Free Cyanide Wells by Marcia Muller Page A

witnessing a scene from his marriage: Gwen angry, himself on the defensive.
    Gwen’s lips tightened, and she looked away from Carly. Matt could now see her face-on, and this, too, was familiar. For a moment her mouth remained in a firm line, but then it began to crumble at the corners; her teeth nipped at her lower lip as her eyes filled. She squeezed them shut, and the tears overflowed, coursing down her cheeks as she remained perfectly still. She was, he knew, making no sound. Her silent weeping had always unnerved him, made him want to flee.
    Apparently it had the same effect on McGuire. As Matt moved the lens to her face, he saw panic. But just as his own panic had quickly dissolved, so did Carly’s. She closed the space between them and took Gwen into her arms.
    How many times had he done just that? He watched, fascinated, as a part of his first life was reenacted before the powerful lens of his camera.
    Carly stroked Gwen’s hair. Her lips murmured words that had belonged to him in years past:
“It’s going to be all right. You’ll see. It will be all right.”
    Gwen’s face was pressed into Carly’s shoulder. Soon she would raise her head and ask in a little girl’s voice,
“Do you mean that? Do you really mean it?”
    And Carly, like Matt, would be forced to lie:
“Yes, of course I do.”
    As he watched the scene through his lens, a chill touched Matt’s shoulders, took hold of his spine. He was years in the past, comforting his wife. He was here in the present, a voyeur. He was about to step into a future he wasn’t sure he cared to visit…
    Gwen raised her head, asked her question. Carly gave her response. Gwen’s face became suffused with hope.
    Then, forcefully, the women’s lips met and held.
    And with a jolt, Matt realized the nature of the relationship between them.

    Friday, May 10, 2002
    H e was halfway to Santa Carla, the county seat, driving blindly while trying to absorb what he’d learned about Gwen and Carly McGuire, when the Jeep ran out of gas. He coasted onto the shoulder, set the brake, and leaned forward, his arms resting on top of the steering wheel. The dashboard clock showed it was twelve-seventeen in the morning, and he hadn’t seen another car for at least ten minutes.
    Briefly he debated leaving the Jeep and walking south to find a service station, but decided against it. Some miles back the highway had narrowed to two sharply curving lanes, dangerous to walk along in the darkness. Besides, stations were practically nonexistent between towns, and the last sign he’d noticed said he was thirty-five miles from the county seat. Instead he set out an emergency flare, shut off the Jeep’s headlights, and settled in to wait for a Good Samaritan.
    His thoughts kept turning to Gwen, picturing the look of hope on her face before she and Carly kissed. So his former wife had formed an intimate relationship with another woman after leaving him. A long-term, stable one from the looks of it. There was a child. Gwen’s? Carly’s? Natural? Adopted? Who had fathered her?
    Had Gwen been involved with women before and during his marriage to her? He knew about the men she’d been with earlier, and up to now had felt reasonably certain she’d remained faithful to him until she disappeared. Surely he’d have known had it been otherwise. Or would he? The possibility of his wife having a lesbian affair is not the first to occur to a man, even when his marriage begins to deteriorate.
    Did the trouble that had arisen so quickly in the marriage stem from Gwen’s confusion about her sexual orientation? From her inability to discuss it with him? From her guilt over an affair?
    How long after she left Saugatuck had she met Carly? Where and how? Did Carly know that Gwen’s former husband had been suspected of murdering her? Gwen had known, according to his anonymous caller, now identified as Mayor Garson Payne.
    And now to the big question: Would the current situation alter his feelings toward