Streak of Lightning by Clare O'Donohue Page A

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?”
    â€œYou’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.”
    â€œWhy 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—”
    â€œJust like he did with my dad,” Greg interrupted.
    â€œYes, 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.”
    â€œWe 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.”
    â€œSee, 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.”
    â€œThat 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.”
    â€œExcept 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.”
    â€œAnd when he found out that Violet had taken the space he wanted, well, you know Joe,” Lori said.
    â€œHe 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.”
    â€œBut if your shop would be empty, he could expand the pizza place. So didn’t he have exactly what he wanted?” I asked.
    â€œThat 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.
    â€œWhen Joe threw his chair through your window, you went to find Greg?” Jesse asked Violet.
    â€œI was heading to the police station, and I saw Greg,” she said. “And he came back here with me.”
    â€œWas Joe alone?”
    â€œYeah. He was in my shop getting his