“What an idiot,” Clayton replied. “Can we get lobster rolls after this?”

“We have to find Rex first, Clay,” said Beverly. “If we don’t find him in a few hours, we’re going to have to notify his parents and the police. It will be a total nightmare.”

They had crossed over into Chappaquiddick and driven past the beach shacks on their way to the Storrow mansion. It was that part of the island where people said things like, “We’re the third house on the left, the one with the Georgian columns offset in a copse of pines.”

“I think this might be a red herring,” said Clayton.

“What do you mean?” asked Bev.

“I mean we’ve been sent on some wild troll goose chase, and it’s unlikely he would have made it out this far. It’s a red herring.”

“We’re not characters in a detective novel,” said Laird. “It’s not like we’re running around searching everywhere for a murderer, when, whoops!, turns out it was the butler.”

The days were increasingly wistful, and there wasn’t much time remaining at camp. Rex might have run away because he was dreading the prospect of confronting his father. If he never went home, he would never have to face him. Similarly, if Beverly left her mother in that home, she wouldn’t have to reckon with their dynamic. She was wracked with panic that Rex was desperate enough to do something so rash that going home would no longer be an option. Beverly had to find him.

“What do we do?” Laird asked, ringing the doorbell one more time as they stood shuffling their feet on the Storrow porch. “Nobody’s here.”

“Maybe they’re out back,” Beverly said.

Out back, the Storrow pool was empty. Potato chips and floats in the shape of orca whales littered the concrete. Only three elderly gents in a hot tub remained, with identical gray hair and leathery man breasts visible above the burbling waterline. The last guests had made their goodbyes about an hour ago. Though one of them seemed to remember that a groomsman in the wedding of Jenny Barnes had mentioned picking up his new pal Rex—or maybe it was his new pal Bax. Jenny was getting married that afternoon in a tent near the Gay Head Lighthouse. Rex Hasselbach might have decided to go along and gate-crash.

“I told you it was a red herring,” Clayton muttered as they walked back to the car.

Clayton Wheeler stuffed his mouth with some more of those puff pastry things and grabbed a couple cups of shrimp ceviche off the tray of a cater waiter. So far, crashing the Barnes wedding reception was the best idea the group had come up with all day. He could hang back and watch the shenanigans while Bev and Lare Bear did the dirty work. “No way is blood thicker than water,” he said to himself. Everything in life was made from water, including blood. In order to exist, blood needed water. Not fifteen minutes back, the bride had gotten into a hissy spat with her mother and stomped off in lacy flounces—it was kind of like watching an ice-cream sundae get pissed off—to the bland arms of her new husband. How many of these people hated each other but had shown up out of obligation? Romantic love was a more authentic form of love because you had to consciously choose your life companion. Clayton could safely say that he cared for Nadejda, the Bulgarian girlfriend he had met while on a two-week archaeology trip during his spring semester—Bulgaria apparently had untold Thracian treasures—more than his siblings. After spending a whole day wheeling away excess dirt while the experts brushed at some poor dead guy’s thousand-year-old eye sockets, he and his new besties had visited a bar where they hadn’t been carded. Clay looked up from his foamy beer, beheld a mane of platinum locks, and was immediately smitten.