Old Chaos (9781564747136) (3 page)

“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.

“Should be less than a mile now.”

They rounded another curve. The land opened out to the right in a strip of prairie that sloped gently down toward the creek. House lights shone through scattered trees, but a vast black hill loomed on the left. Elsewhere it would have been called a mountain. The county road, recently widened and resurfaced, skirted its base.

“Jesus, Prune Hill.”

“Cat Crouching,” Maddie said in Klalo. That was the old name for the hill.
Cat
meant cougar. She shivered and turned up the heater.

When Jack pulled into the McCormicks’ driveway, he parked the mud-splattered Toyota Tacoma behind a BMW that was already in place. The bumper of the pickup almost touched the car’s gleaming trunk. Jack was still mad.

Kayla Graves slipped into the little black dress she kept to wear when she was dating somebody respectable and smiled at her image in the long mirror. Not bad for a thirty-two-year-old. Her January birthday always started the New Year with a blast. She was recovering nicely from the celebration, which had not been at all respectable.

Tonight might be dull or fun, depending on who the McCor-micks had invited. Her escort, Fred Drinkwater, was a dead loss, but maybe Rob would show up with the librarian. Back when Kayla had been on the right side of thirty, she and Rob had had an affair—well, more like a hot weekend—and she retained a soft spot for him. She bore the librarian no ill will, but Rob had a sly sense of humor, and Kayla thought an encounter under the sheriff’s righteous eye might amuse him. Serve the old bastard right for putting that dork, Earl Minetti, in over Rob’s head.

Kayla leaned toward herself and concentrated on inserting beaded and feathered earrings into her lobes. Fred would hate the earrings, she thought complacently as the doorbell rang.

She grabbed her black cashmere coat from the walk-in closet and inspected it for dog hairs. Tiffany’s Lhasa Apso had left souvenirs. Kayla’s ex-roommate had been gone two months, and she’d vacuumed heavily since then, but the dog hairs still rose up and smote anything black. She needed a new roommate, someone to help with the mortgage, but no pets next time. No more wind surfers either.

The doorbell rang, insistent. “Coming!” She was wearing three-inch heels, so she took her time going down.

“You’re late,” Fred snapped when she opened the door. “Come on, Kayla. I told you this dinner was important.”

Important to Fred. He was a developer with a single-track mind, and the track led straight to Profit. When she’d locked the house, she shoved her small purse into her pocket. Have to get one of those gigantic leather handbags the fashionistas were flaunting this year. Maybe Fred would buy a pistachio green one for her. He liked to bestow expensive gifts, if he could write them off.

Fred took her elbow, so she let herself reel against him, hip to hip. He staggered but didn’t lose his footing. For an old guy, Fred was pretty athletic. More ways than one. She grinned.

He inserted her into his warm Lexus and himself into the driver’s seat. “The new commissioner will be there.”

“Mrs. Green?”

“Bjork.” He let out his breath in a huff when her joke registered, put the car into Drive, and pulled out onto Old Cedar Street. “You look good, Kayla, but you should lose the earrings.”

Kayla was peering at the librarian’s house across the way—lit up, somebody moving around, yeah, there was Rob in the hallway with his back to the street. His own house on the corner was dark. So he
was
coming. Contented, Kayla adjusted her seat belt and leaned back to enjoy the ride.

“We’re going to be late.” Meg McLean flicked on the air conditioner of her ancient Accord.

“Hey!” Rob gave an exaggerated shudder.

“It’s the fastest way to defog the windows.” She swished the wipers a couple of times. She was driving her car because neither of them had wanted to go in Rob’s somewhat newer pickup. “Won’t take long.”

“You do realize it’s twenty-two degrees out.” Rob yawned and stretched. He’d had a stressful day at his laptop, writing reports.

“Seat belt,” Meg murmured. When Rob clicked the belt into place, the little warning bell stopped. She eased down the street behind a county sand truck. “You know the way?”

“The development’s on the open land below Prune Hill. According to Maddie, the Klalos never had a settlement there. Probably for good reason.” Rob had grown up in town and knew the area almost as well as the chief did.

Meg had grown up in Los Angeles. “I have no idea where or what you’re talking about.” No traffic. She passed the truck and headed out on the county highway.

Rob laughed. “I know Prune Hill. Apart from that, I’m parroting Maddie.”

“She’s quite a character.” That sounded patronizing to Meg as soon as the words were out. She winced.

“Quite a bulldozer,” Rob said dryly. “I figure she and the new commissioner are evenly matched. If they decide to team up, look out.”

