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Stewie said. “I’ve always gone to the Pines.”
    “So Oscar and maybe his housemates all knew Clea,” Cindy said. “Did anybody mention that to the police?”
    Karen and Lewis looked at each other. So did Stephanie and Jeannette.
    “It didn’t come up,” Jeannette said.
    Stephanie nodded. Karen shook her head. Lewis shrugged.
    “Who’s Clea’s roommate this summer?” Barbara asked.
    “She was supposed to bring a friend,” Lewis said. “This part I did tell the cops. When she sent the check in, she said she wasn’t sure who she’d be inviting to share the room with her. She paid for both shares.”
    “She didn’t bring someone with her?” Barbara asked. “Or tell you who her roommate would be?”
    “She only got here yesterday,” Lewis said. “We didn’t see her till dinner.”
    We had arrived the day before too. Everybody around the dinner table now, plus Clea, had gathered for last night’s dinner. There’d been a lot of talk and laughter. We’d had lobster and strawberry shortcake to kick off what was evidently going to be a season of serious eating.
    “I never got a chance to ask her,” Lewis said. “And no one showed up.”
    Right on cue, a car pulled up on the gravel. The engine choked and died. A trunk slammed. A door banged. Something crashed, maybe gear being dumped on the floor.
    “Yo! Ahoy! Anybody home?” a male voice called.
    We heard tromping on the stairs. The guy’s head appeared in the stairwell by installments. First the bald part in front. Then the slicked back brown hair and the broad forehead. Mirrored shades, though it was getting dark outside by now. Beaky nose. Droopy graying mustache. Not much of a chin. When we could see his Izod shirt down to the waist and the big brass buckle on his belt, he spoke again.
    “Hi, I’m Phil.”
    We all stared.
    “Am I in time for dinner?” he asked. “The traffic sucked. Where’s Clea? I’m her boyfriend.”

Chapter Five
    “You paid for the shares,” Oscar said. “You might as well enjoy the summer.”
    A big group of us lay sprawled on the beach, making the most of a hot Memorial Day. You’d think it was August, unless you happened to dip your toes in the frigid ocean. Everyone from our house was there except Phil, who’d gone to talk to the police. Following Lewis and Karen’s lead, we’d all plunked down our blankets, towels, and gear next to the gang of clean and sober folks from Oscar’s house. Oscar himself was a genial mine-host kind of guy. I’d have bet money he’d had a world class beer gut before he got sober. Piercing blue eyes and a rich, warm voice made him attractive. A luxuriant mustache lent him gravitas. All the women from his house clustered around him, putting me in mind of a walrus with his harem. One of them, little Corky, followed him around like a pilot fish cozying up to a shark. She’d trotted behind him out to the beach carrying two folding chaise longues and an umbrella. He’d carried a beach towel and a Panama hat.
    The sun beat down on us. All but Jimmy. He huddled under the sole umbrella wearing a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and a ridiculous big hat. His iPad perched on his knees. His pink face wore as sour an expression as the sweetest tempered guy I knew ever got. Jimmy’s problem was not getting online, but keeping sand out of his iPad.
    Oscar’s house rode a dune right off the beach, so close his wireless worked down here near the water. That made him Big Daddy to any clean and sober computer nut in the vicinity.
    “It doesn’t seem right,” Barbara said, “but it doesn’t make sense not to, either.”
    “I know what you mean,” Corky said. Punk to the ring threaded over her left eyebrow and the stand-up spikes of her inky hair, she wore the briefest of bikinis over a tan that stopped for nothing. “You’ll feel guilty either way.”
    “It’s spooky at the house,” Jeannette said. “I keep thinking she’s in the next room.”
    “It could be worse,” Karen