The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal) Read Online Free Page A

sight. “You know, it’s hard for me to deal with the fact that somebody’s dead.”
    Gina nodded.
    “Somebody I knew.”
    Another nod.
    “Somebody I slept with.”
    “I know exactly what you mean.”
    “You do? How could you?” I went to the kitchen and returned with a container of Cherry Garcia and a couple of spoons. Gina’d taken her shoes off and propped her feet on the coffee table. She’d turned on the TV; Jean-Claude Van Damme was doing the splits to avoid some menace or other.
    I flopped down next to her, handed her a spoon, dug in with my own. My taste buds were back on duty. I took another bite and turned over the container. “So who do you think did it?” I asked.
    She ran the spoon around the inside of the container, removing little overlooked driblets. Ever precise, my Gina. “My bets on those CITES people. I don’t trust those Germans.”
    “Bigot.”
    “Okay, I’m kidding about the Germans. But not the rest. Plant smugglers makes sense to me.”
    “Plant smugglers makes more sense to you than one of B rendas boyfriends?”
    “Call me a romantic.”
    “You think an angry plant smuggler is more romantic than an angry boyfriend?”
    “Romance ain’t what it used to be.”
    I grabbed back the ice cream, dug out a couple of chunks of chocolate, let them roll around my tongue. “Tomorrow night’s the CCCC meeting,” I said. “I’m going to have to tell all those people about Brenda.”
    “Wont they read about it in the paper?”
    “Will it be in the paper?”
    “She was pretty well-known in her field, wasn’t she? Itseems like the kind of thing you see on page one of the
Times
Metro section, PLANT KILLS UCLA PROFESSOR, something like that.”
    She shoved me toward the end of the couch. Wouldn’t give up until I was squashed up against the arm. She lay her head in my lap, fixed her gaze on the TV. “Maybe one of the club people offed Brenda.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    She sprang back to a sitting position and looked me in the eye. “No, really. God knows there are enough weird characters in that club. Maybe one of them got a bug up their ass about something Brenda did and euphorbiated her.”
    “Come on, Gi. They’re harmless.”
    “That’s what all murderers want you to think. I’ll bet it was one of them.”
    “Nah. It was plant smugglers or a spurned lover or some nonaffiliated euphorbia fetishist.”
    “You’re no fun.” She gestured with her spoon. “Is there anymore?”
    I peered into the ice cream container. Three spoonfuls remained. “Here, finish it.”
    A little later she roused herself and got her stuff together to go home. I walked her out to her Volvo, gave her a hug, and slammed the car door behind her. She jammed the transmission into drive and blasted off into the night. I went back in and to bed.

     
    I woke at seven to the sound of theremin music next door. The people there had moved in three years before, although which of the never-ending stream of slightly seedy characters actually lived there was something I’d never quite figured out. For a while I’d thought they were drug dealers. Then Idecided it was a whorehouse. My current theory was that they were running a bookie joint. There was always some racket or other emanating from over the fence, wailing babies or barking dogs or chain saws. Now it was electronic music. Maybe they were auditioning for the remake
of Plan 9 From Outer Space
.
    I made some tea and went outside. The June gloom continued. It had shown up in May, just like every other year. Sometimes I enjoyed the succession of cloudy mornings, the result of some weather phenomenon I chose not to understand. Doves would coo and mockingbirds would mock, and baby possums would dash by inches from my toes.
    But sometimes the June gloom was a depressing thing, and this particular Tuesday morning, a perfect marriage of gray sky and chill air, was a prime example. I’d expected a night’s sleep would buffer me from the mortality I’d suddenly