Chapter 4: What Was Behind the Hearth

Warrick Doyle turned out to be a broad, cheerful man in his fifties who arrived Thursday morning with a ladder, a nail gun, and an encyclopedic knowledge of every roof in Cedar Hollow going back three decades, and who confirmed, within twenty minutes, that Eli's instinct had been correct: the joists over the old stockroom were rotted clean through, the flashing around the chimney had failed years...