Jordan proved what he said when he showed them pictures of Naira and him together, selfies, mostly, at work, at his house, out at dinner. The woman in those photos was also very pretty, but very different from the woman in the drone footage.
"So, this is what leads you to believe Naira is in trouble," Tej said. "Another woman walks out of the Sandhu family home wearing your girlfriend's GPS tracker up her vagina?"
Sunny usually loved when Tej talked unabashedly about her lady parts; usually it got him wanting to see them and pull out his own gentleman parts. Right now, though, in the context of this very disturbing turn of events, it sounded almost vulgar, even though it was the scientifically correct term.
"She could just be carrying it in her coat pocket, or in her purse," Lauren said. "It was only Naira who had to stuff it up her--"
"Jesus, Lauren," Sunny said, pulling at his collar. "Could we be a little more sensitive in our choice of words?"
Lauren pouted at him. "I'm sorry, am I disturbing your male sensibilities? Are you getting the vapours?"
"It's not that, it's... well, glib. This is a serious matter."
"Is it?" Lauren looked to Jordan and said, "Did you try calling her since you saw this? I'm guessing this was early this morning?"
He shook his head. "Early yesterday morning. She isn't picking up. Not responding to texts, either."
"Does she have another phone she uses for you, or is your number attached to an unrelated name?"
"The latter. A separate phone, if discovered, would give the game away."
"Okay. How far does this woman go?"
"The woman goes to the nearest bus stop, gets on a bus and travels outside the range of the drone."
This was indeed what they saw. In fact, much of the footage seemed unnecessary to watch. As soon as the wrong woman left that house, that became the focus of the investigation.
Was it, though? Or had it been orchestrated that way?
"I want to let the others see it, now," Sunny said. "Don't tell them this woman isn't Naira until they finish watching the video. Don't tell them about the GPS tracker. As soon as I knew about it I wasn't paying attention to anything else."
Lauren looked at him and smiled. "You're thinking what I'm thinking, aren't you."
"What am I thinking?" Sunny asked, giving her a smile of his own, feeling a kind of giddy excitement that wasn't at all appropriate for the crisis Jordan was having.
"What?" Jordan asked. "What are you two thinking?"
"Let's discuss it when the others see it." He stood. Tej looked up at him in surprise and question. "I need to get back before Tori releases the hounds. You stay here with the kids, I'll be back soon."
Tej tried but failed to hide her relief. She considered herself an ambivert; she liked meeting people and socializing, but only for so long, and then she just wanted to relax among her friends and family. The duration of an Open House was the perfect amount of time for her to be switched on. His campaign, with all of its exposure, was going to be a challenge for her. "Maybe I'll stay with the kids while the rest of them watch the footage," she said.
"Sounds like a plan."
He hurried back downstairs, where the party was beginning to empty. A great deal of his fellow members of the Khalsa Diwan Society were still there, but others, he noticed, had left. Rodney Maxwell and his family were gone, as was Maurice Delacroix. Regan was still there, and when she saw him, she brightened. "I was wondering where you went," she said. "Are you still talking to that guy?"
"I'm afraid so. There's a bit of intrigue we didn't expect."
"Really? So, your guy isn't a serial killer?"
Sunny gave a startled laugh. "No. Not serial, at least. Look, he wasn't responsible for my sister's death. As for this other woman, well, the jury's still out. I'm reviewing the evidence upstairs with my friends, if you feel like joining us."
She grimaced. "If Jordan's there, I think I'll have to decline. I made rather a fool of myself hitting on him when his girlfriend is missing, and I don't think I should get involved in what should be a police matter."
Sunny understood, even if the last part stung a little. Was she accusing him of playing at detective? Maybe he was. "Of course."
"In fact, I think I should go." She pulled a card from her purse and handed it to Sunny. "Will you give this to Lauren, though? I think I'd like to keep in touch with her."
"I will," he said, feeling inordinately pleased at the possibility of his two friends from different worlds becoming friends themselves.
She gave him a brief hug and left. He looked around and saw Tori storming toward him. "What the fuck, Sunny?" she said low in his ear. "The mayor was looking for you before."
