Horoscope: The Astrology Murders Read Online Free PDF

especially now. Reflecting on this, she asked herself for the millionth time why Kelly Elizabeth York—KEY—whom so many people considered the key to solving their problems, couldn’t solve her own.

Two
    I T WAS JUST BEFORE six o’clock and the end of Kelly’s workday. She’d seen five clients after Lewis Farrell and had repeated the same process with all of them. It wasn’t quite sunset yet, but the sky was already darkening. She felt a little tired, but in a good way, a productive way. She was taking notes on her last client, a woman of fifty who was thinking about embarking on a new career, when Sarah knocked and came into her office. Kelly looked up.
    “I’ve got an extra ticket to the opera tonight, and I’d like you to come. They’re doing
Faust
. My father was supposed to go, but he’s visiting my mother, and he wants to stay with her for the whole evening.”
    “How is she?” Kelly asked.
    “Her doctor says she’s doing well. She’s gotten back more movement in her left arm. But she’s still not able to talk yet.”
    “Please tell your father to send her my love.”
    “I will. How about going to
Faust
with me? Kevin’s singing the title role.”
    “I wish I could, but—” she looked at the pages with her clients’ information spread out on her desk—”I’ve got too much work to do.”
    “You’ve been at it all day. Why not just take the night off?”
    Kelly picked up her pen again. “I can’t. I don’t want to fallbehind. Congratulate Kevin for me.”
    The way Kelly said this, Sarah knew the subject was closed. She watched, concerned, as Kelly began to write again on the sheet of yellow paper in front of her. Sarah sighed, went back to her office, and put on her coat. Emma was standing at the rear of the hallway, outside the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron when Sarah emerged from her office.
    “She’s not going,” Sarah told her.
    “But she loves opera! And not even to see Kevin?”
    “She didn’t even consider it.”
    Emma’s face was as despondent as Sarah’s voice had been when she delivered the news. For a moment they just looked at each other; then Sarah shrugged sadly and left for the night.
    In her office, Kelly sat at her desk, miserable. She was ashamed of lying, of pretending it was her work that kept her from going to the opera and from visiting Sarah’s mother, Rose. She’d known Rose most of her life, and she loved her—Rose had been as important a part of her growing up as Emma had been—yet in the weeks since Rose had had a stroke, all Kelly had been able to do was to write her a letter telling her how much she loved her and wanted her to get well and to send flowers with Sarah when Sarah visited her. Kelly was sure Sarah knew, just as Emma knew, that it was something other than the demands of her schedule that was making her act as she did, but so far they hadn’t forced her to talk about the problem.
    She looked at herself in the mirror on the wall opposite her desk. The satisfaction she’d felt from her work moments before had vanished. She looked as miserable as she felt.

Three
    H E’D NEVER BEEN TO New Kent but he’d driven through it several times on his way to somewhere else. Tonight it was his destination. He parked in the upscale neighborhood where she lived, a block from her house, under a large evergreen that all but hid his car. Not that he was worried about anyone remembering what kind of car it was anyway; it was a fawn-beige Toyota, like millions of others you saw on the road. There was no reason to look at it twice.
    He’d lucked out again. The streetlamps on the block she lived on were spaced far apart, and there were so many trees blocking their light that they didn’t do much good anyway. The moon, blocked by the trees, too, was just a glimmering, ineffectual presence on the street. He was wearing his black clothes again, and he felt like he blended into the night.
    He walked up the driveway to her house. Unlike the last woman