The Dragon Mother Returns: Taking Back Everything That Belongs to My Daughter novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Fingerprints

Released at midnight, she reads the card's vault log and finds a transfer of Clara's trust from that afternoon.

The Greenwich police station had a bench bolted to the wall and a clock that ran four minutes fast.

I sat on the bench for two hours.

At five, a detective came out with a folder and a paper cup of coffee he didn't offer me.

He was gray at the temples and very tired.

"Your husband's lawyer is here," he said. "He says you're a con artist with a surgeon."

"My husband's lawyer can say that to my face."

"He'd like to."

He took me into a room with a table and three chairs.

Lionel's lawyer was already in one of them. Navy suit, gold cufflinks, a smile.

I had never seen him before in my life.

That told me something by itself.

"Mrs. Keel is dead," the lawyer said pleasantly. "My client identified her remains. There's a death certificate from the canton of Valais. This woman bought a face and a story."

"My name was never Keel," I said. "I kept my own."

He blinked.

It was small. The detective saw it.

I took the envelope out of my coat.

The Swiss police had given it to me in Sion, with an official stamp and a photograph and two pages of fingerprints. It said, in three languages, that the woman in the photograph was Marguerite Oberlin, born in Greenwich, Connecticut, and that she was alive.

The detective read it twice.

"Anybody can print a letter," the lawyer said.

"I have Global Entry," I said to the detective. "They took my fingerprints at JFK four years ago. Run them."

The lawyer's smile stayed where it was. His left hand closed over his right.

The detective looked at him for a long second.

Then he took me down the hall to a glass scanner and pressed my fingers onto it one at a time.

Then we waited.

The lawyer made a phone call in the corridor, low and fast.

At eleven fifty, the detective came back with a printout.

"Marguerite Oberlin," he read. "Trusted traveler. Status: deceased."

He set the sheet on the table.

"Except you're sitting here."

"Except I'm sitting here."

He tore up the trespass report in front of the lawyer and dropped the pieces in the bin.

"You're free to go, ma'am. Legally, you're still dead until a judge says otherwise. I can't fix that tonight."

"I don't need you to fix it tonight."

The lawyer stood up and buttoned his jacket.

"My client will be very surprised."

"No," I said. "He won't."

Outside, it had started to rain.

Matthias was sitting on the bench by the front door, under the overhang, with his knees up around his ears.

He had been there since three o'clock.

He stood up and held out a sandwich in a plastic triangle.

"From the machine," he said. "Egg. I am sorry. It was egg or nothing."

I ate the whole thing standing up in the rain.

"How was prison?"

"Two hours on a bench."

"In Switzerland we would give you a blanket at least."

"In Switzerland you'd give me fondue."

"Only if you confessed."

I laughed. It came out cracked, and it surprised both of us.

He had rented a gray car that was too small for him. He drove it with his seat pushed all the way back and his head bent under the roof.

There was a motel on the Post Road with a blinking VACANCY sign.

I had driven past it every day for twenty years and never once looked at it.

They had two rooms left, side by side, with a door between them that locked from both sides.

Matthias handed me the card and the pearls in the parking lot, one in each hand.

"Safe," he said.

"Thank you."

"Sleep."

"I can't."

He sighed and gave me his laptop too.

I sat on the motel bed with wet hair and opened the bank's website.

The chair's private account.

My fingers remembered the password before I did.

The screen loaded slowly.

Then it showed me everything.

Every time the Treasury Card was used, the private bank wrote it down, along with whatever left the vault.

January 6. Card transferred to C. Oberlin. Signed M. Oberlin.

That was me, on the tarmac, in case.

January 17. Card transferred to L. Keel. Signed C. Oberlin.

Eight days after the crash.

I made myself keep reading.

January 19. Vault opened, L. Keel. Removed: pearl necklace, three strands.

January 26. Vault opened, L. Keel. Removed: emerald dragon brooch.

February 3. Vault opened. Removed: wristwatch, gold, gentleman's. My father's watch, which was supposed to go to Clara on her twenty-first birthday.

February 11. February 20. March 2. March 9. March 16.

Gold coins. My mother's diamond earrings. A sealed envelope of bearer bonds.

Nine times.

Nine trips to the vault while my daughter scrubbed his pool.

I didn't cry.

I took a screenshot of every line and sent them all to my own email.

Then I scrolled to the bottom.

There was one more entry.

It was dated today.

March 28, 4:10 p.m.

At 4:10 I had been sitting on a bench in the police station, watching the clock.

Transfer initiated, L. Keel. Clara Oberlin Trust, entire balance: $11,400,000. To: P. Keel.

Status: pending. Releases Monday, 10:00 a.m.

I knocked on the door between our rooms.

Matthias opened it in a T-shirt, with reading glasses on his nose and a paperback in his hand.

He looked at my face and took the glasses off.

"What?"

I turned the laptop around.

"He's giving my daughter's money to his daughter," I said. "On Monday morning."

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