Raymond came into the foyer. He said, “Goddamn, it didn’t work, Paige. You arranged a blizzard just to get this guy’s money but he’s too smart for you. Now I’ll have to escort him back outside.”

The Granada man stiffened as if he believed Raymond on all counts.

“Sit down,” I told him. “That’s free.”

I went into the hotel kitchen to get the mammoth restaurant percolator started. The rock-band girl from the black bus stood there in her drapings of rags.

“Do you mind we came in?” she asked me. “We didn’t have anyplace else to go. We were freezing in the bus and ’sides, it’s stuck.”

“I sort of mind that you broke in,” I told her. “Where’re the rest?”

“Off down that hall,” she said, and pointed her stick at the door of a wing with locked guest rooms.

“You should get them and bring them in where it’s heated, where there’re fireplaces and chairs. Raymond’s in the sitting room,” I said.

“Raymond?” she said. “Whew, is he hot!”

“I’m just letting you know we have emergency guests,” I said over the phone to Candy, at the Cape Head Police Department. The CHPD was one man, a guy named Walt Barber, and Candy Barber, his wife, worked the switchboard.

The rock band and Raymond and the Granada man were in the fancy sitting room, curled up on the puffy couches, lying on the Persian rugs, lined up with their backs to the noisy fireplace.

“Who am I talking to?” Candy Barber asked.

“Sorry. It’s Dottie’s daughter, Paige, at the Seahorse Inn.”

“Paige! We went skinny-dipping together one Fourth of July, right? Walt almost had to put your husband in jail, remember?”

“It was a grand day,” I said.

Candy’s voice got lower, more confidential. “Walt’s out there on a Ski-doo.”

The rock-band boy with the beret was shadowing me at the registry desk. I looked him a question.

“I gotta piss, I admit,” the boy said.

“Should I tell the police that? I’m talking here to the police.”

“You could send me to jail,” the boy said. “They’ll let me piss there, probably.”

Dottie came down the spiral staircase from the inn’s second floor. She wore a blue serge dress and a cardigan sweater, mules with cotton ankle socks. Fredo skittered along after her.

“Who are these folks, Paige? Why’re you using the desk phone?” When she got close, I smelled her spicy perfume.

“Candy Barber’s on the other end,” I said.

“Candy Barber from the police? Why’s she calling?”

“We’re helpless, Paige, tell Dottie,” Candy Barber said.

I told my mother. “These’re the bus people I met on the beach? They’re a rock band, I found out. I just wanted to let Candy know they’re here and then she can send the Wasnascawa force if we need them.”