“Mother, I’m not a doctor. I’m not even a nurse. I’m just following his instructions. Now, make a fist for me. There, that’s better.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry. This is new for me, too, you know.”

  A moment of silence, and then, “Well, I’m going to talk to Gooden. I don’t like shots. It’s bad enough, taking those pills, they upset my stomach. But needles, you know I hate needles.”

  “Yes, dear. Now, you lie back and relax.”

  “I want some orange juice.”

  “In a bit. Give the insulin a few minutes.”

  “Oh, this is so…” in a voice of exasperation.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’ll bring your orange juice then.”

  A shadow moved across the curtains, and a moment later, Hannah appeared once again in the kitchen. She looked upset.

  Probably, Stanley thought, she didn’t like giving shots anymore than her mother liked getting them. He himself would hate to have to give anyone a shot. And the business about the insulin—he wondered why the doctor had prescribed it if Penelope’s glucose levels were near normal. And hadn’t Hannah herself pooh-poohed her mother’s diabetes? But, that was between her and the doctor, of course. Or, between Hannah and the doctor, it seemed.

  He gave Hannah a few minutes to compose herself before he got up from the chair and went to knock softly at the living room’s sliding door.

  The outside light flicked on a moment later, over bright in the darkness, blinding him temporarily and making him blink.

  The living room curtains whisked aside and Hannah stared out, frowning, her eyes wide. Stanley smiled apologetically and waved his fingers in greeting.

  She peered at him through the glass for a long moment, looking uncertain and none too happy to see him, and glanced over her shoulder toward the bedroom before she unlatched the door and slid it open.

  DEADLY WRONG 199

  “What do you want?” she asked, blocking the entrance. Her eyes, black as obsidian in this gloom, regarded him with undisguised hostility.

  So much for mountain hospitality. “Your mom phoned me again.

  She left a message she wanted to see me.”

  “I’m sure it was nothing. Anyway, she’s resting.” She continued to stand blocking the doorway. “She’s asleep, as a matter of fact.”

  Stanley lifted an eyebrow. “Is she, already. That’s funny. I would have sworn I heard her voice a minute ago. When you were giving her her shot.”

  Something flashed in those dark eyes, like a glint of light on a knife blade. Her mouth tightened. Finally, she took a reluctant step back.

  “Come in,” she said. “I’ll have to see—she’s been feeling very depressed lately, I told you that. I doubt she’ll want to see anyone.”

  Stanley had to edge a little sideways to get past her. She slid the door closed after him, and he heard the latch snap into place with an odd sound of finality. After the glare of the outside light, the living room was pitch dark. Faint light bled through the gloom from the kitchen at one end and the bedroom at the other.

  “Well, she did say she wanted to see me,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.” He started in the direction of the bedroom.

  “Wait,” Hannah said behind him. “I’m sure she’s asleep.

  How long were you out there anyway? What did you hear?”

  “Not more than a minute,” he said without slowing his steps. Something about Hannah’s behavior rang alarm bells in his mind. Why shouldn’t she want him to see her mother? And if Penelope Hunter were asleep, she must have nodded off instantly. She had certainly been awake, and unhappy about that shot, not more than two minutes before. “It’s okay, if she’s asleep, I’ll tiptoe right back out again.”

  She wasn’t asleep, though, she was sitting up bleary eyed in her bed, leaning against a pair of blue satin pillows. She turned her head as he came in. It took her a moment to recognize him.

  200 Victor Banis

  “Stanley,” she said, pleased. “I’m so glad you came. I need to talk… oh, Hannah, did you bring my orange juice?”

  “I—I forgot,” Hannah said from the doorway behind Stanley.

  Mrs. Hunter rolled her eyes, and managed an expression of long-suffering. “Please, darling,” she said in a wheedling tone,

  “I’m really thirsty. My throat is as dry as dust.”

  Although he didn’t hear her, Hannah apparently left the room. Mrs. Hunter had been looking over Stanley’s shoulder, but now she looked at him directly, her expression nervous, even fearful.

