Sunny walked into work Monday morning and was surprised to receive a standing ovation as soon as he walked in the door. The partners, associates and staff of Westminster Law Group were applauding him, and it was so unexpected that he was nearly moved to tears.
"Let's hear it for the newest Councillor for New Westminster!" proclaimed Marty de Guzman, fellow partner and founder of the firm.
Sunny waved him off. "Don't go making predictions yet, buddy," he said. "My campaign's just begun."
"Great opener, Sunny!" called Yvonne Cho, the other fellow partner and founder. "I loved the dancing at the end!"
"Oh, were you there for it? I'm sorry, I didn't see you, or else I would have brought you in to dance with my friends."
"I saw you dancing! You didn't want me dancing next to you, you would have put me to shame."
"Don't worry, my friends would have danced to your level."
Everybody laughed.
"No, really," Sunny said. "Saturday night wouldn't have been possible without the Herculean efforts of the inimitable Victoria Ramos," he said, gesturing to his paralegal, who was dressed more sensibly today in grey slacks and blazer over a teal blouse.
"Take me out to lunch today, and we're square," she said.
"It's a deal," he said, and everyone applauded again before returning to the relatively sedate work of the law.
He took Tori aside and said, "I really do appreciate everything you did on Saturday, and I'm sorry for ditching you for that hour."
She waved him off. "You made up for it at the end of the night, believe me. I showed everyone the footage of you dancing before you showed up this morning. It's kind of the reason for your warm reception just now."
Of course she showed everyone. He'd known she would as soon as he'd seen her phone out. "Good. Now, about lunch," he said. "I'm still on if you want to go--"
"Let me check your calendar first, I was only joking--"
"No, really, I owe you that much, at least. Would you be okay with a stop along the way?"
Her brow furrowed. "I'm not that kind of girl, Sunny."
"Tori," he warned. "I never know when you're joking with me, and I could get into trouble if I say the wrong thing."
She smiled and shook her head. "You're too easy to bug. No, really, where do you need to go?"
"The police station."
She blinked in surprise. "Really? Why?"
"I need to check if a missing persons report has been filed."
She frowned. "Is this still about that guy on Saturday?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it is. A new development has arisen, and I need to do some fact checking."
She blinked at him for a few seconds, then said, "Now you have me curious. Who are these people you're looking for?"
"One person only. A woman. Her name, or so we thought on Saturday, is Naira Sandhu. She's the wife of a real estate agent named Birinder Sandhu. The man I was talking to on Saturday is Jordan Trevelyan. He used to go out with my sister before she got married."
"Wait, wait, you never told me you have a sister."
"That's because I had a sister. She used to work here before we hired you."
Her mouth fell open. "I don't like your sudden use of the past tense, Sunny."
"Yeah, well, me neither. She was murdered by her husband."
Tori gasped and grabbed his arm, pulling him into his own office and shutting the door.
Sunny saw her fighting tears and losing. "Tori," he soothed. "Please, don't cry... it's okay..."
"No it's not!" she cried, furiously wiping tears from her eyes. "You fucking asshole, why didn't you ever tell me? I thought we were--"
"I'm sorry, Tori, it's not something I can talk about all the time."
"You can trust me," she said. "I'm your friend, aren't I, not just your employee, hell, I'm your campaign manager."
"You're right, you're right," he said. "I should have trusted you. I just... I don't know..." Now he felt tears in his eyes, and he was mortified. He discretely wiped them away and said, "It's hard to talk about it without doing what I'm doing now..."
She rushed forward and threw her arms around him, squeezing hard. "You can cry around me, I don't mind," she said. "I'm a hot blooded Latina, I'm used to displays of emotion."
He tentatively put his arms around her, and then, to his horror, he broke down completely, hanging on to his paralegal for dear life.
"Oh, that's it," she cooed. "Tell mama all about it."
"Fucking Jordan!" he sobbed. "Why didn't he leave her alone after she got married?"
"Oh," she breathed. "You mean the two of them kept seeing each other?"
He sniffed and got himself together. "Yeah, at least in the days leading up to her murder. I know it's not anyone's fault but the man who killed her, but, goddamn it, Jordan's still out there, dicking around, and he might have been responsible for another woman going missing, maybe murdered."
