When A.L. pulled up in front of the Whitman house, there were lights on inside, maybe proving his theory that Troy wasn’t sleeping. They hadn’t called ahead this time because they hadn’t wanted to give Troy any time to prepare a story.

They knocked and the door was opened by the same FBI agent who’d opened it just hours earlier. “Making a habit of this?” he asked.

A.L. took a minute to fill him in. Then they walked downstairs and found Troy sitting in what must have been his favorite chair. He didn’t look particularly surprised to see them.

“Troy, we have some questions for you.”

He gave no sign that he even heard them. Nevertheless, A.L. forged ahead.

“We’ve looked at your financial records. And we’re confident that you’re inflating customer invoices and recording sales where the work was never completed.” A.L. stopped. Let that sink in. “I need you to tell me why we’re seeing that. I need you to tell me the truth. And I need to know if it has anything to do with Emma’s disappearance.”

Troy glanced at the stairway leading upstairs. “Listen, you cannot tell Leah this. I have loan payments due at the bank that I can’t make. I owe money to suppliers. Money has always been tight but I’m in real trouble.”

“Get an extension. Make small payments,” A.L. said.

“I’ve already done some of that. Steven Hanzel told me that the next time I went to the bank, his boss would probably want to see my financials.”

That made sense given what the VP at the bank had told him. “None of that explains what we’re seeing,” A.L. said.

“Yes, it does,” Troy said. “Months ago my brother told me about somebody else who would loan me money. But he’s a fucking CPA and he warned me that I couldn’t just dump the money into my account, I had to dribble it in because any big cash deposit would be scrutinized. If the Baywood Bank found out that I had debt elsewhere, I wouldn’t have any hope of working with them.”

“So you were going to trick your friend, Steven Hanzel?”

“I was going to do what I had to do to keep my family from losing their house, to keep my wife from realizing that she’d married a damn fool.”

“Leah knows nothing about this?” Rena asked.

“Leah knows about the initial loans from Baywood Bank. She knows business has been slow. But she doesn’t ask a whole lot of questions. She trusts me to handle it. If she were to find this out right now, fuck, it could kill her. I love my wife. I don’t want to lose her.”

“So you borrowed the money and for months you’ve been using it to keep the garage afloat. What now?” A.L. asked.