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anything. She just got better and better, till Carly finally promoted her to roving-reporter status, meaning she basically covered any story in the county that she found controversial or interesting. Then came the murders.”
    “I understand she was the one who found the bodies.”
    Vera Craig’s face grew somber, and she set her fork tines on the edge of the plate. “Yeah. Bad for her in a couple of ways. Finding two men slaughtered in their bed was pretty horrific. And they weren’t strangers; they were her friends. But besides her grief she had to deal with community reaction.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Cyanide Wells and the county as a whole are pretty conservative. You’ve got your rich people, mostly retirees; you’ve got your religious people, your young families, your working-class people, and your assholes who like to drink and shoot their guns and would consider a good evening’s fun burning a cross on somebody’s front lawn—or blowing away a couple of ‘faggots’ in their own bed. And, like anyplace else, you’ve got your gays who mainly keep a low profile. Ronnie Talbot and Deke Rutherford didn’t, and Ronnie compounded the general dislike by selling off the mill. When it came out that Ard was their friend, the dislike was transferred to her.”
    “That must’ve changed when the paper won the Pulitzer.”
    “It changed when people started reading her stories. They were so powerful, they made the readers understand—or at least think about—the problems of gays who live in this type of environment.”
    “So now she’s writing a book.”
    “Has been for over two years. It’s contracted for and is due to be turned in pretty soon, but like I said, she’s having problems with it.”
    “It can’t be easy, dealing with that kind of material.”
    “I guess not.” Craig picked up her fork and attacked the ravioli with renewed vigor. “But enough about Ard. Tell me about yourself, honey. What brought you to our little village, anyway?”
    Lying, Matt reflected as he packed up his gear and said goodbye to the proprietor of Pooh’s Corner, could be an exhausting business. Today he’d given various versions of the life and times of John Crowe to at least five people. He was glad that his final encounter would be with Carly McGuire, Severin Quill having canceled their tentative plans for drinks—he had to go someplace called Signal Port on a story. McGuire, Matt assumed, knew everything about him that she wanted to know, and would be more interested in his work than his personal history.
    He had roughly an hour and a half before their meeting, so he headed back to the darkroom to develop his films. The contact sheets showed he hadn’t lost his eye, although there were certain technical skills that weren’t as sharp as they’d once been. He particularly liked the last batch of photos: the inanely smiling girl and boy dolls that were causing such controversy among local parents. Innocence, if not downright stupidity, radiated from their faces, and the private parts—which he’d shot for his own amusement—were no more threatening and much less realistic than those that the children of Cyanide Wells surely witnessed while playing the time-honored game of “doctor.”
    Four-thirty on the dot. Armed with his contact sheets, Matt went to McGuire’s office. The door was slightly ajar, and before he could knock, he heard Carly’s raised voice.
    “Don’t you threaten me, Gar!”
    “That was a mere statement of fact, not a threat.” The man’s voice was deep and full-bodied—and vaguely familiar.
    “Facts, I’m afraid, are open to personal interpretation.”
    “Perhaps, but you should realize that there are complex issues at work here, which you can’t possibly begin to understand.”
    “Complex issues. Which I can’t understand. I don’t think so.”
    “You’re not infallible, Carly. If you don’t believe me, look to your own life.”
    There was a silence, and then McGuire