Tori held him at arm's length and looked up at him. "Are you serious?"
"I don't know," Sunny said. "It might be more complicated now. Something's off. Yesterday I went to an Open House hosted by Birinder Sandhu, and there was a woman with him who claimed to be Naira."
She blinked in surprise. "What?"
"Yeah. This is why I'm going to the police station, to see if in fact there was a missing persons report, or if Jordan's had the wrong end of the stick all along."
"I see."
She looked pensive, though, and Sunny said, "What is it?"
"I think I'd like to check the CanLII databank and see if there've been any cases involving this Birinder Sandhu," she said. CanLII was the Canadian Legal Information Institute, a non-profit organization managed by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. "Something about his name sounds familiar."
"Hey, that's a good idea," Sunny said. "Also check Court Services Online to see if he's ever been involved in divorce proceedings specifically. We might as well use the resources at our own disposal."
"Yes! I'll do that right away."
"Well, hold on, maybe we should actually do what we're being paid to do right now, and work on our own projects while on our break. I haven't even turned on my computer yet, who knows what fires I'll have to put out today."
She gave him the stink eye and said, "You're no fun."
"I know, I'm a task master."
She sighed and said, "Fine, I'll go back to work, but now you have me intrigued, and I won't let this go."
"Don't. I'm happy to have a sidekick on this, I didn't expect you'd be so interested."
She smiled brilliantly and said, "Batman and Robin, huh? Oh, by the way, we need to talk at some point about next steps in your campaign."
"Yes. Maybe while we're having lunch. I'll let you know how my supporters at the gurdwara enjoyed Saturday night."
"Perfect." She left his office, leaving the door open. Sunny saw a few of his coworkers peeking in from time to time, and he wondered if they'd heard him crying in here. He hoped not. This wasn't a place where he wanted to be emotional. Clients and colleagues wanted to see someone calm and capable at their job, someone worth their billable hours. That was why he rarely discussed his family life at work, because talking about his family inevitably led to talking about Bishan.
He spent the rest of his morning as he usually did, meeting with clients, dictating correspondence to counsel for opposing parties, reviewing case law for files that had the potential to go to trial. He'd ensured no trials were on his calendar before he'd submitted his papers for nomination, because otherwise he would have had to either try to reschedule the trial, which was a real chore because judges hated to change their own calendars, or find a colleague to take the lead, which was also a chore because hardly any lawyer really wanted to go to trial; they took every minute of your time when you were in it, took hundreds of hours of preparation, and every other consideration, even family, came second. A political campaign just wouldn't be possible while he was in the middle of a trial.
When lunch time came around, Tori knocked on his door. "Ready to go?" she asked.
"Hold on," he said, hitting Save on a word document and logging out. "Okay. Where do you want to go?"
"Taverna Greka," she said. "I want Moussaka, and I want Ekmek, and I want to shove it all in my mouth."
Sunny chuckled. "Sounds good."
Taverna Greka was hopping, of course. The place had the best Greek food in town, and was popular with the lunch crowd. Luckily they were squeezed into a corner because they were only two, and they chatted about the campaign, which community organizations to meet. "The Chamber, The Kiwanis Club, the Rotary Club," Tori said, ticking them on her fingers as she literally shoved the moussaka in her mouth.
Sunny smiled at her as he ate his own vegetarian version of the same dish; if there was a Platonic love, a love idealized by Plato where there was pure affection but no sexual attraction, he would say he was Platonically in love with Tori Ramos. It was a love he had for her and no other; not even for Rachel or Lauren, because, if he were honest with himself, he was secretly still attracted to both of them, and he suspected Tej worried a little about how he felt for his oldest and dearest friends. She had nothing to worry about with Tori, though. This was something he would never admit to anyone, especially not Tori: she reminded him of Bishan, and if translocation of the soul were possible, he would say the spirit of his little sister now resided in the body of this self-proclaimed hot-blooded Latina.
She looked up at him, noticed him smiling and said, "What?"
"Nothing. Well, maybe I'm a little shocked by your eating habits. I'm not going to steal your lunch, you know. For one thing, your Moussaka has meat in it."
She grinned and said, "Hey, Sunny, have you ever had seafood?"
"I can't say I have."
