Before David got anything like a sensible answer, before he got any answer at all, they were gone, all of them, the Siemens and the Hunters, off on a sudden Independence Day vacation.
Martin Grubb, a fraternity brother of Walken’s from Ohio State, had rented a house on the beach at Sea Island, Georgia, for a week around the July 4th holiday and was packed to go when, as he put it, his goddamn mother died, and he had to go to the funeral. He had just placed her at the Welcome Nursing Home in Oberlin, Ohio, close enough to be near and yet far enough to be too far to visit more than once in a while, and she died almost immediately.
“Just like her,” he muttered.
But it meant that the Sea Island house was available: seven bedrooms, maid, cook, gardener, for two thousand a week. Walken could
