Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (11 page)

“Thank you, Sarah.”

She waited as long as she could and then withdrew her hand from his. “Excuse me. I have to go to the ladies’ room.”

As she got to her feet, Kevin rose from his chair, too. “Are you all right?”

She laughed. “Of course I’m all right. I’ll be right back.”

She smiled just long enough to turn away from him. As she took her first step toward the restrooms, she was already silently crying.

Kelly, an apron over a white silk blouse and jeans, her long hair fastened into a ponytail with a barrette, stood at the kitchen counter, cutting fresh basil for her favorite tomato sauce. It was a recipe she’d concocted when Jeff and Julie were little. Fortunately, she had all the ingredients in the house. Her eyes were still wet from peeling onions, and she dried them with a tissue before picking up another piece of basil.

Emma hovered over her shoulder. “I wish you’d let me do that
for you before I go. No need to tire yourself out doing all this for the photographer.”

“His name is Chris, and I’m not tiring myself out, and you’re going to be late for the movie.”

Emma sighed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Kelly turned to her and looked into her kind gray eyes. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Emma’s face was still filled with concern.

Kelly couldn’t pretend she didn’t know why Emma was worried. She smiled and put her hands affectionately on the older woman’s shoulders. “Thank you for going after King. And thank you for being so loving to me.”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Kelly. I just—I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

Kelly continued to meet her gaze. “I am all right. I promise.”

Emma sighed again. “Well, I can’t say I’m not glad you’ve met a man that you’re interested in. And from what I saw when he was photographing you, he is cute.”

Kelly laughed and took her hands off Emma’s shoulders. “Please, Emma, go. You’re going to keep Donald waiting.”

The doorbell rang, and Emma looked toward the hallway as if she was going to answer it.

“I mean it,” Kelly said. “Go!”

“I’m going. I’m going,” Emma assured her. She picked up her coat and scarf from the back of a chair, putting them on as she followed Kelly out of the kitchen and toward the front door.

By the time they reached the hall, King, who had been napping in the living room, joined them and started howling. Kelly grabbed his collar as she opened the front door. The bleak day had turned into a cool, damp night, and Chris Palmer, wearing a black turtleneck under a leather jacket, was standing on the
stoop, carrying a bottle of wine.

“Don’t mind King,” Kelly told him, pulling the dog with her as she stepped back into the foyer. “He’ll calm down in a minute.”

As Chris walked into the brownstone, King continued howling.

“I think you should tell him that,” Chris suggested.

Kelly gave the dog a reassuring look. “It’s okay, King. He’s a friend.”

Emma thrust herself between Chris and Kelly. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Emma O’Brian, Kelly’s housekeeper and cook. But she’s making the dinner tonight herself.”

“I’m Chris Palmer.” His dark eyes shone at Emma as he extended his hand to shake hers. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Emma responded. She gave Kelly an approving nod before heading out the door and telling them to have a good time.

Once Emma was gone, Kelly let go of King’s collar. He kept howling as she walked to the guest closet under the stairs and opened it for Chris. “Let him smell you while you hang your jacket up. Then he’ll stop. If he gets to be too much, I’ll put him upstairs. I’ve just got a few things to do for dinner.”

As Kelly started toward the kitchen, Chris was hanging up his leather jacket and King was sniffing him and still howling.

“I really am a friend,” he was telling the dog. “So you don’t have to protect her. You can just hang out and have a good time. All right?”

Kelly liked the way Chris talked to King. She was glad she’d invited him to dinner. She only wished King would stop howling.

Sarah and Kevin exited through the imposing doors of the Four Seasons onto East 52nd Street. The temperature had dropped since they’d entered the restaurant, and Sarah buttoned her coat all the way up. Kevin was next to her, wearing only his blazer and a scarf. She was avoiding his eyes, as she had for most of the evening, ever since he’d told her about his engagement.

“I didn’t ask about Kelly,” he said as they emerged onto the sidewalk. “How is she?”

“She’s fine,” Sarah responded. Even under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have allowed herself to discuss the problem she believed Kelly was having, but these circumstances were anything but normal.

She suddenly felt his hand gently take hold of her arm.

“I’ll walk you home,” he said.

“I think I’ll take a cab.”

She could feel him looking at her, feel him thinking how strange it was that she didn’t want to walk. She loved walking; she usually walked the thirty blocks from her apartment near Carnegie Hall to Kelly’s brownstone every morning and sometimes walked back again at night. Her apartment was only a fifteen-minute walk from the restaurant; of course she could walk. But tonight she was going to take a cab. She could feel Kevin about to protest and then decide not to. She could feel everything about him, and she knew he could feel everything about her. And that was why she wanted to escape from him as quickly as she could. He must’ve known that, too.

“I’ll hail one for you,” he told her, moving toward the street.

She watched him as he looked west on 52nd toward Park Avenue. “I don’t see any,” he said after a few moments. “You wait here. I’ll go to Park and catch one coming north.”

