Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (10 page)

Chris Palmer’s camera was on the tripod, and he’d strategically placed two umbrellas and flash equipment on either side of it. Now he was looking through the camera lens at Kelly. She waited for him to snap a picture, but he didn’t.

“Relax!” he told her from behind the camera. “You look like I’m putting you through a medieval torture.”

She tried to smile.

“Now you look like you’ve traded the torture rack for the iron maiden. You’re certainly not having fun with this.” He emerged from behind the camera again. “Is it me?”

She laughed. She saw the light from the flash equipment and
realized that when she’d laughed, he’d taken a photograph by squeezing the ball in his hand that was attached to the camera by a cord.

“That was very clever,” she said.

“I had to do something. You looked so gloomy.”

She thought he had a pleasant voice. In fact, she thought Chris Palmer was pleasant altogether. She liked his attentive, dark brown eyes, his athletic body, and the small bump on his nose that she thought he’d gotten from playing sports. She liked the curve of his lips when he smiled and the masculine line of his jaw.

“I’m afraid you picked a bad day,” she told him.

“The aspects aren’t very good?” he asked.

“I wasn’t talking about the aspects. I was talking about my frame of mind. But you’re right; the aspects aren’t good right now. Especially for Pisces like me.”

“I’m a Pisces, too,” he said. “That must be why I picked a bad day to photograph you. And that’s why I have to be so clever.”

She laughed again. He took another picture.

“That’s better,” he said. He got behind the camera again and looked through the lens. “You’re the first celebrity astrologer I’ve ever photographed.”

Kelly kept looking at the camera, and he snapped another photo. “I’m not a celebrity.”

“You write a column, you wrote a book, and you were interviewed on television.” As he talked, he took one picture after another.

“Oh, God! I hope you didn’t see me. I was terrible!”

“You were not. You were charming and funny and you made me believe you knew what you were talking about.”

He removed the camera from the tripod, held it up to his eye,
and moved nearer to her as he continued shooting photos.

“I do know what I’m talking about,” she told him.

He got down on one knee now and looked up at her with the camera. “That’s why you’re a celebrity astrologer.”

She smiled. It wasn’t so difficult now. He’d actually made her relax. “All right. You win. I’m a celebrity astrologer.”

While they talked, he started taking pictures in rapid succession again. “I never realized your eyes were so blue.”

“It’s the blue dress. And the blue eyeliner. They make them look bluer.”

“It’s your eyes that make the dress and the eyeliner look bluer.”

Kelly grinned. “Flatterer!”

“That’s my job. But with you, it’s easy.” He lowered the camera. “Okay. That should do it.”

Kelly got up from the sofa. “I’m glad. I hate being photographed.”

“Why?” Chris asked, putting his camera back into the equipment box. “What’s wrong with being photographed?”

“Actually, I don’t always hate it. I just hate it at the moment.”

“Why?”

He was looking at her as if he really wanted to know, but she wasn’t about to tell him everything that was going on with her.

“I just don’t think I look very good right now. I’m a bit tired.”

“It’s my job to make people look good.” He started taking down one of the umbrellas. “But in your case—”

“I know,” Kelly said. “In my case it’s easy. You really are a flatterer!”

He laughed. “Well, it is.” Then he added, looking at her with a smile. “You’re a lot younger than I thought.”

“I’m a lot younger than that line,” she told him.

He laughed again. She liked the way his cheeks creased when
he laughed.

“How about going to dinner with me tonight?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “Sorry, but I can’t.”

“You’ve already got plans?” He started taking down the other umbrella.

“Yes.”

He looked at her. “I don’t believe you.”

She glanced out the window into the garden. The day was still gray and sunless. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

He was still looking at her. “Why not?”

His brown eyes were no less attractive than they had been before, but now they were serious. Looking into them, she felt embarrassed. She rose from the sofa. “I told you. The aspects aren’t good for me. Pluto is conjuncting my Mars in the tenth house and—”

He interrupted her. “What’s the real reason?”

