Page 113 of Whistle

And yet, there was something about him that got under Harry’s skin. The fact that one day, his store was justthere. Like he’d come out of nowhere. How these tragedies had all happened since his arrival. The fact that he was, well, at least judging from the couple of times Harry had met him, kind of fucking weird.

Not what Melissa Cairns would call hard evidence.

Maybe, Harry thought, he was so ill-equipped to solve Angus Tanner’s murder and Walter Hillman’s disappearance that he was grabbing at fantastical straws. There had to be logical answers to the questions he was puzzling over. He just lacked the smarts to come up with them.

These weren’tcommonalitiesthat meant anything. They werecoincidences, plain and simple. Maybe these families struck by tragedy all went to the same grocery store. Maybe they used the same toothpaste, dined at the same restaurants. And plenty of families could have made purchases at Choo-Choo’s Trains. Nabler was doing a brisk business the morning of the street sale. Who knew how many trains were chugga-chugging away in homes across Lucknow?

Take Delbert Dorfman. Harry had been in that house later, after the man’s body had been removed from the roof and taken away in an ambulance. He had spoken with his mother, who had been at a loss to explain his behavior. Her son had no history of mental illness, was not depressed, did not use, so far as she knew, hallucinogenic drugs. He was not in the care of a psychiatrist. Sure, Harry thought to himself, he was a racist asshole, but that would seem to have no bearing on how he had taken his own life.

Baffling, like the other recent events. But that was the only commonality. The Dorfmans had not spent any money at that new shopin town, so far as Harry knew, which kind of shot to hell his theory that Nabler was behindallthese occurrences.

Unless Harry missed something.

It wasn’t like he’d actually searched the house. Why would he have? On what pretext?

This was going to nag at him. He had toknow.

But as he got into his car, he had two other stops before going back to the Dorfman house. The first was at the Pidgeon home. Darryl’s wife, Christina, came to the door after Harry rang the bell, opening it only a few inches.

“Oh, Chief Cook,” she said, opening the door wider upon seeing who it was.

“Ms. Pidgeon,” he said, nodding his head. “Forgive my coming unannounced.”

“It’s okay. Come in.”

He followed her into the living room, where they both took a seat. There was no longer a train setup on the dining room table. He managed a quick glance through the kitchen doorway and saw a sheet of plywood where the sliding glass door once was.

Christina caught him looking and said, “The new door goes in tomorrow. It had to be ordered. It was some special kind of glass that takes a week or more to get. The insurance people were a problem at first, but that got ironed out.”

“How’s Auden doing?”

“He’s back at school. Everyone’s been very supportive. His teacher’s been great and the kids have been pretty decent. But”—and she clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palm—“he’s pretty devastated.”

“Of course. I had a couple of quick questions.”

“Um, okay.”

“Did they find out what caused the accident? Why the barbecue ignited?”

She sighed. “The fire department looked into it and the insurance company had an investigator come out, and whatever might have been wrong with it, they can’t guess what it was. And it was relatively new. Darryl bought it only three or four months ago and he was always very careful with the gas connections and everything. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Had there been someone here to service it?” he asked.

“No. Not since they brought it from the barbecue place.”

“Okay. Anyone else been in the house lately?”

“Like who?”

“Service people? Someone to fix a washer or dryer or the furnace or anything like that at all?”

Christina thought for a moment. “No.”

“Maybe that train set of Auden’s? Did someone come to the house to put it together?”

“Oh no. Auden and his father did that. It wasn’t very complicated.” Her eyes glistened, and she looked away momentarily. “What makes you ask?”

“It’s routine. Whenever there’s an accident and the cause is undetermined, we like to know if there’s any likelihood that it could have been tampered with, improperly maintained, anything like that.”

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