"Did you tell him what you said you'd tell people if they asked for me?"
"Yes, and he left, and I don't know if it was in a huff because of what I said, or if he just had to go. But this is what I'm talking about. You need to be here to talk to people, it's your debut night!"
"I'm really sorry, it couldn't be helped."
"Where are Tej and the kids?"
"Still upstairs."
She sighed in frustration and ran her hand through her hair. "Well, at least you're here. It would be nice if the voters saw you all together, but this is better than nothing. Now, work the room!"
"I can only stay a few minutes, and then I have to go back upstairs."
She threw up her hands, looking apoplectic. "What the hell are we doing here? What is so fucking important that you're screwing up your candidacy?"
He pulled her aside and said into her ear, "A missing person. It's possible she might have come to harm."
She screwed her eyes shut and shook her head furiously. "What the... what? Who's missing? And why are you involved in trying to find her? Is she family?"
"Well... a couple of degrees separated."
She stared at him blankly for a few seconds. "Are the police involved?" she finally asked.
"As far as I know."
"Oh, God..." She closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose. "Can you at least make a circuit of the room before you go back up? Let people see you and ask you questions if they have them?"
"Yes, I'll do that. Maybe after I finish and go back upstairs, you can put on some music; that's usually the make or break moment for a gathering. People will either dance or leave."
"Do we have music to play?"
"I bet one of these guys has some on their phones. Maybe we can start a Bhangra party."
Her eyebrows rose. "Do you dance Bhangra? I've never seen you do it before."
He shrugged and said, "Maybe you'll get to find out."
"Now I really want to see! Then I can record it and play it at the next staff meeting."
"If I see a phone in your hand when I'm doing it, you're fired."
She chuckled and waved him away. "Go, then, make your rounds."
He thanked her and left. As he weaved among groups of people and asked how they were enjoying their night, he spotted his parents sitting together off to the side, quietly watching everything. He suddenly felt wretched. He hadn't paid them any attention all night.
He made his way over and sat in the chair beside them. "Are you feeling all right?" he asked them.
Dad, wearing a suit he only saved for special occasions, and a tie the same red as his turban, rested his chin on his hands, which gripped a walking stick he used to help him get around. "I liked your speech, Sunil," he said. "Before you mentioned my union work, I hadn't thought of it in years."
"I should have introduced you to Maurice Delacroix, he's the president of the New Westminster Labour Council."
Dad shook his head sadly. "He might not have wanted to talk to me. The IWA had a falling out with the Canadian Labour Congress, of which the New West Labour Council is a subset. It was a rather shameful period."
"Yeah, but wasn't that after you retired? You weren't a part of all that."
Dad shrugged. "Nevertheless, he had other excuses not to talk to me. There are racists in the unions, too. I faced a lot of resistance from my own fellow members; they didn't want me to represent them."
"Sunil, your father needs to go home," Mom said. "It's getting late, and he needs to go to sleep."
"Right now?" He looked at his watch, thinking of the time he still needed to devote to his friends upstairs. "Would you be okay with a friend driving you home? It seems this campaign opener is still going."
"We'll ask your friend Mandeep Randhawa to drive us home," Mom said. "He offered earlier."
"I'm sorry, Mom, I should have paid more attention to your needs. Manny's a good friend. Phone me when you get home so I know you're okay?"
They nodded, and he kissed them both goodnight. Eventually he was able to weave his way back to the staircase leading to the second floor.
He found all the adults together, having what seemed a heated discussion. Jordan still had his phone out, but was touching the screen a lot, sliding his finger one way and then the other, as if advancing and rewinding the video to places his friends wanted to see.
He drew out Regan's card and handed it to Lauren. "Regan wanted you to have this."
Lauren smiled as she took it. "Thanks, I forgot to get her number before she left."
Joe peeked down at the card from where he stood. It was awkward because he was standing beside Joanie but a couple of feet away from his wife, and their kids, at the other table watching them, must have noticed. Sunny had no idea how they were handling this separation that wasn't; their father had moved out of their house, presumably to nurse Joanie back to health out of some skewed sense of responsibility. They had to see through that, even though they were children. They must have had friends with divorced parents, and surely recognized the similarities in their own parents' behaviour.
