Chapter 41
Luke
The Four Seasons? Why doesn’t it surprise me?” Divya muttered, when they parked at the upscale hotel on Cala Formentor, on the north of the island, where Fairbanks was staying.
“Because he’s a posh American?” Luke chuckled.
“Come on, mate. Don’t be judgy.”
Luke and Divya saw showrunner Jasper Fairbanks almost immediately after parking.
They recognized him based on the pictures Sol had found of him online.
He was lounging by the pool, overlooking the sea and surrounded by Mediterranean shrubs and pines.
He was crouched on a lounge chair, his computer on his lap, and enveloped in a thick, white bathrobe.
“Do you also find it eerie that he’s next to the swimming pool after FadeToBlack’s latest post?” Divya managed to say exactly what Luke was thinking.
“He was in Los Angeles when Leonardo disappeared.” Luke grunted under his breath, as they approached the showrunner, still out of earshot from him.
“Are we sure about that, then?” Divya was at the point in the investigation when she’d started questioning everything—not only the assumptions they’d made based on hard evidence, but also the facts.
It proved a very effective technique when they were stuck in an investigation—and they were most definitely moored when it came to reaching Leonardo’s whereabouts.
“We know that he entered the country, and the island, via private jet from Los Angeles yesterday.” The showrunner could still have technically flown out of the island undetected just to fly back and make sure to create a commotion that would make his arrival memorable—and buy him an alibi when it came to Leonardo’s disappearance.
“Would you mind moving? You’re blocking the sun,” Fairbanks told Luke as the detective approached his lounge chair.
“Jasper Fairbanks? I’m Luke Contadino,” he introduced himself and then proceeded to do the same with Divya.
It wasn’t lost on Luke that Jasper hadn’t expected to see them there. Surprise flickered across his face. The detective couldn’t avoid thinking how quintessentially Californian Fairbanks looked: besides the bathrobe, he was wearing tall socks, sliders, sunglasses, and a cardinal-red USC hat.
“What are you guys doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be looking for Leonardo?” Fairbanks, who Luke assumed to be in his mid-forties, closed his laptop and sat up.
“We are.” Luke gave him one of his business smiles. “We’re also wondering what you’re doing on the island.”
“I’m here to encourage you to do your job, obviously!
” Jasper argued. When the two pairs of eyes in front of him judged him for a few seconds, he added: “I was going to tell you that I was here, but then the stupid gummies incident happened at the airport. I was so embarrassed. That’s why I hate flying.
Even when you have a perfectly uneventful flight, something bad ends up happening once you’ve landed! ”
“So you were going to call us?” The disbelief in Divya’s voice matched Luke’s.
“Of course! I wanted to know how you guys are doing? What the news is on good old Leonardo. Then I got here, a bit high and jet-lagged. Slept for probably fifteen hours straight. I woke up this morning, came to the swimming pool to catch up on some email, and it’s all so—”
“Chaotic,” Luke offered when Fairbanks didn’t seem to find the word, but the showrunner dismissed him with a flick of his right hand.
“Complicated,” Divya said. But Fairbanks frowned at that.
There was a silence while the three of them seemed to be at a loss for words.
“Paradisiac.” Divya sighed after a few seconds. She was no longer looking at the two men, but the waves and nature ahead of them had caught her attention. There was not a trace of tension on her features or her body language, and she seemed content. Happy even.
“Yeah, that!” Fairbanks gave a sharp snap of his fingers.
“In any case, I forgot about everything else. Not quite sure who I am or where we’re at the moment.
Been doing some rewrites of episode four for I don’t know how long.
I may have finally resolved the exposition dump issues I had.
No wonder people love traveling. I should do it more often—regardless of how much I hate flying.
” The showrunner also looked at the marine horizon ahead of them and sighed.
Luke blinked. What were these people going on about?
“So,” Fairbanks went back to business. “Do I have a leading man yet? Have you guys found Leonardo?”
“He was sighted on the island two nights ago,” Divya proceeded to share the agreed-upon version of the facts.
“That’s awesome! So where is he exactly?”
“We’re still trying to pinpoint his whereabouts.” Divya was vague. “Doing it as we speak.”
Jasper harrumphed. “If it wasn’t because of the clause on my contract, I’d be looking for a replacement star already.
But Meshflixx was pretty clear: The Single Dad Situation is only happening if Leonardo is the single dad.
What do you think has happened to him? Has he really deserted me like the internet is set on making me believe? ”
“We think he may have been kidnapped, actually,” Luke said.
When the otherwise chatty and apparently extroverted Fairbanks didn’t say anything, Luke and Divya grabbed some lawn chairs and sat next to him.
“Kidnapped? By whom?” Fairbanks finally snapped out of his inner thoughts, his features a mixture of bewilderment and fear.
“Still working on that. Could be someone who calls himself FadeToBlack online. Does that ring any bells?” Luke asked Fairbanks.
The showrunner chuckled. “I have several colleagues who swear by the classic transition and won’t even hear about trying anything else. Do you think he’s okay? Leonardo?”
“He was looking healthy and his usual very attractive self when he was spotted two nights ago,” Divya explained.
“Ah, that’s a good sign!”
Luke could understand that for Jasper Fairbanks there was also a lot on the line, like the actual feasibility of his show.
Even if with Fairbank’s private jet and five-star luxury hotel Luke was having some issues feeling for the showrunner or empathizing with him.
But had Fairbanks really expressed his relief at Leonardo looking good?
“Don’t think I’m totally shallow,” Fairbanks said, as if reading Luke’s mind.
“But you see, I’m going crazy here. I keep getting trapped in online forums where users are convinced that Leonardo has abandoned me and my show and he’s decided he wants to do Theo Summers’ Bibliophilia instead.
In my show, Leonardo plays a total hunk of a single daddy.
For Bibliophilia he was supposed to lose like twenty pounds, and play this emaciated specter trapped between the fabric of books and reality, or something boring like that.
So, if he looks good and healthy, it means he isn’t thinking about leaving me—even if we still need to find him. ”
“Jasper, do you have any idea why someone would have decided to take Leonardo here?” Divya asked one of the questions that was currently on top of the detectives’ minds.
“He loves islands, doesn’t he? Can’t think of a better way of wooing him.”