“About this doctor, I mean. A guy comes in, punches him out, and the doc doesn’t want to press charges? Doesn’t make any sense to me. Why wouldn’t he want to?”

  “Dinner with the Borgias, I think,” Stanley said. “And he’s not a doctor.”

  “What’s that mean? Dinner with who? Is that somebody local?”

  But Libby had laughed when Stanley said it. “I remember that,” she said. “High school lit. Wodehouse, wasn’t it?”

  “Close. Beerbohm.”

  “Let me think what he said.” She rolled her eyes skyward.

  “This isn’t exact, but, something like, ‘an aristocratic Roman might say, “I’m dining tonight with the Borgias.” But none of them ever said, “I dined last night with the Borgias.”‘ Wasn’t that it?”

  188 Victor Banis

  Stanley nodded his approval. “Close enough. Let’s just say Mister Miller dined with the Borgias, so to speak. Carl was simply administering some much needed medicine.”

  Tom looked from one to the other, and shook his head.

  “Great,” he said, starting for the truck. “I’ve got two of them quoting poetry now.” He glanced toward the truck. “I guess we’d better get him home.”

  “I’m headed back to the shop,” Libby said. “Try to keep him out of any more trouble, okay?”

  “I’ll think of something to settle him down,” Tom said.

  Stanley hoped he wasn’t getting ideas.

  § § § § §

  “So,” Carl said when they were back at the cabin, sounding all too eager, Stanley thought, and not at all remorseful over what he’d done, “what are we going to do now?”

  Tom looked at Stanley. The gleam in Tom’s eyes told Stanley he hadn’t forgotten their unfinished business, which Carl’s non-arrest had interrupted. Stanley might have had to prompt him, but Tom’s fires never needed a lot of stoking.

  “Uh,” Tom said hesitantly, scratching absentmindedly at his crotch, “what I was thinking is, you know, Stanley and me, we were kind of thinking… uh, we sort of thought we might… you know. We have some stuff to, uh, talk over.” He looked for help to Stanley, who decided he’d let Tom deal with this.

  Carl’s hopeful smile faded. He glowered at Tom and then Stanley, who only smiled and shrugged, and back to Tom.

  “Meaning, you guys are going to get it on,” Carl said in a resentful voice. “And I’m in the way?”

  “I didn’t exactly say we were…” Tom said, embarrassed.

  “Two’s company, three’s a crowd, right? Fuck it. I can take a hint.” Carl disappeared into his bedroom, and reappeared a minute later, quickly and clumsily folding a sleeping bag all which ways. “I’ll sleep out on the back deck,” he said, and added, loudly, “where I won’t be in anybody’s damned way.”

  He stomped outside, sliding the door closed with a bang.

  “What was that all about?” Tom asked, staring after him.

  “He’s got a crush on you.”

  DEADLY WRONG 189

  “Junior? The kid?” Tom looked surprised. Probably, Stanley thought, he really had not noticed. Tom was truly not the most sensitive when it came to someone else’s feelings.

  “He’s not exactly a kid, you know.”

  “So,” Tom said, frowning in the direction of the deck, “what does that mean? He’s got a crush on me? You mean, like, romantic? Or, what, a case of the hots? And what am I supposed to do about that, start fucking him too?”

  “No,” Stanley said, maybe a shade too firmly. He put his hands on his hips. “You are most certainly not supposed to start fucking Carl Hunter. You’re my…” He caught himself before he said too much—and saw, too, the quick, disapproving look Tom gave him.

  “Your what?”

  “My, oh, I don’t know what I was going to say,” Stanley laughed lightly and waved a dismissive hand in the air, “my partner, I guess I was going to say. In crime investigation, I mean.”

  “You were going to say I’m your lover, weren’t you?” Tom accused him, and when Stanley did not reply, he said, emphatically, “Stanley, we are not lovers. Or partners or, well, whatever you were about to say.”

  Hands went back to hips. “Oh, is that so? Would you mind telling me just exactly what are we then, because I’d like to know? You come flying up here from San Francisco to rip my clothes off me and fuck me in the ass—and you know perfectly well I’m not into getting fucked—”

  “You said you liked it.”

