Old Chaos (9781564747136) Read online

  Critical Praise for the Mysteries of Sheila Simonson

  “Good news for Sheila Simonson’s readers. To her intelligent style and convincing characters she has now added an intriguing locale [Columbia River Gorge, in Mudlark], making an already superior series even better.”

  —San Diego Union Tribune

  “Sharp characterization—particularly of the marvelously wry Lark—and a mystery that is skillfully intertwined with Lark and Jay’s life as they try to start a family grip the reader’s interest up to a resolution that puts an intriguing twist on the standard sleuth-in-danger finale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Beautifully crafted prose [in Buffalo Bill’s Defunct] lays out an interesting, multi-faceted story, filled with a varied array of three-dimensional characters you believe in and care a lot about, with a distinctive, vividly depicted setting…. I’m delighted to see Sheila Simonson back in print and look forward to the next book in her new series. Highly recommended.”

  —Kim Malo, MyShelf.com

  “Sheila Simonson covers some interesting issues—small-town politics and budgetary constraints, extremist beliefs and Native American problems with land development and the looting of Indian artifacts. The camaraderie between the cops and the evolving relationship between Meg and Rob add a richness to the story. Oh yes, and there’s a swell dog named Towser who plays a big part in this excellent mystery. Very highly recommended.”

  —Sally Powers, I Love a Mystery

  “As the body count climbs, [Simonson] proves that the stereotype of the timid, mousy librarian is not only out of date, it’s just plain wrong. Buffalo Bill’s Defunct is a nail-biting roller coaster ride which becomes increasingly exhilarating as the book races along. And the finale, complicated as the plot has been, ties up every loose end.”

  —Betty Webb, Mystery Scene

  MYSTERIES BY SHEILA SIMONSON

  THE LATOUCHE COUNTY SERIES

  Buffalo Bill’s Defunct

  An Old Chaos

  THE LARK DODGE SERIES

  Larkspur

  Skylark

  Mudlark

  Meadowlark

  Malarkey

  A LATOUCHE COUNTY MYSTERY

  Sheila Simonson

  Perseverance Press / John Daniel & Company

  Palo Alto / McKinleyville // 2009

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, companies, institutions, organizations, or incidents is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Sheila Simonson

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  A Perseverance Press Book

  Published by John Daniel & Company

  A division of Daniel & Daniel, Publishers, Inc.

  Post Office Box 2790

  McKinleyville, California 95519

  www.danielpublishing.com/perseverance

  Distributed by SCB Distributors (800) 729-6423

  Book design by Eric Larson, Studio E Books, Santa Barbara, www.studio-e-books.com

  Cover image: Monotype by Lillian Pitt, from the Ancestors series

  Collaborative Master Printer: Frank Janzen, TMP

  Printed at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Pendleton, Oregon

  Photographed by Dennis Maxwell, Portland, Oregon

  “Sunday Morning,” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens, copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

  “As I Walked Out One Evening,” copyright 1940 and renewed 1968 by W.H. Auden, from Collected Poems by W.H. Auden. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Simonson, Sheila, (date)

  An old chaos : a Latouche County mystery / by Sheila Simonson.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-56474-485-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10:1-56474-485-X (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Indian reservations—Fiction. 2. Sheriffs—Fiction. 3. Real estate development— Corrupt practices—Fiction. 4. Real estate developers—Fiction. 5. Columbia River Gorge (Or. and Wash.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.I48766O63 2009

  813’.54—dc22

  2008055730

  For my best friends, and best first

  readers, Roberta Schmalenberger

  and Sarah Webb. Bless you both.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For the purposes of this story, I rearranged the scenery and political geography of the western end of the Columbia River Gorge, subtracting Skamania and part of Klickitat counties from Washington and combining them into fictional Latouche County. Latouche County does not exist outside my imagination. Klalo, the county seat, resembles at least four small towns in western Washington, but is its own imaginary place. I hope there are real toads in it. It does have real bridges—to Hood River and Cascade Locks in Oregon.

  I changed the demography of the local tribes as well as the geography, though I tried to make the ethnic variation plausible. The Klalo tribe is Chinookian in language and in some of its customs, but it is as much a product of my imagination as Latouche County. Its principal chief, Madeline Thomas, doesn’t exist, but I wish she did.

  An Old Chaos takes place early in 2005, about three months after the events I chronicled in Buffalo Bill’s Defunct.

  We live in an old chaos of the sun,

  Or old dependency of day and night…

  Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail

  Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;

  Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;

  And, in the isolation of the sky,

  At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

  Ambiguous undulations as they sink,

  Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

  —Wallace Stevens,

  “Sunday Morning”

  THE MOUNTAIN CROUCHED above a meadow as it had since it was made, not long ago as the life of mountains is measured, but long enough. To the north, the great volcano that had formed it stirred, setting off moderate earthquakes that came in swarms when an eruption was near, but singly or in twos and threes at quieter times. The other nearby peaks trembled, too, as if in sympathy, though sympathy was irrelevant, being a human emotion.

