Old Chaos (9781564747136)

“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“As the body count climbs, [Simonson] proves that the stereotype of the timid, mousy librarian is not only out of date, it’s just plain wrong.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

T
HE
L
ATOUCHE
C
OUNTY
S
ERIES

Buffalo Bill’s Defunct

An Old Chaos

T
HE
L
ARK
D
ODGE
S
ERIES

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
.

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”