s human thinking. It restricts God’s power.”

“I’d say that funneling God’s power through one set of men with one set of beliefs is not only arrogant, it’s dangerous. Almost blasphemous.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Just how much do you know about God, anyway?”

“Well, now, look who’s here,” a voice said above them.

Ross closed his mouth on his answer and looked up to see two guys in shirts and ties standing at their table. One was about twenty, tall and skinny, with a spiral notebook
bulging in his pants pocket. The other was looking at Julia as if she’d just run over his dog.

“Hi, Derrick,” she said, in a tone that just missed being welcoming. “Hey, John, how’s it going?”

Derrick. The infamous Derrick Wilkinson, her future husband, who really did wear wool pants on a warm summer day and had two pens in his pocket.
This
was what she had to look forward to for the rest of her life?

“Mind if we join you?” the skinny kid asked. “They said we couldn’t get a table till one o’clock.”

“Sure,” Julia said without consulting Ross. “We just got our soup.”

At least he’d had the foresight to sit beside her. Watching Derrick Wilkinson snuggle up to Julia across the table would be more than he could stand this morning.

“Ross, Derrick Wilkinson and John Kowalczyk,” Julia said, pointing her soup spoon at each of them in turn. “Derrick works across the street at the lawyer’s office, and John does landscape design with his brother.”

Ross reached across the table to shake hands. “Ross Malcolm,” he said. “Funny how we identify ourselves by what we do, isn’t it?”

“What do you do for a living?” Derrick asked.

Ross grinned and shrugged. “Nothing, at the moment. I’m on vacation.”

“He’s a heavy equipment mechanic,” Julia supplied. Derrick looked down his nose at him, or would have if Ross hadn’t been the bigger of the two. Evidently mechanics didn’t rate very highly on the Hamilton Falls social scale.

“Are you a lawyer?” he asked Derrick.

“No. Paralegal. I couldn’t afford to go to law school.”

There didn’t seem to be any polite rejoinder to make to that. The guy had a chip on his shoulder they could saw up at the mill.

“Julia and I were just talking about prayer meeting.”

He hadn’t touched Julia since taking her arm on the street. Now, under the protection of the tablecloth, he touched her elbow with his own. Maybe it was because she looked soft and feminine and touchable in a booth overflowing with defensive testosterone. Maybe it was just because he wanted her to remember there were other fish in the gene pool. She didn’t need to settle for this one.

Straightening slightly, she went very still, but she didn’t pull away.

“So what I want to know is, does it do any good?” he asked, dropping his spoon in his empty bowl.

“The prayers?” Julia asked.

“Depends what you mean by good,” Derrick said, as annoyingly evasive as any attorney Ross had ever heard.

“I guess a person could feel they contributed to world peace or something,” Ross allowed thoughtfully. “In a nonparticipatory way.”

John frowned. “But everyone participates. That’s part of what makes it so powerful.”

“But don’t you think that getting out there and doing something would add to the effect of your prayers?”

Both men turned horrified eyes from him to Julia. He lifted an eyebrow. He could almost hear what they were
thinking—poor Julia, consorting with the publicans and sinners.

“World peace isn’t in our hands. It’s in God’s,” Derrick said.

“It’s in everybody’s hands,” Ross shot back. “A Christian doesn’t hide behind God’s back. Do you want to abdicate your responsibility?” Both Derrick and John bristled, as if he were accusing them personally. “I’m using the figurative you, of course.”