Read Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio for Free Online

punched
the suitcase with his nose, backed away from it, glared at me again, and
threatened to go up yet another octave.
    "He's
unhappy. Maybe he's a neatness freak. You have to unpack anyway, or your
clothes are going to look like they were pressed in an accordion," Callie
took up for him. I was less enthused since I had no desire to ever put my
clothes on again. However, I crawled out of bed and tossed the luggage up on
the spare bed and clicked open the latch. Inside, right on top, was a small
manila folder with the hotel logo in the upper left-hand corner. Elmo sniffed
at it as if it contained a bomb. As I wondered aloud how this had gotten into
my luggage, Callie tore into it and removed a scrap of yellowed paper torn from
some larger document. She flipped the delicate, faded piece of paper over and
stared at it intently, her mind seeming to wander. She placed the scrap of
paper on the writing desk and sank down into the straight-backed, elaborately
scrolled chair and gently rubbed her hands back and forth across the symbols on
the page as if transporting herself into them. I watched her without making any
sound, wondering what this gorgeous woman was thinking, or doing, and why this
scrap of paper seemed to mesmerize her. When she spoke it was quietly and from
a faraway place, as if by speaking softly she could keep the details of that
place in her mind and not scare them away.
    "How
did you get this?" she asked.
    "I
didn't put this in here. Someone's been in my luggage!" I rummaged through
the suitcase and then opened the other bags to make sure there wasn't more than
just an envelope stashed in my belongings. "It had to have been put there
by the bellman or someone who helped unload them in valet parking."
    "But
how would they know to put something astrological in your bag, when it's meant
for me?" Callie asked.
    "Someone
must have seen us together in the bar and knew we'd be sharing a room," I
replied.
    "I
pulled up this astrological chart almost two decades ago for the builder of
this hotel," Callie said, fixated on the yellowed piece of paper.
    "You
were here with the builder? How did that happen?" I held my shirts up to
the light and checked the pockets, for what I wasn't sure.
    "I
was in my early twenties at the time, and I had just met Robert Isaacs. He
brought me to Las Vegas to impress me."
    I
hated any sentence with Robert Isaacs's name in it, the smarmy Marathon Studio
executive who had married Callie Rivers years ago. Their marriage according to
Callie lasted roughly "ten minutes" and went something like I do, I
did, I'm done. She'd tried to explain the reasons she'd accepted his proposal,
and the lessons it had taught her, and the fact that marrying him was somehow
in her personal growth chart, but I still could not grasp the idea that Callie,
who was so in tune with the cosmos, could have tuned out and married a creep
like Robert Isaacs.
    "I
was this young, blond psychic telling the builder about the stars. I remember
that I had just begun to think about everything in the world as having a birth
chart, because a birth is nothing more than a beginning. Everything has a
beginning, middle, and an end—a life span, in essence—and of course I believe
lives recycle," she continued a dialogue with herself. "I told the
owner that this hotel had a birth chart. This is a piece of that chart..."
Her voice trailed off.
    "How
do you know it's from the same chart?" I asked, leaning over her chair and
kissing her shoulders, not really caring all that much about the chart.
    Callie
smiled at me as if I'd asked how she'd recognized one of her own children.
"I know where the planets were...right down to the minute. It's a birth.
You don't forget a birth."
    A
piece of the birth chart of a hotel and casino, I thought in my usual jaded fashion. I am
absolutely mad about a woman who creates birth charts for buildings.
    "I
know what you're thinking." She focused on me for the first time. "He
felt the same way. He asked what