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

Chapter Sixty-Four: Tej, Sunday

Sunny's phone rang around midnight. Tej cracked her eyes open and noticed the time on the digital alarm clock. Who in the world was calling at this hour? 

"This is Sunny Parhar," he said a little blearily, but still using his professional greeting, as sometimes his clients called with an emergency involving child custody or domestic violence. She hoped he wouldn't have to suddenly rush out to help a client.

He listened for a second, then sat up, suddenly alert. "Joe? What is it?"

Tej felt a guilty thrill hearing Joe's name, remembering her exertions with him last Saturday, but if he was calling at midnight then it wasn't a social call.

"Holy shit," Sunny breathed. "Is everyone okay?"

"What is it?" Tej whisper shouted, but Sunny held up a hand to tell her to hold on.

"Jesus, she did?" Sunny exclaimed, his lip curling in a smile. 

Suddenly Tej's phone rang. What was happening tonight? She answered before all the ringing phones woke up the rest of the family.

"This is Tej Parhar," she said.

"Tej, it's Rachel."

Now she was the one to sit up sharply. "Rachel, are you okay?"

"No. Al's in the hospital again."

"What?! Aren't you in Kelowna?" she asked at the same time she heard Sunny say, "Oh, shit, Manny's in Kelowna with Agnes."

"Yeah, Kelowna General Hospital. He was stabbed."

"What?! Oh, my God, is he okay?" she asked as she heard Sunny say, "Don't worry, I'll call him for you." He looked at her in concern, having just heard what she said.

"They had him in surgery and they say they stopped the bleeding, but they had to give him a couple of transfusions," Rachel said. "His cousins raced to the hospital behind us, and they all donated blood in case he shared their blood type."

"Who stabbed him? And why?" Tej asked, thinking, poor Al. Sunny's eyes widened in alarm when he heard her.

"One of two men associated with the Mercers. Bodyguards, whatever you want to call them. One might have been their driver. Al was trying to get Agnes and Emma away in a taxi. He'd put himself between them and the two men, and had actually managed to stab one of them in the hand with a piece of glass he'd recovered from his wine glass being broken earlier, before he was stabbed himself. Luckily the police had just arrived to give Agnes protection, and they arrested the two men." Rachel sniffled and said. "Agnes told me the part about the glass. He was so brave, and I wasn't even there to help, I was back at the event enjoying ice wine."

"Rachel, if you'd been there you might have been stabbed, too, don't beat yourself up about it. Wait, if the Mercers' bodyguards or driver was there, does that mean they were?"

"Yeah, they were there celebrating the engagement of their daughter to the son of Al's cousin, can you believe it? They were taken by the police once it was discovered the two men acted on John Mercer's orders to detain Agnes before she left. I don't know what kind of charges they'll face, or how quickly they'll make bail, but they're not getting away scot-free."

"That's so crazy," Tej breathed. "Why is it everywhere you go, one of you winds up injured?"

"I know, right? It makes you never want to leave your house. It's too bad, really, because otherwise I enjoyed the evening. The ice wine was sublime, sweet and smooth, and you could barely tell it was booze."

"I wouldn't know," Tej said miserably, wondering not for the first time how bad it would be if she tried drinking once. Then again, one time might turn into more. Once you pop, you can't stop, wasn't that the jingle for something? That adage had certainly applied to the one time she'd made love to a man who wasn't her husband. She'd popped at least three times with Joe, and to her dismay she couldn't stop thinking about doing it with him again. Maybe that was why breaking any vows, marriage or otherwise, was so dangerous. It wasn't the one time you cheated that ruined things; it was the fact that once you cheated the first time, every time you cheated after got easier and easier, until you had nothing recognizable as a marriage, or a faith, anymore. "So," she said, "Are you all staying up there until he recovers?"