“I don’t see a San Francisco greenie like Bjork touting a casino.”

“Maddie has interests other than the casino. She stopped a clear-cut up by the lake without breaking into a sweat. Bear left at County Road 12—about half a mile.”

“Thanks.” Meg squinted at the odometer.

“Turn the AC off.”

She complied. “Sorry.” The Accord began to warm up.

“Staff meeting okay?”

Meg had met with the library supervisors that afternoon to announce her plans for a bond levy next fall. She’d been head of the county library system for only two months, and she’d kept changes to a minimum to begin with. The levy would be her first big project. She described the meeting in some detail, and Rob listened with the intelligent attention she had come to expect and appreciate.

“Jackman giving you trouble?”

“Giving me the ten-year history of failed levies.” Meg’s chief assistant had also been her rival for the top job. “I can handle her. What she doesn’t understand is that tax revenues will jump with all the new housing. She knows,” Meg amended. “She just doesn’t
believe.
”

“I have to sympathize with her. Things have been tight for a long time.” Unemployment was still high in the county among people in traditional occupations like logging.

Meg signaled for the turn and headed uphill. The Accord sighed and shifted down. They rode awhile in silence. She could not get used to the utter blackness of the countryside at night.

“Watch it!”

She stood on her brakes. The car spun out and stopped on the shoulder facing backward. Two black-tail does walked across the road unscathed. Meg let out a shaky breath.

“You okay?”

“Y-yes.” Very carefully, Meg wheeled the Accord around and drove on, but she was still trembling with reaction when she parked in front of the McCormicks’ gaily lit house. Rob rang the bell and gave her shoulders a hug as they waited for someone to come to the door.

When Meg and Rob entered the Great Room, the guests were in cocktail mode with the sheriff and Fred Drinkwater—smoothly fit, dressed in casual winter wear, and half a foot shorter than McCor-mick—in deep conversation by the bar. The developer had brought Kayla Graves. She looked gorgeous, as usual, and winked at Meg in a neighborly way. Mack and Drinkwater glanced around. Madeline Thomas, in full regalia, turned away from a greyhound-like woman and smiled.

A brief hush fell. Everyone except an elderly man sitting by the fireplace looked at Rob. There was a burst of over-hearty greetings.

Meg stole a glance at Rob. He flushed and a muscle bunched at the hinge of his jaw, but he smiled and went into the hand-shaking ritual with Meg trailing him. Beth slipped out of the room. The sheriff, red in the face, poured Meg’s tonic and lime and asked Rob what he wanted.

“Whatever Jack’s drinking.”

Mack poured a Full Sail Amber. Meg hadn’t noticed Jack Red-fern. Given Maddie’s flamboyance, he was easy to overlook. Meg had the feeling that might be a mistake. He rose from one of the love seats by the blazing hearth and strode over to Rob, beer glass in one hand.

“Rob.”

“Jack,” Rob said amiably, shaking hands. “Good to see you. Not exactly fishing weather.”

Jack snorted. He had been known to use a gill net, about which he and Rob had a running joke, but he didn’t look to be in a joking mood. “I want to talk to you.”

“Sure.” The two men strolled to a conversation area that featured two armchairs, a lamp, and a framed print, a sophisticated takeoff on the petroglyph Tsagiglalal, She Who Watches. Clearly Beth had kept her old furniture. It didn’t suit the house, and there wasn’t enough of it to fill the huge room.

As Rob bent his head to listen and Jack started to wave his arm, Meg turned away. They were probably going to talk about the appointment of Earl Minetti as undersheriff, which Rob thought was hilarious, though so far he’d shared his amusement only with Meg. As a subordinate, Earl had been a pain in the butt. Now he was so grateful to Rob for not raising a fuss, he’d probably bend over backwards to cooperate with Criminal Investigation—for a while anyway. Meg didn’t like Earl, but she also thought Mack would stay on as sheriff for at least two more terms, so she had come around to Rob’s way of thinking. Mack would keep Minetti under control.

As Maddie introduced her to the new commissioner, Meg saw that the man on the love seat was still staring at the fireplace. She thought he must be Catherine Bjork’s husband, though the woman made no attempt to introduce him.

“We’re late,” Meg said brightly. “Have we missed the tour of the house?”

“The sheriff took us around.” Mrs. Bjork sounded neutral.

Maddie did not look enthusiastic.

Time to get down to business. Meg meant to sound out the new commissioner on the subject of library levies.