She opened her mouth wide and showed him the half-chewed food in her mouth. "See food!" she said, snorting with laughter.
She was crude, she was potty-mouthed, she took pride in annoying him and making him uncomfortable every chance she got, and he loved her, because Bishan was exactly the same. "I think I remember that joke from when I was a kid," he said.
"As for my eating habits, I grew up in a large family. You ate what you could get your hands on, and you ate quickly, or you starved. It was like prison, that way."
"Have you been to prison? I don't remember seeing that on your resume."
She smirked but said nothing, just kept chewing.
"So, did you check the databases?" he asked.
She brightened and put down her fork. "I did, as a matter of fact. He's been involved in a couple of minor suits involving failure to disclose, breach of duty, if this is the same Birinder Sandhu."
"Ugh," Sunny said. "Those are pretty common. Tej has had to face a couple of those, aggrieved buyers who didn't get everything they wanted or wanted to get out of their contract."
"One person actually sued for bodily harm after having tripped and fallen during a showing."
"The perils of being an agent," Sunny said, nodding.
"They all went his way. None of the claimants could prove ill intent or, in the case of bodily harm, that the injury occurred at the house."
Sunny nodded thoughtfully. "So, as far as you could see, he was never involved in criminal proceedings."
"No, but I did find something else that was interesting." She said this with a mischievous gleam in her eye, and Sunny suspected she'd purposefully saved this for last.
"What was it?" he asked, bracing himself.
"He's been divorced before."
Now he put down his own fork. "Seriously? What was the name of the woman he divorced?"
She just continued smiling at him.
"Come on," he whined. "Don't leave me in suspense."
"Her name," she said, "was Naira Sandhu."
He gaped at her for a full minute before saying, "You're pulling my leg."
"I'm not."
"What the fuck?" he asked. "What am I missing, here?"
Tori shrugged. "Maybe they remarried. Who knows? Maybe he married another woman named Naira."
"The odds of that are a zillion to one," he said, shaking his head. "This is just getting weirder and weirder."
They shared Tori's Ekmek, a light, creamy dessert with honey and cinnamon. Sunny paid the bill, and then they walked quickly to the police station on Columbia and Sixth. Now, more than ever, he had to know what the status of that missing persons report was.
When they entered the station, Sunny approached the Desk Sergeant and said, "Good afternoon. Is there a way to find out if a missing persons report has been filed?"
"Sure. Do you have a name for the supposed missing person?" he asked.
"Yes. Naira Sandhu." He spelled it out for him.
He typed the name into his computer, examined the results, clicked and typed. "There was a report filed," he said. "It looks, though, as if she's turned up."
Sunny blinked in surprise. "She has?"
"Yes... well, the file was closed, and that doesn't happen unless the person has been seen by us and their identity established. Most of the time missing people aren't really missing, they just go away for a while and come back. It's usually a spouse that needs to cool off, or a kid who ran away from home and then came back as soon as they realized they were all alone in the world."
"Huh." Sunny looked at Tori, who shrugged.
"Were you still under the impression she was missing?" asked the Desk Sergeant.
"Well, we're not sure the person missing was actually Naira Sandhu."
"They would have checked her driver's license or some other piece of ID. I mean, they don't swab for DNA, or anything..."
The Desk Sergeant saw their faces and frowned. "Are you suggesting that the person used a fake ID to impersonate someone else?"
"Honestly, we don't know. Wait, did the person who filed the missing persons report provide a photo of the missing person?" He dug for his phone and brought up the email Jordan sent him last night, which he'd subsequently forwarded to his friends. He opened the attachment and showed him the photo. "Does she look like this?"
He adjusted his glasses and peered at the photo on the phone. He looked at the photo that must have been on his screen. Then he looked back at the phone. "I think I better get the detective," he said.
He picked up his phone and spoke to someone on the other end. After a few minutes, a door to the back opened, and to Sunny's surprise, Detective Ian Tracey stepped out. As he approached them, recognition dawned on his face. "I know you," he said. "I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name, but you're a friend of the Mackenzies, right?"
"That's right. Sunny Parhar," he said, shaking the man's offered hand. Tracey had a strong grip; the man looked like he could handle himself in a fight.
"You two know each other?" Tori asked, astonished.
