She played with her glass. “Let’s put it this way: once I overheard Father joking to a golf buddy about how the captain had joined the navy to be close to boys in tight blue uniforms.”

“He traveled with young men?”

“More like traveled to find young men.”

“The rumor mill,” I said.

“Keeps the grass green,” she said.

“Captain Dowd being gay was public knowledge?”

“If my father knew, everyone did. He seemed like a nice enough man— the captain. But not much of a presence. Maybe that’s why Amelia flirted with everyone.”

“Including Brad,” I said.

“I guess they were all crazy,” she said. “Does that explain what happened?”

“It’s a start.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“I’m still figuring out the questions.”

Amber eyes hardened and I thought she’d come back with a sharp retort. Instead, she stood and smoothed the front of her trousers. “Gotta run.”

I thanked her again for her time.

She said, “I know you were snowing me about keeping an open mind, but I’d like to call you if a hot property comes up. Something really worth your while, it’s a terrific time in the market for someone in your position. How about a phone number?”

I gave her a card, paid for the drinks, and walked her to her silver Mercedes roadster.

She got in, started up the car, lowered the top. “I’ll probably never do a book, hate writing. Maybe a cable movie.”

“Good luck.”

“It’s strange,” she said, “after you called, I tried to make sense of it— looking back for something that could’ve predicted it.”

“Come up with anything?”

“This is probably irrelevant— I’m sure I’m reading all kinds of crazy things into insignificant stuff. But if what they’re saying about what happened to those people is true...the gory details, I mean...”

“They’re true.”

She drew a compact from her purse, checked her face in the mirror, tamped her hair, put on a pair of sunglasses. “Mrs. D had this routine she’d go through. When we goofed off during rehearsal, which was often, and she lost her patience but was trying not to show it because she wanted to be one of the gang. Like Mama Cowsill or Shirley Jones.”

“Cool mom,” I said.

“As if that’s ever possible...anyway, what she’d do is start clapping her hands to quiet us down, then she’d make like she was the Red Queen— from Alice in Wonderland. The first few times she announced it. ‘I am the Red Queen and I will be obeyed!’ Eventually we caught on. Whenever she clapped it was going to be a Red Queen routine. Which consisted of her spouting lines like ‘I’m five times richer and cleverer than you,’ or ‘What use is a child with no meaning?’ I took it for just another of her eccentricities, but maybe...”

She went silent.