Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (35 page)

She heard a sound behind her and turned to see Peter coming out of the kitchen, getting his bearings. In his hand was the large knife that she’d used to prepare her dinner.

King had been with Kelly; now he ran toward Peter as Peter started unsteadily down the hall toward the front door.

“Get out of here, you fucking dog!” Peter shouted at him as King ran through his legs. He pushed King out of the way and continued toward Kelly.

Kelly turned toward the street again. Her heart was beating
so fast she felt it would burst. Death was only a few steps behind her, but looking out on the street it felt like death was in front of her, too, that she would literally die if she went outside onto the tree-lined street that she had known all her life.

In that instant, she knew only one thing: She wanted to live, not only for herself, but for her children. Closing her eyes, she let go of the doorjamb, crossed the threshold onto the stoop, and, opening her eyes, descended the steps on her crutches, ignoring the pain in her ankle. Reaching the sidewalk, she realized that she was still alive, and she kept going.

Knife in hand, Peter ran onto the stoop. Enraged by what Kelly had done to him, he was determined to kill her even if it meant stabbing her in the street in front of anybody who might be walking by. He was so intent on catching up to her that he didn’t notice King until the dog ran between his legs, and Peter felt himself stumbling over the husky’s strong, muscular body and falling onto the cement steps.

Kelly was across the street before she allowed herself to glance back over her shoulder. She was startled to see Peter Heath sprawled headfirst down the steps of the brownstone. He wasn’t moving. King was sniffing him.

She stood where she was and started to catch her breath, full of wonder that she had escaped death by daring to do something that had seemed impossible to her for so long. She was outside the brownstone; she was like everybody else who could leave their houses. It was what people did; it was what she had done her whole life until the day after Julie had left for college.

But that wasn’t exactly true, was it?

She
hadn’t
done it for her whole life; there was another time that she’d been afraid to leave the brownstone. It was a long time ago, when her grandmother was alive. It was when she’d first
come to live with her grandmother after her parents died.

For several months she’d been afraid to leave her grandmother’s side. That had meant that the only place she’d go besides the three floors of the house was the garden, where her grandmother would come with her. Her parents had left so suddenly that she’d been terrified of being abandoned again by the only family she had left.

Little by little her grandmother had taught her about astrology and had increased her trust in the world, and eventually she had gone out of the house again. But late this past summer, with Jeff already away at school, Julie’s leaving for college, too, had triggered her fear of abandonment all over again. That was why she’d been afraid to leave the brownstone. But she was no longer afraid.

She’d known that Pluto’s conjuncting her Mars and Mars’s squaring her Pluto would bring up the past, secrets, things that had been hidden. She had been right: the reason she’d been agoraphobic had been hidden in her past all along. And so was the reason that Peter Heath had wanted to kill her. She had found the key.

She heard the shrill sound of brakes and turned to see that a black car had sped to the curb in the middle of the street. A man well over six feet tall jumped out of the car, and she recognized that it was Detective Stevens.

“Are you okay?” he asked, running up to her.

“Yes.” She looked at Peter Heath again. He was still not moving.

Stevens took out his gun and ran up to Peter’s body. Kneeling down, he could see that Peter had fallen onto a knife and that the cement beneath where the knife had entered his chest was covered with blood. He also saw that Peter was still breathing,
and as he listened, he heard him faintly crying. He kept his gun on Peter, took out his cell phone, and made a call.

“Get me an ambulance,” he said into his phone.

Slowly, Kelly walked on her crutches toward her house. She stood on the sidewalk and looked up at Stevens.

“How did you know?” she asked Stevens.

“I can’t explain,” he told her. “I just kept thinking, what if Winslow was wrong? What if it wasn’t the same man?”

Kelly looked at Peter Heath’s body on the steps and heard his whimpering. “He kept saying I made his mother leave his father,” she said to Stevens. “I don’t believe his mother left. I don’t believe she could. I believe his father would’ve killed her if she tried. I was very young, and I remember how frightened I was for her. I think you should look for her body.”