  “I did like it. Well, no, I didn’t, exactly. I mean, I hated it, to be honest, but I liked it because it was you, because it’s the sort of thing lovers do. When your lover fucks you, you love it whether you hate it or not.”

  “Stanley, that doesn’t make any sense. And you never say fuck.”

  “I do when I’m pissed.”

  “You never say pissed, either.”

  190 Victor Banis

  “I do when I’m…” and thought how silly this was sounding.

  “Besides, yes it does too make sense, if you weren’t so damned stubborn stupid. Most cops don’t fuck one another in the butt, you know, unless there’s something going on between them, something more than, ‘hey, let’s go out tonight and handcuff a couple of perps together.’ So, the big question is, what exactly is going on between us, Mister Danzel? If we’re not lovers.”

  “I don’t know.”

  They glared at one another for a long moment. Finally, Stanley said, in an ominously quiet voice, “Let me ask you this one, then. Let’s keep it simple. Do you love me?”

  It took Tom an agonizingly long time to answer. “Honestly?

  Maybe. I don’t—I don’t know that either.”

  Stanley heaved a great sigh. “Okay. That just tears it. It’s a good thing you got yourself a room down at that motel.” He picked up Tom’s windbreaker from the chair and flung it at him.

  Tom caught it one handed and stared wide-eyed. “I thought we were going to, you know. I thought you were all hot to boogie. Are you throwing me out?”

  “Bingo. And the next time you show up, leave your hard on at home.”

  For a moment, Tom stared at him disbelievingly. Finally, he gave a grunt and a fierce scowl, and balling the windbreaker in his fist, strode for the front door. “Fine,” he said. “If that’s how you want it.”

  “You know,” Stanley called after him, “you are nothing but coffee soup. Just coffee soup and an old dish of snow ice cream.”

  “You drive me crazy. Half the time I don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about, Stan.”

  “Stanley!” he shouted, but he shouted it to an empty room.

  He stared morosely at the door Tom had slammed behind him, his angry words echoing, wondering if he should maybe go after him. While he was wondering, he heard the Ram’s engine fire up and a second later, the truck pulled away with a squeal of tires. So much for that idea.

  DEADLY WRONG 191

  Behind him, the deck door slid open. “Did Tom leave?”

  Carl asked. “What happened? I heard shouting.”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. And yes, His Majesty is gone.”

  “For the night?”

  “At least. Maybe the next century or two. You might as well bring your sleeping bag in and go back to your room.”

  “No thanks, I know when I’m not welcome,” Carl said, and went back outside, closing the sliding door with a bang.

  “Another happy night at the Bickerson’s,” Stanley said to the once again empty room.

  The sudden ring of his cell phone was like the peal of bells, making him start. He was almost certain of what he would find when he answered it, and he was right on the money: another missed call message and Penelope Hunter’s phone number yet again.

  He called it back, heard the phone ring again and again, but no answer. Maybe she had turned the ringer off. But why on earth did she keep calling and then not stay on the line to talk to him, or even answering when he called her back?

  Maybe Hannah was right, maybe she was getting addled. For sure, something was rotten in the Alpines, apart from the bears pooping in the woods. He glanced at the windows, but the night beyond and the lights within made them oblong mirrors.

  He saw nothing but his own unhappy expression.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Oh, no, what are you doing here?”

  Sergeant Nathan Wooster was in the act of adding a dollop of ketchup to the plate with his fries. Crazy Mary’s sudden appearance next to his table startled him so that the dollop became instead a lake, half the bottle at least, all but obliterating the food on the plate and leaving only here and there the end of a French fry sticking up.

  “Now, Mary, goldarnit, look what you made me do. What do you mean, what am I doing? I was about to eat this here Wagon Wheeler with fries, till you caused me to mess it up beyond redemption.”

