Karma's a Killer (3 page)

Judith frowned and cupped her hand around her ear. “What's that? You'll have to talk a might louder than that, honey. I'm seventy-five. My hearing has gone south with the rest of my body.”

I sighed, steeled my shoulders, and forced myself to say the words at full volume. “I'm teaching a Doga class.”

“Doga? What in the heck is Doga?”

I tried not to flinch. “Yoga for dogs.”

Judith shook her head in apparent disbelief. “Well, now don't that beat all? Yoga for dogs … ” Her voice trailed off.

To be honest, I wasn't all that sure about Doga myself. My breath-centered style of yoga required mindful connection of movement and breath—a skill that was challenging for most
humans
to master. The thought of Fluffy or Fido inhaling while lifting his paws seemed, well, ludicrous.

But when Michael flashed his gorgeous blue-green eyes and asked me to teach Doga as part of the closing ceremonies for today's event, I couldn't say no. So I'd done some research, set my ego aside, and here I was.

Teaching Doga.

At best, I would show the (hopefully small) class a few human-assisted dog stretches. At worst, I'd become the new laughingstock of the Seattle yoga community. If I got super lucky, Raven's protesters would stage a sit-in and block the entrance to my yoga space, making the entire point moot.

Which reminded me, I needed to find Michael and warn him about the protesters.

I was about to do exactly that, when a sound startled me from behind.

Three

“There she is!”

Dale Evans, my white-bearded, goat-rescuing attorney from Orcas, waved furiously from the edge of my booth. Michael stood behind him, grinning from one gorgeously crinkled eye to the other. I'd never met the two women standing between them, but even they looked amused.

Dale wore his normal outfit: worn jeans, baseball cap, suspenders, and dark brown work boots. His bright red T-shirt featured a cartoon cowboy riding a bucking-bronco-like goat. The caption read
Chief Goat Wrangler
. Bandit, his black-and-white Jack Russell terrier, jumped up and down at the end of his leash. The matching red bandanna he wore read
Wrangler's Assistant
.

Dale lifted me off the ground in a tight hug. I hugged him back, turned my face away, and tried not to think about the millions of multilegged microbes swarming from his face to mine.

It didn't work.

No matter how often I assured myself that Dale's facial hair was perfectly hygienic, being anywhere near his long white beard gave me the willies. My best friend Rene teased that pogonophobia—the irrational fear of beards—was a clear sign of mental illness, but it didn't matter. No matter how much I loved Dale—no matter how much I loved
any
bearded man, for that matter—I couldn't stomach face-to-fur contact. Even thinking about it made my skin crawl.

Dale set me back on the ground, took a step back, and held me at arm's length. “Let me get a good look at you!” He ignored the dark coffee stain decorating my chest, narrowed his eyes, and frowned.

“Miss Katie, I do believe you've lost weight.”

“Thanks.” I smiled.

He didn't smile back. “It wasn't a compliment.”

From anyone else, the words would have stung, but I knew he meant well. Dale was never one to worry about social niceties. He narrowed his eyebrows and examined me again with almost fatherly concern.

“You doing okay?”

I pasted on a fake smile and lied to my friend. “I'm doing great.”

Time to change the subject before he probed any deeper. I turned away and motioned for Judith to join us.

She tossed another peanut to Blackie, grabbed a handful of flyers, and ambled next to me.

“Everybody, I'd like you to meet Judith.”

Dale flashed Judith a hairy-faced grin and tipped his baseball cap. “Good day to ya, ma'am.”

He winked at me, implicitly asking me not to break his cover. Dale loved playing the part of a southern-born goat farmer. His friends all knew that the good-old-boy persona was a pretense, but we went along anyway. Who were we to spoil his fun?

He handed me a crumpled paper bag. “I brought something for Bella.”

I opened it and inhaled the pungent aroma of goat cheese. “These smell amazing!” I pulled out a goat-shaped cracker.

Dale stopped my hand an inch away from of my mouth. “Not so fast, Miss Kate. I baked those for Bella, not you. They're flavored with chicken broth.”

I reluctantly dropped the delicious-smelling morsel back into the bag. Chicken broth wasn't part of my vegetarian diet.

Dale grinned and gestured toward Michael. “Seems kind of silly to bring Bella cookies now that you both live with a pet store owner, but I figured these were a special treat.”

“She'll love them, Dale,” I replied. “Thank you.” I pointed toward the goat area. “Hey, where were you earlier? I looked for you over by the petting farm.”

