He wondered if the jackass was still showing up at the McDonald’s every evening and every morning for the last couple of days like a pathetic tide.

John looked at the clock, then over at Carly in the passenger seat and back to Ada in the rearview mirror. He’d never make the six o’clock meetup. He’d have to try to find Roy in the morning.

It had been easy not to talk about the painting with Roy. They’d never really discussed it except for Jonathan telling him it was gone. And Roy certainly didn’t want to talk about it after that night. Not ever. It was a boxed topic just trembling at the hinges to fly open and spill all over everything.

The memory of Roy’s face from that night would come to Jonathan out of nowhere, sometimes when he was trying to sleep or eat or watch a show, or like now when he needed to think. The horror. Shame. Regret. Panic. The wheels coming off everyone’s wagon.

It had been contagious, that awestruck, begging look. It infected Jonathan and made him briefly sure they’d never get away with it.

Now he had no choice but to risk the third rail of Roy’s raw conscience. John needed to know if anything worth the Anningers’ time and checkbook was in the box of stuff Roy had taken from his father’s mess. Anything at all worth their forgiveness.

He could almost imagine forgiving Roy, too, as the door hit him on the way out, if he had anything in that truck or in his lukewarm brain that John could offer the Anningers. Selling the painting to them was only as useful as it balanced the account to their satisfaction. And to Owen’s.

He hated dealing with Roy.

But Jonathan knew what to do with other people’s upset, to this or that end. Out of everything he could use, nothing was finer for getting to what you needed to know—and for getting people to do what you needed them to do—than winding them up.

Carly was next. Then Roy.

She’d been quiet on the ride sitting next to the inevitable argument. But she was soft in her posture, with her arm unselfconsciously near Jonathan’s elbow on the padded console. As unconcerned as Carly looked, there might as well have been the Macy’s parade beside them for how hard poor Ada had been staring out the window. She was practically pressed against the glass, as close to being outside as she could get at fifty miles per hour, straining to the limit of her seat belt in an obvious wish to be riding in a sidecar, in the trunk, anywhere that was not with her friend who was in big trouble.

He pulled into her driveway.