Streak of Lightning by Clare O'Donohue Read Free Book Online Page A

have hurt Joe.”
    â€œI know, but Joe was drunk last night, so maybe—”
    Lori cut me off. “Joe didn’t drink.”
    â€œLori, I saw him when he was arrested. He was drunk.”
    â€œI don’t know what you saw, Nell, but he wasn’t. He might have been a bit rough around the edges, but drinking wasn’t one of his faults.”
    I stared at her a minute. Lori looked sad and tired, more or less how she always looked. Certainly not like a woman who was glad her husband was dead, or the cause of it. “You weren’t at the police station last night after Joe’s body was discovered,” I said. “At least I didn’t see you there. Did you make a statement to the police?”
    Violet stood in front of Lori. “After Greg called, she came to my house. She didn’t need to sit in that station looking at Joe’s dead body, and she couldn’t stay in her empty house. She needed a friend.”
    â€œAnd you two are friends?”
    â€œYes. Good friends.” Violet was a small, middle-aged woman, but standing in that alley between me and the woman I suspected of killing Joe, she looked pretty tough.
    â€œI’m glad that she has a friend,” I said. “Being married to Joe, she certainly needed one.”
    Violet smiled. “Joe wasn’t all bad. I was his friend, too.”
    That caught me off guard. “He threw a chair through your window.”
    â€œHe was a bit excitable, but we always worked things out.”
    It was my turn to smile. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that Violet was playing with me. “So when you punched him in the mouth, was that you being excitable?”
    â€œIt was a misunderstanding.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œDoes it matter, Nell? I wasn’t in the police station last night, so obviously I didn’t kill Joe. And anyway, as Lori pointed out, no one killed Joe. He died of a heart attack.”
    As Violet spoke, Lori started to cry. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.” It was a sudden outburst of emotion, and I hadn’t expected it. But it did seem genuine. No one knew what went on between two people in a relationship. To everyone else it seemed like Joe was a nightmare, but maybe Lori saw a different, better Joe.
    Violet put her arm around Lori and led her into the flower shop, closing the door behind them. I stood there thinking that in these women I had two great suspects. Lori, the long-suffering wife, and then Violet, suddenly pretending to have been Joe’s friend when the two had done nothing but argue.
    But if Joe had been strangled in his jail cell, then neither of my two best suspects could possibly have done it.

Chapter 12
    Four people and a tired dog sat in a quilt shop carefully going over the statements of all our suspects. And getting nowhere.
    Iwas warm and sleepy, and everything hurt. I rolled up the sleeves of my sweater and rubbed the arm that was quickly falling asleep.
    â€œDid 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.
    â€œSo 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.”
    â€œBut it wasn’t Greg,” Eleanor corrected her.
    â€œSo 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