Poisoned Pearls Read Online Free Page B

wouldn’t have called her makeup subtle, but
there was still a beauty to her exaggerated red lips, the dark brown skin
growing darker in the warmth, the extra-long lashes and sparkling blue
eye-shadow.
    “Hey, girl,” I called to her, waving her to the front of the
store. “ Whatcha doing?” I leaned against the cool
glass of the display case, bringing my head closer to Angela’s height.
    She joined me at the counter, leaning her hip against it,
rubbing her hands together, trying to force some warmth back into them.
    “Stupid cops chased away all the traffic tonight,” Angela
replied. “You know what’s up with that?”
    Did Angela know Kyle? I didn’t think so, but then again, you
never knew. “They found Kyle Magnusson’s body out back.”
    Damn it. Why did saying that out loud make my voice shake?
    Angela looked over her shoulder and blinked her wide black
eyes at me a couple times. “Nope,” she said after a few more moments. “Can’t
recall. Friend of yours though, I guess?”
    “Yeah,” I told her. My throat suddenly hurt. I wasn’t coming
down with something, was I? ’Cause I wasn’t about to cry.
    I didn’t cry that way.
    “I’m sorry,” Angela said, her voice as soft as if she was
trying to make nice with one of the feral cats out back.
    “You know Helen Eaton?” I asked, standing up straight,
trying to shift the conversation away before I maybe embarrassed myself with
tears or some such useless thing.
    “Helen of Troy?” Angela asked. “Cops think she’s in on it?”
    I shrugged. “Where’s Helen working these days?” I asked.
    Angela shook her head. “No one’s seen her for at least a
week. Celine was wondering if maybe Helen had finally found that ride out of
town, gone someplace warm.”
    Now I was worried. The street girls sometimes fought, and
occasionally put each other in the hospital, particularly if they thought one
of them was stepping into their territory. But they also looked out after each
other, kept tabs on each other’s whereabouts.
    It wasn’t as if they’d get any sympathy from the cops if
something happened to one of them.
    “Did she have a pimp?” I asked.
    “ Naw , she was part of the
association,” Angela said.
    More than one of the groups of hookers—excuse me, sex workers —in the downtown area
had organized themselves when the shootings and gang violence had gotten real
bad, before the cops had gotten involved and started cleaning up the place.
They’d pooled their money and hired actual security, some muscle men who
delighted in taking down any john or pimp who bothered their girls.
    The cops were right to be worried about vigilantes,
particularly in this neighborhood.
    But what had happened to Helen? I figured it had to be
something bad if that detective was asking about her.
    Before I could ask anything more, Angela said to me, “The
streets are clean. The people are good. But be careful of what you see.”
    “Excuse me?” I asked. What the hell did that mean? She
wasn’t on something, was she?
    Angela blinked her too-wide eyes at me again. “The streets
are clean. The people are good. But be careful of what you see.”
    “What are you on?” I asked. I couldn’t tell if Angela’s
pupils were dilated, but I assumed they were.
    “The streets are clean. The people are good. But be careful
of what you see,” Angela repeated again, seemingly frustrated.
    “You’re not high, are you?” I asked.
    Angela shook her head. “The streets are clean. The people
are good.”
    “Yeah, I have to be careful of what I see,” I told her. “Got
that. Thanks.”
    So the TV did get some things right—there was such a
thing as a pre-cog loop. I’d never seen one before. Angela hadn’t ever been
trained, though. Had she taken the PADT? I would have thought that if she had
any real ability, she wouldn’t be hooking.
    Angela had once told me that she’d taken a correspondence
course in paranormal ability and that she’d scored the highest in her