Even my only precaution-wrapping my nine millimeter in a towel, stowed poolside under a deck-style chair-was risky. What if somebody kicked or otherwise moved the bundle, and the damn automatic clunked out on the concrete? Went off, even?

You might even say it looked a little suspicious, because I’d draped another towel on the chair itself…

On the other hand, there were no other swimmers in the early evening at the Paddlewheel’s pool. An hour ago, I’d had a piece of pie (butterscotch cream) at the restaurant and an older gal named Marge had chatted with me, starting with answering my query about why the restaurant was so dead at supper time.

“The Paddlewheel opens at five,” she said.

“Also closes at five, I understand.”

She nodded. Brunette, brown-eyed, she was pushing fifty and just a little heavy, with a lined face and neck that weren’t enough to conceal how attractive she’d once been.

“We’re just a kind of annex over here,” she said. “We run an hourly shuttle over there and everything.”

“To the Paddlewheel? Really.”

“Really. Anybody staying with us is here for the Paddlewheel, and they almost all take supper over there. We make it on breakfast and lunch and really do pretty well right up to late afternoon.”

“How long has the Paddlewheel been around?”

“Going on ten years. It’s on its third management, British ‘bloke’ named Cornell, Richard Cornell-but everybody calls him Dickie. Real smoothie. He’s the boss here. He built the Wheelhouse, and he’s done wonders with the Paddlewheel. Oh, it was always nice, you know, always the respectable entertainment alternative in Haydee’s. But Dickie upgraded everything-food, entertainment, even expanded the gambling.”

“How can you be respectable running an illegal casino?”

She shrugged, refilling my iced tea from a pitcher. “Haydee’s has always been a wide-open little town. It’s like Reno or Vegas.”