She walked over to the window and watched as the wind ruffled the trees that lined the garden walls. Usually she loved the fall, this mysterious transition between the fertility of summer and the stillness of winter that manifested in the changing colors and the shedding of leaves. But this year, so far she had experienced it only as a time of fear, and she realized that she was afraid now. Not just afraid of going out of her brownstone, and afraid that the man who had called her would call her again—or do something worse—but afraid of opening herself even to the possibility of a relationship again. She had sensed nothing wrong with Chris Palmer, but how could she let him or anyone near her when she didn’t really know who she was anymore?

After a while, she turned away from the window. He was standing two yards from her with the folded umbrella in his hands, waiting for an answer.

“I haven’t been out with anyone for a long time. And I don’t think I’m ready.”

“Why not see?” he asked her simply.

She looked at him and wondered if he might be right. He was about her age, maybe a year or two younger. He was smart. There was no doubt that he was good-looking. His eyes continued to meet hers, unfazed by her evasions and protests. He worked for the same magazine that she did. That meant that its editor, Wendy Storr, whom Kelly had known for five years and liked enormously, thought he was responsible.

“Why don’t we have dinner here?” she said finally. “Say seven thirty.”

He smiled. “I’m glad I broke down your resistance. Seven thirty it is.”

G
IORDANO WAS SITTING AT
his computer, completing his search of rape and murder cases reported in the past five years. He’d started out looking in the metropolitan area, then broadened his search to include the entire Northeast and, eventually, the South, Midwest, and West, including Hawaii. So far he hadn’t found a single rape/murder or rape or murder case in which the method matched that of Jennifer McGraw’s killer. Many victims had been strangled, but none with the singular, thin cord—not rope or wire—that her killer had used. More important, none of them had been marked with a sign of the zodiac—in Jennifer McGraw’s case not, in fact, just
a
sign of the zodiac, but her sign. As Giordano had found out from Jennifer’s parents, she was born on November 28, which made her a Sagittarius, and the man who had raped and murdered her had gouged that sign into her flesh.

Giordano looked through the last of the rape and murder cases in the database. It had occurred last night in Honolulu, a young woman walking alone on the beach just after midnight. She’d been raped and stabbed, and the drunken tourist who had done it had already been caught.

The accumulation of details of brutality and violence that he’d taken in as he’d read about the crimes made Giordano sick to his stomach. He picked up his coffee and threw it back like a shot of
bourbon, hoping to wash the disgust from his mouth and gut and mind, but the coffee was old and stale, and it only made him feel worse. He was just about to get up and pour himself a new cup when the phone rang. It was the ME.

“Glad you’re still there,” Rayburn said from the morgue in the bowels of the building. “I thought you’d be home by now.”

“I can outlast you, old man, any day,” Giordano growled.

Rayburn, as usual, remained unperturbed. “Not much luck on the McGraw case, I guess.”

Giordano was the only one in the office. He took advantage of the situation to light up a cigarette. “Did you just call to make me more depressed, or do you have something to tell me?”

“You’re smoking, aren’t you?” Rayburn asked.

“Don’t drive me crazy, Ray. Do you have something to tell me or not?”

“As a matter of fact, I do have something to tell you,” Rayburn said with self-satisfaction in his voice. “It’s about what the victim was strangled with.”

Giordano continued to smoke as he listened.

“I found microscopic bits of leather in the strangulation marks. It was a leather cord. Maybe something used in handicrafts. Like a piece of rawhide. Sturdy enough that it wouldn’t break when force was applied to it.”

Giordano felt slightly less despondent. But only slightly. “At least that gives us something to go on.”

“You’ve been hitting a wall until now, Frank?”

Giordano took a drag on the cigarette. “Four of them.”

“Sorry,” Rayburn told him. “But put out that damned cigarette before somebody sees you. They’re going to be pissed off anyway when they smell you’ve been smoking.”

Giordano stubbed the cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe
and put the stub in his pocket. “I’ll deny it was me.”

“Start looking at leather cords.”

“Thanks, old man.”

