I had to concentrate a moment and employ what journalistic skills I had to boil everything down to point form. “The guys who’ve been after Trixie found her sister and brother-in-law up in Kelton. They killed them. They took Trixie’s daughter Katie. They want the money Trixie took from them, or they’re going to kill Katie. I went to see Trixie in prison. She has a plan for how we can get into her safety-deposit box, get the money, give it to these guys. One of them is holding Katie at our house. If anything goes wrong, he gets the call and kills her.”

I waited for Sarah to say something, but then heard another voice.

“How’s the linoleum thing coming along?”

Frieda, the Home! editor.

Then Sarah. “I’m on the fucking phone, Frieda. Zack?”

“I’m here.”

“Where are the kids?”

“Not at home. Angie’s downtown at a class, Paul’s at school, both of them said at breakfast that they weren’t going to be home after school today.”

“Most of the time, they don’t show up when they say they’re going to. Not the other way around.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

“Are you okay?”

“I guess you could say I’m a bit rattled. But otherwise, yeah, I’m okay. But once this is over, if it goes off as planned, there’s a deal to hand me off to another set of bad guys. Or bad gals, actually.”

“What?”

“Let’s not worry about that now. The immediate problem is getting into the safety-deposit box.”

“How are you going to do that without Trixie?”

I paused. There was no easy way to do this. “Gary wants you to do it. He saw your picture on the fridge, when we were at the awards dinner, and he thinks you can pull it off. We have Trixie’s red wig, which is part of her Marilyn Winter persona. That’s the name she used to get the safety-deposit box. You’d have to go in, pretending to be her, with the key, sign in as her. Then you get into the box, transfer all the money into a bag, and bring it back out. Give it to Gary, Katie gets released.”

Sarah said nothing.

“Honey?” I said.

“I’m here.” Another pause. “Tell me about Katie.”

“She’s scared to death, Sarah.”

“Do you think they’ll actually let her go?”

I felt a wave of hopelessness wash over me. “I’m just going along for now, Sarah, hoping this works out the way it’s supposed to.”

Merker said, “Can we get this show on the road? Tell your lady we’re coming to pick her up. Where’s she work?”

“The Metropolitan,” I said.

“Where’s that?”

“Sarah,” I said into the phone. “Don’t do it. This has all gone far—”