Samantha had a hard time pushing the slightly broken button on her key fob to unlock the rear door of her Volvo station wagon. When she finally realized it was unlocked, she pulled the door up and Teddy waited for her to hook up his leash. Once the leash was attached, Teddy bounded out the back door. He looked up eagerly, his tail going a hundred miles a minute as Sam shut the door and locked the car. She made a mental note to get that key fob fixed while Teddy tugged on the leash and headed for the trail in the Forum Nature Area.

      It was a frightfully cold morning, but Samantha reminded herself it was almost the middle of November. There was frost on the ground, yet the trees still held the last remnants of their stunning fall colors. Sam loved this time of year, but it was all she could do this morning to keep from screaming out loud. The last week with Mark had been brutal, culminating in their final good-byes not more than half an hour ago. He had spent the week packing his stuff and making arrangements to move back to Florida, all the time exclaiming how sorry he was for hurting her and protesting that he really did love her. But Samantha wanted him gone no matter how much he protested. Seeing him kiss that woman outside of the bar had totally disgusted her. The woman was a waitress Mark had been seeing while Samantha was on assignment in Seattle. Bad form, Mark, she thought to herself. Really bad form.

      Samantha walked briskly as Teddy trotted along by her side, stopping occasionally to sniff some long departed rabbit or deer scent on the frosted grass. She stopped briefly to plug her earbuds into her iPhone and turned on the R&B station on Spotify. A little Robert Cray Band might help soothe her bruised ego. She didn’t know what would mend her wounded heart, although she had to admit her heart wasn’t that wounded. She was fond of Mark, for sure, and briefly thought there might be a future in it. They had had a couple of fun dates when they met in Florida almost a year ago and then maintained a long distance relationship. But it was odd when Mark made the decision to move from Florida to Columbia and just sort of showed up on her doorstep last April. She was a little put out that he had made that decision without talking to her first, but Sam figured moving in together was what normal couples did. She’d had boyfriends before but never a courtship that lasted this long or was this intense, so she didn’t really know what seemed normal. The relationship started a downhill slide once Mark moved to Columbia and things settled down. He didn’t seem to have the kind of drive and ambition she usually found attractive in men. So maybe the break-up was destiny after all.

      The discovery of Mark and his waitress was the final insult. Samantha had been in Seattle working on a life insurance claim involving a scheming spouse and a stolen rare book collection. The case began with the theft of almost one hundred very valuable books. Samantha’s investigation eventually led police to discover them stashed in a flooded warehouse. They were packed in plastic cases that were almost watertight, so not all of the books had been damaged. The total value of the collection was not anything near the kinds of claims Samantha usually investigated, but after the Florida case her boss felt she needed something a bit more routine. Sam was drawn to the Seattle case more than any other she had worked on or studied. She found the world of rare book collecting utterly enthralling. And this was a very respectable collection which included a copy of “Anna Livia Plurabelle,” by James Joyce, worth around five thousand dollars. The case became even more remarkable and disturbing by the client’s sudden death from what appeared to be a heart attack. It was an unusual death for a man of thirty-eight years, so Samantha was called in. And indeed, the coroner ruled the death a homicide. It was a heart attack, but it was caused by a large amount of air injected into his vein by his greedy wife.

      As a fraud investigator for Heartland Global Insurance (based in Chicago with clients all over the world), Sam was assigned to the most expensive and therefore the most interesting and unusual cases. The job required her to travel extensively, but thanks to technology, she didn’t have to live in Chicago and was able to live pretty much anywhere she wanted. She chose to settle in Columbia, Missouri where she had come almost fifteen years ago to attend the University of Missouri, or “Mizzou” as it is affectionately known. After getting her undergraduate degree in Psychology and Sociology, she went to College Park, Maryland to obtain her Master’s in Criminology. She originally thought about being an FBI agent but wanted more flexibility than a career with the FBI could afford her. When the job at Heartland Global came up, she jumped at it. She spent three years in Chicago, but after solving three big fraud cases, saving the company millions of dollars, and gaining a reputation as a top-notch investigator, she moved back to Columbia where she could enjoy some peace and quiet with Teddy in a smaller community. She had always loved Columbia and it was a welcome respite in between her adventures around the country. It was still close enough to Chicago and Dr. Samuel Carson, her uncle after whom she was named and who had raised her from the age of three.

      The younger Sam was the daughter of famed archeologists Ralph and Anita Green, who had met during their graduate years at the University of Chicago in the 1960s. Sam came along much, much later and was pretty sure she was not only a bit of a surprise to the nerdy couple, but also a bit of an inconvenience for them. Of course they must have wanted her, after all abortion was a widely available option for women of means in 1980. But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that trekking off to exotic spots around the globe to go digging in the dirt was difficult with an infant. Samantha picked up on clues through the years from her uncle that having a baby seemed to be a source of constant irritation for his sister Anita.

      Samantha learned through conversations she had with her uncle, and through conversations she overheard, that Ralph pushed for keeping the baby when Anita turned up pregnant in her early forties. Then, when her parents were killed in a plane crash over Russia in 1983, Anita’s brother, Samuel, a history professor at the University of Chicago, was the only living relative with the means and the will to care for an orphaned toddler.

      Dr. Samuel Carson, renowned professor of Eastern European history, had lectured all over the world and was a frequent guest on cable television news shows during the conflict in Kosovo. He had published several books and was generally regarded one of the leading experts on Eastern Europe. He adored his niece and raised her as his own. Unlike his sister, he gladly hauled the toddler away on history expeditions across the globe. He taught Samantha Green everything she knew about the world and how to get the most out of life. He was never overprotective and let her invent her own journey when the time came to pick a college and a field of study. He offered enthusiastic encouragement and all the financial support she needed until she was on her own. Unk,