He ran toward Park. When he got to the corner, she saw him
looking south, waving his hand in the air for a cab.

She didn’t know how she got through the last few moments when Kevin put her into the cab. She knew she must’ve said something, but she had no idea what it was. She didn’t even remember giving the cabbie her address. She remained in a fog as the taxi took her to 57th Street and 8th Avenue. She didn’t know if the trip was fast or slow; time had become meaningless. She got out at the entrance of the apartment building, unlocked the door, somehow got into the elevator and pressed the button for her floor. When the doors opened, she drifted across the hall, fumbled with her keys, and finally managed to open the door to her small apartment. All she could think about was that this was probably the last time that she would ever see Kevin.

Ultimately, Kelly had had to take King upstairs and leave him in her bedroom with the door to the third floor closed so that she and Chris could have dinner in peace. They ate at the dining table in her living room, looking out on the moonlit garden behind the brownstone. She’d set the table with her grandmother’s red damask tablecloth, matching napkins, flowers from the greenhouse in a crystal vase, and four candles in cranberry glass candleholders. The Dennisons had shared dinner with her at the same table, but tonight was very different. Michelle and Mark were her closest friends, like family, really, and having them over was so comfortable for her that it required no effort. With Chris, she was aware of the way his brown eyes looked at her, not with the interest of a photographer, but with the interest of a man looking at a woman he was attracted to. When he’d asked her out, she’d told him it had been a while since she’d dated; she hadn’t realized then how unused she’d gotten to being looked at as a date. She also hadn’t
realized how much she would enjoy it again.

“I guess you could call me a sweetaholic,” Chris observed, savoring his second butter cookie. “You really made this?”

“Pastry is my specialty,” Kelly told him. She was on her second cookie, too. Once again she felt grateful for being tall. She didn’t have to watch what she ate like Sarah or Michelle, who were more petite and never ate more than one portion of anything.

Chris sat back in his chair and kept his eyes on her. “I thought astrology was your specialty.”

Kelly was looking at him, too. She liked the fair skin on his handsome face and the dark beard that had begun to show on his cheeks and along his jaw since that afternoon when he’d come clean shaven to photograph her. And of course she liked his brown eyes.

“Astrology is my professional specialty. But I also love cooking.”

“If you love cooking, why do you have a cook?”

“Emma used to cook for my grandmother. This was my grandmother’s house. She raised me after my parents died. When she passed away, she left the brownstone to me. Emma lived downstairs. I didn’t want her to have to look for another home or another job.”

“That was generous of you.”

“Emma’s been generous to me, too. I was twenty-five when my grandmother died. I was a single mother with two children and starting graduate school in psychology. Emma took care of my children when I was at school. She cooked and she helped clean. For years I couldn’t pay her what she deserved. It took everything I had to keep the house, feed us, and pay for school.”

Chris glanced over his shoulder, into the hallway. “Where are your children?”

“Actually, they’re not children anymore. They’re in college.”

His eyes returned to Kelly. “I won’t say you look too young to have children that age because you’ll say that line’s been around since Adam left the Garden of Eden.”

She laughed. “Not this time I won’t.”

“Good. Because it’s true.”

The way he looked at her, she believed him. She also believed that if she let herself, before the end of the evening they’d be in bed, making love.

Smiling, he got to his feet. “Why don’t I help you clear the table?”

“You don’t have to—”

“I know. I want to.”

She watched as he rolled up the sleeves of his black sweater and started gathering the dessert dishes. Suddenly, a chill pierced through her body with the sharpness of an ice pick. Ingrained into the skin under the dark hairs on his forearm was the tattoo of a skull.

He must have seen that she was staring at it because he said: “A remnant of my Goth days. When I was young and grim and obsessed with death.”

He headed toward the kitchen with the dishes, but she didn’t go with him. She just stood there, thinking about the black, blue, and red skull, with black holes where the eyes and nose should be and its mouth grinning with the rictus of death. For the first time that night she realized that she was alone in her house—the one place she felt safe—with a man she did not know. What did it matter that she’d liked the way he looked? Or that he’d been so charming and clever when he’d photographed her? Or that he worked for
Luminary World
magazine and that Wendy had assigned him to take her pictures? Had she called Wendy to ask
about him? No. She’d called no one. Chris Palmer was a stranger.

All evening he’d asked her questions and she’d told him about herself. The first thing he’d told her about himself all night was that he had a sweet tooth. Now he’d told her that the skull on his arm was a relic from years ago. But she had no idea if he was telling the truth. Maybe it wasn’t left over from the past; maybe it was very much a part of his current life. Maybe the black, blue, and red skull, five inches long and the width of his muscular forearm, meant that Chris Palmer was violent and sadistic. Maybe King had sensed this about him and that was why he’d kept howling at him. Maybe Chris Palmer was the man who had—