Chapter 3

As she peeked through the windows of the cafe where she’d agreed to meet Abby, Emma could see it was crowded. She’d had ample opportunity to regret her promise to come to this meeting during the one-hour drive in her car. She’d moved at a snail’s pace through the city traffic, where she could have spent her day in her lovely garden, enjoying being outdoors with flowers, forests and mountains in the horizon and not a person for miles.
“Oh well,” Emma sighed. A promise was a promise; even when you’d been blackmailed into it. And it was a small comfort that the café was beautifully situated on the seafront, especially on a day like today that was quiet and sunny.
Emma took a firm grip on herself, opened the door and stepped inside. Even though there were a lot of customers, she quickly spotted Abigail, who had gotten halfway up from her chair at a table near the back wall and waved at her eagerly: “Emma – over here!”
Emma managed a half-hearted wave and started to zigzag her way among the tables to get to Abigail and the woman she sat with.
Isabella Garcia was around thirty years old; beautiful, with dark, wavy hair, a narrow, graceful face and large, dark eyes that were currently swollen from crying.
She got up from her chair and reached out her hand: “Isabella”, she introduced herself. “And you must be Emma. It’s so sweet of you to come all this way”.
“But of course.” Emma felt a little embarrassed at the thought of how much she’d wanted to turn around and go back to the sunny peace of the log cabin.
Seated at the table that Abigail had managed to keep for them, Emma ordered a cup of tea and a packet of biscuits from the waitress who’d materialized from the buzzing crowd.
“Did you have a nice drive here?” Abigail leaned inquiringly over the table. Her little, round face with the always eager blue eyes was framed with a lush head of blonde hair, which she’d tried to tame that day by putting it up with a couple of clips. The result was so-so – quite a few blonde wisps had torn loose and fringed the face. Almost like a description of Abigail herself – too eager to bridle, Emma thought with an affectionate smile for her friend.
“Yes, thank you, it was fine. The traffic was a bit slow, but the nice weather made up for it” she said lightly, before she turned her attention to the dark Isabella.
“I’m really sorry for your loss” she said quietly.
Isabella bowed her head, partly to acknowledge the condolences, partly to hide the tears that were threatening once again.
“Do you feel like telling me what happened?” Emma added softly.
“Yes. My sister has been killed. My little sister. She was only twenty-eight, just two years younger than me.” Isabella slowly began. “She was murdered, as she was on her way home from work late at night three days ago. She…” Isabella paused for a second to repress her emotions. “She was beaten to death; had her head bashed in, as she was heading through that park over there”. Isabella made a vague, undefined gesture with her hand to illustrate that ‘over there’ was closer to the city centre than the coastline.
“Do you have any idea why? I mean what the motive might have been?” Emma asked cautiously.
“No, that’s the thing! The police have no leads to work on, they say. Until recently she lived with an abusive boyfriend, Brian, whom she was afraid of. She fled from him and lived in a shelter for women for a while, until she got her own apartment. Yeah well, apartment; it’s a bedroom with a kitchenette and a shower, but at least it was her own, and it was located conveniently for everything. She could walk to and from work, as…”
Isabella fell quiet for a second while she fought her feelings.
“Has any DNA been found?” Emma asked with caution.
“No. The police say that the place where Sophia was found didn’t show any signs at all of anyone else. If they could get away with saying that she’d killed herself by repeatedly hitting her own head with something heavy, I bet they would!”
Isabella’s eyes flared, and she angrily stomped her foot against the floor.
“The fiery, Latin temper certainly doesn’t deny itself” Emma thought. “But at least a temper is better than feeling powerless”.
“I’m sorry”. Isabella looked down for a moment. “But it’s just so… so…”
“Yes, it’s horrible. Terrible”. Emma compassionately took the young woman’s hand and squeezed it.
“Have the police talked to Brian – uh, your sister’s ex-boyfriend?” she asked.
“Yes, but he has an alibi for that night – was with his friends, or so they say. Knowing Brian, he could easily have bought himself an alibi. He was oh so sweet and gentle and in love. But as soon as Sophia had moved in with him, he showed another face. He beat her up every time he was dissatisfied. And at the end that was all the time. Imagined my sister had other men.”
Isabella made an angry snort. “As if she would ever dream of something like that! After Sophia moved away from him – well, ‘ran away’ covers it better – he looked her up several times; waited for her, when she got off work, especially after her night shifts. It’d be just like Brian to go crazy and beat her to death”. Isabella searched her purse and produced a small handkerchief that she covered her eyes with.
