Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Made the Invoices
Naomi Price chose a booth facing the door at a diner near Forest Park.
She was thirty-one, with tired eyes and a canvas work bag wedged tightly between her shoes. Abigail recognized her as Spencer’s former bookkeeper, though Spencer had once described her as “too emotional to handle business.”
“You were the woman on the phone,” Abigail said.
Naomi looked down at her coffee. “Yes.”
“Were you helping him?”
“At first, I didn’t understand what I was helping with.”
Naomi opened her laptop and showed Abigail a folder of invoice templates. They carried the names of medical transport companies, specialty pharmacies, and an infusion provider called Midwest Advanced Care.
They looked official. Each contained Spencer’s patient number, appointment dates, and balances ranging from nine hundred to six thousand dollars.
None of the companies existed.
“Spencer told me a chain of clinics wanted sample billing forms,” Naomi said. “Creating forms is normal work for a print shop. Then I saw checks from you being deposited into his merchant account.”
Abigail recognized every amount.
The forty-eight hundred dollars she believed had paid for an experimental medication had covered overdue payroll taxes. Another check had paid the shop’s landlord. The money for a private ambulance had been transferred directly to Spencer’s personal credit card.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Naomi’s fingers closed around her coffee cup. “Because I signed off on some of the files. When I confronted him, he said he’d tell the police I designed the whole thing.”
The waitress refilled their cups. Neither woman spoke until she left.
Naomi then showed Abigail an email Spencer had sent three months earlier.
Make the next invoice look urgent. She asks fewer questions when she’s afraid.
Abigail pushed the laptop away.
“How much?”
“From the checks I found, seventy-eight thousand four hundred dollars.”
Abigail had given him more than that. She had also paid his rent, insurance, groceries, and business debts directly.
Naomi reached into her bag and removed a bank notice.
“This came to the shop yesterday. Spencer used your Social Security number to guarantee a business line of credit.”
The outstanding balance was ninety-two thousand dollars.
At the bottom of the application appeared Abigail’s signature.
May you like
She had never seen the document before.
Naomi watched her carefully. “The fake hospital bills weren’t the beginning, Mrs. Riley. They were how he learned you wouldn’t check.”