He was certain none of his friends brought their own parents to this party because they didn't want them witnessing the calamity he saw unfolding in front of his eyes. For example, how were Mr. and Mrs. DiTomaso, Catholics who didn't recognize divorce, explaining the absence of their son from his own house? Were Joe and Lauren so successful in hiding it from them that they just didn't know? Then there were Lauren's parents, who apparently knew everything about their daughter and her marriage, if Sunny believed Lauren when she told him she could tell them anything without awkwardness or shame. They had to know about this, so what did they now think of their son-in-law? Then again, Sunny couldn't believe they knew about what Lauren got up to with Rachel and Al; that was just one bridge too far, and as cavalier as Lauren was about her love life, Sunny didn't think she wanted her parents to think badly of her, because, whatever he might have believed about Joe's arrangement with Joanie, or Lauren's arrangement with Rachel, Lauren's cheating with Al was the one thing she couldn't wiggle out from under, because it was the one thing Joe had never agreed to, and the only way they could justify any of this was that they all agreed on it.
Lauren noticed Joe's curiosity and handed him the card. "Regan Nakamura, she's also running for Council. Last year's Citizen of the Year in New West. She's also of Japanese heritage. We got to chatting while you two were elsewhere."
Joe smirked at her and said, "Did you give her your history lesson?"
She gave him the stink eye and said, "Her family was interned too, you know. She recommended I go to the Nikkei Centre in Burnaby. Maybe we'll go together."
Joe's face softened. "I'll go with you too."
Visibly touched, Lauren took his hand and said, "Really? I'd like that. Naomi and Tosh should see their history. I mean, we should also check out the Italian Cultural Centre, and Roma Hall, but I can't believe I never went to the Nikkei." She looked to Joanie and said, "You can come too, if you want."
Joanie smiled at her and said, "I'd like that, but don't wait for me, either. If I'm going back to work soon, I might not be able to schedule time to go with you. And anyway, I think you and Joe need your own family time again."
Sunny blinked in surprise. This was the oddest exchange between wife and mistress he'd ever seen. In his years as a divorce lawyer, he thought he'd seen it all. Maybe there was hope for Joe and Lauren yet.
"So," he said. "What did I miss?"
Rachel harrumphed and said, "Tracker up the whosits, huh? I bet sir Jordan here and his lovely girlfriend programmed that tracker to vibrate."
Lauren hooted with laughter. Jordan blushed furiously but, notably, didn't deny it.
Sunny pulled at his collar. Rachel and Lauren knew how to push his buttons, and what frustrated him about it was that he kind of liked it, but now was not the time to be discussing the sexual proclivities of the two IT wonks. "Rachel," he warned, tutting his finger at her. "The children are just over there."
"Oh, relax, they can't hear anything, and if they did, they wouldn't know the context."
"Who is this woman, then?" Al asked. "If this isn't Naira?"
"I have no idea," Jordan said.
"Here's what worries me," Joanie said. "If this woman has the tracker, then at least she knows Naira had it. Worse, she might have told Birinder about it. Are we assuming Birinder and Naira know this woman?"
Jordan shrugged. "I don't know about Birinder, but if Naira knew her, she never told me about her."
"What if this woman is Birinder's mistress?" Joe asked. "Maybe he also has someone on the side."
You'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Joe, my boy? Sunny thought irritably. As much as Lauren had to answer for Al, Sunny hated the way Joe flaunted Joanie in front of them all, as if it were completely normal. Sure, it was nice to see her in relative good health, and ambulatory, but did they have to stand so close to each other, holding hands?
"If she's his mistress," Sunny said, "how could she be at his house? Wouldn't Naira be there? Wouldn't his parents?"
"That's a good point," Lauren said. "The drone footage never established whether anyone was in the house. At least, I never saw anyone in the windows."
"She could hypothetically be a burglar," Rachel said, "or at least a trespasser."
"If she was robbing the place, though, would she have taken the tracker?" Al asked. "It was meant to look like a tampon applicator, right?"
