Nobody's Child: A Jeri Howard Mystery - Tapa dura

Private investigator Jeri Howard embarks on a dangerous search for a runaway among the homeless in the streets of Berkeley

Dawson writes with a deft, sure hand, much the way her sleuth Jeri Howard detects. With both author and sleuth, you know you're in the hands of true professionals."
--Julie Smith
Across the glorious San Francisco Bay lies Berkeley, California, as famous for students and activism as it is for the charm of the town itself. But the complexities and troubles of the big city have made their home here and no one feels safe anymore.
A decomposing body buried in an empty lot has been dug up by a construction company, and Jeri Howard's demanding, imperious client, Naomi Smith, thinks the victim could be her daughter, Maureen, who ran away from her comfortable home two years ago. Jeri dislikes her client, but as a survivor of the mother-daughter wars herself, she is determined to discover the identity of the dead woman and how she was killed. What worries her just as much, though, is the missing child Maureen was last seen carrying--both of them sick, broke, and sleeping among the hopeles