Chapter 39
Sol
Miquel just called me,” Luke told her, when he went back to the café and sat next to Sol. “He wants to apologize to you and he asked me to tell you to please take his calls.”
Sol slanted her eyes at him. Why was Luke telling her that? Since when did he play messenger for Miquel? Luke hated ex-husband number one. Didn’t he?
“Oh—kay,” she answered and finished her double espresso. Could that day get any weirder?
“I found five cab companies that operate in Palma,” Divya said on the other side of Sol and apparently unaware of whatever bizarreness had just occurred between Sol and Luke—or simply deciding to ignore it.
There were more important things at present, after all, like a missing actor.
“I say, let’s talk to all of them, see if we can find the driver who took Leonardo the other night from the cocktail bar. ”
“Sounds good,” Luke muttered. What exactly had gotten to him? He’d barely looked at Sol from the moment he came back from talking to Miquel.
“Bloody hell!” Divya yelled, still checking her cell phone. “Moon wants to talk to us. Says it’s urgent.”
“You don’t sound very happy about the prospect of having to talk to Moonbeam,” Luke joked.
“The way their message is written, this doesn’t look like a Sugar and Moonbeam conversation, more like a PI Divya Bakshi and Meshflixx producer Moon Scott one. They’d even used their corporate email address!” A crease formed between Divya’s brows.
“Right, do you want me to be the one to talk to them?” Luke offered, no longer teasing Divya.
“No, I can do this mate, just be prepared.” Divya said. She answered her phone after one ring, and exited the café.
“Be prepared for what?” Luke said, once his detective partner had left.
“Are you okay, Luca?” Sol took the opportunity that they were alone to ask.
“Yeah, of course.” His answer was tight, too fast. “Are you?” He flicked his eyes from the street, where Divya was talking to Moon, to Sol, then back to the street.
“Yeah, of course.” She was also fast to answer, and feared none of them had been completely truthful.
Luke
First it was Miquel's still unprocessed message—or was it a warning or cautionary advice? Luke didn’t know what to make of it but according to Ex Number One, who’d known Sol for a lot longer than Luke, there was no way the woman Luke loved would want to actually propose to him and marry—not sober anyway.
Then it was the bad news from the client.
Divya returned to the café that had somehow become their impromptu office not five minutes after having left it to talk to Moon. She was huffing, her lips pressed into a thin line.
“Something happened?” Luke asked his detective partner. But of course he already knew the answer.
Divya simply bore her intense amber eyes at him. “Bloody entertainment people, mate.”
“Agreed,” Luke said. He still didn’t know what Moon had told Divya, but he was on his partner’s side, always.
Divya sighed. “Moon is furious—nervous too. Somehow the execs at Meshflixx figured out we’re in Mallorca, and they’re not happy—unless we find Leonardo in the next couple of days, of course.
Then I reckon everything will be fine because they could start shooting on Monday.
But they made Moon ring and tell me: we have to find Leonardo or we’ll be fired, we’ll never work with them again, and they’ll make sure no one wants to work with us.
The Single Dad Situation will be done. And Moon won’t only be without a job, they’ll be persona non grata to Meshflixx too.
They think it was Moon who gave us the green light to come here. ”
That was bollocks.
“Would it help if we called Meshflixx and explained Moon had nothing to do with this trip?” Luke said. He could see that Divya was distressed just thinking about Moon and their work problems—let alone solving the case.
“I think the best we can do is find Leonardo.”
Luke agreed.
···
As things stood then, it looked like Sol would never marry Luke, Meshflixx had threatened to never employ the Bakshi & Contadino Agency again, and they’d make sure no one else would either. But the day could still get worse—and it did.
Five minutes after they’d left the café headed for the hotel to start ringing cab companies, Sol called the alarm. She’d been uncharacteristically silent all morning, and had been focused on her mobile phone for the last half an hour, even while they walked.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she said in a high-pitched way, standing immobile in the middle of the street while still not taking her eyes from her phone.
“Sol, what’s wrong?” Divya asked her.
“He wrote again,” Sol said. “FadeToBlack, he just posted something else on their feed. There’s a picture of what looks like the water in a swimming pool and a caption.”
“What does the caption say?” Luke was almost scared to ask.
“Fuck!” Sol gasped.
She handed the phone to Luke. He handed it to Divya, without even looking at it, just went to Sol and hugged her, stroked her hair. Breathed deeply in and out to get her body to do the same.
Whatever had set her heart racing couldn’t be good. But he needed to make sure she was all right before focusing on the case.
Sol
She inhaled Luke’s woodsy smell and that grounded her, it calmed her down.
Her heart started beating at a slower pace, helped by the deep inhalations and exhales Luke was making.
The dizziness faded as she continued with the deep breathing.
She didn’t want to let Luke go but she had to do it.
She could hardly keep clinging to him when they were in the middle of the street—and Leonardo was in danger.
She reluctantly untangled herself from his body.
“You all right?” he asked her, almost as if he too didn’t want to let her go.
She nodded. “You need to read the post from FadeToBlack.”
Divya handed the phone to Luke. His features were edged by worry after reading the words that had troubled Sol:
You’ll never hear him scream underwater. Stop pretending he’s safe.