"If no one was in that house and she was a burglar," Jordan said, "then that means Naira was away from the tracker, and that makes me worried something happened to her."
"Because she was supposed to have it with her, even if she wasn't necessarily wearing it," Lauren said.
"That's right."
They were all quiet, then, because that was a very real possibility. "That's why this makes me suspicious," Sunny said. "I can't shake the feeling this woman is a plant, a decoy, drawing that drone away from the house while something else is going on. Did anyone notice anything else in the footage? Anything we weren't meant to focus on?"
They all looked blankly at him and shook their heads.
"I'd like us to focus on what happens after the woman leaves the house," Lauren said, intuiting his meaning. "I want to see if anything shows up around the woman, even if it's in the distance."
Below them, music suddenly began to play. It looked like Tori had gotten things going, after all. He owed her a dance for this.
He drew close to Jordan, who rewound the footage to just where the woman left the house. Lauren sidled up to his other side, and Joanie stood behind her, but because she was so much taller than Lauren she was able to see over her. He played the footage, and they watched her walk, and walk, along the sidewalk in the dead of night. They watched her wait at the bus stop. No one else entered the footage, no cars appeared, she was completely on her own. They watched her board the bus and be borne away. The drone followed her until it reached the end of its range, and then turned around and began flying back to its dock, presumably at Jordan's residence.
"Stop!" Sunny said. Startled, Jordan paused the footage.
He and Lauren locked eyes across the phone. They both smiled. Joanie saw it too, and she smiled.
"Car," Joanie said. "Actually, an SUV."
"Can you focus in on that license plate?" Lauren asked.
Jordan did his best, but the vehicle was too far away; the drone was flying high, now. Sunny could see the vehicle clearly enough, though. "It looks like a white BMW X series," he said.
"Jesus," Jordan said. "Birinder drives one of those."
"Is this taking the same flight path as it always does?" Sunny asked.
Jordan nodded. "After it loses the tracking device, it defaults back to its programming."
"Does that mean you live near these people?"
Jordan shrugged. "I have to, to be in range for the drone."
"I think we're back along this street heading to the house," Lauren said. "Wait a minute..." She gingerly touched a finger to the screen and rewound the footage a little, then played it again. Now all their focus was on the vehicle.
"It's driving back to the house, isn't it," Joanie said.
"Yes, I think it is."
"Why is he only returning home at three in the morning?" Al asked.
"Maybe he was out late at a party," Rachel said. "And for all we know, Naira could be in the car with him."
"Knowingly out of sight of the tracker?" Jordan asked.
"Maybe she didn't actually feel like wearing it that night," Rachel said. "Maybe she was getting a little tired of your creepy surveillance and wanted a night to herself."
Jordan blinked in surprise and said, "But she--"
"We only have your word that she was ever concerned for her safety," Joanie said. "In fact, we only have your word that the two of you were in any kind of relationship at all. This whole thing could be just you stalking her, for all we know."
"We only have your word that the police are even looking for her," Sunny said.
Jordan looked gobsmacked at this sudden reversal of attitude from them. "Then why would I waste your time with this?"
"Because you are concerned about that woman in the footage," Lauren said. "I believe you when you say you don't know her; there's no sign of recognition on your face when you look at her. But, again, we only have your word that the tracker was shaped the way it was, and that Naira agreed to wear it that way. Maybe it was stitched into her purse lining without her knowledge, and then this woman just stole the purse. She was holding a purse."
Open mouthed, indignant, he looked from one friend to another and said, "I can get you the schematics for that tracker."
"Okay," Lauren said. "But again, what can we really do, short of giving this footage to the police? We can sniff around a little, I suppose, but we have no real authority to investigate."
Jordan sighed in frustration and put away his phone. "Well, I guess all I could do was ask you to look, and you looked. Thank you all for your time."
He stood, and Sunny said, "Jordan?"
Jordan looked at him. Sunny cleared his throat and said, "If you really want to find her, if you really are worried for her safety, bring that to the police. You may have to face the consequences for how you obtained the footage, I don't know, it's kind of a grey area with the rise of drone usage. What I do know is that the police can identify that woman much easier than we can, and that might point them in the right direction."
