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300 miles long from the Indiana dunes to Mackinac Bridge, and 923 feet deep at its deepest spot. And it can have waves. Big waves. Luckily, that day they were only a couple of feet high, but since they were coming from the southwest, the water was cloudy.
    If our summer visitors hang around beaches on the east side of Lake Michigan very long, they learn that if the wind is coming from the southwest, the water is, too. That water is warm—compared to ice water—but it’s filled with sediment and waterweeds. At least we hope that’s what makes it murky. It’s coming straight from Chicago.
    If the wind and water are coming from the northwest, the lake is clear but cold. If the wind is from the east, the beach is invaded by flies, and I don’t want to go down there, so I have no idea what the water is like.
    Looking for a body in Lake Michigan is not a one-man job. After Jill came to our house looking for help, I called 9-1-1, then contacted a few neighbors I knew were swimmers. They called other people. Joe put on his swim trunks and headed for the beach, taking Jill with him. Joe immediately made some dives in the area where Jill said her friend had gone down, but he hadn’t found the missing Jeremy, and neither had other people who arrived on the scene within the next hour. Now the volunteers were doing their gruesome line dance, hoping one of them would stub a toe on Jeremy’s body. If this didn’t work, they’d go home, and in a couple of days helicopters would start patrolling the shoreline, looking for a body floating in the water or washed up on the beach.
    By now Jill wasn’t tearful. That was all right with me. Jill seemed familiar, which meant I’d probably seen her around town, but I didn’t know her, and I didn’t feel equipped to console a stranger’s grief.
    She hadn’t wanted to talk a lot, which was surprising. My experience has been that people who’ve gone through traumatic experiences are eager to talk about them. But Warner Pier’s police chief, Hogan Jones—who just happens to be married to my aunt—had trouble getting the whole story out of her.
    Jeremy Mattox was the full name of the missing man, Jill had told him. She said he wasn’t a serious boyfriend, just a casual date.
    â€œHe works where I work, and he offered to show me this beach. He said it was real nice, and they don’t charge to use it. So he picked me up at seven, and we came up here.”
    I was curious, so I interrupted. “Why did you come so early?”
    â€œEarly?” Jill looked at me blankly.
    â€œYes.” I tried to look encouraging. “Beaches in our part of Michigan face west. This one has a high bank behind it, and a lot of trees on top of the bank. There’s never any sun here until late in the morning. Hardly anybody comes here to swim before noon.”
    â€œOh. Well.” She seemed to need a moment to think the question over. “We have to work this afternoon.”
    â€œWasn’t the beach cold when you got here?”
    â€œYes, but I brought a cover-up.”
    Jill’s cover-up was a gauzy shirt that matched her neon-striped bikini. It was designed to keep the sun off, not to keep the wearer warm when the temperature was around fifty-five in the shade, as it would have been before eight a.m. at Beech Tree Public Access Area.
    She didn’t have a lot more to say to Hogan or to me.
    West Michigan was settled nearly two hundred years ago by the Dutch. Many of their descendants, including me, are still here, so lots of us look as if we just stepped out of the Zuider Zee. There are more people in the phone book named VanSomething-or-other than there are named Smith, and Dykstra is considered a common name.
    So West Michigan is full of big, blond people. As a tall natural blond, I’d stood out in Texas. In west Michigan I rarely got a second glance.
    Jill did not look like a west Michigan native. She was