Joe Heath’s hands shook as he stood in the basement of his house, watching two men from the police department digging a hole in the earth beneath the cement he’d poured twenty years before. Behind him was the worktable where he’d sat drinking his beer and watching Kelly York, thanks to the cameras and microphones his son had planted in her house. His hands weren’t shaking because he was afraid. He
was
afraid, but his hands always shook when he hadn’t had a drink for a while, and he’d had to stand there with two detectives for an hour, at least, without a beer or anything stronger to give him courage while the other policemen had jackhammered through the cement and then used crowbars to lift the broken chunks off to the side so they could shovel into the dirt.

He knew the policemen were getting close. He brought a hand to his face and felt it shaking as he touched his cheek, trying
to comfort himself, telling himself that it didn’t matter anyway. His eyes stayed on the cop who was digging nearest him. The cop had already dug out three shovelfuls of dirt. Now he was digging a fourth shovelful. The cop threw the fourth shovelful of earth onto the cement and was about to dig into the ground again when he stopped and stared down into the hole. Joe Heath saw what the cop saw: the bones of a rib cage. He started sobbing, his whole body shaking; he knew it did matter. He had killed his wife, and for all these years, he had hidden it from everybody, including his son; there was no hiding it anymore.

Detective Stevens looked at the bloated old man with the dull eyes and red, blotchy face, body and soul ruined by alcohol. As Stevens watched the detective from the Bensonhurst division put the cuffs on Joe Heath, he thought of Heath’s son in the hospital and wondered if Peter would survive the wound in his abdomen that he’d gotten from falling on the knife. Then Stevens thought about Kelly; he had to call her to tell her that she’d been right again. Helen Heath had never left her husband; she’d been there all the time. Hidden. A dark secret of the past.

I
T WAS THE
S
ATURDAY
after Thanksgiving, and Kelly was at Merkin Hall for Sarah’s concert. She loved being there to hear Sarah play, and she loved wearing the red dress she’d bought for the occasion. The dress symbolized her sense of freedom: freedom to come and go from her house as she chose, freedom to enjoy her life. She liked being able to go to an event that she cared about and wear a special dress just for the hell of it. She liked being able to enjoy the way the dress looked on her, the way the vivid red contrasted with her blond hair and her dark blue eyes and the way its cut accentuated her height and her trim figure. She was no longer afraid to be herself.

She loved that Jeff and Julie were there with her to hear Sarah. They sat on either side of Kelly, holding her hands. Looking at them, she recognized once again that they were handsome, vital young adults, even though they were and always would be her children.

Emma was there, too, sitting between Jeff and Sarah’s parents, Rose and Sam. Rose had been home for three weeks and was able to get around with a cane; she was rehabilitating more quickly than the doctors had first predicted. Kelly saw the pride in Rose’s and Sam’s eyes as they waited for the curtain to rise on their daughter’s quartet. The aisle seat next to Sam was empty, and Sam had placed his coat on it. Every now and then he’d glance
over his shoulder as if he was expecting someone.

Kelly leaned over Jeff and Emma. “Who’s the seat for?” she asked Sam.

“Our future son-in-law,” Sam told her. He smiled at Kelly mysteriously, and she noticed that Rose was smiling, too.

The house lights began to dim, and Kelly turned her attention to the front of the concert hall. A moment later she felt Jeff moving beside her and, looking in his direction, saw Kevin taking the empty seat next to his future parents-in-law. Kevin met her eyes and smiled warmly, and then all of them sat back in their seats and focused on the stage.

Under the brilliant stage lights, Sarah’s quartet started walking onto the stage. Sarah was first to enter. She looked radiant in her long black dress, carrying her violin, her back straight, her black hair shining like onyx. She walked to her chair and gracefully sat down. As the other members of the group took their seats, Kelly reflected that, since the time of danger was over now, it was the time for second chances and adventure. That’s what she’d seen in the stars, and it was already happening around her. Kevin had broken up with his fiancée, Sarah had given him another chance, and they were starting over; maybe it was time for Kelly to call Chris Palmer and apologize to him and hope that he would give her another chance, too. And if he wouldn’t, then, for the first time in a long time, she knew that she was open to meeting someone.

