Weeping Angel (3 page)

“Hobby!” she cried as if he'd paid her a paramount insult.

“If you want a piano as an ornament in your parlor for some kids to dabble on, that's fine with me. In fact, I think lessons would be a good thing.”

“Well, thank you so much,” she snapped.

“I don't think you meant that.”

“And I don't think you meant what you said. You were maligning my intentions.”

“I wasn't. I was trying to make a comparison here. Which is my point—there is no comparison. I
need
this piano, Miss Marshall. If I don't get
this
piano, my business is going to be busted. So, you're going to have to do your teaching on another piano when one arrives.”

She boldly met his eyes. “I can't.”

“Why not? One good reason.”

Flushing, she grew very distraught; her fingers twisted the fringy stuff on her purse. For a moment, he thought she might cry. Wrong choice on her part. Hell, he could squeeze out some tears, too, if he thought of something to rip his gut.
If
he was so inclined to turn on the waterworks. Which he was not. Men didn't cry. And smart women didn't either. A fatal mistake because this man never surrendered to theatrics.

Frank rested his hip against the counter. “Are you having trouble thinking up a good reason, Miss Marshall?”

She showed no signs of relenting. “I don't need any reasons, Mr. Brody. I paid for the piano and the piano is mine.”

Feeling every muscle in his body grow taut, Frank nodded and turned to the ticket agent. “Parks, I've been about as pleasant as I can, this being a hot day and all.” He pressed his palms on the countertop and leaned toward Grenville until they were nose to nose. Frank kept his tone level and low. “Just so we're clear on this. I want my piano. And I'm going to have my piano. Not in a few weeks or a month. Now. Right now. As of”—Frank shifted his gaze to the clock and back—“four-oh-three, it's mine. I think we're clear on this, Parks. I know I am.”

Grenville's eyes bulged, making them appear twice their size through the short lenses of his glasses. “B-But I've explained you can't take immediate possession.”

Frank backed away and shrugged his shoulders in mock resignation. “Hell, then I'm just going to steal it.”

“You can't let him!” Miss Marshall implored the ticket agent. Twirling toward Frank, her fancy skirts swished around trim ankles and sounded like a high wind in tall grass.

He tipped his head with a challenge. “Step outside and watch me.”

“You couldn't possibly roll the crate over the boardwalk yourself!”

“I have thirsty men to help.”

“They won't help you unless I tell them they can,” Grenville warned. “It's like I said. We're going to have to go through the Wells Fargo office. Until that time, I have to keep the piano here.”

“I'll be damned if I'm going to let a perfectly good piano sit in a train depot,” Frank ground out. “It's either coming with me, or I'm setting up my bar here. What's it going to be, Parks?”

“That's not at all acceptable to me,” Miss Marshall broke in.

Frank kept after the ticket agent. “What's it going to be, Parks?”

Grenville ruffled the tidy edges of the Union Pacific manual. “My official ruling as a representative of the railroad is to organize an emergency town meeting to decide what to do. We've got ourselves a monumental problem.”

The only monumental problem Frank could see was standing in front of him with a hat of garden foliage and duck wings on her head.

I
nside the Christ Redeemer church, the flock of Weeping Angel gathered to decide the residence of the New American upright parlor piano. Paddle ceiling fans stirred the warm air under the guidance of five boys who'd been elected to pull the cords up and down.

As the congregation took their seats on the polished mahogany pews, there was murmured reflection as gazes lifted to the gesso—plaster-and paint-coated—winged angel, classically posed and based on the statue of Artemis at Versailles. She'd been put up with twenty lengths of clear fishing line, and only on those Sunday mornings when the dawn's early light beamed through the stained-glass windows could a person see the strings holding her. After nine o'clock she seemed to be suspended by the will of God.

The angel meant a lot to the residents of Weeping Angel—they'd named their town after her. It had come about the day after a spring shower passed over the town, and Reverend Thorpe went to inspect his
newly constructed church. He found the angel with what looked to be tears streaming down her face. He'd fled the hallowed hall, screaming that the Lord had given him a sign. Not fifteen minutes later, the whole of the town gathered in the church to behold the miracle. But it wasn't until after everyone was huddled with awe around the weeping angel, that Oscar Beamguard had the bad grace to point out the steady drip coming from a leak in the roof and landing on the angel's head to run down her cheeks.

There'd been a moment's hushed quiet before the folks still proclaimed the event as a miracle. After all, God had made the rain, and even though the roof was at fault, the leak had as much power as the angel crying herself. They decided then and there they must name the town Weeping Angel in honor of the divine omen.

Retelling the story of how it had all come about was considered a privilege. The citizens took pride in relating the story, careful to keep the recounting accurate. A person couldn't stretch the truth about the Lord's work and not worry about penitence.

Not giving a minute's thought to how the town was named, Amelia sat in the first row pew, along with Narcissa Dodge, Grenville Parks, Herbert Fisk, Lew Furlong, Hardy, and Mr. Frank Brody. She had more pressing things on her mind than the blessed angel.

Namely, gaining possession of the New American upright parlor piano.

Why couldn't Mr. Brody let her have this piano and wait for a new one to arrive for his saloon? What was more important—nurturing the minds of the children or contributing to the delinquency of the town's men?

