BooksBarbecue
Back Whistle
Chapters (73)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Part IAnnie
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Part IIHarry
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Part IIIAnnie
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Part IVHarry
  40. Thirty-Three
  41. Thirty-Four
  42. Thirty-Five
  43. Thirty-Six
  44. Thirty-Seven
  45. Thirty-Eight
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. Forty
  48. Forty-One
  49. Forty-Two
  50. Forty-Three
  51. Forty-Four
  52. Forty-Five
  53. Forty-Six
  54. Forty-Seven
  55. Forty-Eight
  56. Part VAnnie
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. Fifty-Two
  61. Fifty-Three
  62. Fifty-Four
  63. Fifty-Five
  64. Fifty-Six
  65. Fifty-Seven
  66. Fifty-Eight
  67. Fifty-Nine
  68. Sixty
  69. Sixty-One
  70. Acknowledgments
  71. About the Author
  72. Also by Linwood Barclay
  73. About the Publisher

As if struck by a sudden impulse, he crossed the room and grabbed a large cardboard detergent box that was in a far corner of the room. He brought it back to the table, picked up a caboose, and threw it forcefully into the box.

“Goddamn fucking things!” he said. Before he could grab another car, Harry reached for his arm.

“Mr. Comstock, please leave everything as it is for now, okay?”

The man stared vacantly at Harry, almost as though he couldn’t see him standing there.

“Mr. Comstock?”

He blinked a few times. “Yeah, okay, okay. I’ll leave it for now.”

“These trains,” Harry said. “You’ve always had these?”

“No, I bought everything this week. A few days ago. Nadine . . . she was really taken by them. I thought she’d think they were stupid but she liked them. She helped assemble the buildings and everything.”

“Where did you buy all this?”

“That store on the main street. Oh God, I don’t know what I’m going to tell her family.”

Harry thought about that barbecue accident. That birthday gift for young Auden.

And then it hit Harry for the first time. The conversation he’d had with Nabler at the sidewalk sale. Nabler had known his son’s name was Dylan.

Harry was sure he hadn’t told him.

Part III
Annie

Twenty-Two

A little more than a week after moving into their summer place, things were really starting to click for Annie and Charlie.

She was generally up an hour or more before Charlie, in the kitchen by seven, putting a pod into the Nespresso machine, dropping a slice of whole wheat bread into the toaster while her coffee percolated, then taking her drink and her toast and jam to the table and savoring it while she read the New York Times on her tablet.

She and Charlie were only using one end of the kitchen table because half of it was covered with five hundred jigsaw puzzle pieces that, when done, would be a cover from The New Yorker magazine—this one featuring dozens of dogs in various comical activities—that she had brought with her from the city. So far, she’d only managed to put together the edges and part of the masthead (“The” and “ew” and “ork”) and turned all the other pieces face up, clustering them by color. During the pandemic, she and John had ordered several puzzles to get them through their periods of isolation, but, after completing only one, had sworn off them. John said being hunched over the dining room table for hours on end was killing his back, and Annie began to feel she was wasting her whole day even when she had nothing else pressing.

But out here with nothing else to do, she was willing to give the pastime another chance, and so far enjoyed it.