Giordano hung up the phone and walked over to the coffee machine. He’d just begun swigging down a hot mug of the vile stuff when Hernandez walked in. Giordano knew that Hernandez and Kim had been talking to the clients Jennifer McGraw had worked for as a freelance artist. He didn’t know they’d also stopped at Jennifer McGraw’s house and what they’d found there.

Hernandez sniffed the air and made a face. “It smells like an ashtray in here, Giordano. You been smoking again?”

Giordano stared his partner straight in the eye and lied. “Not me.”

Hernandez didn’t pursue it.

“You got anything from your interviews?” Giordano asked.

“She did good work. Turned it in on time. None of her employers knew anything about her personal life. They hired her because they were impressed with her portfolio. They got a sense that she was lonely. Maybe that was why the killer chose her.”

Giordano nodded, disappointed. He’d been hoping for more. Before he could say anything, Hernandez was talking again. “But look what Kim found.” He smiled and showed Giordano the copy of
You and Your Sign
that Kim had discovered in her den. “Some of the corners on the pages are turned down and sentences are underlined. It looks like the victim spent a lot of time reading it.”

Giordano stared at the magazine. His dismal feeling about the case began to lift. He decided it wasn’t impossible that they would find the man who had raped and strangled Jennifer McGraw.

T
HERE WERE SEVERAL TYPES
of occasions for which Sarah always got dressed up: when she was giving a concert, when she was attending a concert or opera, and when Kevin was in town and they were going out to dinner someplace special. Tonight she was wearing a new green sheath dress. It was more sophisticated than the suits and dresses with A-line skirts that she usually wore. She’d bought it because it showed off her trim figure and because green had become her favorite color. Wearing green, she felt that her shoulder-length black hair seemed to shine, and it brought out glints of green in her hazel eyes.

Tonight she and Kevin were definitely having dinner someplace special. He had brought her to the Four Seasons Restaurant, and their table was next to the pool, which was the focal point of the elegant, high-ceilinged room. Four paintings in somber colors and coarse textures hung on the similarly colored brown and black walls of the Pool Room. There were also beautiful live trees. It was like being in a midcentury modern palace.

After turning to look at the paintings, Sarah turned to Kevin again.

“What a lovely place,” she said. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Neither have I,” he told her. “That’s why I thought it was time we tried it.” He broke off a piece of the bread on his bread plate. Then he looked around the room. “It really is lovely, isn’t it?”

The way Kevin was acting made Sarah feel he had something on his mind. He was often like this: He didn’t like to just come out and say things; he liked to build up to them.

He smiled at her. “I’m glad you liked my
Faust
.”

“I have to admit, it was a bit frightening. Seeing you condemned to hell.”

He laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s only an opera.”

“Your aria, ‘Salut, demeure chaste et pure.’ It was gorgeous.”

“It means a lot to me that you liked it. Now tell me about your quartet.”

It was her turn to smile. “We’re performing at Merkin Hall at the end of next month.”

“Congratulations.”

“I hope you’ll be able to come.”

“If I’ve got the night off, I wouldn’t miss it. You know that.”

“I know.”

He reached across the table for her hand and took it in his. “I have something to tell you, Sarah.”

So she was right; he did have something on his mind. She felt the warmth of his hand holding hers and smiled at him again. “Tell me.”

“This is even harder for me than I thought it would be—”

Sarah had never seen him look so worried. “What is it?”

It took him a long time to speak. “When you turned down my proposal,” he said finally, “I thought I’d never find anybody else …”

Sarah felt herself tense up, but she didn’t say anything. She just kept looking at Kevin and trying to act as if she didn’t feel the earth was about to give way right under her.

“But I have found someone. Lisa Golden, the soprano who’s singing Marguerite.”

Sarah willed herself to keep letting Kevin hold her hand. “I’m happy for you, Kevin.”

“I know it’s a bit of a shock. There’s never really been anyone that either of us has been close to except each other. I don’t know how wise it was that we kept sleeping together after, well, you know …”

“We never made each other any promises,” she said, trying to continue looking into his eyes, knowing that this would be the last time they would ever have a dinner alone together, or at least the last time that she could ever dream on the way to dinner that they would always be having dinners together alone. “I’m happy for you,” she repeated.