Amelia leaned forward ever so slightly to regard Mr. Brody with a wary gaze. He sat on the end, next to Hardy, and had the poor taste to appear comfortable—this
being his first time in the church. Resting his arm on the pew's back, he'd propped one foot on his knee; his hat dangled from the toe of his boot. He'd seated himself as indolently as he'd eaten his peach, but the expression marking his profile gave him away. He was mad enough to eat hornets. She refrained from taking in his appearance further, mad herself, and more than a little offended because he'd called her sister in that tone. Why, everyone in town knew her family came from Methodists.

She resumed her position with a straight back. She
needed
to have
this
piano or she wouldn't last through the winter. She had withdrawn most of the money from her savings account—one hundred and fifty-nine dollars—and put it toward the piano. Of course she still had her aunt Clara's nest egg hidden in the broken-handled coffee mill on the top shelf of her pantry. But it was fast becoming too small for even a hummingbird to sit on.

If only she hadn't spent two hundred dollars on the Legacy Collection—the complete Bible spelled out in twenty-five marble-edged Italian leather volumes for easy reading.

Amelia hated to think about Jonas Pray, the book and Bible salesman from California. He'd been the handsomest man she'd ever seen. Like fine honey, he'd been golden, smooth and sweet with words. What a naïve fool she'd been.

She'd been raised to believe young ladies only acquainted themselves with respectable men while they waited for a marriage proposal. What more earnest occupation than a Bible salesman? She'd learned the hard way that a man's calling card wasn't enough to spell out his character.

After her public humiliation, she'd immersed herself in the upkeep of her home and the tending of her yards because she'd also been taught that the greatest
cause of misery and wretchedness in social life was idleness.

Her aunt had instructed her on the laws of physiology and hygiene. Her mother had cultivated in her a spirit of independence. Yet with all this knowledge at her disposal, Amelia had only been trained to be a wife, not how to transact business and be a financier. So it was with horror that she reacted to the news from Mr. Hartshorn, the manager of the bank, that her account was on the verge of collapse.

It was the second most humiliating day of Amelia's life.

After great consideration for her predicament, the only dignified way she could think to salvage herself from poverty was to teach piano lessons.

She had eight confirmed pupils—all girls. At twenty-five cents a lesson, and lessons being held once a week, she would be supplementing her diminutive savings with two dollars every seven days. She could have had an extra two dollars and fifty cents and would have had ten more pupils—boys—if she'd been able to convince their mothers the importance of musical awareness for a son as well as a daughter. But she'd exhausted her speech on the matter and had had to settle for the eight girls.

Eight girls she wouldn't have if she didn't get her piano.

The town's mayor, Cincinatus Dodge, took up the pulpit to direct the meeting. He'd gone beyond the prime of his life, the spark of his youth starting to fizzle out. But he was still a man of much character and had aspirations of becoming a renowned orator. He'd been trying to recite the whole of the Declaration of Independence since last Fourth of July whenever he had the authority to hold the town captive. But he hadn't gotten past “all men are created equal” before someone interrupted his recitation. Because he'd memorized the document from the order in
which it had been written, he'd have to start over to gain his momentum back. And by then, his audience had grown wise to him.

“Come to order, citizens,” he called in a clear voice freshly sprayed with saline water from his atomizer. The church full of people didn't readily cease their steady whispers. “It has come to my attention—quiet, please—we have a monumental problem.”

There were numerous nods of men's heads and women conspiring in hushed tones behind their gloved hands.

“Now then—quiet, please. Quiet, please!”

The room instantly fell silent as a graveyard.

Mayor Dodge's brows rose a fraction as all eyes focused on him. He kept his appearance neat and tidy—as would a mayor in his late fifties. The part in his pomade-oiled silvery hair was so deep and exact, Moses couldn't have done a better job with his staff. His tailor-made clothes were respectable and fit him well. He glanced at his wife, Narcissa, who sat at Amelia's left. She gave him a frown and discreetly shook her head no. He placed his right hand into the fold of his jacket and took on a Jeffersonian pose. “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them—”

“What about my entitlement to the piano?” Frank broke in, his voice heavy with impatience.

“—entitle them to a piano . . . to a piano?” Mayor Dodge crinkled his nose. “Horse feathers! That's not right!”

Frank stood, panama in hand, and headed toward the pulpit. “Slide over, Dodge, I don't have time for high jinks.”

“But I always oversee the town meetings!” the mayor blustered, refusing to move.

“Come over to the Moon Rock after this is settled and oversee me making you a gin cocktail—on the house.”

“Mr. Brody, you may have the podium.”

“I had a feeling you'd see things my way.” Frank turned to the crowd to deal with the problem himself, galling Amelia. “Grenville Parks here, our ticket agent for the Short Line, seems to think this meeting is necessary in order for me to take ownership of a piano I bought.”

“That
I
bought,” Amelia amended.

“All right,” Frank said, looking pointedly at her. “The piano we
both
bought, but had the damn luck—”

A rush of feminine gasps befell the congregation upon his slip of the tongue in the Lord's house.

Frank frowned, his gaze growing dark as if he didn't put merit in the eternal consequences of swearing in a church. But at least he had the decency to rephrase, “Had the bad luck of having only one piano delivered.”

“I can vouch for the one crate,” Herbert Fisk, the porter, added.

“Me, too,” said Hardy. “Heard the chords strike when we put her on the dolly.”

Lew Furlong sneezed, then blew his nose so loudly the boys pulling the fans broke into peals of laughter over the honking sound. Rubbing his watery eyes, he sniffed. “I helped get the one and only crate off my train.”