Streak of Lightning (6 page)

Four people and a tired dog sat in a quilt shop carefully going over the statements of all our suspects. And getting nowhere.

I
was warm and sleepy, and everything hurt. I rolled up the sleeves of my sweater and rubbed the arm that was quickly falling asleep.

“Did you get a tattoo?” my grandmother asked.

I looked down at the ink on my arm from earlier. “No, a clue. I'd forgotten all about it.”

In a rush of excitement, Carrie did a reverse phone directory lookup on the number I'd seen written on the Chinese takeout menu. “MG Management,” she said. “What's that?”

None of us knew, and calling the number didn't help either. The recording said the offices were closed for the holidays. It seemed everyone was taking the day off but us.

“So tomorrow there's the autopsy, and we find out if Joe was strangled,” Carrie said. “And if he was, then it had to be Greg.”

“But it wasn't Greg,” Eleanor corrected her.

“So who then? Violet or Lori?”

Jesse leaned back in his chair, as tired as the rest of us. “I had to keep Joe from lunging at Rich yesterday. He was pretty strong. Assuming one of those women got into the station and unlocked Joe's cell, I don't think either of them could have strangled him. Joe would have been able to stop it. And Greg would have heard it.”

“And Larry was at the garage all yesterday,” I pointed out.

“Are we suspecting Larry?” Eleanor asked.

“No, but he was the only other person who went back to the jail cell before the paramedics got there.”

“But Greg said Joe was dead before Larry arrived,” Carrie pointed out. “So we're back to Greg.”

“He does make a great suspect.” Jesse got up and stretched. It was a good idea, but I was too tired to move. “It's that darn bruise. I can't see Greg strangling him. And when he arrested him, he said he didn't get rough, just sort of chased him around. I was rougher on Joe than that.” He stopped, stared into space for a second, and then turned to me, his eyes wide. “Nell, show me again where Larry said the bruise was.”

I touched the base of my throat, and as I did, Jesse's expression changed.

“Well, that's it,” he said. “It wasn't Greg.”

I jumped up. “Who was it?”

“It was me.”

Carrie turned to him. “You murdered Joe?”

Jesse laughed. “No. I stopped him from attacking Rich. I held him back. He was strong. I think I caused the bruise when I was pushing my hand against his chest, trying to hold him back.”

“So it wasn't a murder at all. It was a heart attack like Lori said?” Eleanor asked.

Jesse shrugged. “Or it was those pills she brought to the police station. Either way, it wasn't Greg. I'll call Terri in the morning and tell her what happened, and let Greg know he's on duty tomorrow night.”

We closed up shop and headed home. As I lay in bed that night, I felt almost silly. We had worried ourselves for nothing. A simple explanation for a non-strangling bruise, and our friend's freedom and career were once again safe.

I had a good night's sleep, and the next day as I sewed the blocks for my streak of lightning quilt, I felt a rush of happiness. The year hadn't started off the way I'd planned, but it at least felt like the clouds had parted and everything would be lovely and bright again.

Then Jesse called. And like a flash of light in a dark sky, it was clear that the storm wasn't over.

“He wasn't strangled,” Jesse told me over the phone.

“We knew that.”

“And it wasn't a heart attack.”

It was the only other choice left, and though it was what we had suspected, it made me a little sad. “So Lori poisoned him.”

“No, not that either. The state police found the bottle of pills in Joe's jail cell, and according to their forensics, they are just what Lori said: blood pressure meds. Besides, the coroner did a preliminary autopsy this morning, and poisoned or not, those pills didn't kill Joe.”

“But he knows the cause of death?”

“Hematoma. A ruptured blood vessel caused by blunt force trauma to the head.”

“Somebody hit Joe.”

“And hard. On the back of the head,” he said. “So we're back to it being Greg. Terri is here now, and she says that she can delay filing her report until this afternoon, but . . .”

“You have to suspend Greg.”

“I decided to give him the day off so I can suspend him tomorrow, not that it matters. I think Terri plans to arrest him this afternoon,” Jesse said. “So if you have any ideas . . .”

I didn't. When we hung up, I looked back at the progress I'd made on my quilt. As I sewed the blocks together, the simple strips made a beautiful log cabin block, with one side blue and the other a creamy white. Once the blocks were sewn together in a zigzag pattern, the whole quilt top did look quite complicated. If, like Jesse, you didn't know how to analyze a quilt block, you might look at this quilt as being impossibly hard. The trick, as I had explained to him yesterday, was to isolate the block.

And the trick here, I knew, was to isolate each clue, each incident. And that's what I had to do—starting with the first unanswered question, Lori's reaction to Rich.

“I know it's going to be busy,” I said to Eleanor as I put on my coat. “But I'll bring you back lunch.”

“You're leaving the sale to get lunch?”