  “Stanley,” she said in a stage whisper, “I’ve got to talk to you, but alone. Later. Hannah will take Josephine out for her walk in a little while, and we can talk freely. Don’t go before then, please. I’ve been, well, I’ve not been—oh, thank you, dear.”

  Hannah came in with the orange juice. Mrs. Hunter took it with a grateful smile and, when Hannah remained by the bedside, watching with a resentful expression, Mrs. Hunter lifted the glass and took the merest sip.

  “Oh, that is so delicious,” she said, smacking her lips with exaggerated pleasure and setting the glass on the table by the bed. Stanley saw that her hand was unsteady, and the orange juice sloshed onto the tabletop, but she seemed not to notice.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “I think you’d better go,” Hannah told Stanley. “Mother looks tired.”

  “No, no, I want Stanley to stay. I haven’t heard a single thing about what he’s been doing to clear up this business with Carl. Why don’t you take Josephine out for her walk, darling, and Stanley and I will catch up on the news?”

  Now that he was here, though, it seemed to him also that Mrs. Hunter did not look well. A damp sweat had broken out on her brow and her hands were definitely shaking. “Actually,”

  Stanley started to say, “Maybe I should...”

  “There isn’t any news,” Hannah said shortly, as if Stanley weren’t there. “And you look very tired to me, Mother.”

  DEADLY WRONG 201

  “But, I’m not… oh, is that my…?” She hesitated, tossing her head, looking puzzled. “You know, now that you mention it, I do feel…”

  Her face went white, not gradually but suddenly, and her eyes widened. “Hannah,” she croaked in alarm, barely able to get the single word out. She lifted her hands to her throat, as if trying to get some obstruction out of it, and her breath became a gasp.

  Hannah had stepped away from the bed, behind Stanley.

  Mrs. Hunter’s eyes rolled back in her head and she began to thrash about on the bed, obviously going into some kind of convulsion.

  “Call 911,” Stanley said. He ran to the bed, kneeling over the stricken woman, attempting to administer CPR. “Hannah—”

  He looked, but she had left the room. “Hannah,” he shouted,

  “Call 911.”

  His eyes fell on the nightstand, and saw the syringe, and the vial of insulin there. In a flash, he knew what must have happened. Insulin shock. An unaccustomed dose… wasn’t that what the Klaus von Bulow thing had been about in that movie?

  Except this had been an accident. Or…

  Hannah said, from the doorway, her voice calm, disinterested, almost, “It’s okay. Everything’s under control.”

  “Hannah, your mother is—”

  “Dying.” Only that one word.

  Stanley turned his head to stare at her. She sounded so matter-of-fact about it. Shouldn’t she be in a panic, or some distress, at least? She raised a hand to the collar of her shirt, and as she did so, something glittered in the lamplight. A ring, an enormous purple stone. In an instant, he knew it was her mother’s missing amethyst. But what did that mean, if Hannah were wearing it on her finger now, so openly, when supposedly it had gone missing? She didn’t care if her mother saw it?

  Behind him, Mrs. Hunter continued to thrash about wildly for a moment. The bed creaked as she gave a particularly violent spasm, and a sound came from her that needed no expert to identify as a death rattle.

  202 Victor Banis

  Unless Stanley was very much mistaken, Penelope Hunter was no longer dying. She was dead. No, of course it didn’t matter if Penelope Hunter saw her missing ring on her daughter’s finger. Not now.

  “She must have taken too much of her insulin,” Hannah said.

  “But I saw you,” Stanley started to say, and caught himself.

  Not quick enough, though. She made a hissing sound, like a goose that’s been startled. “How long were you outside before you knocked?”

  “No more than a minute, a few seconds, actually,” he said quickly, feigning what he hoped looked like innocence. “Did you call 911?”

  Her eyes were hooded over, like a vulture’s eyeing a piece of carrion. “I will,” she said. She turned and left the room.

  A little late, Stanley thought, but did not say. He looked past the bed and saw the syringe and the vial of insulin on the nightstand.

