The next morning my pal Wade Lawson was on the local morning news, trying to explain why a third Chicagoan had been killed by lightning the night before.
“Yes, Andrea, this is definitely unusual,” Lawson said to the morning show host talking to him with an image of a rainy Chicago skyline behind him. The chyron beneath read: LIGHTNING: LOCAL BUSINESS OWNER LATEST IN BIZARRE SERIES. “I’ve been talking about it since yesterday. And there’s no way to direct lightning—it hits where it wants to. I mean, where the charge builds up between the ground and—”
“But we’ve got lightning striking twice here. More than twice,” said Andrea Cooper, the local morning anchor. “That’s not supposed to happen, is it?
“Actually, each bolt of lightning is made up of many smaller bolts, one after the other in a split second,” Lawson said with a patronizing smile. “So actually, yes, lightning does strike twice.”
I turned the TV off.
Wendy Kirke, owner of a small ice cream shop on the north side, had been struck and killed by lightning at 10:30 last night, right after locking her doors and turning to head home in the rain. Her shop was two doors down from the Lakeview Redburn. It served homemade ice cream and frozen yogurt, as well as free trade coffee from Central America and Africa.
Was Lavoy really killing off his competition with lightning? I’d never thought the café business was so cutthroat, but I’d run into stranger motives for murder.
In my office I left messages for Lenore Grayson and Julie Lavoy. Rachel came in carrying her Supergirl coffee mug. “Hey, did you hear about—”
“The ice cream shop owner? Yeah. This guy’s looking more dangerous than your usual angry ex.”
“Funny he didn’t just zap his wife. Ex-wife. Whatever.” She sat down.
“Usually they try to terrify them into coming back. Sometimes it works.”
“I’d just shoot you. Just so you know.” She sat down
I nodded. “Message received.”
My phone buzzed. Grayson. I’d sent her my latest report yesterday, but I’d left out my suspicions. Now I asked, “Does Lavoy have any evidence of violence? Or anger?”
“There are several items in the filing,” Grayson replied. “Threats, intimidation of friends and family, that sort of thing. Why?”
“Well, you know how I tend to run into these things—”
“Oh hell, he’s not a vampire or a werewolf, is he? I don’t think I can include that in any filings.”
“No, but I think—” I stopped myself. “Let me get back to you.”
Julie Lavoy called me 10 minutes later. When I asked her about Lavoy’s temper, she groaned. “You could say that. The arguments just got more intense as things went on. He got mad if I went out with friends and came home late. He threw things when he was drunk. When I had a miscarriage, he—” She took a breath. “It was bad, let’s just say that. I mean, I put up with it a lot longer than I should have, and then I met Warren. It was when we were separated, but when Alan found it, he went berserk. That’s why I thought—when he was struck by lightning—but Alan couldn’t do that, could he?”
I hesitated. “To be honest, I—this may sound weird, but yes. Maybe.”
Julie was silent a moment. “How would he do that?”
“I don’t know yet. I think Marcus may know about it.”
A sigh. “That would make sense. They were best friends, and then—something happened, I don’t know what. Then Marcus called me, like I said, looking for Alan. And, well, I remember Marcus liked occult stuff. Alan told me how they’d smoke weed and then do séances, stuff like that. And wait—didn’t that guy Mortime get hit by lightning?”
“Yeah.” I was relieved she had an open mind about all this stuff. Some people—like my editors when I was a reporter—just stopped talking when I brought it up. “It looks like I have to talk to Marcus again. I saw him last night, but Alan showed up.”
“I’ll come with you. He’ll talk to me.”
“All right. Early, before Alan makes his rounds. I’ll bring an associate.”
“Fine. Three o’clock?”
“Sounds good.” We hung up. “We’re going back to the café.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Fine. This time I want my scone.”
So we went back to Marcus Diego’s Redburn Café. I was starting to feel like a regular.
Marcus wasn’t behind the counter. Rachel and Julie sat at a table while I got coffees and Rachel’s scone. By the time I got to the table they were giggling like teenage girls. I wondered what Rachel had been telling her about me. I decided not to ask.
Marcus came out from the storeroom five minutes later. Maybe one of the baristas had buzzed him, because he headed right for our table. “Okay.” Hands on his hips. “What’s the deal?”
“Hi, Marcus.” Julie pushed a chair out from under the table. “Can we just talk?”
“Without Alan?” I added.
He glanced at the front window, as if looking for Lavoy, then around the café. Two people sat at two separate tables, looking at their phones, and a young couple snuggled in the sofa next to the glowing gas fireplace.
