She nodded. “I’d better stop drinking. Tell your friend to bring the child over at seven; we can spend a half hour getting acquainted.”

“I have one other favor to ask you.”

“What now?”

“I was wondering if you could show me your husband’s gun. You know, the gat.”

“Why?”

He was taken aback, and grasped at the first lie he could think of. “I have a friend who trades in old guns. He told me that a lot of times, they don’t have to be all that old and people usually don’t know their value. In other words, you could be sitting on a mint.”

“A mint? Please. For that old peashooter?”

He thought his ploy had failed, but after Mrs. Hultz had finished the slice of pizza she was working on, she got up and went into the dining room. He watched her go to a hutch and open a waist-high middle drawer. From it she retrieved a revolver. She closed the drawer with her hip and grasped the gun by the handle. “I’ll fill you full of lead,” she said, the gun wobbling in her unsteady grip.

“Do you have bullets for it?”

“It’s loaded right now.”

“Loaded,” he yelled. “Don’t point it at me.” He squirmed in his chair and it reminded him of Helen at the Busy Bee when she first faced the gunman’s weapon.

“Don’t be such a wimp,” she said, and handed the gun over to him. “I think it’s a Colt .38 Special. Some cops in the thirties carried them. I don’t know where Stan got it.”

“OK,” said Owen, “I just wanted to see it. I’ll tell my friend and ask what he thinks it’s worth.”

Mrs. Hultz walked back into the dining room. “I don’t know if I’d ever sell it,” she said. “You know, sentimental value.” She returned the gun to the middle drawer. A little while later, when she got up to go to the bathroom, Owen went to the hutch, opened the drawer, and carefully put the gun into his jacket pocket. When Mrs. Hultz returned to the living room, she grilled him on her babysitting assignment. He told her his friend Kiara would bring the baby over to her house, which would make it easier. She said that was fine.

“Tell her to remember some of the child’s toys and a blanket, and if she has a fold-down crib for him to sleep in, that would be great,” said Mrs. Hultz.