There was an ancient green Naugahyde couch in front of the big (and new) television, which was tuned to a game show. An old cushioned armchair was at one end of the newly polished coffee table. Lisa instantly switched off the TV and gestured to them to sit down on the couch.

The already-folded clothes from the basket were on the chipped coffee table, along with magazines, a romance novel, and a box of tissues.

Lisa sat in the flowered armchair. After her guests were settled, she muttered, “Okay, I did a bad thing. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Bobo felt his store of righteous anger seeping away. He said, more gently than he had intended, “Lisa, I know you remember Fiji from your wedding. And maybe you remember me; you put a spy camera in my shop without telling me. Fiji tells me your husband’s name is Cole. Did he know what you were doing?”

“No, sir. And he’s at work now. Today is my day off.”

“Then I’m glad we caught you at home,” Bobo said. He paused, tried to think of how to phrase what he wanted to say. “You seem like a nice young woman. I don’t know why you’d cooperate with a man who wanted to do something illegal.” It was illegal, wasn’t it, to tape someone’s activities in their own place of business, without their consent?

Lisa looked miserable. She pulled some T-shirts from the basket and began to fold them, as if she had to be busy.

“Here’s what happened,” she said, not looking at either of them, concentrating on the garments she was folding with speed and precision. “One of Cole’s daddy’s friends came by, said he’d heard Cole and I had gotten married in Midnight. He’d also heard we have a baby on the way.” She glanced up, as if to see their reaction. Fiji and Bobo both nodded. “So he said he figured we needed money, and I said, ‘Sure.’ Cole’s got a job at Western Auto, and I got a job at Dairy Queen, and we’re doing . . . okay.”

“Okay” must be the new “barely scraping by,” Bobo thought.

Lisa put aside the stack of folded T-shirts and started on the underwear with no self-consciousness at all. “But we got a baby due in five months. Babies need a lot of stuff. Our folks are just barely paying their bills, and my sister’s still using all her baby clothes and furniture. So when he told me he’d give me two hundred dollars if I just put a little transmitter thing inside an old camera in your store, I said I would. He said he was trying to catch you selling drugs, that he owned the pawnshop.”

“You knew he was lying,” Fiji said sternly.