Karma's a Killer Read Free Page A

five minutes make?
    I turned and headed in the opposite direction, toward the goat petting farm. I still couldn’t believe that Michael had convinced Dale—self-proclaimed goat rustler and attorney at law—to make the four-hour trip from Orcas Island to Seattle for today’s event, but I was happy he did. I hadn’t seen Dale since he represented me last fall, and I missed his back-hills country charm. Besides, I still owed him a lifetime’s worth of yoga lessons for getting me out of that murder charge. It was time to start paying my bill.
    I glanced around the enclosure, looking for my friend’s distinctive gray beard. Dale had truly outdone himself. Over a dozen floppy-eared Nubians happily napped, grazed, and otherwise entertained themselves in a thirty-by-thirty chain-linked square. The peri­meter was papered with a variety of goat-related signs: The Best Kids Have Hooves , Don’t Get My Goat , and Home Is Where the Goats Are among them. Every color of the goat rainbow was represented: black, brown, gray, white—even two cute little white-on-black-spotted kids that looked like reverse-image Dalmatian puppies.
    The enclosure was lined with straw bales strategically placed so that exhausted parents could rest while two teenaged volunteers taught their children how to safely interact with the playful animals. The teen boys—one blond, the other brunette—had matching brown eyes, square jaws, and short, stocky builds. If they weren’t twins, they were at least brothers.
    I saw pretty much everything I would hope for in a goat petting zoo: laughing children; curious, friendly Nubians; a dense carpet of wood shavings; even an obstacle course containing makeshift ramps, old tires, oversized wooden spools, and empty five-gallon water containers. The only thing missing was Dale.
    After five minutes, I gave up and headed for my booth. On the way, I stopped at the tented table for Michael’s pet supply store, Pete’s Pets.
    Tiffany, my nemesis and Michael’s employee, acknowledged my arrival with a bored-looking yawn. She snapped her chewing gum, glanced down at her cuticles, and frowned, a sure sign that she was in a better mood than usual. To be fair, I wasn’t paying much attention to her, either. I was too distracted by the colorful retail area Michael had created in the ten-by-ten space around her. Unlike
Serenity Yoga’s empty tent and bare table next door, the Pete’s Pets booth was filled with rhinestone-studded collars, bright yellow tennis balls, and a huge variety of dog treats ranging from organic freeze-dried meat cubes to individually wrapped dog cookies to five-foot-long bully sticks.
    Tiffany finished her visual manicure and acknowledged my presence. She pointed at the six-inch brown coffee stain decorating my front.
    â€œNice shirt.”
    I glanced at a barely visible blemish on the side of her nose.
    Nice zit.
    I immediately felt bad for the uncharitable thought. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras clearly advocated neutrality toward evil, and my thoughts toward Tiffany were anything but neutral.But in my defense, it wasn’t my fault. At least not completely.
    Tiffany and I had started our immature rivalry a year ago, the day she began working at Pete’s Pets. Michael, for whatever reason, liked her. Bella—the traitor—did too. Neither Tiffany nor I agreed with Michael’s taste in friends, but Bella was more discerning, and she’d decided that Tiffany was her best cookie buddy. So for the sake of the pup, Tiffany and I had put down our verbal weaponry and declared an uneasy truce.
    A truce that dissolved three weeks ago when she broke up with her latest boyfriend.
    Since then, she’d started wearing her jeans a size or two tighter; the neckline of her shirt, three inches lower. She’d invested in a push-up bra and dyed her hair a new ultra-platinum shade of blonde. And on more than one occasion, I’d caught her