Chapter 11
Luke
The next morning, while they were still waiting for the elusive Sandro Palau to grant them an interview, the detectives decided they needed to talk to El bano de Edipo’s director, Isabel Teixidor.
And since Sol seemed to be particularly interested in that case—and Luke suspected she was considering ideas for a second book—the journalist was joining the two detectives in their journey to Isabel’s flat.
“We’re in for a real treat!” Sol said when they went inside the historically preserved, wrought-iron cage lift.
The thing was so noisy that, for a moment, Luke thought they would get trapped inside.
A couple of minutes later, they were seated on a scratchy, too small sofa in Isabel’s cramped living room.
It boasted high ceilings with intricate plaster detailing, stained-glass windows, and the original hydraulic floor tiles.
It could still have benefited from some renovating, but Luke imagined preserving the historical accuracy of that architecture wasn’t cheap—or easy.
Divya, Sol, and Luke sipped espresso the director had offered them. Luke wasn’t a coffee drinker but that was the only hot beverage offered to him in that particular city—and people still wondered why he was so eager to leave.
Isabel was sitting on a tufted upholstered armchair in front of them, attired in wide-legged trousers and a cashmere jumper, all in her signature black. She was zealously clutching a cardboard tissue box with one hand, holding a used tissue with the other.
“Encara no m’he fet a la idea de què ha passat.”
Sol smiled at the director. Then translated her words to Luke and Divya: “She says she’s still getting her head around what happened.”
Even if Isabel had spoken proficient English the night Sol and Luke had met her—when the police were at the Casanova theater—the director now spoke only in Catalan. Luke was so glad Sol was there—and so baffled by the director’s behavior.
“Ask her what she thinks has happened,” Divya instructed.
Sol did so. The care in her voice when addressing the director was impossible to miss.
The moment Leonardo’s disappearance had been mentioned, Isabel had produced a tissue from her sweater’s sleeve to wipe her nose and runny eyes.
Isabel seemed to be very affected by Leonardo’s disappearance, and Sol was probably trying to be sensitive.
But of course it could also be that it was just a bit of theatrics from the director wanting the detectives to believe she was very touched by Leonardo’s situation.
“Isabel thinks Leonardo is dead.” Sol, who was between Luke and Divya, turned her head from one to the other to make sure both could hear her.
“Dead?” Both Divya and Luke said in unison.
A shiver ran down Luke’s spine. Death was something he hadn’t contemplated for that particular case. Perhaps he’d been na?ve—and utterly incompetent—but even though he still didn’t know what had caused Leonardo Pascual to be missing, Luke wanted to believe the actor was okay.
“Why does she think so?” Divya said.
Sol asked the director. The journalist’s eyes twitched upward when Isabel answered, but she forced them back down, keeping her expression flat.
“She read her own tarot cards. Based on what she got, Isabel thinks something terrible must have happened to Leonardo. Her theory is that he slipped on dog shit—she is really not a dog fan.” Sol rolled her eyes when turned to Luke, so that Isabel wouldn’t see her.
“She thinks he then fell to the ground, broke his neck, and now is lying in some hospital morgue.”
Isabel nodded as if endorsing Sol’s translation of her words.
At least the director’s assumption about Leonardo’s fate was that it all had been an accident and not that someone had purposely killed the actor.
Still, Luke couldn’t shake his discomfort—even if he didn’t believe a tarot reading was strong enough proof that the actor could be in trouble.
“We checked the hospitals. The police did too. He’s not there,” Divya explained.
Sol confided with the director again, and came back to the detectives: “Isabel thinks that somebody probably stole Leonardo’s wallet while he was lying on the floor on the street, that’s why you can’t find him.”
Luke wasn’t going to argue with Isabel and tell her they hadn’t found a body that matched Leonardo’s age and general physical description. He preferred to smile uncomfortably and pretend he was taking notes.
“Can you ask Isabel why she thinks that’s what happened?” Divya told Sol.
After a few minutes of back and forth in Catalan between the director and the journalist, Sol finally said: “It’s the only reasonable explanation to her.”
“Come on!” Luke hoped not to have sounded as frustrated as he was, but the whole lost-in-translation situation was getting a bit too much for his taste.
Especially considering the director seemed to choose when to and not to understand and speak English.
“You were talking to her for quite some time.”
Sol leveled him with one of her stern looks. He shrugged his shoulders, defensively.
“I’ve been trying for her to elaborate on that answer. She’s quite adamant about giving me the same short reply. She’s proving quite the interviewee,” Sol grumbled.
“So she doesn’t believe he could have been, let’s say, kidnapped?” Divya graciously intervened.
A couple of minutes of back and forth between the two Catalan women ensued. Luke tried deciphering some of their words, since he spoke Italian with his family and the languages had some similarities, but he was only able to guess at the increasing frustration in Sol’s sentences.
“She says no one would want to kidnap Leonardo.”
“What about an overzealous fan?” Divya asked again.
