Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)

Chapter Forty-Eight: Sunny, Sunday

Sunny knocked on the door of the small house in Richmond to which he was given the address by a tearful woman, dreading the scene he would witness when he got there. He'd heard wailing and screaming in her background when he called earlier and imagined her children had just had their worlds shattered.

The house was in a pretty cul-de-sac in the western section of the city, close to the water, a little post-war with a front porch. It would be a tight fit for Agnes, her two kids and her two parents. He hoped they'd move, now. Patrick's new house would be perfect for them, and by all rights it should be theirs. He was here at least partly to start the process to make sure that would happen.

When Rachel called him this morning, her voice evoking dirty images in his head of what he'd done with her last night, he wondered uncomfortably if she was going to ask him how he was feeling about last night, because even though his body reacted to her voice, his head and heart were feeling something a little more nuanced. That wasn't what happened, though, and as he reacted with shock to her news, his arousal disappearing instantly, he felt a little relieved as well that they didn't have to have that conversation.

The door opened and Agnes stood there, her face tear-streaked, her eyes bloodshot and heavy with bags. The woman had probably gotten no sleep. As soon as she saw him, her face crumpled, and she threw her arms around him and began sobbing again.

"I'm so sorry, Agnes," he said, squeezing her gently. "This must be a terrible shock for you and your family."

After a few seconds of crying into his shoulder, she broke away, sniffing and wiping her eyes. "You can come in for a second," she said. "I'm not quite ready to go yet."

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he stepped inside the house. Agnes's children sat in between her parents, sunk into their loving embrace, dazed and wet-eyed, all cried out, it seemed, at least for the moment. The older Asian couple looked at him in confusion until Agnes said, "This is Sunny Parhar. He's my lawyer, representing me in the divorce, which I suppose is unnecessary, now, but he's been a great friend to me these past two months, and he was good enough to come here on a Sunday to help me get things sorted."

Sunny felt warmed by her praise, but he felt like he needed to add a few things. "Mr. and Mrs. Chu, I'm also here to accompany Agnes to the Coquitlam RCMP detachment, so she can talk to detectives investigating the... incident."

Mr. Chu frowned and asked, "Is this necessary? She was here when it happened, nowhere near the incident. She'd been estranged from Patrick for two months."

"Of course, and there's absolutely no reason to think the police suspect her of anything, but she does need to speak with them, primarily to make a formal... identification." Sunny cast a sidelong glance at the children, who gazed at him in a kind of wonder, this stranger in a turban who seemed to have appeared out of thin air, maybe to grant them a wish like a genie, and he knew what that wish would be, and he felt terrible that he couldn't grant it. "She could either talk with them at the station, or they could come to her here, and I think it's least disruptive for your family if she goes there."

Agnes had been getting her coat and purse while Sunny was talking to her parents, and when she was ready she knelt and embraced her kids, who pleaded for assurance that she would be home soon. He imagined they were terrified of losing a second parent.

"I'm bringing her back as soon as I can," he told them, though he wasn't sure they were even listening. "She can call you with updates as often as you like."

In Sunny's Prius, Agnes was silent, and he didn't try to make her talk. She looked wrung out with grief, and the last thing he wanted to do was pull pleasantries from her like teeth. It took until they were just crossing the border from New Westminster into Coquitlam before she said, "Thank you for taking me. I don't think I could have made the trip myself, and I didn't want to take the kids with me."