“Okay.” He sat with a grunt. “Just a few minutes. What’s going on?”
I glanced at Rachel, then spoke. “Your friend Alan Lavoy can control lightning.”
Marcus blinked twice. He looked at Julie, then sat back and crossed his arms with a sigh. “I didn’t think anybody would believe it. That’s why I didn’t say anything.”
Rachel nodded to me, confirming that he was telling the truth.
“That means Warren . . .” Julie’s face was tight. “He killed him.”
Marcus bit his lip. “Yeah. I guess. I mean, he didn’t tell me about it. About killing anybody. I just—He’s got this book.”
Rachel and I exchanged a glance. She’d seen a book in Alan’s mind. “What book?”
“Harold’s book. Harold Mortime.” He shook his head. “He was a prof at U of I when Alan and I were roommates there. We were friends. He was the kind of prof who’d smoke weed after class with you. And he was into some pretty strange ideas. Conspiracy theories, you know? Not like faking the Twin Towers or putting microchips in the COVID vaccine. Weather stuff, mostly.”
“Weather conspiracies?” Rachel looked skeptical.
“Like tornadoes, right? He thought the government could control tornadoes and earthquakes, or at least they were trying to. And crop circles were caused by weather satellites with lasers, or something. He bought all these antiques—maps of the ocean currents, sextants for figuring out where you are, old books on predicting weather, stuff like that. He was into trying to control the weather—chemtrails, cloud seeding, you know? We just thought it was funny.” He laughed for a moment, then fell silent.
“What about the book?” I sipped my coffee, which was turning cold.
“I’m getting to that.” He rubbed his forehead. “Anyway, a few months ago I tried calling Alan, and I talked to you.” He looked at Julie. “I knew about his coffee shops, and I was looking for a job. And he said he’d give me this job, but I had to do something for him. See, I was still friends with Harold. Harold Mortime, you know about him?”
I nodded. “Go on.”
“He wanted me to get into Harold’s house and—get something from him.”
“Steal a book?” That came from Rachel.
Marcus hung his head. “Well, yeah. It was called something like The Weathermonger’s Codex, or something. Anyway, I needed the job, and Alan and me—well, we had some fights, but he was still a good friend. I thought. It took a couple of weeks, getting in contact with Harold again, making friends again, hanging out, and eventually he took me home to get high a few times. The last time I found the book when he was in the bathroom, and I managed to get it out.”
“So the book tells you how to control the weather.” I pushed my coffee aside. “But what was Alan doing in Mortime’s house the other night? The night Warren died?”
Julie flinched but said nothing.
“It’s not just chanting spells, I guess. That’s what Alan told me. You need objects around you to make the thing work, and after I stole the book Harold wasn’t going to let me back into his house. But I looked around outside and found where he hid a spare key, and I made a copy. Then I put it back so he wouldn’t change the locks.”
Marcus suddenly pounded a fist on the table, shaking all our beverages. “I didn’t think—I’m sorry, Julie. I just never thought he’d start—doing stuff like this. I just needed a job. I didn’t know . . .” He shoved his chair back, but stayed rooted in his seat. Breathing hard. “I didn’t know.”
Julie stared at him. Then she gave a short nod. “Okay. You didn’t know.”
I glanced at Rachel. She shrugged. Marcus was telling the truth, all of it, as far as she could tell.
Julie leaned forward, her eyes cold. “Okay. Now what do we do about him?”
Her voice made me nervous. Low and serious, it felt like a simmering boil just under the surface. I looked outside. Rain was streaking the windows.
“We have to get that book,” I said.
“What about Alan? He killed—” She stopped and looked around to make sure no one heard her. The barista was watching us but too far away to listen. Everyone else was busy with their phones. “He killed Warren.”
“Taking away the book takes away his power,” Rachel said. “It’s a punishment. He’ll know we did it.”
“He’ll still be walking around. He’ll still be—” Her voice choked. “Alive.”
“We can’t exactly go to the police with this.” Even if they believed me, “Murder by lightning” wasn’t part of the criminal code. “Rachel’s right. Knowing we stopped him will have to be enough.”
“And making him broke when you’re done with the divorce,” Rachel said.
Julie sighed. “There’s that.”
Marcus shook his head. “The way business is going, he’s closer to broke today than he was last week. I’m not even sure he’s going to keep this place open much longer.”
“Then we’d better do something before he murders any more of the competition,” I said.
Rachel rolled her eyes. “You going to break into that house?”
Marcus reached into his pocket. “We don’t have to break in.” He dropped a key on the table. “I made two.”
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