“But the police must have checked his alibi, since they think they can rule him out?” Emma mused and added: “Are there any other suspects – other people who could have had a motive?”
“Sophia was well liked by everyone she came into contact with”, Abigail interjected from the other side of the table. “She was a very gentle person; kind to everybody. If anything, she was maybe a little too self-effacing, especially after those horrendous experiences with Brian because she had to please him all the time to avoid outbursts. Isn’t that right, Bella?” Abby glanced sideways at her friend to see if she was okay to take over again. Bella nodded at her, and Abby took it as a signal, got up from the table and grabbed her purse.
“Now that you two have met, I’ll leave you. I know from experience that interpreting a horoscope is a very personal thing. So, um… I’ll retreat. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” She looked first at Isabella and then at Emma. Both nodded their agreement.

After Abby had left the café, the two at the table ordered some more tea. The conversation was a little slow at first, as they tried to get a feeling of each other. After some time, Emma thought it was okay to close in on the subject they’d come to talk about.
“Did she tell you about her life – your sister? Were you close?”
“Yes, we… we were together pretty much every day in our spare time, you know, during the day. And sometimes we also spoke on the phone, whenever our work left time for it”.
Isabella – or Bella, as her friends called her – dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, then resolutely put it back in her purse.
“And…?”
“I don’t think there was anything sort of… Well, she’d become a little nervous after all the trouble with Brian. No wonder. She’d started to become a little paranoid, in my opinion. Sometimes she said that she felt watched, spied on. Naturally, she assumed it was Brian, who was up to something, but…”
“But?”
“Well, it’s just that Brian hasn’t really ever had a talent for hiding his motives – or himself for that matter. So, as I said to her, it had to be something she imagined, because she’d been through such a turbulent period in her life. But now… it seems as though she was right…. if it isn’t some crazy psychopath, killing random people just for fun”. Isabella shuddered.
“And what’s more – now I feel I’m becoming paranoid. Since Sophia’s death I often feel like… yeah, as she described it… like someone is watching me.”
“Well, that’s not so strange, considering all the violent events that’ve happened around you”, Emma interjected. “Abby told me on the phone that you wanted to meet me because you thought I could help you somehow. What did you specifically think of?” Emma asked gently, as she gave the other woman’s hand a little squeeze again.
“Well, Abby tells me you’re an astrologer. I thought maybe you could see something… anything that might indicate which direction to search to find that… that beastly, vile person”.
“Yes, well, astrology isn’t an exact science. It can give pointers as to which period of your life you’re in, and perhaps some suggestions as to how you can work with the challenges to come out in one piece on the other side of hard times”.
Emma could have bitten her tongue off in that moment – ‘come out in one piece!’ – what a thing to say in such a situation. But Isabella didn’t seem to have noticed the unfortunate choice of words.
“OK. At least I can take a look at your sister’s horoscope.” She found her purse and from its depths took out her laptop, which she always carried with her. Pushing her cup aside, she placed the computer on the table in front of her and turned it on.
She found her astrology program and wrote “Sophia – homicide” and the date of her death.
“What’s your sister’s birth date, Isabella? I’ll need the date and time of her birth as accurately as possible.”
Bella gave her the wanted data, and from the fluent way it was done, Emma guessed that it was either something the sisters had done before – or maybe Bella had been instructed thoroughly by Abby, before she’d contacted Emma.
“So, your sister was a Virgo” she noted shortly after. “Was she very meticulous about things?” she asked with a little smile.
“Oh yes. Sophia couldn’t get things orderly enough; almost finicky, and she was also very service-minded”, Bella reminisced mournfully. “It suited her to a tee to be employed in a place, where she could help people. And then she also got to meet a lot of interesting people.”
“A true Virgo then”, Emma smiled fondly and continued for a moment tapping in data.
She studied the diagram of the birth chart that showed up on the screen – now also with the transits drawn in.
“Well, at first look I’d say it’s pretty obvious that there have been problems in a relationship not too long ago – but those tensions are gone. There’s nothing immediately suggesting that her ex-boyfriend had something to do with the assault on your sister… seen from an astrological perspective”.
Emma looked up and glanced quickly at Isabella before she refocused on the interpretation of the diagram on the screen.
Falling quiet for a while with a concentrated frown, Emma studied the screen. Aha, there seemed to be something here … Sophia’s 12th house– the area for secrets, the subconscious, hidden enemies, had been heavily activated at the time of her death… Among the many transits the planet Pluto formed a direct opposition to Saturn in the 6th house. Pluto – the planet for transformation, or for Death, opposing the planet of Fate, Saturn that was situated in the house for work and health. Uranus for ‘suddenness’ and Neptune for opacity, lies and deceptions were also a part of the whole field of tension. All in all, it was very ill-fated – as the events had proved.
