Chapter 4
Sol
Sol should have thought twice before assuming she wasn’t going to be a suspect in the disappearance of Leonardo Pascual.
Isabel Teixidor looked like the guiltiest of the people the police had been interviewing that evening—the stage director had not contacted them immediately after realizing Leonardo was missing and finding the eerie note in his dressing room.
And investigating officers Manuel Mendoza and Mercè Roig had taken their sweet time interrogating the director in private—while Sol and Luke waited.
But the police officers were also giving Sol a lot of attention now that they were talking to her—alone.
“Please sit down,” Officer Mendoza told her in Catalan when they went inside the small room the police were using for the interrogations.
There was a small round table and a few chairs around it.
Sol shivered—the whole backstage area of that old theater was giving her the creeps—and she enveloped herself in the midnight-blue bomber jacket that Luke had forced on her when he realized she was cold.
It smelled like him—musky wood and lavender—so it gave her comfort.
“Why did you meet with Pascual this afternoon?” Mendoza asked her in Catalan.
“I’m writing a profile about him,” Sol answered and she clutched Luke’s jacket around her again.
She closed her eyes and imagined him naked, smiling at her.
In the past, she’d pictured herself swimming with sea turtles and dolphins if she needed to calm down.
Now it was naked Luke. It worked every time.
She breathed deeply. Pictured her gorgeous lover once again. And opened her eyes.
She was faced with Officer Mendoza’s confused features. “Is Pascual famous? I mean, he’s a theater actor…”
Officer Roig’s eyes swept toward the ceiling, as if tired of her colleague’s ignorance. “I told you he did the show about pirates for Meshflixx,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I don’t think anybody saw that,” Officer Mendoza decided.
Sol was confronting the kind of person—typically a man—who assumed something couldn’t be that popular just because they’d never heard about it.
“People did watch that. Believe me,” Sol said. “I’m an entertainment journalist. My job is to know what people watch.”
Officer Mendoza’s frown stayed furrowed—definitely not convinced. “That’s an old show anyway, no? Why are you interviewing him now?”
In her more than two decades as a journalist, Sol had needed to pitch many ideas to skeptical editors.
She felt exactly like that while trying to explain to Officer Mendoza why someone would be interested in reading an interview with Leonardo Pascual.
“Well, he debuted on the stage in Spanish with this play. I mean, Leonardo is bilingual but he’d never done any acting in Spanish.
That in my profession counts as news. Especially if the actor making the debut is as photogenic as Leonardo is. ”
Officer Roig chuckled but Officer Mendoza’s expression remained stern. He hadn’t appreciated the humor.
“Plus he’s doing a new show,” Sol continued blabbering.
She definitely would not have foreseen her day ending with having to justify her interview with Leonardo Pascual.
The man was irrefutably sexy. Hadn’t these people heard about the Pascual Effect?
Everyone fell for Leonardo for a reason—plus, he was a damn good actor.
“What new show?” Mendoza asked. “Have I heard about it?”
Most certainly not. “Maybe? It’s been kept under wraps though. It’ll also stream on Meshflixx. It doesn’t even have a title yet. It was supposed to start shooting on Monday in London.”
Sol realized only after she said it that, from the moment she and Luke had entered Leonardo’s empty dressing room, she’d assumed the show would not start shooting on Monday any longer. It was difficult to imagine it would. It was Thursday night and Leonardo was missing.
“What’s the show about?” Mendoza asked. Sol wasn’t sure whether the police officer was genuinely curious about the show, or he was just still determining if Pascual was worth interviewing or if Sol’s reason for talking to him had been a mere pretext to get close to him—and make him disappear.
She pressed her eyes shut—trying to recall the one-line description of the show she’d read in the press release from Meshflixx sent to her inbox a few days before. “I think he plays a recently widowed single dad to a teenage daughter.”
“Oh, I want to see that!” Officer Roig exclaimed and that was enthusiastic enough for Officer Mendoza to be momentarily appeased.
“Right?” Sol agreed with the other woman.
“Okay, so did Pascual look worried during your interview?” Officer Mendoza asked.
“I mean, he checked his cell phone a couple of times because he wanted to finish the chat no later than six thirty to make sure he’d have time to grab a taxi and get all the way to the Casanova in time. But other than that, he seemed relaxed…”
“Did he appear worried, depressed, sad?” Officer Roig added.
“He looked happy and delighted to be talking to me.”
But then again, Leonardo was a very good actor and his job during the interview was to pretend he was enjoying the chat.
Still, Sol didn’t add that last part to her statement.
But as she was going through the events of the afternoon, she recalled something else.
“Wait, he told me since The Privateers’ success, some fans had become a bit—intense. ”
Officer Roig quirked one of her eyebrows up. “Intense?”
“His words. He said he was thinking about hiring private security for certain public appearances. You don’t think it could be that, right?” Had Sol solved the mystery and should the police be looking into Leonardo’s intense fans?
Both Officers Mendoza and Roig returned blank expressions. Sol was immediately reminded she shouldn’t play amateur sleuth—not with total strangers who also happened to be police investigators. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
“Leonardo didn’t mention anything about skipping the play tonight and driving to London?” Officer Roig asked then.
“Driving?” Sol asked, confused.
“There are no records of him flying out of the Barcelona airport, or taking a train out of the country,” Officer Roig said.
“It’s curious you should ask because we did talk about driving actually. He had to take a few lessons for this show, but he still doesn’t have a driver’s license. He told me he basically hates being behind the wheel.”
“So unless he was purposely lying to you…” Officer Roig started.
“…he isn’t driving from here to London,” Sol finished.