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introduced me anyway.
    “Amy, this is Brandon Colby. He’s a lobbyist in Sacramento Brandon, this is Amy Hobbes. She’s with the Globe .”
    This Brandon guy was smooth. This Brandon guy was pretty. This Brandon guy was going to be dangerous.
    I spent the next year putting a gag on my intuition. When Brandon called, my knees quivered. His voice turned my brain to jelly. My body was taking over and to hell with reason. I found myself one May afternoon in Monroe standing in front of 150 strangers saying “I do.”
    Heather was in middle school, I was playing political hostess, Brandon was moving up in his firm. I didn’t miss the news business as much as I thought I would. Maybe being a mom, and surviving the devastation of Vinnie’s death had burned through the adrenaline.
    My life was on a different track than I’d planned, but it was secure and safe. Until the day Brandon came home and announced he’d taken a different job. It was bigger and better and paid more. He’d be working at the national level. It was in Chicago. And Heather and I wouldn’t be joining him. He was moving with his pregnant girlfriend, a staffer in the Illinois legislature.
    It took two weeks before I got out of bed and went down to the Monroe Press to talk to Calvin O’Keefe.
    When I wake up every morning still in Monroe, I blame the asshole car thief who started Vinnie on a high-speed chase.

 
     
    CHAPTER NINE
     
    Jim Dodson calls me directly when Janice Boxer’s autopsy results come back.
    “We’re probably going to need your help on this one,” he says. The sheriff’s voice is country with an urban overlay.
    “Our initial thought was that Janice had just driven off that road. It was funny, because she was up and down those roads, day in and day out. Hell, I’d even seen her put her own snow chains on.”
    “What kind of help do you need,” I ask warily. “What was the report?” It’s an iffy proposition working closely with the cops. I want to maintain good relations with them but there are times when I’m left out of the information loop.
    “Janice Boxer was dead before her car went off the road. We still don’t know what the killer used but her skull was smashed She’d been hit in the head a couple of times before she was put in the car. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt and her head went into the windshield so the coroner had to pick through a bunch of bone and glass to get to the hits that actually killed her.” In my imagination I can hear the man sigh.
    I’m silent for a minute. Monroe was small by big city standards and I’ve never known anybody besides Vinnie who was murdered. I’m not a close friend of Janice Boxer’s but she’d been helpful and friendly when I was looking for a house and understanding when I backed out of the deal after rethinking winter snow.
    Janice laughed—not her perky real-estate lady’s laugh, a real I-get-you chuckle—and told me that she’d had the same fears. She worked for a large corporation in San Jose before she moved to the foothills and began selling real estate.
    It took time to acclimate to mountain living.
    Dodson’s voice brings me back. “Are you still there?”
    “It’s different when you know the victim,” I say. “You know we’ll have to get all sides—interview her family, friends, co-workers. Maybe talk to some people she did business with.”
    “I know, and that’s what I’m counting on.” This time I can hear a slight sigh.
    He’s convincing, but I need to stand my ground. “Hey, we’re not going to do your work for you. You know that the only information we’ll give you is what we print.”
    “I know that. I’m not asking you to do the investigation. Completely off the record and for background that can’t get used or repeated, we’re going to be looking at the perpetrator coming from the Bay Area. We’re a tiny department. I don’t have the bodies to send to San Francisco or San Jose for interviews. If you do a story on the murder