I Was His Waiting Room novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: The Double Bill

"Show me," I said.

Ronan frowned. "Show you what?"

"A receipt. One. You said every month."

He took out his phone and scrolled.

"There. September."

Costigan Training letterhead. The same Gmail address I'd never used.

Juniper. Six hundred dollars. Paid.

And at the bottom, the curly little M.

I took a picture of his screen before he could pull it back.

"Hey."

"Ronan. That's not my signature."

"It's a receipt. Nobody signs receipts carefully."

"I never sent you a receipt. I never sent you anything. Who did you pay?"

"Kiera. She passed it on. You said you didn't want me knowing it was from me."

"When did I say that?"

He opened his mouth.

I watched him go back through three years and look for the day.

He didn't find it.

"There's an explanation," he said. He put the phone in his pocket. "I'm not doing this tonight."

He left.

I sent the photo to Niall before the door had stopped swinging.

The Prendergast family office was the top floor of the Prendergast Builders building on Granite Avenue in Milton.

At eight the next morning Niall had both trails laid out on a conference table the length of a bowling lane.

Brendan sat at one end in a hoodie, turning his coin.

"Thirty-six invoices to us," Niall said, laying them in a line. "Nine hundred a month."

He set my photo beside the September one.

"Same month. Same letterhead. Same signature. Six hundred to Ronan Fahey."

"So she billed the same dog twice."

"Fifteen hundred a month," Niall said. "If Ronan paid her the whole three years, that's fifty-four thousand dollars for a dog that cost zero."

"Plus the twelve thousand a month from us," Brendan said.

I looked at the two pieces of paper side by side.

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