So much for overnight delivery, Stone thought. “Sure. Be right over.” What the hell, he had to pick up a newspaper anyway. He drove into the village and to the shop.

“Heavy,” the girl commented, handing the package to him. “You got guns in there?”

Stone smiled. “Just shoes with shoe trees in them.”

“Feels like guns,” she said, returning to her work at the soda fountain.

Stone bought a paper and went back to the house. He unwrapped the package, put his golf shoes with his clubs in the garage and the new loafers in his dressing room upstairs. He took a few hundred in cash from the money Joan had sent and put the rest in the safe. She had also sent a light, Italian cotton Windbreaker, which would be useful for covering the gun as well as for the cool Maine days. Trust Joan to think of that.

He loaded the three magazines she had sent, put two in the little magazine pouch, then slapped one into the beautiful little custom-made Terry Tussey .45, with its Damascus steel slide, black anodized lightweight frame and mother-of-pearl handle. Small guns were a specialty of Terry’s, and this one weighed only twenty-one ounces, tiny for a .45.

He took off his belt and threaded the two-by-quarter-inch gun belt through his trouser loops, adding the magazine pouch and the gun holster at the appropriate points. With the belt tightened and the gun in its Mitch Rosen holster, everything felt secure, with the gun lying flat against his side and at an angle. When he slipped on the light windbreaker or a sweater, or left his shirttail out, everything would be concealed. He drew the .45, worked the slide, put on the safety and added another round to the magazine. With the pistol loaded, cocked and locked, ready for use, he felt better.

Stone called Ed Rawls. “My equipment has arrived. May I return your shotgun without getting blown away?”

“Come ahead. Blow the horn three times as you reach the gate, and I probably won’t kill you.”

Stone followed Rawls’s instructions to the letter and pulled into the clearing before the little house without incident. Rawls came out to meet him, and Stone handed him the shotgun. “There’s still one in the chamber, and the safety’s on,” he said.

“Come on in,” Rawls said. “Coffee?”

“Sure.”

Rawls poured him a cup from a Thermos and handed it to him. “So what are you packing?”

Stone removed the .45 from its holster, popped out the magazine, ejected the cartridge in the chamber, locked back the slide and handed it to Rawls.

Rawls thumbed the slide catch, aimed it out the window and squeezed off an imaginary round. “Sweet trigger,” he said. “Who’s Tussey?”

“A guy out in Carson City, Nevada. I saw something of his in a magazine, and we talked on the phone a couple of times. I’ve got a couple more of his guns, too.”