Sarah applied her bow to her violin and, with the other members of her group, played the haunting first notes of Janáček’s String Quartet no. 1. As the rich melancholy music filled the hall, Kelly lost herself in its beauty.

G
EORGIA
F
RONTIERE WAS AN
author, a businesswoman, a performer, and a philanthropist—a woman who lived life to the fullest.

Frontiere was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Lucia Pamela Irwin, Miss St. Louis of 1926, KMOX radio’s “gal about town,” and the leader of America’s first all-girl orchestra, and Reginald Irwin, an insurance salesman and businessman.

Frontiere had early aspirations to work as an opera singer, eventually travelling to Milan to train with the Milan Opera. By the age of ten, she was performing along with her mother and brother in the singing group the Pamela Trio. The group traveled the state and entertained at ballrooms and state fairs. A few years later, the family moved to Fresno, California, where Frontiere performed at dinner theatres alongside her mother in a duo, the Pamela Sisters.

In the late 1950s, Frontiere moved to Miami and had her own television interview show. Later, she made appearances as part of NBC’s
Today
show cast. She also performed as a nightclub singer in Miami.

While living in Miami, Frontiere was introduced to the then Baltimore Colts owner, Carroll Rosenbloom, at a party hosted by Joseph Kennedy at his Palm Beach estate in 1957. Frontiere married Rosenbloom, who became her fifth husband, in 1960.

In 1972, Rosenbloom traded ownership of the Baltimore Colts for ownership of the Los Angeles Rams. During this time, the couple resided in Bel Air, California, and Frontiere became a part of the Los Angeles social scene, hosting numerous parties and philanthropic events. Tragically, Rosenbloom died in 1979 in Golden Beach, Florida.

Upon her husband’s passing, Frontiere inherited a majority ownership stake in the Los Angeles Rams. She was often dubbed the first female owner of a National Football League franchise, although the NFL reported that she was actually the second female majority owner. However, during Frontiere’s tenure, she was the only active female majority owner in the NFL.

During her years as owner, Frontiere moved the Rams twice. In 1980 she relocated them from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to Anaheim (a deal Rosenbloom made in 1978). Then she moved the team to St. Louis in 1995.

Throughout her career, Frontiere was devoted to a range of philanthropic causes. In 1991, she made a $1 million donation to the Fulfillment Fund, which provides support systems to help underprivileged students pursue higher education. She was also an outspoken supporter of the NFL Alumni Association. In 1997, she spearheaded the formation of the St. Louis Rams Foundation, which has contributed more than $7 million to charities in the St. Louis area.

Always a patron of the arts, in 2000, Frontiere donated $1 million to help build a 5,500-seat amphitheater, the Frontiere Performing Arts Pavilion, located in the Sedona Cultural Park in Arizona. She also produced the Tony-nominated August Wilson play
Radio Golf
and Richard Dresser’s
Below the Belt
.

Frontiere also sat on numerous boards and was awarded an honorary doctor of philanthropy from Pepperdine University.

Preview of:

K
ELLY WAS SITTING AT
the desk in her office on the first floor of her brownstone, thinking about the two women she had interviewed to take the place of her assistant, Sarah, when the doorbell rang. It was Sunday, and Kelly knew she had no appointments with clients coming to see her so she could do their astrological charts. She heard the doorbell ring again and then an insistent knock. She looked out her office window and saw, standing on the stoop at the front door, a young woman in her early twenties. She had dark hair midway to her shoulders and was wearing earmuffs, an expensively tailored brown woolen coat, a brown scarf gathered around her neck and chin to protect her from the frigid January wind, and a very troubled expression on her pretty face.