“Oh, I asked her that, she dismissed me.”
“So what does she make of the note?” Luke asked Sol.
“I also asked her that. But let me warn you: you’re not going to like her answer.
” Sol kept turning from one detective to the other to deliver that information but was now facing him.
“Isabel thinks it was you who put it there so that Meshflixx would hire the agency and you’d get paid to do nothing. ”
Luke blinked for a few seconds.
“I told you you were not going to like the answer. Of course I tried telling her that was preposterous.” Sol lowered her voice to an almost whisper so as not to be heard by Isabel.
“But the woman doesn’t listen. She technically must have seen the note before you and I went to Leonardo’s dressing room, but still believes it was you who put it there. ”
Both Sol and Luke turned to Isabel, who was wiping her runny nose.
“Non sono stato io a mettere la nota nel camerino di Leonardo.” He felt compelled to tell her it hadn’t been him putting the note in Leonardo’s dressing room.
The director probably understood him better in Italian than if he’d used English.
Or it would be harder for her to pretend she didn’t know what he was telling her. He’d enunciated each word carefully.
Isabel’s eyes tracked him from across the living room, wary.
“Then what happened to him?” Isabel answered, in perfect English.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, but believe me when I tell you: He didn’t slip on dog shit or was run over by a bus. We’d have found him by now if that’s what happened.”
Isabel’s whimper and her sudden sob made him realize he’d probably been a bit too harsh in his last words. But then again, she’d just accused him of tampering with a potential crime scene just to get hired.
Isabel mumbled some unintelligible words for Luke.
“She says she’s a bit tired of speaking English and that she’ll continue in Catalan from now on,” Sol said.
How bloody convenient.
“I think we just have a couple more questions and we’ll get out of her hair.” As usual, Divya always managed to focus on what was important. “Can you find a way of asking her politely how her working relationship with Leonardo was?”
Sol
“I can try,” Sol huffed.
Why was it that she’d volunteered for that little questioning escapade?
Didn’t she have better things to do, like literally anything?
Even deep cleaning the whole apartment sounded more appealing than dealing with the fickle and volatile Isabel again.
Oh right, Sol was toying with the idea of writing a second book because she was a masochist. And she liked solving puzzles.
“I’d love it if you could tell me a bit about your relationship with him as an actor,” Sol asked her.
This was easily one of the hardest interviews of her career.
Only this wasn’t as a journalist. She hoped that at least she’d be able to use all of that in-the-field experience and put it on the page.
“He was a genius. A rare mixture of great looks and pure talent.”
Sol sighed. She was starting to fear they were not gonna get anything relevant out of Isabel. It was hardly a secret that Leonardo was both gorgeous and gifted.
“Is he easy to work with?” she asked the director.
“He was charming.” It wasn’t lost on Sol that while she herself kept talking about Leonardo in the present tense, Isabel kept doing it in the past, as if convinced that her supposition about him being dead still held.
“So no friction with other actors or with you? I mean, of all the team of El bano de Edipo he is the biggest name…”
“He was charming.” Isabel repeated and that didn’t exactly answer Sol’s question.
She was aware that she hadn’t translated anything to Luke and Divya, but there wasn’t much to get translated anyway, and Sol hoped they understood she was trying to get somewhere with her questions—not that it looked like she was going to succeed.
“And you didn’t mind that he was leaving the play to go and do a television show?
” she finally asked. Sol had read about it the previous day while researching and writing her profile on Leonardo.
El bano de Edipo’s run in Barcelona had been quite successful—with sold-out performances pretty much every night.
The theater and the producing company had wanted to extend the run of the play, but Leonardo was due in London to do The Single Dad Situation, so he’d had to say no.
For an instant, a flicker of irritation cut through the director’s tear-streaked face. But she composed herself immediately.
“That’s how theater works. You need your actors available every single night. Leonardo had previous commitments. He wasn’t available.”
The director blew her nose—perhaps more as an excuse to stop talking than out of any actual need.
“And there was no chance of extending the run of El bano de Edipo with Sandro instead of Leonardo in the main role?” Sol was pushing her luck.
Isabel twitched on her armchair. She gave Sol an artificially exaggerated smile. “There wasn’t. Of course things could be different now.”
Sol preferred not to say anything, and simply smiled at Isabel as if she was one of her usual interviewees. She hoped Divya or Luke didn’t take the opportunity to intervene then, but they were both smart enough to figure out she was onto something.
“After the other night’s performance there’s been some interest,” Isabel said, almost reluctantly. “We’re exploring opportunities for a few more weeks of the play—perhaps even a bigger venue.”
“Oh, but that’s excellent!” Sol was doing her best at fake enthusiasm.
“I know. But don’t publish anything yet!” Isabel told her.
Sol had only gotten the director to open up because she’d forgotten about the detectives. Isabel’s ego had been happy to babble to a journalist. Divya and Luke definitely owed Sol one.