“Did you sister have any problems at work recently?” she asked Isabella.
“Secrets or something like that – maybe something she was afraid of or that made her feel uncomfortable?”
Isabella’s eyes turned distant. Clearly, she was thinking hard about it. “Well, as I said she’d become a little… well, paranoid sounds wrong now, after what happened, since it turned out she had good reasons to be scared. It was mostly something… I don’t quite know how to describe it – more a sense of something threatening her, rather than anything specific.”
Emma nodded. Yes, that was probably how the influence of Neptune would have worked in that constellation – something that didn’t really want to reveal itself but could only be sensed; ‘something’ that was just an intrusive feeling.
“And then, yeah… she’d also felt very clumsy, mentally I mean, lately. She told me she’d felt so stupid on several occasions”.
“What happened at those occasions?”
“The thing I remember most clearly was that she told me, she’d fallen into a reverie, when she was with a guest as floor manager. She kept coming back to that because she thought she’d looked incredibly stupid and indiscreet. She said she’d just stood there almost gawking at the poor guy for she didn’t know how long”.
“Did she say what made her do it?”
“Nah – she was just so absentminded at the time. And then she said she thought there was something familiar about the guest, and… well, she fell into a reverie. Naturally, that made the guest a little irritated, and it didn’t make it any better that he was really attractive, or so Sophia told me. She was really annoyed with herself, and worried he maybe thought that she saw him as some kind of Adonis, God’s gift to women – and she certainly wasn’t interested in anything like that, after everything that happened with Brian, to put it mildly”. Isabella looked down.
“No. Of course not”. Emma was pensive for a second. “Did your sister at any point mention how the man looked; I mean some kind of description?”
“No. Actually she didn’t. Just that it was on the floor she took care of – that is the fifth floor. Do you think there is connection between…?” Isabella’s eyes widened.
“Naturally I can’t say. As I mentioned, astrology isn’t an exact science. But I think you should go to the police and tell them what you’ve told me now. If they have so few leads to go on, it should be worth it for them to be thorough”, Emma said, and immediately added:
“But I wouldn’t mention that it’s an astrologer that has made you think about that episode. I kind of have a feeling that the police aren’t the most prominent admirers of The Riddles of the Universe…” she smiled ironically.
“You could just say that you remembered what your sister told you, and that you hadn’t thought about it earlier as something important – but that now, since there seems to be no leads…” she added.
They each ordered one more cup of tea and sat and talked a little more for a while, until Emma glanced out the window and realized she’d better return home. Time had passed a lot faster, than she’d noticed.
“I’d better get going. It’ll be dark soon, and I have long drive ahead of me”, she said.
“Oh, I’m sorry you have to drive so far, and that you’ve even taken all that trouble. But I’m deeply grateful that you took the time to talk to me”. Isabella stretched out her hand for a goodbye.
Emma ignored the hand and instead put her arms around the young woman, giving her a warm hug.
“No need to thank me. Maybe it won’t even be any help, after all. But I’m glad to have met you.  You take care of yourself. You may not think so now, but you will get through this. Call me and let me know what happens, and if there’s anything else I can do to help…”
She let go of Isabella and fished out a business card from her purse, which Isabella accepted gratefully.
They walked together out to the parking lot, where they said goodbye again, before Emma got in her car and with one last wave backed out and drove away.
Her last glimpse of Isabella in the rearview mirror was of the young woman waving at her in the deepening dusk.

The killer put down the newspaper, threw a few dollars on the red checkered tablecloth and briskly walked to the door.
Indeed. His impulse to follow the sister had been right. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to witness this interesting meeting between the three women.
He frowned a little, as he saw the women in his mind’s eye: The dark sister, the blonde chatterbox, who’d pretty quickly left the table, and then the little brunette, who conjured up events on a computer screen. He’d never thought he’d feel threatened by a… stargazer, for heaven’s sake. But her deductions and questions had been a little too sharp – for her own good.
And her advice to the sister to go to the police with her little story… well that certainly didn’t bode well. Damn!
Description – one could easily be procured, if anyone started to dig a little too deep into which guests had lived on the fifth floor of the hotel during that period. Good thing that his old line of business had made him skilled in the art of masking himself.
The café door swung closed after him, while he peered out over the parking lot. Yes, there she was the dark one, waving goodbye. How appropriate…