"We've come into each other's orbit a couple of times in the last few years," Sunny said. "I'll tell you about it later. Detective Tracey, may I introduce Victoria Ramos, my colleague."
Tracey shook her hand. "A pleasure," he said.
"The pleasure's all mine," Tori said, smiling. Sunny wasn't entirely sure about Tori's sexual orientation, and because he was a respectful employer he considered it none of his business, so he never asked. Tori's body language when shaking Tracey's hand, however, suggested maybe she liked men, and that she liked them a little rough.
"I understand you have information about a missing persons case?" Tracey asked.
"We don't want to take more of your time than necessary," Sunny said, "and it could be nothing, but from what I can tell, two women are claiming to be the same person."
Tracey blinked in surprise. "Why don't you come to my office, and we can have a chat."
They followed him to the back and took seats across the desk from Tracey, who brought up the details of the case on his computer. "Why don't you start from the beginning," he said. "How are you connected with this woman?"
"I'm not, not really," Sunny said. He went on to explain the events of Saturday.
"You're running for Council?" Tracey asked when Sunny mentioned the campaign opener.
"Yes, and if you live in New West, I hope you'll go out and vote; I know municipal elections have historically low turnout, but a lot of what affects your day to day life happens at the municipal level."
"Like police funding," Tracey said, smiling, revealing the diastema between his top front incisors.
Sunny cleared his throat. It wouldn't do to tell Tracey he wouldn't be voting for any increase in police funding if he were on Council. "Exactly."
"So, this man, this Jordan Trevelyan," Tracey said. "He had footage that led him to believe something bad happened to his girlfriend, who you say is calling herself Naira Sandhu, and who is not the woman in the missing persons report."
"Right. This is his girlfriend," he said, showing him the photo on his phone. "The woman in the footage is not this woman. We actually met the woman from the footage yesterday at an Open House."
"This woman?" Tracey asked, turning his monitor around to show them the photo attached to the file.
"Yes," Sunny said. "She called herself Naira Sandhu as well. I asked Jordan to turn the footage over to you, but he was worried you might charge him for obtaining the footage illegally."
Tracey's eyebrows rose. "Well, that's unfortunate, because not turning it over can get him charged with obstructing a police investigation, although it's kind of a grey area since we closed the file..." He scratched his stubbly chin and said. "I need to talk to this guy. Do you have a number for him?"
"Unfortunately no," Sunny said. "I have his email here, though, if you want it."
Tracey handed him his notebook, on which he'd been jotting the summary of Sunny's description of events. Sunny wrote down the email address in the sender line of Jordan's email.
"Thank you," Tracey said. "It'll be good to see the footage to know what you're talking about. Can you email me that photo you have, too, so I can compare them and check my own databases, just to see if she's not already in the system?"
Sunny did so, using the email address Tracey gave him. "You know, I never even considered if one of these women might have a criminal record," he said.
Tracey gave him a kind smile. "It's very common to think that way, you know. It's certainly true most crimes are committed by men, but you'd be surprised how many people, especially men, overlook the possibility of women being criminals. You remember that business back in August with McTeague; she was a woman, and she was one cold character."
"My employer has a sexual bias, who would have thought?" Tori said.
Sunny felt ganged up on. "Is it wrong to think of women as inherently better natured than men? Every woman I've ever known has been a saint."
"I'm sure most of the men you've known were the same," Tracey said. "It's just the environment you grew up in. You've been lucky never to have been desperate enough to commit a crime, nor for your friends and relatives to have been. Most crime arises from poverty and the things connected to it: drug abuse, marital discord, that kind of thing. If more resources went to lifting people out of that hole, I might find myself unemployed one day."
"That's very charitable of you," Tori said, clearly impressed by this philosophical detective.
Tracey shrugged. "It's just what I see."
Now Sunny felt bad about his police funding stance. If there were other people like Tracey on the force, maybe his bias against the police was unfounded. Still, to devote more resources to lifting people out of the hole, other budgets would have to shrink, and most municipal money went to police and fire services.
"I'd like to email you something else," Sunny said, finding Jordan's other email. "Jordan used a tracking device he says he and the woman he knew as Naira developed together, because they both work in IT. He says the device allowed the drone, which he used to make the footage, to follow her, keeping an eye on her from a distance."
