gave a nod matching the lukewarm tone. “Amelia.”
“What is your book about?” Norbert inquired of Thaddeus further.
“Do you really want to know?” Thaddeus asked.
Norbert laughed with hearty vigor. “Certainly, I want to know or I would not have asked, now would I? Go on, give me a synopsis.”
“Well, the story is not complete, but it revolves around a murder.”
“Sounds grisly,” Vera said.
“Yes, a bit,” Thaddeus agreed. “And you are in it, Mr. Emerson.”
“Me? I am a character in a book? I am honored.”
“You are ancillary, but still, because you know the dead man, Jimmy Jiggs, Mac Hardcase wants to talk to you.”
Norbert’s jovial smile fell. The color drained from his fat face.
A feeling of dread overcame Amelia.
Thaddeus opened his book and began reading his own creation before she could intercede. “‘Hey, buddy,’ Mac shouted at Norbert Emerson across the sidewalk. ‘Aren’t you an acquaintance of Jimmy Jiggs?’ The stiff upper crust tried to ignore Mac, but he wasn’t having any of that. ‘Yeah, I saw you with Jimmy at Handsome Eddie’s strip joint. You got a doll there dances for you special. Kitty Kats is her name, am I right?’”
Norbert Emerson’s bulbous face registered horror. He began backing away, nearly tripping over his own feet.
Vera was not at all amused. She pursed her already-thin lips. “Such vulgar rubbish coming from a little boy.”
Bewildered by Norbert’s reaction, Amelia felt she should probably stop her son, yet something in her could not end the scene unfolding.
Thaddeus continued reading with dramatic flair. “Mac kept on Emerson like a mosquito on a healthy dog. ‘Don’t play stupid with me, buddy. Jimmy Jiggs wasn’t just an acquaintance o’ yours. He was your bookie and now he’s dead.’”
By now, Norbert had turned in the opposite direction, and if his physique had allowed, Amelia was sure he would have sprinted faster than an Olympian gold-medalist. “Come, Vera. Let’s not engage the rapscallion any longer.”
Left in the dust of Norbert’s hasty retreat, Vera made off after her husband, complaining. “Norbert, what on earth? Norbert?”
Thaddeus had been so engrossed in his own narration that he had not noticed the Emersons’ departure. “‘Just tell me if you know where to find a dame named Ziva,’ Mac urged Emerson. ‘A sophisticated dame with long blond hair and a roller-coaster body.”
* * * *
At home, Amelia sent Thaddeus upstairs to change out of his church clothes and into his Sunday play clothes. Angus would be home shortly, and after a quick lunch, father and son would step outside for a rousing game of croquet.
While heating water for a cup of tea, Amelia pondered on the most recent Mac Hardcase development. Was it possible that Teddy knew of Norbert Emerson’s gambling problem by overhearing her and Angus discuss the unfortunate debt? That had to be it, of course. But why in the world had Norbert reacted like a frightened rabbit to Teddy’s storytelling? He behaved as if there was some terrible truth in the tale.
On a whim, she retrieved the telephone directory and turned to the H’s. Right there on the first page she found it: Handsome Eddie’s Dancin’ Bares Gentlemen’s Club. The raunchy establishment was real, but outside of Back Bay in a very undesirable part of town. Teddy would never have known of its existence from viewing it in passing. That was for certain. Of course, he could have pulled the name from the directory himself. It wasn’t as if they kept it under lock and key. She considered dialing Handsome Eddie’s and asking for Kitty Kats to see what the response might be, but at that very moment, Angus walked through the front door, so she set the directory aside and made a beeline for Teddy’s room. She found him at his desk, pencil in hand, staring out the window.
“Are you writing again?” she asked him.
“In a manner of speaking. It seems crafting a plot can be very difficult.”
She sat on the edge of his bed. “So, tell me, how did you think up this story, Teddy?”
He turned in his chair to face her. “I guess you could say, it just comes to me. I have an idea, and I write it down. But other times, like now, the idea just is not…available. But do you know what is really fun, Mommy?”
“What’s that, darling?”
“When the characters seem to write themselves. My pencil just moves and they come to life, talking and making their own choices. I would say it feels somewhat like magic, really.”
“And Norbert Emerson in your book—is that how he appeared? He just ‘wrote himself’?”
“Yes, Mommy. I probably should not have read him that part of my book though, should I have?”
She laughed. “Probably not. Well, my young author, why don’t you put the book aside for now and come down for a bite.”
After lunch, Amelia washed the dishes and ruminated more about Teddy’s story and about Norbert’s response to it. As if Jimmy Jiggs and the stripper Kitty Kats were flesh and blood—people with whom he cavorted. She wondered if strip clubs were open on Sunday afternoons. Appalled at the possibility but also a tad intrigued, she decided to go see. If nothing else, the outing would clear her mind. She covered her head in a scarf and her eyes with large sunglasses and left a note saying she had gone out for a country drive.
In fact, Handsome Eddie’s Dancin’ Bares Gentlemen’s Club was open when she arrived. It was only then that Amelia asked herself what she really intended to accomplish here. Even if there actually were people named Jimmy Jiggs and Kitty Kats, and even if Norbert knew them, what would that matter to her? Except that somehow, inexplicably, her six-year-old son also knew these people—or knew of them. This was a conundrum Amelia felt compelled to investigate.
Fearful of germs or other, well, diseases, she pulled a tissue from her purse and wrapped it around the door handle before letting herself in. Immediately, a cloud of cigarette smoke overwhelmed her nasal passages while the blaring music, if one could call it music, assaulted her eardrums.
When she removed the sunglasses, she realized a large man loomed in front of her. Both tall and wide, his arms were crossed over his bountiful middle.
“You ain’t the kind we see in here most days,” he said. “You lost, lady?”
Amelia coughed. “No, sir. This is my intended destination.”
“Huh?”
Amelia sneezed this time. The thick air did not agree with her.
“Bless you,” the large man said.
“Thank you, thank you. What is your name, sir?”
“They call me Killer.”
Amelia felt her throat clinch. She swallowed with some difficulty