  Like a pool of water when a stone is thrown into it, the pattern of his thoughts broke apart and then settled back, but not as it had been before, the very addition of the rock changing the pattern.

  On an impulse, he reached across the bed and snatched up the syringe and the insulin bottle, intending to drop them into his pocket.

  “Leave them where they are,” Hannah said from behind him.

  Stanley looked in her direction. She stood just inside the doorway, holding her shotgun—aimed directly at him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  And there it was, the deadly wrong. If ever he had seen murder staring out from someone’s eyes, he saw it now in hers.

  Around them, the bedroom seemed to shrink and darken.

  “Get up from the bed,” she said.

  “But…”

  “Now. Do as I say. Or I’ll shoot you and say I saw you assaulting my mother.”

  “That is so ridiculous,” Stanley said, but he did get up from the bed. “Everyone knows I’m as queer as a three dollar bill.

  Why on earth would I be assaulting your mother?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Who knows? People go crazy. Maybe she called you queer, and you snapped. Your fingerprints are on the syringe now. Yours and hers. Mine aren’t. I wiped them off.

  So it might have been an accidental overdose, or even suicide.

  Or you might have killed her.”

  “What possible motive could I have?”

  Another shrug. “She does hate queers, you know. Maybe she found out you were fooling around with Carl. Which, by the way, are you?”

  “Carl? Good Heavens, no, Carl isn’t even gay, he—”

  “He was gay enough to fool around with that other faggot. I saw them, they were—” she struggled for words, a bead of spittle forming at the corner of her mouth. “It was disgusting.

  You’re disgusting. All of you people.”

  “You know, Hannah, I don’t think it’s your mother who hates queers, I think it’s you.”

  Her smile was icy cold. “Yes. It’s true. I always have.”

  “But, still—you’d murder your mother because I’m queer?

  That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Step away from the bed.” She moved aside, gestured toward the door with the gun. “Out there.”

  204 Victor Banis

  “What are you going to do? You can’t just shoot me in cold blood.” He wasn’t quite convinced, though.

  She didn’t answer. “The kitchen,” she said.

  She switched off the bedroom light as they left. The front room was still dark, but there was light enough from the kitchen to see his way. Hannah followed him. When he stepped into the kitchen, Stanley saw what had been concealed from him earlier when he’d watched through the window. The poodle, Josephine, lay in a lifeless heap on the floor by the back door, a puddle of blood drying about her head. A blood spattered golf club leaned against the wall nearby.

  “The dog too?” he said, giving Hannah an angry look.

  “What could the dog possibly have done to you?”

  “She was a pain in the ass. Stand there. Don’t move.” She reached a jacket down from a peg by the door. Stanley watched for some opportunity to run at her while she shrugged it on, but she was too far away from him, and she managed to keep the gun trained more or less in his direction. No doubt she could shoot him before he got even half way across the room. Guns were faster than feet. It didn’t take much time to shoot somebody.

  She picked up a ring of keys and a flashlight from the kitchen counter. “Outside,” she said, turning off the lights as they went out, plunging the house into darkness.

  A frightened moon had hidden behind some clouds. “That way,” Hannah said, indicating the water. After the bright lights of the kitchen, Stanley could barely see and he stumbled once.

  He thought briefly about falling to the ground, trying to get out of firing range, but there was little cover between here and the lake, just the little metal shed, and that didn’t look very promising.

  “Stop here,” she said when they reached the shed. She tossed Stanley the keys. “Open it. The brass key.”

  Stanley hefted the keys in his hand, wondering if he should throw them at her. But they weren’t that heavy, and his pitching arm wasn’t that good. He found the brass key instead, fumbled with the padlock on the shed’s door, and got it open.

  DEADLY WRONG 205

  She shined the flashlight past him, looked around with it for a minute. “There,” she said, pointing with the light, “That length of chain. Pick that up and bring it with you.” Stanley bent to retrieve the chain. “Let’s go,” Hannah said.