Jordan sighed again, this time in resignation, and nodded. "I'll think about it."
With that, he left. They all looked at each other in the aftermath of that strange encounter, and Sunny could tell none of them were satisfied by how it ended. There was more to this, he knew, but he didn't know what it was, and he doubted he would ever know.
"Look, everybody," he said. "How about we not discuss what happened anymore tonight. Let's sit on it at least until tomorrow. For now, would anyone like to join me in a little Bhangra dancing?"
"I'm in!" Tej said, getting to her feet. "Let's get the kids!"
"Sounds fun!" Lauren said. "You might have to show me the moves, though."
"Me too," Rachel said. "And Al." She pulled up a very hesitant Al. The women wanted to dance. When was the last time they'd danced, he wondered. Did their husbands never take them out? Pity.
"If it's all right with everyone," Joe said, "I think I'll watch from the sidelines."
"Good idea," Lauren said with a smile. "You could injure someone if you start flailing your arms and legs."
"I'll watch too," Joanie said. "I may be able to walk, but dancing is a little beyond my pay grade right now, and I don't want to reinjure myself just before I go back to work."
"No, of course not." Sunny began to bop and sway, already feeling the beat.
"Whoa!" Lauren cried. "Here comes the dancing king! I never saw this side of you before, Sunny!"
"Prepare yourselves," Tej said, taking his arm. "You're going to swoon when you see him move."
Lauren had a hand to her chest, and Sunny got the uncomfortable feeling he was seeing more than just admiration on her face. He remembered that hug she gave him back in Harrison Hot Springs, and feared that Joe and Al might not be the only men in her sights. It made him uncomfortable because he liked the idea, and he didn't want that to infect his own marriage as it had Joe's and Al's. The last thing the LSDC needed was yet another affair to deal with.
To distract himself from those thoughts, he led his friends and the kids back down the stairs in a kind of conga line of Bhangra, and when the people in the ballroom saw him enter at the head of a line, they thought it was staged, and began cheering wildly. For the next hour or so, he lost himself in the music and the flow of his body, loosening his tie only when he began to sweat. Tej was right there with him, slinking sensuously close to him, and he wondered if he'd be able to make love to her tonight, or if they'd just be too tired and too worried about the kids and the parents hearing it. Lauren, Rachel and Al tried their best, but they looked like marionettes handled by inept marionettists. The kids seemed to do a better job, Emma, Naomi and Tosh following the lead of Harpreet and Ajit, because they felt less self-conscious about their bodies, probably. Joe smirked at them from the sidelines, and Joanie had a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh, probably at poor Al's fumbling attempts to copy Sunny; he didn't grow up with this, so he could be forgiven. Everyone around them smiled and encouraged Sunny's white and half-white friends, happy they were at least making the effort.
Tori looked on the edge of squealing with delight when she saw him finally being the candidate she wanted to see tonight, working the crowd, getting them excited about his campaign. Leading them, in a dance, admittedly, but exhibiting the charisma he'd need to entice the voters to put him across the finish line. She had her phone out, and most likely she was recording him, but he didn't hold it against her, regardless of what he'd threatened before; he was having too much fun to care, and he felt good that he was finally making her happy tonight. Happy Tori tonight meant together and productive Tori on Monday.
All in all, aside from the disturbing conversation with Jordan, whom he hadn't even expected to see tonight, the night was a success. He'd figure out how he felt about a possibly missing woman in the morning; there wasn't anything he could do about it now anyway, and the case was supposed to be in the hands of the police. Until then, he'd burn the rest of the nervous energy he'd built up over that hour with Jordan, and enjoy the opening of his campaign with this final, exultant expression of his identity.
Thanks for reading this far! It might look like that's all to the story, but as we've seen in other titles in this series, once the LSDC gets the bug, they don't let go until there's a real resolution. If you liked what you just read, hit the "Vote" button and leave a comment.
To go back to 1978 and see when Sunny meets Lauren for the first time, hit, "Continue reading."