“A couple of 4-H kids from the island are managing the rescue during their spring break. I conned them into running the petting zoo, too. They get community service credit for school and a few days off from working on their daddy's farm. I get a week's vacation to harass my old Seattle friends.” He nudged me with his elbow. “That includes you, Missy Kate. Bandit and I are going to take you up on those yoga classes you promised us.”

“Hey, you two,” Michael interrupted. “Catch up on your own time.” He winked to let us know he was kidding. “Kate, I want you to meet these two ladies.” He started with the woman on his right. “This is Maggie Phillips, the founder of DogMa, the shelter we're all here to support.”

Maggie was attractive, probably in her mid-thirties, with gorgeous auburn hair and intelligent, dark brown eyes. I instantly liked her, though I questioned her fashion choice, especially for a day devoted to dog walking. Her four-inch heels sank into the grass with every step, and her dark blue jacket and slacks ensemble seemed specifically designed to pick up every stray strand of dog hair. Ten minutes with a German shedder like Bella, and she'd turn into a human lint roller.

She carried a cup of coffee in one hand and a pen, clipboard, and key ring in the other. She set the clipboard and keys on the table to shake my hand, but she held tightly to her mug. We Seattleites take our caffeine pretty seriously.

Michael continued the introductions. “Sally is Maggie's assistant.”

Sally stiffened.

Maggie quickly corrected him. “‘Assistant' doesn't quite cover it. Sally is our bookkeeper, office manager, volunteer coordinator, and adoption counselor. She even fills in as a veterinary technician and dog walker when needed. She does pretty much everything that needs doing at DogMa, and then some. I'm the face of the organization, but Sally's the true hero.”

Sally looked less like a hero, more like a wounded warrior. She was at least thirty pounds overweight, and her face had the sallow complexion of someone either seriously ill or several years overdue for a long vacation. Sagging skin under her eyes suggested that she was in her late sixties, but I had a feeling she was at least a decade younger. She stood with a slumped, almost defeated posture and wore serviceable clothes—a T-shirt and brown khakis—that were suitable for hiding a variety of animal indiscretions.

Sally remained silent as Maggie continued talking. “I wanted to come by and thank you in person. Everyone's so excited about your Doga class.”

I cringed before I could stop myself, but nobody seemed to notice.

“We're hoping that the more you relax people's bodies, the more they'll open their pocketbooks. DogMa seems to be bleeding money lately. Most suppliers aren't nearly as charitable as Michael. He's a real treasure.”

Michael's face reddened. He supplied all of the shelter's pet food at cost, but he preferred to keep his generosity private. It was one of the many things that I loved about him.

“It's nothing, really,” he said. “Helping abandoned animals find good homes benefits everyone, especially pet food stores like mine.”

“You might be right,” Maggie replied, “but that doesn't stop our other suppliers from price gouging. Our costs have risen dramatically over the past year, and we've been forced to make cuts wherever we can, including laying off employees. Without successful events like today, we'd either be forced to shut down or take in significantly fewer animals.”

“Hopefully that won't ever happen,” Michael said. “The good news is, unless something goes wrong, we should far exceed our donation goals today. We had over two hundred drop-in registrants this morning. That brings us to almost twenty-three hundred walkers.” He looked out toward the lake. “And the weather turned out great.”

He was right. The day was uncharacteristically warm for April in Seattle. The projected sixty-five degree high would provide plenty of warmth for the walkers without overheating their canine companions. Even better, water-loving dogs could go for a technically illegal but almost always tolerated dip in the lake without being exposed to the toxic algae that polluted it in late summer.

Michael frowned and pointed to the coffee stain between my breasts. “What happened to your shirt?”

“Believe me, you don't want to—”

A metallic crash stopped me mid-sentence.

“End animal slavery!”

We all gasped in unison and whipped toward the sound. Judith yelled, “Hey, stop! What are you doing?” Even Tiffany ran over to check out the commotion.

Blackie's cage lay open on the ground. He stood next to it, looking confused. A teenage girl waved her arms and stomped her feet, trying to scare him away. “Go on, fly! Be free! Animals should never be prisoners!”

I'd never met the young woman who was yelling, but I recognized her outfit: black jeans, black boots, long-sleeved black T-shirt decorated with an orange flame emblem. The jagged ends of her purple-black hair brushed against multiple silver ear-piercings. Black lipstick and eyeliner highlighted the matching jewelry in her left eyebrow and lower lip.

The Goth Girl kept yelling, sounding frustrated. “Go on, you stupid bird, fly! You're free!”

