At ten-fifteen Daisy swung into the newsroom. She waved hello to the anchor in the glass booth and gave the Capitol Hill correspondent a bag of experimental snacks for his beagle. She adjusted the strap on her oversized shoulder bag and dropped into a seat beside the editor. “What happened to Frank? I heard him giving the traffic report while I was driving in. He said a rude word and that was the last of him.”

“Rear-ended a garbage truck and got buried under half a ton of Dumpster droppings. He’s okay except for a broken leg.”

Daisy pulled a five-by-seven card from her pocketbook and glanced over a recipe for dog granola. “That’s too bad. Who’s doing traffic?”

“Nobody’s doing traffic. Steve’s offered double Frank’s salary plus a year’s supply of Girl Scout cookies, but nobody’ll take it.”

Daisy felt her heart jump. Double Frank’s salary! “I could do it,” she said. “I need the money.”

“You need money that bad?”

She bit her lower lip to keep herself under control. This was the chance of a lifetime. She had enormous school expenses, a big rent payment due, a live-in little brother who was eating her out of house and home, and a car that drank a quart of motor oil a week. She was determined to make it on her own. Besides her dog lady job, she worked as a school crossing guard, a cab driver, a waitress on the dinner shift at Roger’s Steak House, and delivered newspapers. She’d written Bones for Bowser to give herself additional income, but she wasn’t due a royalty check for three more months. If she took the traffic job, she could drop waitressing. Maybe she could even give up the newspaper route. She was doing the dissertation for her doctorate, and she could work on it at night.

She swiveled in her seat and looked across the room at Steve Crow. She’d always been a little frightened of him. With his jet-black hair, dark, piercing eyes, and slightly aquiline nose, he was an intimidating figure. His complexion was dark, his shoulders broad, his hips narrow. The scuttle-but at the station said his father was pure-blood Native American; his mother was Hispanic.