Page 75 of Whistle
Charlie’s tongue rested on his upper lip while he considered. “Okay.”
She cut off a two-inch long strip of tape, stuck it to the table so that she could work on it, took from her coffee can of drawing implements a fine-point marker, and, in a calligraphic style, pennedchoo-choo’strains, adding shading to give the letters a three-dimensional look. Once done, she peeled the tape from the table and attached one end to the tip of her finger, then walked it over to where he sat on the floor.
“How about this?” she said as he delicately took it from her finger.
“That’s way better than mine,” he said admiringly as he placed the tape above the front display window of his last unlabeled structure.
“Hey, I do this for a living,” she said, smiling.
“It’s no wonder you picked that name.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s where they all come from.”
Annie still didn’t understand, so Charlie uncoupled the caboose from the rest of the train, brought it over, and turned it upside down so his mother could see the sticker affixed to the underside.
It read: “Choo-Choo’s Trains 122 Main Street Lucknow, Vermont.” A zip code and a phone number with an 802 area code followed.
“It’s on the bottom of all the trains,” Charlie said. “You must have peeked.”
“I guess I must have seen that and forgotten,” Annie said.
Although she couldn’t remember when.
It was a little after one in the morning when Annie heard something.
She sat up in bed, expecting to once again hear a phantom trainwhistle, but that wasn’t it. What she had thought she’d heard, in the seconds before she woke up, was a door opening. And not an upstairs door, like the one to Charlie’s room, or the bathroom a few steps away.
This had the sound of a heavier door, if that made any sense. One that creaked on its hinges when you opened it.
In New York, she was always hearing something in the night. Ambulances and police cars and fire engines. In the wee hours of the morning, garbage trucks emptying huge Dumpsters. Sometimes even gunshots.
But even in New York—especiallyin New York—if you heard a door open, you might want to investigate. Because that meant someone was coming into yourhouse. The world outside could go to shit, but once someone crossed the threshold into your domain, that was cause for fucking alarm.
Annie threw back the covers, reached out to turn on the bedside light, then stopped herself. If there was an intruder, did she want to let them know she was awake? Would she lose the element of surprise? Or was that what she should do? Let whoever had come into the house know she was up and that they better get the hell out.
Charlie.
Whatever plan she might settle on, the priority was to make sure Charlie was safe.
She slipped on her housecoat and crept out of her room and into the second-floor hallway.
There was no one there. No lights on.
She passed the open door to the studio. It was dark in there, save for some moonlight coming through the skylights. For a second she thought she saw a pinprick of light, no larger than the top of a pen, but when she blinked it was gone.
From the top of the stairs, she could see down to the entryway.
The front door was wide open.
Jesus Christ, someone is in the house.
A chill ran the length of Annie’s spine. She was certain she’d locked the front door before she and Charlie went to bed. Yes, she was in the country now and security wasn’t as big a concern, but old habits die hard. So how did someone get in?
Then it hit her.
Wasn’t it possible, even after all these years, that Dolores had a key to the house? She’d cleaned for whoever had lived here years ago.