  “But that young man, the one from San Francisco—”

  “Don’t you be worrying none about those two, one’s tucked in at Libby Hunter’s cabin for the night, and the other’s settled in just down the street at the Mountain Inn. And this is the first chance I’ve had all day to eat a decent meal, till you come along and—”

  “No, no, he’s not. And he’s in danger, grave danger, and—”

  “Mary, for Pete’s sake.” It was June, bustling up with a coffee pot in her hand. “You know what Joe said. Now you just git on out of here, you hear me, before we both get in hot water. Git!”

  Mary seemed not to have heard her. She was staring at Wooster’s plate—which he did admit, looked pretty awful now that she’d messed it up like that. He started to say something sharp to her, but her expression was so horrified, it gave him pause. Plus, she was speechless, and that in itself was a startling thing. In his experience, once Mary got her mouth to running, it was like Bantas Creek, you couldn’t stop it with a beaver dam.

  “Mary,” he started to say, but she suddenly gasped and said, in a croak of a whisper, “Death.” She clapped both scrawny hands over her mouth, her eyes so wide they looked like hubcaps.

  194 Victor Banis

  Before she could say anything more, June was shepherding her toward the door, saying “Go on now,” with one hand on Mary’s arm, the other still holding the coffee pot like a weapon.

  Mary went without any resistance, not even looking back at Wooster, seemingly all too eager to go. He watched her disappear out the door, practically running.

  June hurried back with the pot to refill Wooster’s coffee cup. “That Mary,” she said, shaking her head, “she just gets crazier by the day. You want me to get you another Wagon Wheeler?”

  “Nah, don’t bother, this is fine, I’m not as hungry as I thought I was,” he said.

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  He nodded and added sugar and cream to the coffee and stirred it absentmindedly, looking with distaste at the mess on his plate. At the sea of red, covering everything: fries, burger, even the pickle.

  Death?

  § § § § §

  “Stanley, you can be such a bitch sometimes,” he told himself aloud.

  He was on his way to Hannah’s, walking along the edge of the street. And beating himself up as he went. Over Carl, actually, more than over Tom. Sparks flying between him and Tom were nothing new, they had been breaking up since before they ever got together, if you wanted to look at it like that.

  He had been pretty petty with Carl, though. Who, after all, was not much more than a kid, and was doing what young men often did, forming a crush on an older man. It wasn’t his fault that the older man happened to be one Stanley Korski was all hung up on. Rather foolishly hung up on, he told himself, and not for the first time.

  Still, foolishness notwithstanding, wasn’t love supposed to ennoble, and here he was instead turning into one of those catty queens that he despised—and over a man who couldn’t even bring himself to say, “I love you.”

  DEADLY WRONG 195

  The sad reality was, he had been an absolute bitch with Carl, and he knew it. Worse, to someone whose life was obviously not a happy one, and who now was in a particularly ugly spot, from which he was counting on Stanley and Tom to extricate him. It was true, what he’d told Tom at the very beginning, Carl was a victim too of whoever had murdered Donnie. A victim who had, not at all surprisingly, attached himself to the strong, older man who had suddenly appeared in his life. To Carl, Tom must look like the cliché knight in shining armor, never mind that the armor had a few rust spots on it.

  And why wouldn’t he develop a crush on the big ape, he asked himself . I did, and I’m nowhere near as pathetic as he is. Which, all in all, just at the moment, he was not entirely sure of either.

  While he was castigating himself, it occurred to him as well that Carl Hunter was not nearly the loser that others considered him or that he seemed to consider himself. He’d shown a touching sensitivity to little Donnie, hadn’t he? And he’d punched out Donnie’s therapist for molesting him. The guy had more balls than he gave himself credit for.

  He decided he’d make it up to Carl when he got back, be particularly nice. It was the least he could do, and it was the right thing to do. Goodbye bitch, hello sweetheart, that was his plan of action.

  First thing, he’d insist Carl move back into the house. It was ridiculous for him to be sleeping on the back deck, like some kind of leper. Besides, Tom wasn’t there anyway, so it wasn’t like he’d be in the way.

