Daniel barely spoke during the drive downtown.
He sat behind the wheel with both hands fixed at ten and two, staring through the windshield as though perfect concentration on traffic could exempt him from conversation. Every few blocks, I looked at him and thought of the expression I had seen when the bank representative mentioned surveillance footage.
Fear.
I kept returning to it.
“Did Vanessa ask you for money recently?”
His shoulders tightened.
“Not this again.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“She always needs money.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Daniel.”
He exhaled sharply. “She asked about thirty thousand.”
I turned toward him.
“When?”
“Last week.”
“For what?”
“She said she had debts.”
“What kind?”
“She didn’t explain.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“That I couldn’t give her thirty thousand dollars.”
The traffic light ahead turned red.
Daniel stopped harder than necessary.
I studied his profile.
“Did she know why?”
“What?”
“Did you tell her I would object?”
He rubbed his thumb along the steering wheel.
“I may have said we weren’t touching the savings.”
“We.”
“Yes.”
“Or Claire won’t let me?”
He glanced at me.
That was enough.
I looked out the passenger window.
For years, whenever Vanessa created a crisis, Daniel transformed our boundaries into my boundaries. If we could not lend her money, Claire worried about the budget. If Vanessa could not stay another month, Claire needed the guest room. If we skipped an expensive family vacation, Claire thought it was irresponsible.
I had become the wall Daniel hid behind whenever he lacked the courage to tell his sister no.
The bank occupied the ground floor of a gray stone building between a pharmacy and a law office. Inside, the air smelled faintly of carpet cleaner and coffee. Four teller stations stood behind a broad counter. A security camera hung above the entrance.
A woman in a navy blazer approached us.
“Mr. and Mrs. Mercer?”
“Yes,” Daniel answered before I could.
“I’m Angela Ruiz, the branch manager.”
She shook our hands.
Her grip lingered slightly when she took mine.
“Please come with me.”
Her office had glass walls with blinds half drawn. A second woman was already seated inside.
Angela introduced her as Marlene Cho from the bank’s fraud department.
That made Daniel pause.
“I thought we were just reviewing a disputed transaction.”
Marlene folded her hands over a yellow legal pad. “A sixty-one-thousand-dollar disputed cash withdrawal requires a formal review.”
“Cash?” I said.
Daniel looked at me.
“You didn’t tell me it was cash.”
“I didn’t know.”
Marlene glanced between us.
“Our record shows the transaction was paid using a combination of cashier’s checks and currency.”
“To whom were the cashier’s checks made payable?”
“That information is part of what we’re verifying.”
Angela turned her monitor slightly.
“Mrs. Mercer, may I see your driver’s license?”
I handed it over.
She studied it carefully before making a photocopy.
Then she placed another image on the screen.
It was a scan of the identification presented during the withdrawal.
My photograph.
My name.
My address.
My license number.
But even from where I sat, something looked wrong.
The expiration date.
Mine ended in 2029.
The scanned copy showed 2027.
“That isn’t my license.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“It looks like it.”
“Read the date.”
He did.
His expression changed.
Angela nodded slowly. “We noticed that discrepancy this morning.”
My pulse quickened.
“So someone created a fake ID?”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?”
“We need to complete the investigation.”
“Show us the camera footage.”
Angela and Marlene exchanged a look.
Marlene spoke.
“There is an issue with the angle.”
Of course there was.
I almost laughed from disbelief.
“What issue?”
“The customer conducting the transaction stood at station six. Because of maintenance being performed in that section, the primary camera covering that station had been temporarily redirected.”
Daniel sank back.
“So there’s no video.”
“Not exactly.”
Marlene clicked several keys.
A grainy image appeared.
A woman entered the bank wearing large sunglasses and a cream-colored coat. Her hair fell below her shoulders.
Mine was almost the same length.
She carried a black handbag.
The camera captured her from above and slightly behind.
I felt Daniel turn toward me.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Angela advanced the footage.
The woman crossed the lobby.
For two seconds, she turned enough for the camera to catch the side of her face.
The image was blurry.
Still, I noticed something.
A small dark mark behind her left ear.
I leaned closer.
“Can you enlarge that?”
Marlene did.
The pixels distorted.
But the mark remained.
A tattoo.
Three tiny stars.
My skin went cold.
Vanessa had three stars tattooed behind her left ear.
Daniel saw them too.
“No,” he whispered.
Nobody spoke.
He leaned so close to the screen that his chair squeaked.
“That could be anything.”
I looked at him.
“You know exactly what it is.”
“You can’t identify someone from three blurry spots.”
“I’ve seen that tattoo for ten years.”
Angela lifted a hand.
“We cannot make an identification based solely on this footage.”
“Who handled the transaction?” I asked.
Silence again.
Then Angela pressed the intercom.
“Would you ask Rebecca to come in?”
Daniel looked toward the office door.
A young teller entered less than a minute later. She appeared to be in her twenties, with dark hair pinned at the base of her neck. Her eyes moved first to me, then Daniel.
The color left her face.
“Rebecca,” Angela said gently, “this is Mrs. Mercer.”
Rebecca swallowed.
“I know.”
The room became perfectly still.
“You know me?” I asked.
She shook her head quickly. “I mean, I recognize you from the account profile.”
Marlene watched her carefully.
“Rebecca processed the withdrawal.”
I leaned forward.
“Was the woman who came in here me?”
Rebecca looked at Angela.
Then at Daniel.
Not at me.
“I checked identification.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Her fingers twisted together.
Marlene said, “Rebecca, answer Mrs. Mercer.”
The teller drew a breath.
“No.”
Daniel stood.
“You told me on the phone yesterday that the woman matched the account holder.”
Rebecca looked startled.
Angela’s head snapped toward him.
“Yesterday?”
I turned slowly.
“You called yesterday?”
Daniel froze.
The account statement had arrived this morning.
At least, that was what he had told me.
“When did you discover the money was gone?” I asked.
His face had become pale.
“This morning.”
“Then why were you calling the bank yesterday?”
“I—I checked the account online.”
“You said the statement alerted you.”
“I misspoke.”
“You accused me of stealing sixty-one thousand dollars based on a withdrawal you already knew about yesterday?”
“Claire.”
Rebecca was staring at him now with unmistakable recognition.
Not the vague recognition of someone who had heard his voice on a telephone.
She knew him.
I stood.
“Have you met my husband before?”
Rebecca's lips parted.
Daniel stepped toward the door.
“This is getting ridiculous.”
Marlene’s voice sharpened.
“Mr. Mercer, please remain seated.”
He stopped.
I turned back to Rebecca.
“You recognized him when we walked in.”
Tears suddenly filled the teller’s eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
Angela rose.
“Rebecca?”
The teller looked at her manager as if deciding whether a job mattered more than whatever secret she had been carrying.
Then she looked at me.
“The woman wasn’t alone when she first came to the bank.”
Daniel’s chair scraped violently against the floor.
Rebecca flinched.
I did not.
“Who came with her?”
Her voice dropped almost to a whisper.
“Your husband.”
Click Here to continue read next: PART3: The Teller Said Daniel Had Brought Vanessa to the Bank Days Earlier, but That Was Only the First Secret He Had Hidden
The Morning My Husband Found Sixty-One Thousand Dollars Missing, He Looked at Me Before He Looked at the Bank
Part 2 of 8