Tracey raised his eyebrows. "That sounds like stalking to me."
"Me too," Tori said, looking offended. "I wouldn't want a drone following me around, filming me. That sounds like a gross invasion of privacy."
"I agree with you," Sunny said. "Apparently, Jordan and Naira both decided to go this route, because they were both worried for her safety."
"Because of the husband, Birinder," Tracey said for clarification. Sunny nodded. Tracey went on. "A guy who, for all we know, doesn't even know this woman, and who considers Naira, his wife, to be the woman in this missing persons report." He sighed as he looked at his monitor again, tapping his pen on his desk in concentration. "This missing persons report is interesting. He files it, and then very soon after his wife returns. We didn't even get the opportunity to put it out in the media."
"Yeah..." Sunny said as he finished forwarding the email to Tracey. "Everything about this is fishy."
Tracey nodded and said, "Well, thanks for both emails. I'll look through my photo books and see if her face is a match to anyone we have in the system. I'll also put it out to the patrol constables to keep an eye out in case they recognize her. I'll figure out what to do about this tracking device and try to contact Jordan."
"Thanks very much for your attention to this," Sunny said.
Just then, a woman strode into Tracey's office as if she belonged there, calling, "Back from lunch!" She stopped as she noticed them sitting there. "Oh! Sorry, I didn't know you had company."
She was olive skinned with black curls that cascaded to her shoulders. She wore form hugging grey slacks and a white button down shirt with a collar, its sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She wore a chunky sports watch that looked expensive. "I could leave, if you need--" she began.
"No, not at all," Tracey said. "Detective Goncalves, I don't know if you remember Sunny Parhar, he's friends with Rachel Mackenzie."
"Oh, yeah, I remember you," she said, offering her hand to him. As they shook, she said, "You were with them at the Anderson house that time with the baby."
"Baby?" Tori asked, confused.
"Remember the Anderson estate?" Sunny asked her. When she nodded, he said, "Rachel Mackenzie, nee McWilliam, was executrix for the will; if you remember, she worked a few weeks at the firm around that time."
"Oh, right, the friend you were helping out," Tori said.
"Yes. Anyway, on her first day checking out the house, she and her friend, well, husband now, Al, they found a mummified baby in the coal cellar."
"Jesus!" she breathed. "Do I want to know what happened?"
"I'll tell you later."
"Mr. Parhar and Ms. Ramos were updating us about a missing persons case that was closed, and now I think we need to take another look at it," Tracey said.
"Oh, really?" Even Goncalves' frown was attractive. "Thanks for making more work for us, guys."
She stood behind Tracey and bent over him to look at the screen, her face very close to his, an overly familiar gesture that made Sunny wonder if the two were more than just colleagues.
"What the fuck?" Goncalves said.
"What is it?" Tracey asked.
"This picture," she said, pointing to something on his monitor. "That's my friend Naira."
"Which picture?" Sunny asked, leaning forward.
"This one," Goncalves said, turning the monitor toward him and pointing to the photo he'd just emailed Tracey, and which Tracey had brought up side by side with the woman in the footage, the woman in the missing persons report, the woman Sunny met yesterday.
"Hold on," Tracey said. "You know this woman?"
"Uh, yeah," Goncalves said. "We went to the Justice Institute of B.C. together. She's police, too."
"She is?" Tracey asked. "Not New West, right?"
"No, she's RCMP in Coquitlam."
"I don't understand," Sunny said. "My contact told me this woman worked in IT with him."
Goncalves said, "I don't know what to tell you."
"And her name is Naira too?" Tracey asked.
"Yeah. What do you mean, too?"
"This woman," Tracey pointed to the other picture, "is named Naira Sandhu."
"Fuck me," Goncalves breathed. "That's her name too."
They were all stunned into silence, until Tori suddenly sang, "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!"
Thanks for reading this far! The last line is from a traditional children's song about the narrator sharing the same name as the titular character, and I thought it would be a cheeky little bit of comic relief with which to end the chapter, after the startling revelation of two women having the same name. If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If something doesn't ring true about police procedure, leave a comment; I strive for authenticity.
Before we see how Sunny and his friends deal with this revelation, let's flash back to when they were thirteen and see how they dealt with the most harrowing event of their young lives, by clicking on "Continue reading."