Page 108 of Whistle

“I’m workin’ on it.”

“Workin’ on it, he says,” Jenny said dismissively, and went off to deal with another customer.

Harry went back to studying his notebook. He’d written down something Delbert’s mother, June, said as his body was being loaded into the ambulance.

“He didn’t even smoke,” she told the chief.

Thirty-Six

Back when Edwin Nabler opened his very first shop—where was it, now? Cleveland? or was it Scranton?—there was a thrill surrounding the first customer of the day. Who would it be? A serious shopper? A browser? (There weren’t many of those. Nabler had a gift when it came to salesmanship. They might not buy on the first visit, but they always came back.)

But he had to admit, that thrill was gone.

It was still a pleasure to welcome the first person to open the shop door. He still had the strength for a “How are you today?” or a “What fine weather we’re having, wouldn’t you say?” or “Is there anything special you’re looking for?” But that charge he used to get at the start of his business day had dropped to a lower voltage.

Still, he managed a smile for the woman who had stepped into Choo-Choo’s Trains on this sunny morning. When he emerged from the back room, he closed the door quickly so as to muffle the sound of those multiple trains chugging their way around his layout.

He walked up to the cash register and flashed the woman a smile as she looked his way.

“What fine weather we’re having, wouldn’t you say?” he asked. As good an opener as any from his repertoire.

“I love the fall,” the woman said.

“We won’t have these colors for much longer,” Nabler said. “It all seems so fleeting. The beauty of the changing season is here, and then it’s gone.”

He put her in her late thirties. Slim, attractive, dark hair. The ring on her finger told him she was married, and a mother in all likelihood, given that she had entered what some would derisively refer to as a toy store. (How he hated that, but they were calledtoytrains, so what could you do?) But part of the workforce, too, he thought, judging by her professional attire. A simple blue dress with long sleeves, two-inch heels, just the right amount of makeup.

“I’ve never been in here before,” she said. “I must have walked past it, but somehow it escaped my notice.”

Nabler smiled. “I hear that a lot.”

“Been here long?”

“A while. But we’re more of a specialty shop. It’s not like you need a model train every day. We’re not like the diner across the street, where if you don’t get your daily cup of joe you’re not going to be any good to anybody.”

She chuckled. “Isn’t that the truth.”

“So, you’re into the hobby? A collector, perhaps?”

“Oh no, not me. I’m thinking this might be a perfect Christmas gift for both my husband and my son. Something they could enjoy together.”

“And get them out of your hair,” Nabler said.

The woman laughed. “That’s not my intention, but you might be right about that.”

She was wandering down the far aisle, looking at sets and packages containing individual engines and cars. “You have some beautiful stuff here.”

“Thank you. I do all the detailing on the cars myself.”

“Really? But the trains themselves, are they made in America? Overseas?”

“They’re manufactured right here in the good ol’ US of A, but you know the way things are going. I think we’re going to see much of the work move to China. But even when it comes to that, when the trains arrive here, I do extra work on them in the back, so that anything you get from Choo-Choo’s is essentially an exclusive product.”

“Nice to hear. What sort of extra work do you do to them?”

Nabler smiled. “You know, there was this restaurant I used to go to. A very swanky place, and they had the best scrambled eggs I’d ever had in my life. And I thought, they’re just scrambled eggs. We all know how to make scrambled eggs, right? But these had something extra about them. So one day, I asked the waiter if he could ask the chef what he put into the eggs that made them so extraordinary. So he went off to see the chef and came back, and you know what he said?”

“What did he say?”

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