“You must be Aubrey Hamilton,” I said. I strode over and shook his hand. “You run the canary farm, right?”

“Are you looking to buy a bird?” he asked. A little too eagerly—I wondered if perhaps the bird business wasn’t going too well.

“Sorry, no,” I said. “I’m looking for the guy who lives next door. Mr. Bass. Have you seen him recently?”

Hamilton shook his head.

“What do you want with the old guy, anyway?” he said. Was he frowning in suspicion of me, or in disbelief that anyone would voluntarily seek out his neighbor’s company?

“I’m actually trying to find his nephew, Jasper Walker.”

The frown deepened. Definitely suspicion.

“Jasper is or was married to my friend Karen,” I went on. “And she left her son Timmy with me yesterday.”

I indicated the car, where Timmy was chugging his juice. Hamilton barely glanced at him.

“Karen said she would just be gone for a little while,” I said. “And that was yesterday morning. She’s not answering my calls. I’m checking anyplace she might have gone and anyone who might have seen her.”

“I haven’t seen anyone next door for days,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Ah, well,” I said. “Look, this may sound odd, but—Timmy got loose and wandered into a patch of poison ivy. I’d really like to wash him off. The sooner I do that, the less chance that he’ll develop a rash.”

Hamilton hesitated, clearly torn between a reluctance to appear inhospitable and an even stronger reluctance to let a wayward toddler into his house.

“We could just use that,” I said, pointing to a green garden hose neatly coiled and hanging from a hook by the side of the house.

“Okay,” he said. “Let me bring you a towel.”

“He might have invited us in,” I grumbled to Timmy as I stripped his clothes and diaper off.

Though once I began soaping him up and rinsing him off, I realized that it was an extraordinarily messy project, and I’d have been mortified at doing it inside a stranger’s house.

“Sorry to put you to this trouble,” I told Hamilton when he returned with the towel. “But you probably know how bad poison ivy can be for a little kid.”

“No trouble at all,” he said, though clearly he was getting tired of having us underfoot. He kept glancing over at the barn.

“Is that where you keep the birds?” I asked, pointing to the barn.

“What?” he said, looking startled.

“Your canaries. Is that where you keep them?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Canaries, cockatiels, and parakeets. Are you interested in buying—sorry, you already said you weren’t.”

“How’s business?” I asked.

“Slow,” he said. “The market’s depressed. Too many breeders. Damned things are eating me out of house and home. I could give you a good deal on a pair of cockatiels, if you like.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not much of a bird-fancier. But I’ll ask my family if anyone’s in the market for a pet bird.”