“Chinese takeout, to be precise about it.”

I drove to Morristown, which was just on the other side of the park, and headed down their Main Street to the restaurant. If this place had spooked Lori, maybe I could figure out why. It was a desperate move, but it was all I had.

It was closed. At first I assumed they were extending their New Year's break, but when I got to the door, I could see the restaurant had gone out of business. A
WE'RE RETIRING!
THANKS FOR YOUR MANY YEARS OF LOYAL SUPPORT
. sign was in the window along with another, larger one:
CALL MG MANAGEMENT TO LEASE THIS SPACE
, written above the same phone number I'd found in Violet's shop.

Violet was moving her shop to Morristown? If so, that explained why she had the number, but it didn't get me one step closer to finding out who had hit Joe in the head or why the mention of the restaurant had rattled Lori.

Dumb as it was, there was only one more thing I could think of to get to the truth. I had a growing reputation in Archers Rest for being the town's Miss Marple, a quirky busybody who liked to get involved in police investigations. The fact that I was usually right didn't seem to lessen the amusement factor, and being the butt of jokes, however lovingly told, bothered me more than I cared to admit.

I stood a long time in front of the Chinese restaurant trying to come up with a better way to find the answers I needed. But I couldn't think of one. If the killer was ever going to be found, it had to be now, before Greg's career was ruined. It could all blow up in my face, I knew, but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a WIP and a WOMBAT.

“You can't be serious!” Violet said, making her irritation clear. “You're gathering us all in one place to unveil the killer? Isn't that a little cold, literally and figuratively?”

I could see her point. Along with the rest of my suspects, Lori was standing in the windy January cold staring at the front of Everything Pizza. “I thought it was a heart attack,” she kept saying. “Why would anyone hit him over the head?”

Jesse, Rich, and Greg looked uncomfortable; Eleanor put her arm around Lori to provide comfort and warmth; Violet looked mad; and Detective Terri Adkin just looked amused.

“I appreciate your being here, Detective,” I told her.

“As I told you before, I've heard all about your, um, crime-solving skills.” She suppressed a laugh. “I'm just happy to see it in person, even if it is a waste of time.”

“It's not. Nell is very good at figuring these things out,” Eleanor jumped in. I smiled at my grandmother's defense of me, and quietly hoped she was right, that I wasn't wasting anyone's time or making a fool of myself.

“Okay, so what's the plan now, Miss Fitzgerald?” Adkin asked. “Someone jumps up and confesses to killing Mr. Proctor?”

Truth was, I didn't have a plan. I was out of plans. Everyone had a reason to hate Joe, but no one wanted him dead, not really. That was the only logical conclusion I'd reached, and it was completely illogical because someone had killed him.

“Rich was in the pizza place at about one o'clock,” I started.

“I didn't hit him with nothing,” he said.

“No, you didn't, Rich. But you upset him. You mentioned the Chinese restaurant in Morristown that just closed in the building owned by MG Management. Which you know about, Violet.”

She flinched a little. “How do you? Never mind. Yes, I know about it. So what?”

“You're moving your business to get away from Joe, maybe?”

Violet looked to Lori, who shrugged a little. “Yes, I am. But not to get away from Joe. To expand my business. That storefront has more space. Morristown is twice the size of Archers Rest.”

“Why did Joe throw the chair through your window?”

Once again she looked at Lori before answering. “He was mad about the Chinese restaurant. Joe wanted to expand the business. He needed to make more money, so he wanted to put more tables in. He had a plan to take over my spot. He'd called the county inspector—”

“Just like he did with my dad,” Greg interrupted.

“Yes, and I'm sorry about that,” Lori said. “When I found out what he'd done to your father, I was heartbroken. Martin was so kind to us. The pizza place was Joe's dream, but it wasn't worth ending a friendship over. I knew people hated him for that, hated us. I felt so alone all these years, until Violet became my friend. And then Joe was going to ruin that, too.”

“We didn't hold it against you, what Joe did to Martin, what he did to any of us,” Eleanor said. “You can't help what Joe did.”

“See, I told you,” Violet said to Lori before turning to me. “When Lori found out Joe was planning to do it again, this time to me, she came to me and told me so I could be ready. When the inspector came, I had everything up to code. No violations, no way to get me out of this place.”

“That made Joe mad,” Lori said. “So he started looking for another space. When the owners of the Chinese restaurant decided to retire, he planned to lease it.”

“Except I got it first,” Violet said. “The funny thing was, the more Joe kept trying to get me to move out of here, telling me what a tiny hole of a place it was, the more I realized he was right. I had pots on top of pots, plants too crowded to grow. The walls started to close in on me, and I realized I needed more room.”

“And when he found out that Violet had taken the space he wanted, well, you know Joe,” Lori said.