  Maybe he’d even suggest they go out for a drink. Or, go for a walk. Hold hands and skip up and down the street. Or, well, what? He thought of what he might do to make things up to him.

  No, not that, certainly. Anyway, it wasn’t him Carl wanted, not since he’d laid eyes on Tom. Who wants a tofu burger when there’s a T-bone on the grill? A good meaty one, and sizzling hot.

  Maybe, he thought, he should go ahead and fix the two of them up. Whether he was conscious of it or not, Carl was certainly primed for it. And Tom might be, too. He had hot 196 Victor Banis

  nuts, and Stanley had the impression that he had never been particularly concerned with where he exercised them. With women, anyway, in the past, but surely he was beyond that particular barrier now.

  Or maybe he should suggest that Carl take a stroll down to that motel. Tom might actually welcome him. Which didn’t exactly raise Stanley’s spirits, but maybe if Stanley encouraged them to do the deed, it would do everybody some good.

  Well, the two of them, anyway. He couldn’t quite see himself turning cartwheels over it.

  But, really, what right did he have to decide whether they should get it on or not? What claim did he honestly have on Tom Danzel? A few episodes of white hot sex, yes, but what else? His friends had scoffed. Even Chris, his best friend, had been no more approving in his sympathetic silence. Stanley knew, against his every inclination, that they were right, too.

  What greater cliché than the gay man in love with the straight one? Men like Tom had enough of the voodoo in them to do the act. Stanley had plenty of experience with men like him.

  Every gay male did. And most of them had enough sense to know it could never go any further than that.

  He heard a car behind him, traveling slowly. Surely not that moron cop, keeping tabs on him? He started to look back, but the sound disappeared. Apparently the car had turned off. I’m getting wiggy, he told himself.

  He paused as he approached Hannah’s house. The front was dark, and he wondered if she and her mother had gone out. He glanced at his watch. It was eleven. Maybe they’d gone to bed already. He walked around the corner of the house, saw lights spilling from the windows in the rear, and went in that direction.

  The lights were on in the kitchen, and in Mrs. Hunter’s bedroom at the opposite end of the house, the long front room in between dark.

  The kitchen curtains were open and he could see Hannah inside, framed in the window. If she looked out, she would see him as well. He watched, meaning to wave for her attention, and realized belatedly what she was doing. Hannah was DEADLY WRONG 197

  preparing a syringe, obviously intending to give her mother a shot. He paused, one foot on the step up to the deck, watching as she lifted syringe and vial up to the ceiling light, filled the syringe, removed it from the vial. She held the syringe up again, checking the dosage level.

  Poop. He hated needles. Even when he had blood drawn, he could not watch while the nurse stuck the needle into his arm.

  He had to look away when they gave him flu shots, and you could barely feel those.

  He mounted the steps to the rear deck quietly, sat on one of the hard plastic chairs there. He’d just wait for the medication ritual to be finished before he knocked. Then he wouldn’t have to watch it.

  A raccoon shuffled out of the darkness, on a route that would take it to the garbage cans at the corner of the house.

  They eyed one another with mutual suspicion. Were raccoons dangerous? This one, however, apparently thought better of his supper plans and veered off again into the darkness.

  When Stanley looked again, Hannah had disappeared from the kitchen. The curtains were drawn at the window to Mrs.

  Hunter’s bedroom, but the window was open, so that the voices within carried out to him easily.

  “What’s this,” he heard the older woman say, and Hannah replied, “Your insulin, dear.”

  “Insulin? But I don’t take insulin, I have my pills.” In a voice peeved as much as puzzled.

  “Doctor Gooden said we need to switch. He said it was time.”

  “But, why so much—oh, what are you doing it this way for?

  I didn’t know people take it intravenously.”

  “Doctor Gooden said just for the first time or two, to give the body a wake up call, so to speak. We’ll cut back in a day or so. Hold still, now.”

  “But I don’t see why this is necessary at all. My sugar’s been fine. I tested it just a little while ago and it was perfectly normal.

  Why does he want to change things?” Impatience made her voice rise.

  198 Victor Banis