Deep into the steamy August afternoon they drove, Jeff with his allergies, Mindy with her menstrual cramps.

The little girl was not fortunate enough to be up front with the BMW's air conditioning blowing and festive rock music playing on the tape deck. No, nine-year-old Jenny lay inside a four-foot wooden box in the trunk. She had been blindfolded, her mouth taped shut, and her wrists bound together with clothesline cord. Inside the box it was dark. Inside the box it was one hundred six degrees above zero.

"You think we should check her?"

"Jeff, will you relax?"

"She could've worked her way loose or something."

"And then what? She's in the trunk, for God's sake. Where's she going to go?"

By now the red BMW was climbing up into the steep clay cliffs and rough timberland above Silver Lake. Tourists were everywhere, plump in gaudy vacation clothes as they broiled in the sun along the side of the road, bug-eyed in dark glasses, packed into the station wagons and campers that zipped by in the opposite lane.

Jeff was careful to drive fifty-five.

Please, God don't let me get stopped for anything now. Not now.

"I should never have started that diet yesterday," Mindy said. "Not with my period and all. But, I guess, I needed to."

"Oh, honey, you know I like you fine the way you are."

"Dr. Goldberg said I needed to lose twenty-five pounds."

"Did you ever see Dr. Goldberg's wife?"

"No. Have you?"

Jeff nodded. Blond, he was one of those handsome men who would appear boyish well into his fifties. He was thirty-seven. "A blimp."

"His wife's a blimp?"

"Absolutely."

Dark, fat Mindy slapped the dashboard. "Then where does he get off telling me I need to lose twenty-five pounds?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you. He wants to tell his own wife that she needs to lose twenty-five pounds but he doesn't have the nerve, so he takes it out on you."