Blackie cocked his head right, then left, then right again, as if paradoxically confused, entranced, and annoyed by the oddly adorned female. He tried to approach her; he tried to make friends; I'm pretty sure he asked for a peanut. Each time he hopped closer, she shooed him away, calling him names and ordering him to take flight.

He finally took her advice. He flapped his wings and soared—away from his supposed freedom and straight to Judith's shoulder.

The whole episode was laughable, at least at first. Blackie clicked, preened, and nuzzled Judith's ear, looking happy and completely at home. Goth Girl yelled, waved her arms, and tried to scare him away from afar. “Get out of here before that evil animal terrorist traps you again!”

Judith turned toward Goth Girl and shouted, “Shut your trap, you little punk! You'll scare him.”

Blackie ignored them both. He let out a loud caw and flew from Judith's shoulder to my table, where he landed next to Maggie's clipboard. He cocked his head forward and stared, transfixed by her shiny keys.

“Blackie, no!” Judith yelled.

Her words had no effect. Three quick hops later, Blackie leaned down and picked up the key ring.

Judith snatched Bella's bag of dog cookies, grabbed a large handful, and threw. Miniature goats rained to the ground in a five-foot radius.

“Look, Blackie! Treats!”

It almost worked.

Blackie paused, distracted by the yummy-looking morsels littering the grass. For a split second, he dropped the keys.

Judith lunged, faster than I would have thought possible for a seventy-five-year-old woman with obvious arthritis. But before she could reach him, Blackie picked up the key ring again, looped it securely around the bottom half of his beak, and took flight, carrying his treasure off into the distance.

Crows cawed from every direction, as if celebrating his victory. A half-dozen dropped down to clean up the home-baked plunder. By the time I looked back at Blackie's cage, Goth Girl had disappeared.

“Well, it was worth a try,” Judith said. She reached up and wiped beneath her eyes. “He's gone for good now.”

“I'm so sorry,” Dale replied.

“It's okay. Not how I wanted to release him, but at least he's finally home with his buddies, where he belongs.”

She pointed a claw-like finger toward Blackie's empty cage. “As for that little Miss Vampira that scared him off, I'd like to wring her scrawny neck. Someone should teach her—and the rest of her kind—a lesson in manners.”

“She was right,” Tiffany retorted. “Birds
shouldn't
live in cages.” She locked eyes with Michael, as if expecting his agreement. “We don't even carry bird supplies at Pete's Pets. Michael says keeping pet birds locked up in cages is cruel. And that crow's cage was
tiny
.”

Judith's jaw clenched. Her hands formed swollen-jointed fists. “I wasn't keeping him as a pet, you little … ”

Dale grabbed Judith's arm, I assumed to prevent her from coldcocking Tiffany. Michael cringed and gave Tiffany a be-quiet-now look. Sally stood quietly on the sidelines, shaking her head. Maggie, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice much of anything. She stared off into the distance, eyes wide, mouth open.

“Um, you guys, where did that crow take my keys?”

Judith shrugged. “I'm sorry, hon, but I have no idea. I'm sure he has some hidey-hole nearby where he keeps his treasures, but you'll never find it. I've never found anything he stole from me, anyway. Jewelry and keys are his favorites.”

Maggie closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Great. Just what I needed. One extra hassle.” She looked at her watch and frowned, as if mentally calculating. “My spare keys are at DogMa, and there's no time to get them before I have to start the closing ceremonies.” She turned to Sally. “Looks like I'll need you to stick around through cleanup today after all. When we're done, you can give me a ride back to the shelter.”

Sally's shoulders tensed. “But you promised that I could leave at noon. I've already worked almost sixty hours this week. I haven't visited Frank at the rehab center since Thursday.”

Maggie's tone invited no argument. “I'm sorry, but I have to insist. The van and its contents are too valuable to leave parked here overnight. You can see Frank tomorrow.”

Sally's face turned so red I was afraid her hair might ignite, but she didn't argue. I hated to interrupt them with more bad news, but I had a feeling that a few misplaced keys wouldn't be DogMa's biggest problem today.

“The van might be the least of our worries,” I said.

I filled everyone in on the conversation I'd overheard between Dharma and Raven down by the dock. When I started, Maggie's eyes flashed with what looked a lot like fear. By the time I finished, her expression had morphed into anger. She grabbed Sally's arm. Hard.

“Did you know they were planning to protest today?”

Sally jerked away. “Ouch! That hurts! No, of course not. How would I have known?”

Maggie peered at her assistant through narrowed eyes. “We'll talk about this later. Right now, we need to figure out what they're up to and stop them before they ruin everything.”