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He summoned a polite smile and softened his tone as he indicated the screen. “Is it possible for me to get a printed copy of that? You’re going to have the computer, and now you have the sign-in information, so it’s not like I’m taking anything you won’t still have.”
She hesitated, but then relented with another terse nod.
Loyal grabbed the papers hot off the printer and met Honor in front of the reading room beads. “I’m going to the police station.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said. “Asher’s going to meet us there.”
“Gavin Stowe said he’s on the way, too,” Mae advised.
“Thank you.” He thrust the printout in his hand at Tessa. “Look at these names. Do you recognize any of them?”
Her gaze skimmed the top page. “This is from six years ago. I didn’t work here then.”
“I just need to know if any of those people still come to Roxanna for readings?”
She looked a little closer. “Yeah. There’s a handful of people here that are regulars.”
“Mark them for me. Hurry. We need to get going.”
Two minutes later, he and Honor were out the door. He drove his Land Rover while she perused the list.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
He di
dn’t want to say it out loud, but there was no way to avoid it. “It’s her mother.”
“What?”
Honor’s confusion told him Roxanna probably didn’t talk about the woman to many people. He didn’t blame her. The bitch wasn’t worth a second of her daughter’s time or consideration.
Only now, Roxanna was going to be forced to deal with her again, however indirectly. He hated what it might do to her.
“Roxanna’s parents named her after her mother. They share the same exact name.”
Honor’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
“And she said they look very much alike. I would imagine the woman has used that to her advantage over the years. Plus, as her mother, she probably knows Rox’s social, and other information that would let her gain access to stuff she shouldn’t.”
“Her own mom?” Incredulity dripped from the words.
“The woman abandoned the family when she was nine, but showed back up in her life when she was in college. Rox had suppressed who she was for years, trying to make her family happy, but when she reconnected with her mother, the woman helped her to accept who she was and got her to start using her psychic abilities again.”
“Ah—for the hotline,” Honor guessed.
“Yeah, I think so.” Loyal made a left turn and the station was right ahead. “But she was just using her. She said her mom left town abruptly after clearing out her savings of over ten thousand dollars.”
“Holy shit. What a bitch.”
“Yeah. I think she’s the one who worked with Tanner. And I think all the free readings when Rox opened the shop was her way of trying to make up for what her mother did. I was going to call some of her clients from back then that still go to her now, and see what their stories are for the hotline, and now Roxanna.”
“That could help. Not to mention, common sense says if she’d been the one running the hotline scam, the last thing she’d do is stay in town and open a shop under her own name.”
“Exactly.”
Loyal made the final turn into the station lot to park, and took the papers from Honor as they headed inside. At the door, he stepped aside for her and an older lady who’d walked up behind them to enter first.
“Hey man, wait up.”
