Karma's A Bitch (A Pet Psychic Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page B

him until his fur shined and fixed a new baby blue collar around his neck. I rubbed blackberry and honeysuckle essence into his skin a few times that day, hoping to ease his grief. He turned down food and I had to spritz water on his tongue to get some fluid into him.
    Being busy helped but by the end of the day, when we locked the doors and flipped the closed sign around, the sadness crept back and settled over me like a heavy blanket.
    Sylvia came over and lifted my chin in her hand. “Come on, let’s get some dinner and you can tell me what happened to your friend.”
    We ended up at Parkshore Grill’s patio style tables on the corner, a pet friendly restaurant so Karma wouldn’t be left alone. Sylvia had a fondness for the place, since it was one of the first restaurants to take a chance on Beach Drive a few years ago and start the upswing into the successful tourist destination it was now.
    I ordered Karma an unseasoned steak, which I cut into tiny pieces, and a bowl of ice water. Both of which, he stared at with disinterest. I rubbed his ears. I kept hoping to get more images from him, a clearer picture of the events but got nothing.
    “So, spill the beans, my amiga.” Sylvia poured from the bottle of Jadot Burgundy she ordered for us to split. “Such a tragedy. How did this happen?”
    “I honestly don’t know. I went to Mirror Lake early yesterday morning, hoping to meet Frankie and talk to her about doing a fundraiser for the homeless. But, when I got there, the police were there with their guns pointed at Karma, who was just having a fit protecting Mad Dog.” My insides trembled. The scene was still too fresh. I took a mouthful of wine, letting it calm my insides before I continued. “When I realized Mad Dog was…dead…” there, I said it. Dead. Gone forever. Oh heavens, the last time I saw him…was the last time I would ever see him. My eyes blurred, my heart felt raw. I looked up at Sylvia, using her as an anchor. “I didn’t even know his real name.”
    She placed a dry hand over mine on the table. “We can find out his real name, then we can say a prayer for his soul.” She glanced down at Karma. “We’ll say a prayer for you, too, pobre bebê.” She pushed the coconut shrimp appetizer around on her plate. I could see her looking at me sideways. “You don’t believe he took his own life?”
    “No.”
    She sighed. “Well, that’s a good thing for his soul.”
    “I think someone murdered him.”
    “Why you think this?” She glanced around nervously.
    What could I say? If flower essence was on her woo-woo list, me receiving psychic images from Karma would really freak her out. “Um, well, the detective told me there was an empty bottle of rum…” I reached into my memory, “Bacardi 8, found near the body. So they think he got intoxicated and drowned.”
    “Whoa, expensive bottle of rum for a homeless guy.”
    “But that’s just it; he’d been sober for five months. He said because of Karma. He would have never willingly left him.” Her words just hit me. “Expensive? Like how expensive?”
    She shrugged. “Around a thousand dollars American.”
    “Huh.” Well, that didn’t make sense. At all. “Well, I don’t think it was his anyway. The detective said they’ll be able to tell when they do a tox screen during the autopsy.” A month, though or more. Jeez. Whoever murdered him could be long gone by then. I had to find a way to get them to investigate this as a murder before then.
    “I have to figure out what happened to him.”
    Sylvia waved her fork at me, swallowing in a hurry. “No, no, no you don’t. If he was killed by someone, you can’t go putting yourself in danger by trying to expose the killer. Don’t you watch crime shows?”
    I shrugged. “Actually, no.” We never had a TV in our house. I did read a lot, but that would only give Sylvia ammunition for her argument, so I kept that to myself. “Sylvia, Mad Dog was my friend. I have to do