  When the time came, the volcano would set off another chain of small earthquakes. When the time came, the smaller mountain would move, too, changing its shape. It would only take the right combination of forces—ice and rain, lots of rain, and one of those minor tremors. It was all a matter of time.

  And the crack in the teacup opens

  A lane to the land of the dead.

  —W.H. Auden,

  “As I Walked Out One Evening”

  Early January 2005

  BETH HAD PLANNED the dinner party like the invasion of Iraq, though she hoped for less dire consequences. Apart from glitches associated with a new house, the problem was the basic incompatibility of the guests, but she was used to that. She was the wife of a politician.

  Beth often thought her husband had been happier as undersheriff, just another cop. That was a long time ago. Mack was now into his fifth term as Latouche County sheriff. It was probably his last, because he was sixty-five and she was sixty-one, and both would be happy to retire in a few years to enjoy their grandchildren. For now, Mack was a politician. Lately, he had been behaving like a politician. She wondered whether he had noticed her disapproval.

  Probably not. She sighed and shoved a platter of Costco hors d’oeuvres into the oven
to warm.

  On New Year’s Eve, Beth had thrown a big bash to celebrate the general election. More than a hundred of what passed for glitterati in Latouche County had swarmed in, drunk California champagne or local beer, scarfed down the tidbits on offer, and swarmed out, heading for parties where no one would ask how much they’d drunk before driving home.

  As they left, Beth mentally ticked them off her list of people she had to entertain. She poured fresh-ground coffee for those who stayed after the New Year toast, and gave thanks that paying off so many social debts had been so easy. Nevertheless, gloom descended. Their comfortable old house had never looked better—warm and welcoming and quirky. And then the movers came.

  Now here she was, miles outside Klalo, in the granite kitchen of her perfect new McMansion, putting the last touches on another political dinner. Mack was still in the shower. She couldn’t hear the drowned-porpoise noises he always made in the shower, because the master bathroom was several miles from the kitchen.

  Everything was miles from everything else in the house. It was grotesquely large, even for a couple with five children and seven grandchildren. All my fault, Beth reflected grumpily. When she and Mack had gone over the plans with the developer and his architect, she had asked for changes and got them. What she had not said was that the place was too damned big, not just for Mack and herself, but for any family smaller than a corporation. It was wasted space. Beth did not like waste, and never mind that the developer had given them a fantastic price on the house.

  She threw her pot holder on the slab of rock by the stove and took off the chef’s apron she wore to protect her silk pantsuit. Time to check the bar. The dinner table had been set since three o’clock and looked nice enough. At least she’d had the wit to keep her battered old table. It sat invisible beneath Irish linen, covered with china and silver and wineglasses, all at the right distance from each other for people to talk to their neighbors. Houses should be that way, too.

  This one wasn’t. She trudged across the Great Room to the entryway The bell rang again as she reached the door. Two complete strangers stood shivering under the light.

  “Mrs. McCormick?” The woman gave a glossy smile and memory clicked on.

  “Call me Beth, please. You must be the new county commissioner.” Beth had seen Mrs. Bjork on TV for ten seconds the night of the special election in December. Catherine Parrish Bjork had replaced the late Hal Brandstetter. She was green. He had not been. Her victory changed the balance of power. Mack wanted to know how.

  “Oh, Beth, call me Cate.” The woman’s gaze slid sideways to the trim, elderly figure beside her. A retired banker from California, Mack had said, older than his wife by a good twenty years. “This is my husband, Lars.”

  “Come in before you freeze. The wind’s straight from Alberta.” Beth stood to one side as the Bjorks entered. The doorway was wide enough to admit a Humvee.

  Outside, a gust swirled pellets of snow across the triple-wide driveway where the Bjorks’ BMW stood under the security light, creaking as it cooled. Beyond the street lay the county road and the dark bulk of Prune Hill, named for a long-dead orchard. To the right, across the street and closer to the highway, Beth could see the Gautiers’ house, floodlit always. The development held only four other homes, all of them large, all illuminated to prevent intruders from breaking in. The lights did not make Beth feel secure. They made her feel targeted. She’d never felt that way in town, where chances of a break-in were higher.

  It was a clear night. The sky glittered with stars—this far from Portland you could see stars at night—and most of yesterday’s snow had sublimed away. Mount Saint Helens, quiet but still active, lay twenty-five miles to the north and Mount Hood a bit closer to the south. If you looked down the Gorge, you could just make out a dim smear of light from Bonneville Dam. The views in every direction were spectacular on a clear day, as real estate speculators had found out. The assessed value of real property in the county had tripled in the last eighteen months.

  Murmuring friendly sounds, Beth divested her guests of their coats and settled them on one of a pair of love seats in front of the fireplace, which was drawing nicely now after an earlier puff of smoke. She had retrieved the platter of canapés from the oven, set it on the warming tray, and supplied the mute banker with a glass of sherry and Cate with Perrier (twist of lime for the designated driver) before the bell rang again.