  “Where now?” The chain was heavy. Stanley hoisted it over his shoulder. In the distant, he heard a faint scraping of stone.

  That raccoon coming back, he guessed, but Hannah seemed not to hear it. Maybe shotguns caused a hearing loss. Something Freudian.

  “The boat.”

  The boat, a fourteen footer, he guessed, floated in the shallows by the edge of the water, tethered by a knotted rope to a wooden post on the shore. She directed him into the front of the boat, waited until he was seated, dropping the chain into the bottom of the boat with a grateful woof of breath, before she carefully slipped rope from pole to set the boat adrift. She gave it a shove, sending it into slightly deeper water, and climbed in herself.

  She sat in the rear facing him, the shotgun resting on her knees, and reached behind her to start the outboard motor. It coughed a time or two and Stanley had a fleeting hope that it wouldn’t start, but then it kicked in with a loud roar. She throttled it back to a muted putter, and guided the boat slowly away from the shore.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Out there.”

  Not very informative. Stanley took a chance and looked over his shoulder. Distant lights showed a couple of other boats out, but he couldn’t gauge how far away they were. He rather thought Hannah would shoot him if he started yelling.

  Libby had said something about voices carrying over water, though. What if he engaged Hannah in conversation? Were the other boaters close enough to hear? It was all he could think of at the moment.

  “Hannah, what’s this all about, anyway?” He started out talking normally, raising his voice very gradually. “You didn’t murder your mother because I’m queer. I know you didn’t like taking care of her, but surely you weren’t that unhappy.”

  206 Victor Banis

  “My mother?” It was almost a curse. “I loathed her. She was never a mother to me. Not a real mother. Do you have any idea what kind of life I’ve had? Or, not had, would be more like it.

  All I’ve ever done is take care of them, all of them, my father, her, Carl. Helpless, the whole bunch. Libby’s disgusting, that lesbian business, but at least she had the gumption to get out from underfoot, I’ll give her that.”

  She looked around to get her bearings, and edged the boat slightly to the right. Even at their reined-in speed they were already far from the shore, the lights of houses and passing cars increasingly distant, the blackness growing deeper and more ominous. The muted grumble of the outboard beat at the darkness.

  “I’ve wanted her dead for years,” Hannah said with sudden vehemence, turning back to look at him. Her face was twisted, her words dripped acid. “You think I ought to be sorry, don’t you? But I tell you, I’m not, not for a minute. I wish I’d done it long ago.” She was silent for a moment before she spat out,

  “The bitch!”

  “But, then, why now…?”

  “It was that sick little pervert, that queer friend of Carl’s…”

  As if a sheet of lightning had suddenly illuminated the water’s surface, he saw with startling clarity exactly where this was leading. Talk about slow, Stanley. “It was you,” he blurted out.

  “You killed him.”

  Her laugh was like an arctic chill. “I was walking that damned dog, along the lake, and I saw them, Carl and that McIntosh boy, sitting on a bench. They were… they didn’t see me at all, they were so wrapped up in one another. It was disgusting, it made my blood boil. I wanted to kill them both, Carl, too. And then, they quarreled about something, and Carl stumbled off, I suppose he had finished with what they—had finished, and he threw that boy down on the ground and ran away. And that boy, that horrible little creature, he was just lying there, crying like a baby. At first, he didn’t even hear when I came up to him. And then, I must have made a sound. He said, without looking around, he said, ‘Carl?’“

  DEADLY WRONG 207

  Stanley had an image in his mind, of Donnie lying in the sand, crying—crying his heart out because he had just driven away the only friend he had, the only one in the world who cared for him. “And you killed him. Just like that?”

  “No, not just like that. I didn’t walk up to him with the idea of killing him. At first, that didn’t even cross my mind. I meant just to tell him what I thought of him, to tell him to keep his filthy hands off my brother. But, there he was, blubbering and moaning, and when he spoke Carl’s name, like he wanted to go right back to what they had been doing, it made me furious. I was blind, I was so angry.”