The Ambrose Deception
Page 20
To: Enoch Ambrose
From: William Hughes
Subject: Tying up loose ends
Might I say you have excellent taste in heirs? Also, are there any changes that you would like made with your arrangements?
To: William Hughes
From: Enoch Ambrose
Subject: RE: Tying up loose ends
First things first, I sure do. Those kids are good as gold.
Second, give those drivers raises. And bonuses for all of them. The kids are crazy about them. They’re worth every penny.
Third, give Linus and Sybil each a small trust, and inform them that they must make their own way in the world from now on. And tell them that if they whine, they get nothing.
Finally, the kids and I went to the zoo the other day, and we have a serious problem that we need to address AT ONCE.
To: Enoch Ambrose
From: William Hughes
Subject: RE: Tying up loose ends
Agreed. It will be taken care of immediately.
To: William Hughes
From: The Lawson Atwater Center, Antarctica
Subject: Happy to help
Sir,
We have received your request, and we can certainly help you out. How many penguins do you think you’ll need?
Colonel Robert McCormick and his cousin Captain Joseph Patterson were real people. They were co-editors of the Chicago Tribune from 1914–1926 and worked in identical offices on the twenty-fourth floor of the Tribune Tower. The floor plan on page 309 shows the actual layout of the twenty-fourth floor, complete with McCormick’s and Patterson’s secret stairways.
When I visited the Tribune Tower, those two offices were unoccupied and used for special events, and the hidden stairways were being used for storage purposes. And in 2016, the Tribune Tower was sold, ending its long historic association with the Chicago Tribune. At this point, the future of the Tribune Tower is still very much an open question.
All of the locations in the book are real places that you can visit, although the hours of operation and the animals you can create in the Mold-A-Rama machines may vary depending on the time of year. (The schools are the exception—they’re not real schools, so you can’t visit those. But really, would you want to?)
Enoch Ambrose and his children are, unfortunately (or not, depending on who you’re talking about), fictitious.
At the time this book was written, there were no penguins at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Their exhibit had been shut down in 2011. However, after this book was completed, the zoo announced that it would be bringing penguins back.
Coincidence? (Okay, probably.)
Eli Bates Fountain in Lincoln Park, Storks at Play (aka “Spitty Geese with Fish Huggers”)
This book would not exist without the hard work of so many talented people, so I want to give special thanks to Kate Schafer Testerman, Stephanie Owens Lurie, Gilbert Ford, and everyone at Disney Hyperion. You guys are rock stars.
Thanks also to:
President Obama, whose visit to Chicago kept me stuck in traffic long enough to come up with the idea for The Ambrose Deception.
My cabdriver that day, whose attempt to avoid the traffic jams took me past landmarks (like the Bowman and Spearman statues) that ultimately ended up in the book.
Amy Dickinson, Jan Guszynski, Gerri Cobb, and John Dewey, for answering my questions and making it possible for me to see Colonel McCormick’s and Captain Patterson’s offices, even though a movie shoot was going on.
The producers of Dhoom 3, for waiting until I’d gotten to see the secret stairways before kicking me off their movie set.
Everyone at Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, for listening to me obsess about Mold-A-Rama machines and the brightness of Divvy bike headlights. And to my SCBWI friends for the advice and moral support.
Katherine Solomonson, for her book, The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition: Skyscraper Design and Cultural Change in the 1920s. Thanks also to the incredibly helpful people at Lincoln Park Zoo and Graceland Cemetery.
And finally to my family, for reading a million drafts and putting up with my more-than-occasional author anxiety.
EMILY ECTON is the author of seven middle-grade books published under the names Emily Ecton and Emily Fairlie. She is also a former writer and producer for Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the Peabody Award–winning comedy news quiz on NPR. Emily is a native Chicagoan and a lifelong Cubs fan, which is awkward, because her dog, Binky, prefers the White Sox. (Every year, the White Sox have a special game that dogs can attend. The Cubs do not. Binky holds a grudge.) To avoid the inevitable conflict, Emily and Binky now live in Charlottesville, Virginia. Visit Emily online at emilyecton.com.