Who liked to be nagged? But Decker knew that nagging took on a greater significance to this kind of man—just like the guys back home. Nagging represented an assault to their independence, a malevolent little birdie telling them they weren’t perfect.

Get off my goddern back, woman.

Decker said, “When else did he lose his temper?”

Annette sighed. “Once with those Manfred boys. They kept coming around, and I guess Byron just got tired of saying no politely.”

“What’d he do?” Decker asked.

“Took out his shotgun and told them to leave.”

Suddenly, Decker kicked himself mentally. Byron Howard owned a shotgun, had fired it the day Marge and he had trod onto Howard’s property. He wrote in his pad, Check out BH shotgun. Own a .38, too?

Casually, he asked, “What kind of shotgun does Byron own, Annette?”

The woman was not fooled one bit. She said, “Byron hunts.”

“Skeet, too?” Decker said, smoothing his mustache.

“No.” Annette relaxed a little. “Just hunts, and he don’t do that so often anymore. He’s got a Browning now, I think.”

“Twelve gauge?”

“Twenty,” Annette said.

Wrong gauge, but still worth checking out. Decker said, “I used to own an Ithaca deerslayer. My buddies and I used to hunt alligators with it, down in Florida. My uncle…” Decker smiled. “My uncle would get mad at us because we’d shoot the critter, and that’s a big no-no for alligators. It makes ’em mean as junkyard dogs and ruins their hides.”

He noticed Annette was hanging on to his words. Good.

“How do you kill alligators if you don’t shoot them?” Annette asked.

“It’s a whole procedure,” Decker said. “First you bait them with a modified stick…it’s a kind of a gaff. Once you have them biting, you tie them up, bind them completely. Then you insert this special type of gun in their mouths that shoots upward. It scrambles their brains without ruining the hides.”

Annette stuck out her tongue to show displeasure.

“Sounds pretty bad,” Decker said. “But if you don’t keep the population under control, the buggers migrate and wind up in your swimming pool.”

Decker smiled, Annette smiled back, looked like she was having a good time. He said, “I grew up in a family of independent folk, not unlike yourselves. We had lots of guns: rifles, shotguns, handguns. You carry a gun, Annette?”

“No, sir,” she answered.

“How about your husband? Or Darlene or Byron?”

“Jeff has a rifle. Darlene and I know how to shoot, but we don’t like guns, really.”

“Byron carry anything smaller than a shotgun?”

“Byron don’t like pistols,” Annette said. “Says they’re for killing people and not game. I’ve only seen him with his shotgun.”

But something sounded off to Decker. He wrote himself a note to that effect and decided to change the conversation. Annette had become rigid, and he didn’t want to lose her.