He’d like to enlist Stick’s help, or maybe Nancy’s. A twenty-four-hour surveillance couldn’t be conducted solo. But what would he give for a reason? What would Harry say when Stick asked whether Nabler was a suspect? Yeah, well, maybe. And what was it he was suspected of doing?

It would be a short conversation.

Nor would Harry get authorization to tap Nabler’s phone. Not when all he had was a gut feeling that was impossible to articulate. Harry was going to have to do this alone, at least for now. And there wasn’t a damn soul he could talk to about this, not even Melissa, because instead of trying to help him out, they’d be picking up the phone and calling the guys in the white coats to take him away.

Harry was going to have to do this on his own. He’d start tomorrow.

Through the day, keeping tabs on Edwin Nabler was simple.

When his shop was open, he was there. He had no employees, so it wasn’t like he could take off for a couple of hours without closing.

In the morning, Harry went into the diner for a take-out coffee and sat on the bench where Gavin had once been a fixture. He’d wait until the open sign came on in the window of Choo-Choo’s Trains, finish his coffee, and then go about his duties, checking back occasionally to make sure Nabler hadn’t closed early or taken a long lunch.

What struck Harry was that Nabler didn’t come from some other location when it was time to open up. The man was living in his store, sleeping in his store, presumably in some room at the back. All he’d need, Harry figured, was a bed, a bathroom with a shower, a mini-fridge, and a hot plate. The question was why Nabler chose to live that way.

A man that age—and now that Harry thought about it, he really had no sense of how old Nabler was—would at the very least have an apartment, wouldn’t he? It was true some people chose to live frugally. They were not concerned with material things. Maybe Nabler was like that. There was no sign of a significant other. He had what he needed, and no more.