“Funny about that, isn’t it? I guess showbiz trumps everything. You ask people in this city if they’d give up a vital organ for a walk-on in a movie, I guarantee you most would ask where’s the scalpel. Half the people in my business have had some connection to the industry. Come over to the office and you’ll see faces you vaguely recognize but can’t place. I’m talking the girl who served coffee to the banker lady on The Beverly Hillbillies during the second act of one episode. She’s still got that SAG card in her purse, works it into every conversation. The smart ones learn that even if they make it, it lasts as long as warm milk. The others are like Amelia Dowd.”

“Living in fantasyland.”

“Twenty-four seven. Anyway, that’s the history of the Kolor Krew.”

“The project never got anywhere.”

“We must’ve done two dozen auditions. None lasted longer than fifteen seconds because the moment the agents heard us sing they winced. We knew we were horrendous. But Amelia would be standing there, snapping her fingers, beaming. When I got home I’d light up a doobie, call my friends, get all hysterical-giggly.”

“How’d the Dowd kids handle it?”

“Billy was an obedient robot, might as well have come with wheels. Nora spaced out, just like always, did the whole Mona Lisa thing. Brad was always hiding a smirk. He’s the one who finally spoke up. Not disrespectfully, more like, ‘C’mon, we’re not getting anywhere.’ Amelia ignored him. I mean, literally, just pretended he wasn’t there and went on talking. Which was a switch.”

“In what way?”

“Generally she paid plenty of attention to Brad.”

“Abusive?”

“Not exactly.”

“Special attention?”

Elise Van Syoc tried to impale a lime wedge on her stirrer. “This could be the important part of my book.”

“She seduced him?”

“Or maybe it was the other way around. I can’t even say for sure something happened. But the way those two related wasn’t exactly mother-son. I never noticed until I started spending all that time with them. It took a while to notice Mrs. D being odder than usual.”

“What’d she do?”

“She was no great shakes as a mom. With Billy and Nora she was distant. But with Brad— maybe she figured, technically, because Brad was an adopted cousin and not her son...still, he was fourteen and she was a grown woman.”

“Hip rubs and cleavage?” I said.

“Some of that but usually it was more subtle. Private smiles, little looks that she’d sneak in when she thought no one was watching. Occasionally I’d catch her brushing his arm and he’d touch her back. Nora and Billy didn’t seem to notice. I wondered if I was imagining it, felt like an alien dropped on Planet Strange.”

“How did Brad react?”