Love Loyal and True (Must Love Diamonds 2)
Page 81
Someone better answer soon. He sounded like a fucking broken record.
The detective thrust a slip of paper his way, and when he took it, the words Search Warrant flashed like a neon sign. As he skimmed the document, Roxanna Kent, Lift Your Spirit, and Spirit Guides Now all jumped out at him.
That dread in his stomach solidified into a heavy ball.
“I told you yesterday I was following a new lead. How long have you known Ms. Kent?”
He jerked his head up to stare at the guy. “She and my brother have been friends for the past six years. She and I have, ah, recently started dating.”
Kushner’s eyebrows rose. “Interesting.”
“Not really.” He glanced down at the wedding ring on the guy’s finger, then looked at the search warrant again as he muttered, “It happens.”
“She really lets you see her books?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You come across anything out of the ordinary?”
Fuck. What was he supposed to say to that?
I’m not talking until my lawyer is present.
Only he wasn’t the one being investigated.
“I only started helping her out a couple of weeks ago. Her previous accountant was a woman by the name of Mirela Rose.”
A blond woman in plain clothes searching through one of Roxanna’s file cabinets looked up at that name, and Loyal’s neck tingled. She met his gaze for a brief second, shifted her pointed look to the detective beside him, then went back to searching.
“May I ask what exactly you’re looking for?”
“You going to help us find it?”
Loyal fought to not clench his jaw in irritation and waited.
“Do you know when Ms. Kent will be back?”
“She’s at lunch, so maybe a half-hour or so?”
“That’s what I told them,” Tessa chimed in from behind them.
The detective’s lips thinned with his glance in her direction, then he returned his attention to Loyal. “Did you know your girlfriend used to operate Spirit Guides Now with Leander Tanner?”
His eyebrows rose in disbelief. “What? No way.”
For good measure, he repeated the detective’s words in his head, and again, had the same immediate reaction.
No fucking way she worked for that scammer—or with him for that matter.
Kushner gave him a grim smile. As the light from overhead glinted off his shiny scalp, Loyal read the pity in his eyes.
“They ran the hotline for a little over three years,” the detective revealed. “She didn’t open this shop until after the guy skipped town.”
He frowned. “How come you didn’t go after her then?”
“We didn’t know who she was until last week. We got a complaint from a woman she defrauded for twelve-hundred dollars.”
When he heard that number, that fucking dread ball in his stomach grew spikes. “How?”