“Shhh! Keep your voice down. Okay, okay, fine. If you leave right now, how about I come by after work? I get off at six.” I glanced up at the women again, now just a few feet from our door; I felt flustered and annoyed that Clara had manipulated me. But then I reconsidered. How different my life at sixteen had been compared to hers. Maybe she needed help: Going to the cops. Finding a way to get away from Des.

“Meet me at the shop,” she said. “Des will already be gone for work by then.” She sauntered away, and I watched the trio of women sneer at her as she left. I sighed. I had planned on doing more research on the paintings when I got off work—whatever research meant, when I only had a single legible initial, a broad range of dates.

But after I checked the women in and walked them to their lockers, I wondered if Clara might be able to help me there, too. It was a ridiculous, almost feverish thought, and yet—she knew things she shouldn’t know. She saw things she shouldn’t have been able to see. Would she be able to tell me something about the paintings? Maybe not. But I had next to nothing to go on. If she was going to rope me into meeting her anyway, it was worth a try. I felt a flush of shame at my selfishness, how quickly my motivations had flipped from altruistic to self-serving. Maybe Matthew and Ramona had rubbed off on me more than I had thought.

I WAS hungry from another depressing lunch break in the cafeteria, and the smells of fries and soft pretzels and fudge on the boardwalk made me ravenous. I approached Clara’s shop and saw a new message on the chalkboard sign out front. A picture of a crystal ball in the center, and in the corner, a tiny star. I looked in and saw she was alone, sitting on the floor in front of an oscillating fan with streamers tied to the grate, turning the pages of a People magazine. I pushed through the curtain, the beads tangling in my hair.

“Ah, good. You’re here.”

I picked a jade Buddha statue off the counter and turned it over in my palm. Embarrassingly, I was nervous again. In the spa, I had authority, I could enforce the rules. But not here.

She flipped the magazine closed. I noticed that the mailing label on the cover was addressed to the spa, under Deidre’s name. Of course.

“Have you seen these posters around?” She rustled behind the counter where the old register sat and handed me a piece of paper. It was the poster about the missing teenager, Julie Zale.

“Yeah, I’ve seen them.”

“What do you make of it?”