Chapter 28
Luke
Did you talk to Moon?” Luke asked Divya when they met on the street, in front of the hotel where Leonardo had been staying in the city.
“I did. They’re going to try to buy us some more time with Mesfhlixx,” the Mancunian said. “But they told me the execs are nervous. Every day the production is halted, it’s a lot of money. We’re on day two. Moon doesn’t think they’ll want to go more than a week.”
“Which means?” Luke rubbed the back of his neck.
“It’s Tuesday. We need to figure out where Leonardo is by Sunday, at the latest. So that production of The Single Dad Situation can start next Monday. Otherwise they’re just going to scrap the whole thing.”
“Is Moon worried?” Luke asked. The one actually worried was him. He didn’t see how they were going to find a missing actor by Sunday with what little they had to work with.
“About losing their job?” Divya asked. After Luke nodded, she said, “No, they’re starting to be worried about something bad having happened to Leonardo.”
A heavy knot settled in his stomach. Luke recognized it in Divya too.
“Where’s Sol?” Divya asked, as they were both entering the lobby of the hotel.
“Home. I wasn’t sure what we’d find here.”
“Nothing, obviously. The police wouldn’t have permitted us access otherwise.” Divya dismissed him. She was giving him the judgy eye.
She was probably right. He still didn’t want to risk finding something potentially distressing and Sol being there.
Divya and Sol could both call him an overprotective arse if they wanted to.
It wasn’t like Sol had complained when he’d suggested she stay home and help the detectives with something else.
“I asked her to do some research for us.” It hadn’t been some bullshit research either. He was well aware that, if there was anything to be found, Sol would unearth it.
Luke and Divya went to the lobby counter, introduced themselves, showed proof of identification, and got a key card to Leonardo Pascual’s suite on the sixth floor.
“Research?” Divya asked once they were alone again, inside the lift.
“I feel we’ve been approaching this whole case the wrong way from the beginning. We’ve talked to everyone possibly involved at least once, if not twice.”
“Not everyone!” Divya objected. That was true. They were still waiting for calls from Leonardo Pascual’s parents and his manager, Robert Lancaster.
“Not everyone,” Luke conceded. They’d exited the lift and were now in front of room 615, the one Pascual had been staying at for the whole run of El bano de Edipo in Barcelona.
Luke handed some nitrile gloves to Divya, he slipped on a pair himself.
“I just think we should stop focusing on the people and start figuring out what Leonardo's movements were before he disappeared.”
Now, he’d see what luck Divya and he had. Luke used the key card and opened the door to Leonardo’s room.
“I think you may be onto something, mate. What the bloody hell is that?” the Mancunian quipped.
···
Half an hour after Luke and Divya had entered room 615, they were joined by the police officers in charge of investigating Leonardo Pascual’s case, Mercè Roig and Manuel Mendoza.
“So this wasn’t here the first time you saw this room?” Divya checked for the umpteenth time. It didn’t hurt to be extra meticulous.
“Of course, we wouldn’t have left it here for you to find, would we?” Officer Roig was huffing and puffing. One of the forensic members on her team was bagging the print note that had been taped to Leonardo’s room mirror. “And we would have seen it!”
The unmissable note read:
You’ll never hear from him again. Stop playing dumb and being cheap.
“Can we go over the calendar one last time? You were here last Thursday, the night Leonardo disappeared. And then again the following day, Friday. But not since then?”
“We dusted everything for fingerprints, gathered all the evidence, and left.” Roig’s features appeared annoyed, her hands were on her hips. And Luke let his work partner deal with her. He had the feeling Divya would be more successful.
“And no one from the police ever came back for anything? How long was the hotel staff supposed to keep the room as it is?” Divya probably knew that the other woman’s patience was thinning.
“Are you interrogating me?” There it was, the reaction Luke had been fearing—and the reason why he’d been silent. In his experience, there was only one thing more annoying than one private detective asking too many questions to a police officer: two private detectives.
“Come on!” Divya’s Manchester accent was more accentuated when she was arguing. “This is hardly an interrogation, is it? Just some friendly bit of sharing of information. We rang you the moment we realized there was something going on.”
Not entirely true. Luke and Divya had made sure to take a thorough turn around the room first, take pictures and videos of everything, and see if there was anything else the police had missed.
But other than a bit of messiness—it appeared Leonardo Pascual wasn’t big on putting his clothes away—it looked like there was nothing else—apart from a second bloody ominous note.
···
“Tell me what I missed,” Sol asked the dreaded question that afternoon.
Luke and Divya had gone to her flat the moment they’d left Leonardo’s hotel.
“Should you perhaps sit on the sofa while I make tea for everyone?” Luke asked, trying to usher Sol and Divya to the living room area. “Sol, you want some matcha? Or I think there’s some of that sencha left that you really enjoyed last week…”
Sol’s stare pinned him in place, not moving a millimeter from where she was standing, then she turned her face to Divya. “Why is he mollycoddling me?”
“I’m not!” Luke tried protesting, threw his arms in the air feigning innocence. “I’m just offering tea!”
Sol’s pointed glare returned to him. She was still not moving, standing in the middle of her kitchen.
“Tell me what I missed when I stayed home doing your research,” she hissed. “Research that has yielded no results!”
“No results so far, cara.” He gave her his most charming smile. Sol remained unmoved.
“Let’s forget about the tea, but perhaps we can all sit down,” Divya graciously said, going to sit on the sofa.
“If I plant my ass there”—Sol pointed to the place next to Divya on the couch—“you promise to tell me what’s going on?”
Luke was tempted to make a joke about how that would mean losing sight of her scrumptious arse—she was wearing leggings and a cropped sweatshirt after all. But he reminded himself he needed to focus.
