‘Hit something hard.’

‘More metal?’ Lissa asked.

‘I think so. Sure wasn’t wood. Let’s see.’ He shone the light in and cocked his head this way and that before shaking it decisively. ‘My head’s too big. Let’s boost Lissa.’ Laurie and Trent lifted her up and Brian handed her the Pen Lite. Lissa squinted for a time, then said, ‘Just like in the crack I found.’

‘Okay,’ Trent said. ‘Next picture.’

The drill hit metal behind the second, and the third, as well. Behind the fourth – by this time they were quite close to the door of Lew’s study – it went all the way in before Trent pulled it out. This time when she was boosted up, Lissa told them she saw ‘the pink stuff.’ ‘Yeah, the insulation I told you about,’ Trent said to Laurie. ‘Let’s try the other side of the hall.’

They had to drill behind four pictures on the east side of the corridor before they struck first wood-lath and then insulation behind the plaster… and as they were re-hanging the last picture, they heard the out-of-tune snarl of Lew’s elderly Porsche turning into the driveway. Brian, who had been in charge of hanging this picture – he could just reach the hook on tip-toe – dropped it. Laurie reached out and grabbed it by the frame on the way down. A moment later she found herself shaking so badly she had to hand the picture to Trent, or she would have dropped it herself.

‘You hang it,’ she said, turning a stricken face to her older brother. ‘I would have dropped it if I’d been thinking about what I was doing. I really would.’

Trent hung the picture, which showed horse-drawn carriages clopping through City Park, and saw it was hanging slightly askew. He reached out to adjust it, then pulled back just before his fingers touched the frame. His sisters and his brother thought he was something like a god; Trent himself was smart enough to know he was only a kid. But even a kid – assuming he was a kid with half a brain – knew that when things like this started to go bad, you ought to leave them alone. If he messed with it anymore, this picture would fall for sure, spraying the floor with broken glass, and somehow Trent knew it.