“Us too.” Greeley tapped his and Ronan’s lists.
“Says here her last appointment was with Cope on December 15th, of last year. Do you remember her?”
Cope nodded. “I sure do. Anita was a lovely woman. She lived in Beverly with her husband Tom. They’d been married for almost twenty years and had no kids of their own, but Anita did.”
“Had that child passed over?” Ronan asked, looking as if he were scared to hear the answer.
“No.” Cope shook his head. “Anita had given her up for adoption. She’d gotten pregnant during her senior year of high school and managed to hide it until after graduation. She told her mother, who gave her three options; marry the father, give the baby up for adoption, or keep her out-of-wedlock baby and go live somewhere else.”
“That’s pretty harsh.” Greeley frowned.
“It was,” Cope shivered. “We talked about this during my first reading with her in November and I could feel Anita’s grief rolling off her in waves. I’d never encountered grief that powerful before. Anita said she’d named the child Christina and brought the receiving blanket the baby had been swaddled in while they were at the hospital. I wasn’t able to find anything using my gift. At the end of the session, I advised Anita to do those genealogy kits like Ancestry or 23 and Me. A lot of people who are adopted submit their DNA to those sites hoping to connect with their birth parents or a sibling.”
“Did she do that?” Fitz asked.
Cope nodded. “She did. Anita booked another appointment with me and brought the results with her. A young woman had matched Anita with enough DNA in common for this woman to be her daughter. The only problem was that the woman’s profile was private. All we could see was that her first name was Amelia. Anita was hoping I could use my gift to find out her last name and maybe an address.”
“Can you do that?” Greeley asked, his eyes wide.
“Sometimes,” Ten said. “I can do it if I’m in the room with the same person. I read them and pick up personal information. Names of kids, spouses, job titles, some address information.”
“It’s the same for me, but since all we had was the infant’s blanket and an internet printout from the genealogy website, I had nothing else to go on.” Cope sighed, sounding like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “I suggested that she use the email feature. Amelia’s profile was private, but each member of the website can be reached through the site’s messaging platform. Anita left with a bounce in her step.”
“I’m guessing that’s not where the story ends.” Fitz tapped his pen against his legal pad.
“It’s not. Anita came back a week later distraught because her message hadn’t been responded to.”
“I heard her crying from my office and knocked on the door to see if there was anything I could do to help,” Ten said softly. “Turned out, there wasn’t. I suggested she contact a private investigator. I knew you all took those kinds of cases and recommended she call Doug Masters. I didn’t get the best feeling from her and thought it would be a bad idea to recommend her to you, Ronan.”
“Did Masters find Amelia?” Ronan asked.
“He did.” Cope offered a sad smile. “Anita called to let me know she was on her way to visit Amelia and that was the last I heard from her. Carson saw her obit online two days later. Anita had been in a horrible car accident. She’d hit a telephone pole at sixty miles per hour. She was alive when the medics got to the scene, but she passed in the ambulance on the way to the hospital in Newburyport. We sent a condolence card to her husband Tom,but never heard anything back from him. To the best of my knowledge, he’s never booked an appointment with us.”
“I’ll reach out to Tom as well,” Fitz said, copying information from his list to the note pad. “The last three names on the frequent flier list are; Steven P. Smith, Anna Weston, and Jason Zane.”
“I know Jason,” Ten said. “He’s one of my clients. His wife cheated on him back in 2022. Jason came to me to see if what she’d told me was the truth and to see if there had been other affairs.”
“Were there?” Ronan asked, having a feeling he already knew the answer.
“Oh, yeah,dozens.” Ten shook his head. “I made a snap decision not to tell him about any of the other lovers, figuring that would be that. But it wasn’t. Jason made appointments with me every other month. He’d bring a pair of his wife’s panties sealed in a zipper bag for me to test with my gift to see if she’d been faithful, or not. Spoiler alert, it was alwaysnot. My last appointment with him was just before Thanksgiving. I suggested that what Jason and his wife needed was therapy, not a psychic. I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Do you think he’s capable of writing these letters?” Fitz asked.
Ten nodded. “To be honest, he scared the hell out of me. Jason has a stalker-type personality. I could always feel his volcanic rage simmering under the surface whenever he came into the shop. I have a feeling letters would be the least of our worries if Jason were behind this, and he only ever saw me, not Cope, Carson, or Cole.”
“Let’s start with those three people. Kim Defoe, Anita Peters, and Jason Zane. Ronan and Greeley will work them up and thenwe’ll make a plan of action. Does that work for you two?” Fitz pointed back and forth between Ten and Cope. Both nodded their agreement.
“I’ve never heard of Jason Zane before. Why didn’t you ever tell me about him?” Ronan asked, after Fitz, Greeley, and Cope left the conference room. He’d had goosebumps the entire time Ten was telling the story about working with Zane.
“I didn’t want to scare you unless there was a reason. Up until now, he’d never given me a reason.”
“I’ll check him out.” Ronan stood up and gathered his notes. “Next time you have a psycho client, let me know. I can run a background check and make sure you’re safe.”
“I will,” Ten agreed easily before hugging Ronan and leaving the room.
Ronan knew there was no way to keep Tennyson safe at all times. Jason Zane sounded like he had the same kind of dangerous personality his ex-husband Josh had. No matter if Jason was the letter writer or not, Ronan would make sure he never showed his face at West Side Magick again.
12