“Absolutely. Let’s go.”
They both joined Divya on the sofa. There was a charged silence but before Sol could complain, Luke said: “There was another note in Leonardo’s room.”
“What do you mean another note?” Sol was confused.
“Same font type and size, same type of paper, very similar message as in the note you and I found inside Leonardo’s dressing room at the theater.”
Sol’s eyes flicked frantically from Divya to Luke, as she was sitting between the two of them. Her nose flared and she swallowed. She’d been riled.
“How?” She finally asked.
“It would appear someone left the note inside of Leonardo’s room at some point between the last time the police were there last Friday and today. We talked to the hotel’s staff. No one saw anything, but of course they see dozens of people coming and going every day. It’s easy to miss someone…”
“What about security footage?” Sol asked.
Luke couldn’t repress the proud smile. “Look at you being all thorough. The police took that. Promised they’ll let us know if they find something.”
“Do we trust them?”
“Not really,” Divya admitted.
Sol
“Why the hell were you being so cagey about the note being found?” Sol reprimanded Luke.
He threw his hands in front of him. “I didn’t want to upset you. I know you’re worried about Leonardo.”
“I’m worried about him being missing—not the stupid notes. I think the first one was just a decoy so that we didn’t realize his cosmetic products had been taken.”
There was a reaction in Luke’s face, his eyebrows rose. He and Divya exchanged one of their wordless looks. The Mancunian then said: “And you think this one could also be a decoy so that we don’t see something?”
“Maybe?” Sol had no clue—she’d never felt more like an amateur sleuth, completely out of her depth, than in that moment.
Yet, for some reason, Luke and Divya didn’t seem to have the same reservations Sol had.
“We were contemplating the possibility of Leonardo being kidnapped again,” Divya explained. “Because of something in the note. But we’ve talked to the client again. There’s still no demand for ransom.”
Sol narrowed her eyes. She had the impression the detectives were as lost as she was. “So you’re contemplating other possibilities?”
“Can we show you a couple of videos?” Luke asked Sol, scooting closer to her on the sofa and taking his cell phone out of his pocket even before she said yes. The proximity hit her with his musky lavender scent. She almost inhaled it.
“We recorded some videos in Leonardo’s hotel room—just in case,” Divya supplied, also getting closer to her on the other side.
“In case we were missing something other than the note,” Luke added. “It was clear that after the note was found, the police would probably not let us set foot in that room again.”
Sol extended her hand, made a curling movement with her fingers. “Give me.”
Luke handed her the phone. She hit play and the three of them watched the video together in silence.
“We had to try,” Divya said after they finished watching the two recordings they had made that day.
“It was worth it,” Luke agreed. Sol didn’t know what they were talking about. “But there’s nothing there.”
“What do you mean there’s nothing?” She lifted her face from the phone, turned first to her left to look at Luke, then turned to her right to look at Divya. Had she been so distracted by Luke’s heady, delicious smell that she’d seen the wrong thing? “Let me rewatch it.”
The eyes of the two detectives were on her as she was going over the video again that detailed the contents in Leonardo’s room. Sol lifted her eyes from the cell phone, looking again for the detectives’ eyes. First Divya, then Luke. Could it be that only she was realizing the obvious?
“Why are there no clothes?” she finally asked them.
“What do you mean, there are no clothes?” Defensiveness crept into Luke’s voice. “I counted at least a pair of jeans, two or three T-shirts, some tracksuit bottoms, and a jumper!”
Oh my god, these two!
Sol sighed. Let’s explain to them what they are obviously missing.
“Leonardo has been in Spain for a few months. He’s gone to parties, lunches, several shopping trips around Madrid and Barcelona.
He told me during our interview how even though he travels a lot for work, he’s a terrible packer, he simply brings too much stuff everywhere—and then gets stuff wherever he goes.
He loves clothes. And that’s the only garments in the whole room?
Where’s the rest? Where are the dressy pants, the fancy shirts, the stylish jackets, the sexy party outfits, the pajamas? ”
Luke and Divya exchanged another one of their wordless stares. It was Divya who talked next: “So you think someone went to Leonardo’s room and took most of his stuff?”
“Obviously.” She then doubted herself and her deductions again. Perhaps it wasn’t that obvious after all. “But, how come the police didn’t realize? My guess is the clothes were taken when the note was left in the room, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Luke had the sort of mischievous expression in his eyes Sol knew only showed when he was enjoying an investigation.
Was it possible that she’d been right in her realizations about Leonardo’s clothes?
And why was that making her all giddy? Not only because she was right about the investigation but also because Luke was thoroughly enjoying her being good at his own job.
“Maybe whoever took the clothes when Leonardo disappeared, then decided to go back to the hotel to leave the note to make sure it wouldn’t appear too suspicious, aware that not only the police would have a look but also private investigators…
Maybe the police didn’t realize that the first time there were more clothes than now… ”
There was something about that whole affair—Leonardo Pascual mysteriously disappearing, his beauty products gone from his dressing room, now his clothes also gone, the notes—that wasn’t sitting well with Sol.
“I know we all agree that Sandro is in a lot of pain and could not have done anything to harm Leonardo—” Sol started.
“Do we all agree?” Luke teased. Divya and Sol just glared at him.
“Let Sol finish her thoughts, mate.” Divya warned Luke.
“But could it be that Leonardo wasn’t that much into Sandro? Could he just have decided to take a few days off and disappear without telling his lover?”
“But making sure nothing that would make his life more comfortable was missing…” Divya followed Sol’s words.
“Uh-huh,” Sol agreed.
“That would explain a lot of things,” Luke said. Sol’s heart rate picked up, but not only because he still smelled delicious. Was she good at this detective thing? “But I still don’t think he just left.”