Chapter 32
Sol
Are we going to take Fairbanks’s offer?” Divya asked Luke and Sol.
The Mancunian was just getting into Sol’s apartment that Wednesday morning after Luke had hung up with Fairbanks and had called her to tell her what’d happened.
Luke dragged a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Are we? Can we?”
“Want me to call Moon and ask what they think about it?” Divya offered, her cell phone already out of her pocket.
“No, no, no, no, no!” Sol extended her hands in front of her in warning. “Don’t tell Moon anything. We want them to be able to say they didn’t know anything in case Meshflixx gets pissed.”
At the end of the day, Luke and Divya were hired detectives. Sol wasn’t even officially working on the case. But Moon was Meshflixx’s employee. It was better to keep them insulated if things didn’t get a positive outcome.
“Why would they get pissed off?” Luke’s gaze sharpened on Sol.
“In case we go to Mallorca to look for Leonardo—against their specific instructions—and still don’t find him there,” Sol said.
She’d been extremely thorough in her online research, the same way she was when she was looking for background information to write an article.
But with online research one could only be so certain: they needed to go to Mallorca and see whether what she'd found was real.
“Show me the post again,” Luke asked her, as if sharing the same doubts.
Sol went to her computer, which was on top of the coffee table.
She opened it and it was right there: the pixelated video uploaded to social media—with a Palma de Mallorca geolocation tag—that showed a man wearing the same black wide-legged slacks and boxy, white, short-sleeved shirt Leonardo Pascual wore for his interview with Sol the day he went missing.
In the video, he was also sporting triangle slim sunglasses.
During the interview the sunglasses had been hanging from the open necklace of his shirt.
“And you think that’s Leonardo?” Luke asked her.
Sol exhaled. The video was so pixelated, and taken from a distance, that it was hard to unequivocally say yes.
The man in it seemed to be a similar size and build as Leonardo.
He had the same brown messy hair cut short.
He even moved and made some of the same gestures Sol had seen Leonardo make when they’d met.
But the face of the individual in the video wasn’t very distinguishable.
The reason it had taken Sol a few attempts to unearth that video was the way it’d been tagged.
Instead of using Leonardo Pascual’s official handle, or his name, the person who posted it had labeled it #LooPasqual.
“I think so.” She finally said. “And that’s also the other guy.”
Next to could-be Leonardo on the social media video there was a shorter person, all dressed in black, wearing sunglasses, and who reminded Sol of the person she’d seen approach Leonardo when their interview had finished at the W Hotel.
“I think we take Fairbanks’s offer, mate,” Divya said, a slight hesitation still lingering in her words.
Luke paced back and forth in front of them for a few seconds, pinching the bridge of his nose in his characteristic nervous way and not saying a word.
“Is he thinking?” Sol asked Divya.
Divya shrugged. “You tell me.”
“What’s the worst that could happen if we take Fairbanks’s offer?
” Luke stopped pacing and stood in the middle of the kitchen.
It was at moments like that—when he spoke fast and louder than usual, and did a lot of his talking with his hands—that Sol found him at his most Italian.
She smiled. She was into his Italian side.
“Uh, if we don’t find Leonardo, the execs at Mesflixx could get mad and decide not to hire us again,” Divya said.
“I would need to check with our accountant. But right now I reckon they make up thirty percent of our earnings. They’re a very reliable client, always seeming to find themselves in one problem or another to require our services. ”
“Thirty percent is not terrible. I mean, we could survive their rage, right?” Luke tried reasoning. It wasn’t clear to Sol whether he was talking it over with the two women or with himself. “We have other clients.”
“Not if they warn everyone in the business against hiring you.” Sol wanted them to contemplate all the possible scenarios. The Bakshi & Contadino Agency had been working on other entertainment-centered cases because of their previous successful rate with Meshflixx.
“We could specialize in something else,” Divya quipped. “I mean, it’s not like we know shit about entertainment. We’d be lost without you, Sol.”
They would.
“So, do we take the risk?” Luke searched Divya’s face.
“I think we do, mate.” She smiled at Luke.
Both detectives then turned to Sol. “Do we take the risk?” Luke asked Sol then.
“What? Me? It’s your agency!”
“Yeah, but we know you’re really invested in it,” Divya said. “Plus you’re investigating this case with us. So what do you say?”
“I say we all could use a little bit more sun and warmth.”