A Sounding Brass (30 page)

9. Have you ever heard the voice of God audibly? If so, what was it like? Do you think God speaks to people in this day and
age?

COMING IN MAY 2007

IF YOU ENJOY THE NOVELS OF SHELLEY BATES, LOOK FOR. . .

Over My Head

by Shelley Bates

Even in November, when the trees were bare and skeletal and the ground wet, the jogging trail by the river was still Lamorna
Hale’s favorite place to run. Not that she was wild about jogging, mind you. But something had to be done about her flabby
stomach and wobbly thighs, because she was simply not going up to a size sixteen on her next trip to the mall, and that was
that.

There are barriers in every woman’s life beyond which she will not go, and a size sixteen was one of them.

Besides, jogging got her out of the house. Going to Curves would do the same, but she’d still be in a gym with people she
knew from church and Anna and Tim’s schools. What Lamorna liked best about running by the river was simply that she was alone.

When you had a ten-year-old son and a fourteen-year-old daughter, who could blame you for taking extreme measures by resorting
to jogging in order to get a little peace and quiet?

So what if her sweats were a shrunken pair of Robert’s and her shoes were from the local discount store? No one was out here
at seven on a winter morning. The executive types had already come and gone, taking the commuter train from the station in
Glendale into Pittsburgh and leaving the trails to the winter birds, squirrels, and slightly chunky moms.

Lamorna’s legs were beginning to ache, though, at the end of her mile. She wasn’t much of a goal setter, but if she had to
set one, it would be getting back to the bridge without keeling over and dying of oxygen deprivation. She was about to the
halfway point where she turned around—where the Susquanny River widened a little and a sandbar had built up. Often the herons
would gather there to pick over what the river had tossed up, or to spear minnows on their way past in the shallows. In the
summer, the kids had loved to play here. Someone had tied a rope swing into a tree, and they’d drop off it into the deep pools
closer to the bank. But now the swing was as frozen and lifeless as the tree that supported it, waiting for the sun and the
return of the children.

There must have been some high water recently. A log had washed up on the sandbar, and crows were walking around it like car
salesmen sizing up a new deal. There were clothes draped over it, too. Good grief. Surely someone hadn’t been swimming? It
had to be forty-five degrees out here.

Lamorna jogged a little closer, taking one of the offshoot trails closer to the bank. Maybe it wasn’t a log, after all. Maybe
someone had tossed a bag of old clothes off the bridge instead of taking them to the Salvation Army like normal people did.
But weren’t there branches sticking out? And was that an animal trapped under it? With brown fur?

The river trail, though beautiful and scenic, didn’t change much. That was why Lamorna liked it. She didn’t have to watch
out for hazards because she knew where they all were, and she could pay attention to seasonal changes in the scenery without
worrying about falling flat on her face.

So, anything different meant a little investigation was in order. Maybe there would be identifying marks among the clothes
to tell her who the litterbug was. And then she’d march right down to the Glendale police station and wake up one of the—

Good heavens.

Lamorna slid down the bank and landed upright by sheer luck. She squinted against the sparkle of the sun on the water and
focused on the pile on the sandbar.

Not fur. Hair. Dark brown, short-cropped hair, drying and rimed with sand.

A green jacket. Jeans.

Bare feet. Slender, pale feet, so cold they were gray.

The bundle on the sand was a girl.

Had been. Had been a girl.

Because even Lamorna could tell she was dead.

Shelley Bates has been writing novels since the age of thirteen. After writing five Harlequin romances, her first CBA novel—the
RITA Award winning
Grounds to Believe
—debuted from Steeple Hill in 2004. The critically acclaimed
Pocketful of Pearls
followed from Warner Faith in 2005. Shelley has a B.A. in creative writing from the University of California at Santa Cruz
and an M.A. in writing popular fiction from Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania. She is currently a freelance editor in
the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley.