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with a shoulder, scooting along sideways. Glad-handing. He was, apparently, an important guy in this crowd— everyone wanted to touch him, tell him something. He leaned down to let some guy whisper in his dainty ear, and when he pulled himself upright, his head hit a flashlight, and everyone around him laughed, their faces glowing off and on as the light rotated like a police car’s. Men’s faces. Guys’ faces. There were only a few women in the entire place—four that I could see, all bespectacled, homely. The men were not attractive either. There were whiskery, professorial fellows; nondescript, suburban-dad types; and a goodly amount of guys in their twenties with cheap haircuts and math-nerd glasses, men who reminded me of Lyle and the guy who’d led me downstairs. Unremarkable, but with a brainy arrogance wafting from them. Call it AP aftershave.
    Lyle reached me, the men behind him grinning at his back, studying me like I was the new girlfriend. He shook his head. “Sorry, Libby. Kenny was supposed to phone my cell when you got here so I could bring you down myself.” He eyed Kenny over my head and Kenny made a shruggy noise and left. Lyle was steering me into the crowd, using an assertive finger to the back of my shoulder. Some people were wearing costumes. A man with a black waistcoat and tall black hat pushed past me, offering me sweets and laughing. Lyle rolled his eyes at me, said, “Frederick Baker freak. We’ve been trying to push out the role players for the past few years, but … too many guys are into that.”
    “I don’t know what that means,” I said, worried I was about to lose it. Elbows and shoulders were jostling me, I kept getting pushed back every few feet I moved forward. “I really, seriously, don’t understand what the fuck is going on.”
    Lyle sighed impatiently, looked at his watch. “Look, our session doesn’t start til midnight. You want me to walk you around, explain more?”
    “I want my money.”
    He chewed at his lower lip, pulled an envelope out of his back pocket, and stuck it in my hand as he leaned into my ear and asked me to count it later. It felt fat, and I calmed down a bit.
    “Let me show you around.” We walked the perimeter of the room, cramped booths on our left and right, all that metal fencing reminding me of kennels. Lyle put that finger on my arm again, prodding me onward. “The Kill Club—and by the way, don’t lecture, we know it’s a bad name, it just stuck. But the Kill Club, we call it KC, that’s one reason we have the big meeting here every year, Kansas City, KC, Kill Club … uh, like I said, it’s basically for solvers. And enthusiasts. Of famous murders. Everyone from, like Fanny Adams to—”
    “Who is Fanny Adams?” I snapped, realizing I was about to get jealous. I was supposed to be the special one here.
    “She was an eight-year-old, got chopped to bits in England in 1867. That guy we just passed, with the top hat and stuff, he was playing at being her murderer, Frederick Baker.”
    “That’s really sick.” So she’d been dead forever. That was good. No competition.
    “Well, that was a pretty notorious murder.” He caught me grimacing. “Yeah, like I said, they’re a less palatable section. I mean, most of those murders have already been solved, there’s no real mystery. To me, it’s all about the solving. We have former cops, lawyers—”
    “Are there role players for … mine? My family, are there role players here?” A beefy guy with highlighted hair and an inflatable doll in a red dress paused in the crowd, nearly on top of me, not even noticing me. The doll’s plastic fingers tickled my cheek. Someone behind me yelled
Scott and Amber!
I pushed the guy off me, tried to scan the crowd for anyone dressed as my mother, as Ben, some bastard in a red wig, brandishing an axe. My hand had balled into a fist.
    “No, no of course not,” Lyle said. “No way, Libby, I would never let that happen, the role play … it.