  As Beth plodded back toward the door she heard the woman say something, low and sharp, and the man respond in a rusty baritone. So he could speak. She also heard sounds that suggested someone else had come into the room. Male voice.

  Not Mack. Skip Petrakis. Skip was the father of Beth’s seventh grandchild, Sophy. Mack despised him. In Mack’s day, a decent young man who knocked a girl up married her. Beth had explained several times that it was their daughter, Peggy, who stood in the way of little Sophy’s legitimacy. Peggy wasn’t ready to get married, not yet. Skip had offered.

  When Beth opened the door, smile in place, she saw Jack Red-fern and his formidable wife, Madeline Thomas, principal chief of the Klalos and a woman to reckon with in county politics. Under her unzipped Gore-Tex parka, Maddie had chosen to wear a lavishly beaded elkskin robe, a matching headband, and calf-high elkskin boots, also beaded. They became her. As usual, Jack wore jeans and a Pendleton shirt. His parka was zipped to the neck against the knife-blade wind. Jack was not smiling.

  Mostly to protect her heirloom boots, Maddie had decided to let Jack drive west from Two Falls to Klalo, though he drove like a cowboy on meth. Tonight he was erratic as well as fast because he was angry. Jack did not want to enter Sheriff McCormick’s house or eat at his table.

  Since her husband was not a talker, it took Maddie a while to dig out the reason. As sheriffs go, McCormick wasn’t bad. Her sister’s son was a deputy, so Maddie was willing to reserve judgment, even cooperate with the sheriff. But Jack was set to explode, and so far Maddie had been unable to defuse him.

  She winced as he squirreled around a sharp bend in the face of an oncoming car. “You know, Jack, I did talk to Rob. Mack offered him the promotion, and Rob turned him down. Rob doesn’t want to be undersheriff.”

  “That don’t matter. It’s a slap in the face, appointing that kid Minetti.”

  “Rob says he’s a born politician.” Maddie thought that was true. She’d met Earl Minetti. “You know the undersheriff is groomed to run for office. Mack will retire soon. He wants to train his successor.

  “Minetti was Rob’s sergeant!” Jack tromped on the accelerator. The pickup leapt forward and skidded a little on the frosty surface. Fortunately there was no traffic. Jack eased back.

  Maddie opened her eyes. “I suppose it does look bad.”

  “It looks like a fucking slap in the face,” Jack growled, “whether or not it’s meant that way.”

  Probably true. People would be talking. It surprised her that Jack, who usually didn’t care what other people thought, should be so concerned about appearances.

  She sprinkled calm on her husband’s fury the rest of the way to Klalo. Then she had to start navigating, because the McCormicks’ new house lay some miles out of town, off the county highway that followed the course of Beaver Creek.

  As the road began to twist, Jack slowed down a little. “I don’t understand you, Maddie. He saved your life. More than that, he laid his own life on the line for you.” By he, Jack meant Robert Neill.

  “I know. I’m grateful.” And embarrassed. Maddie had been in that state since October, when she had managed to get herself taken as a hostage. She was rarely embarrassed and did not like the feeling. She added in her most conciliatory voice, “I like Rob. I even trust him. If he wanted the job I’d call out the troops.”

  Among Maddie’s supporters were a number of dedicated young people from all three of the Klalo bands. She could picture them picketing the courthouse, no problem, but over this? She was saving them for the casino battle.

  Jack said seriously, “They�
�d come running.”

  She nodded. “I can see their signs now. ‘Minetti Out.’ ‘Neill for Undersheriff.’ ‘We Want Justice.’ ”

  Jack grunted approval.

  “If we were loud enough, the Portland stations would send cameras.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then what?” she demanded.

  “At least Rob would know you give a damn.”

  Maddie sighed. “He’d be mad as fire. He has to work with this guy.” Rob was the county’s chief investigator.

  “ Under this guy. If Rob didn’t want the job, the sheriff should’ve gone outside the department.”

  “Maybe so.” But Minetti was a known quantity. What racist thug might turn up if Mack hired an outsider? The trouble with Jack was, he didn’t think. There was nothing wrong with his brains and nothing at all with his heart. He was all heart. But he did not think things through.

  Headlights shone, a horn blared. Jack cursed and dipped his lights. He twisted the wheel, and the pickup screeched around the next bend. “Where now?”

  “Turnoff’s coming up…there.”

  Jack headed uphill in third, shifted down. The engine growled, and the truck’s lights bored a hole in blackness. No house lights out here. Yet. Sooner or later some fool would build a glass palace with a cantilevered deck leaning out over Beaver Creek.

  “It’s an insult,” Jack muttered.

  Maddie said softly, “Don’t borrow trouble.”

  They came to a Y junction. She pointed to the right.

  Jack leaned forward and peered into the dark. Steep black hills rose on either side of the ribbon of asphalt. “Here? No shit?” He drove on, much slower.