Then, as though a giant hand had smashed her face, Greta Sheridan had broken into heart-rending sobs. “That girl looked so much like Nan, didn’t she? Oh Chris, I’ve missed her so much all these years. Dad would still be alive if she were here. That heart attack was his way of grieving.” I wish I’d taken an ax to every television in the house before I let Mother watch that damn program, Chris thought as he ran down the corridor to his office. The fingers of his left hand drummed on the desk as he grabbed the phone. “Mother, what’s wrong?”

Greta Sheridan’s voice was tense and unsteady. “Chris, I’m sorry to bother you during the auction, but the strangest letter just came.” Another fallout from that stinking program, Chris fumed. All those crank letters. They ranged from psychics offering to conduct seances to people begging for money in exchange for their prayers. “I wish you wouldn’t read that garbage,” he said. “Those letters tear you apart.”

“Chris, this one is different. It says that in memory of Nan, a dancing girl from Manhattan is going to die on the evening of February nineteenth in exactly the way Nan died.” Greta Sheridan’s voice rose. “Chris, suppose this isn’t a crank letter? Is there anything we can do? Is there anyone we can warn?”

Doug Fox pulled on his tie, carefully twisted it into a precise knot, and studied himself in the mirror. He’d had a facial yesterday and his skin glowed. The body wave had made his thinning hair seem abundant and the sandy rinse completely covered the touch of gray that was emerging at his temples. A good-looking guy, he assured himself, admiring the way his crisp white shirt followed the lines of his muscular chest and slim waist. He reached for his suit jacket, quietly appreciating the fine feel of the Scottish wool. Dark blue with faint pinstripes, accented by the small red print on his Hermès tie. He looked every inch the part of the investment banker, upstanding citizen of Scarsdale, devoted husband of Susan Frawley Fox, father of four lively, handsome youngsters.