Rude Awakenings: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 2)

Chapter Twenty-Four: Al, Monday

The call came a little after midnight. Al nearly sprang out of his seat when he heard his phone ring, he'd been so tightly compressed ever since he'd received an automatic notification from Modo that his booking was going to expire in thirty minutes.

It startled Samson enough that he bolted off the couch and away from him. The cat was already in a forlorn mood, meowing because Rachel wasn't home, looking in every room for her. Ever since they'd married, and Al had moved out of his old catified apartment, Samson had claimed Rachel as his mate, and for the first time in his life Al felt he was in a competition with a twenty pound cat for someone's affection; Samson had moved from the corner of the bed to the middle over the months, placing himself like a wall between husband and wife, and it irritated him. He really didn't know how to address the issue save locking him out of the bedroom, which would only result in heartbreaking yowling pleas and scratching at the bedroom door.

Up until then he'd been calling hospitals, beginning with St. Paul's, the closest to him, then Vancouver General, then St. Joseph's, then moving out to Burnaby Hospital and Royal Columbian in New West, then Surrey Memorial, and the Richmond Hospital just in case. He even tried Abbotsford Regional Hospital, thinking about where they'd found Joe's phone. None of them had a Rachel Mackenzie (she'd changed her name from Chan to let her friend Allison have the honour of being the only wife with her dead husband's name) or a Joe or Giuseppe DiTomaso registered as a patient with them. He didn't know if that was a good sign or not.

He'd also been drinking coffee with the grim determination to stay awake, and now his nerves jangled with the caffeine, his heart beat far too rapidly, and his muscles felt jagged and achy.

He looked at the screen. Modo Customer Service. He answered. "Hello?"

"Mr. Mackenzie?"

"Yes."

"This is Jared with Modo Customer Service."

"Hi, Jared, how are you?" he asked politely, holding his panic at bay as if it were an elephant trying to push through the door.

"Good, good. I see here a flag on your account to alert you when your Modo booking ran past the expiry."

"That's right. My wife made the booking and has since gone missing."

"Okay. Now that we have an interest in returning this car to its home, we're ready to reveal its location. Once we've revealed it to you, will you be able to go out there and bring it back?"

Al blinked in surprise. "Uh... well, my primary concern is finding my wife, not returning the car, but if I can locate her in the vicinity of the car, and take her home safely, I will of course drive her back in the car and bring the car back to its home space."

"Yes, well, of course, finding your wife is the priority."

"That's the best case scenario, mind you. I could get there and find out she's not there at all. Or she's there and in need of medical assistance. If that happens, I won't be too worried about the car, to be honest."

"No, but--"

"If I find that I cannot return the car myself, can I call you and let you know, and then you can send a tow truck, or something... actually, if something terrible has happened, the police may need to have a look at the car--"

"Mr. Mackenzie." Jared's voice was a bit louder than before. He wanted Al's attention. "May I suggest this? When you get there, and you discover the car cannot be returned, just call us. We'll figure it out from there."

He sighed. "Okay. Yeah. Thanks. So, where is it?"

"We've located it down in the River District of Vancouver, below Southeast Marine Drive, along East Kent Avenue. It's probably parked in the Gladstone-Riverside Park."