Chapter 3 - FORTY-SEVEN DINNERS
Claire built a list.
Not from memory alone.
Calendar entries.
Photographs.
Grocery receipts.
Mark’s guest messages.
Linda’s birthday events.
Holiday dinners that included executives.
Summer patio meals.
Board weekends.
Product-launch celebrations.
Forty-seven business-related dinners in three years.
That did not mean forty-seven fraudulent reimbursements.
Some may have been legitimate.
Some social.
Some mixed.
Grace wanted records.
Claire still had access to the household email because utility statements and grocery receipts went there.
She searched:
reimbursement.
Then:
culinary.
Then:
MHCS.
The results were worse than she expected.
Invoices.
Dozens.
Each looked professional.
MERCER HOME CULINARY SERVICES.
Descriptions:
menu planning,
food preparation,
event hosting,
service labor,
cleanup.
Rates varied.
$1,200.
$2,700.
$5,100.
One Christmas dinner:
$6,400.
Claire whispered:
“I cooked that.”
Grace nodded.
“Who created the invoices?”
Metadata showed:
MARK MERCER.
Claire closed her eyes.
The bank destination ending 4418 still mattered.
Grace obtained it through divorce discovery.
The account belonged to:
Mercer Administrative Holdings LLC.
Mark controlled it.
Claire stared.
“He billed his own company for my work.”
“Possibly.”
“And paid himself.”
“Possibly.”
“Using my name.”
“Yes.”
Then Grace found something else.
The invoices contained an electronic signature:
Claire M.
Not Claire’s handwriting.
Not a scanned signature.
A typed attestation.
SERVICE COMPLETED AND APPROVED.
Claire said:
“I never approved anything.”
Grace looked at her.
“That moves this beyond marital unfairness.”
Then the next invoice opened.
It listed:
20 hours executive-hosting labor — Claire Mercer.
Claire stared.
May you like
The date was her fiftieth birthday.
Mark had made her cook for his clients that night too.
