The fourth book in the Elsie Hawkins series, 1991

At 6:30 A.M., when Washington, D.C., was waking to another sweltering summer day, a Ledbetter Oil Company tank truck rolled off a ramp of the capital beltway, spilling five hundred gallons of highly flammable black gunk across four lanes of traffic. No one was injured, but the rush-hour commuters traveling the outer loop found themselves in hopeless gridlock surpassing even the normal snarl of morning traffic.

As operations manager of WZZZ, AM radio, Steve Crow didn’t wish bad luck on anyone, but in his eyes, thanks to Ledbetter Oil Company, this had all the makings of a superior Monday. It was now nine-thirty in the morning, and Ledbetter ’s gunk was still being sanded, shoveled, and scrubbed off the beltway, trapping half of Northern Virginia in transit. The nation’s movers and shakers were sweating and swearing in their cars, and each and every one of them was tuned to WZZZ. WZZZ told the news, all the news, and nothing but the news-twenty-four hours a day. And while some detractors of AM radio felt the call letters prophetic, no one caught in Washing-ton’s daily commuter crunch could deny the pull of WZZZ’s traffic report. Sooner or later, if you sat in traffic long enough, you tuned to WZZZ. During rush hours WZZZ kept a helicopter aloft, giving live traffic reports every fifteen minutes. The worse the traffic, the higher WZZZ climbed on the ratings charts-and today’s traffic was gloriously terrible.

Steve Crow was celebrating with a jelly doughnut, chewing happily, watching in fatalistic resignation as powdered sugar sifted onto his navy slacks. When a glob of jelly plopped onto his striped power tie, he muttered an expletive and yanked at the knot.