Horoscope: The Astrology Murders by Georgia Frontiere Read Free Book Online

“There’s no one.”
    She heard an intermittent scratching sound on the other end of the phone and she realized that Officer Nelson must be taking notes. Finally, he said, “I’ve got it all down, Dr. York, but there’s nothing we can do right now. Call us if he calls again. If he keeps calling, we’ll get the phone company to monitor your line, and we’ll find out who he is and tell him to stop.”
    Kelly didn’t answer right away. She didn’t want to get off the phone yet. Talking with this policeman, she felt safe; she didn’t know how she’d feel when she hung up.
    “Dr. York?”
    “I’m sorry, Officer. I was just thinking. But I understand what you said. I’ll call back if he calls again.”
    She figured he must have known she was scared when instead of just saying goodbye, he said, “Don’t worry, Dr. York. You’ll probably never hear from him again.”
    She tried to sound as confident as he did. “Thanks.”
    She waited for him to hang up before she did. She felt no better and no more reassured than she had before she’d placed the call. Through the bars her grandmother had installed on the first-floor windows so many years before, she looked out at the trees and realized how sunny the day was. But even that didn’t improve her mood. She couldn’t forget the vitriolic whisper of the man who had called her; she couldn’t forget the words that he’d said to her; and she couldn’t forget what her chart had told her. She felt the man would call again.
    She forced herself to get out of her chair and go over to the door between her office and Sarah’s. She took a moment to gatherherself before opening it. When she did, she saw that Sarah was at her desk and a sophisticated middle-aged woman in a black suit was sitting on one of the chairs against the far wall. “Forgive me for keeping you waiting, Ms. Weston,” she said, doing her best to smile. “Please, come in, and we’ll get right to work.”

Six
    T HAT NIGHT , K ELLY LAY under the cover, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Meow was at the foot of the bed, and Kelly could hear her snoring as she slept with her head on Kelly’s ankle. She glanced down at King sleeping soundly in his bed on the floor. She looked at the clock. Its illuminated digits told her that it was 2:15. She looked at the silent phone beside it. Except for the subtle sounds of Meow’s snoring and King’s breathing, the whole house was silent.
    She knew that if she just continued lying there, thinking about everything that was troubling her, she would be awake all night, and at some point she would see her room growing lighter with daybreak and be all the more depressed knowing that she hadn’t slept. Rather than staying in bed and ruminating, she got up, put on her bathrobe and slippers, and went into her upstairs study to work on her column. It was due in the morning, and normally she would’ve started writing it before now, but after looking up the aspects for her own chart, she’d been avoiding it. She found it difficult to concentrate on writing her column when her own aspects were so difficult.
    Doing her best to emerge from her somber thoughts, she sat at her library table in front of her laptop computer. At the top of the file on her screen, she typed the words that would appear on this week’s column: “The Stars: Week of October 26th.” The sun sign for the week, of course, was Scorpio, as it had beensince October 23. In her previous column, she had written about the sun entering Scorpio and the opportunities this offered for deeper reflection. Now she would elaborate on this in the context of the aspects for the new week.
    She picked up her ephemeris, the almanac she used to see the positions of the planets as they moved through the heavens throughout the years, and opened it to October 26. She already knew that in the coming week Mars would enter Capricorn, where it would eventually conjunct Pluto—an aspect that would affect everyone and that