“He confronted me the other day, and he got right up in my face, so I punched him in the mouth.” Violet laughed. “Not that it did any damage, or shut him up for that matter. The next day when he saw me on the street, he told me that I'd better give him the Morristown space or I'd regret it. I said, ‘Fine, I'll regret it.' And he went into his place and got the chair.”

“But if your shop would be empty, he could expand the pizza place. So didn't he have exactly what he wanted?” I asked.

“That wasn't the point. Joe didn't want everyone to win. He wanted to be the only one who won.” Lori wiped away a tear. “But he didn't deserve to die because of it.”

Terri Adkin stepped forward. “And it still doesn't explain who killed him.”

She was right, and to make her point more clear an icy wind blew through us, leaving us all shivering. Jesse moved to the door of Violet's shop and opened it. “We may not solve this, but we can at least be warm.”

We huddled in the front room of the shop, staying clear of the broken pots that Violet had yet to clean up, and tried to figure out together what had happened.

“When Joe threw his chair through your window, you went to find Greg?” Jesse asked Violet.

“I was heading to the police station, and I saw Greg,” she said. “And he came back here with me.”

“Was Joe alone?”

“Yeah. He was in my shop getting his chair back.”

“Which was where?” Jesse asked.

“There.” She pointed toward the damaged floor plants and the broken pots.

Joe had come in and gotten his chair, the last thing he'd done before Greg locked him up, alone, in that jail cell.

We all stood and stared. I played the scene over and over in my mind. Nothing made sense, and then suddenly I knew who had killed Joe. And I could hardly believe it.

“Joe walked in to get his chair while Violet went to get the police,” I said.

“I think we've established that, Miss Fitzgerald,” Terri Adkin said, the amusement now turning into impatience. Small town amateur detectives are an acquired taste, I guess.

“But that's my point,” I said. “We've all known that from the beginning. And we all knew, at least Greg and Jesse and myself, that Joe was drunk when he came into the police station.”

“He didn't drink,” Lori pointed out.

“I know. You told me that yesterday. But he was drunk when he walked into that police station. Or at least we thought he was.” I walked among the debris of pots. “He threw the chair through the window, and it landed on this plant. Then he came over to this spot to grab his chair. . . .” I mimicked the movement, bending over and straightening up again slowly.

“Oh, my God,” Lori gasped. “And he hit his head on the shelf.”

“And those big ceramic pots tumbled down on him,” Jesse finished the thought. “When Violet and Greg came back, they assumed the chair had done the damage. And if Joe was hit hard enough, it could have caused bleeding in the brain.”

“Which might take hours to kill him,” Detective Adkin added. “But he would have been a little woozy, maybe seemed drunk.”

“And he was too stubborn to admit that he was hurt,” Lori said, starting to cry.

“With the bruise on his chest, and his bad temper, someone killing him seemed more likely than a simple accident.” Detective Adkin spoke the words, but she seemed surprised at the explanation. “So there was no killer.”

“No, there was,” Lori told her. “It was what I warned him about all along. Joe's anger killed him.”

•   •   •

Jesse and Detective Adkin went back to the station, and the rest of us left the flower shop for Jitters and hot tea. Carrie, Violet, and my grandmother offered Lori their support and advice on running a business alone. Rich volunteered to help with the cleanup as Lori expanded Everything Pizza into Violet's storefront, and even Greg promised his skills as a handyman, learned at his dad's side, if Lori ever needed some help.

Lori cried and smiled and shook her head in disbelief. “I wish Joe had known what good neighbors he had,” she said. “I don't know how to thank you.”

“Just take care of yourself,” Eleanor told her. “That's all you have to do. A good night's sleep is what you need.” And finally, she was likely to get it.

I wasn't glad Joe was dead—you can never be glad that someone is dead—but I was relieved that no one had killed him, that Greg was back at work, and that I could get a slice of pizza without being yelled at.

After a while, I returned to Someday and went back to work on my streak of lightning quit. I finished sewing the last block just as Jesse came into the shop.

“Your report is all done?” I asked.

“My report, the state police report . . . everything. I know WOMBATs, and WIFs and UFOs, but what is the acronym when you finish a quilt? Because, whatever it is, that's what the reports are.”

I thought about it for a moment. “We don't really have one for finishing a quilt. We just move on to the next one,” I told him.

“Well, I'm in no hurry to move on to the next suspicious death.” He rested his hand on mine. “Wasn't much of a romantic weekend, was it? And I was thinking about what you said on the train the other day, about what you do on the first day of the year being what you do all year. Not a great beginning, was it?”

I thought about how much I'd been looking forward to the weekend, and how strangely it had all gone instead. “I got to spend it with you,” I told him. “And you let me help you with a case without arguing about it, so that's a pretty good omen for the year.”

He laughed. “I wouldn't have it any other way.”