Page 15 of Scripted for Love and Poison (Sol and Luke Mystery #2)

T he following morning, Luke was standing on the open-air walkway of a run-down, two-story apartment building in yet another part of town deemed unhip by Alex.

Luke was aware he should probably stop taking the opinion of a thirteen-year-old so seriously but couldn’t avoid doing it.

He liked Alex. The introverted, scrawny kid reminded Luke of a version of himself at his age.

Minus the skateboard and the tie-dye Crocs.

And Alex seemed to genuinely like Luke, as well.

It was nice to be surrounded by nice people, especially when he was so far from home and his romantic partner still hadn’t forgiven him for being drunk and saying the wrong thing the day before.

It was as if Sol was freezing him out. And the lack of personal space wasn’t helping. Luke’s plans for the day were interviewing Vinny Green, trying to finally talk to Travis Wise, and finding a hotel room for him and Sol. They needed to move out of Lola’s living room and start communicating again.

He put thoughts of Sol aside for a moment as he knocked on Vinny Green’s apartment door.

The sooner the case was over, the sooner they could go back to London and resume their perfectly heated relationship.

After a second knock, a blond woman in her late twenties holding a few stapled pages opened the door.

“Can I help you?” she said, not taking her eyes off the pages in front of her, which looked like a script. Was it possible that everyone was an actor in this town? At least every waiter and waitress he’d encountered so far looked like an aspiring one.

“I’m looking for Vinny Green,” Luke said.

“Who?”

“Vinny Green, he’s a waiter at Star System Catering.” Luke had a bad feeling.

“You got the wrong address. There’s no Vinny Green here. And no clue who that is. I also temp for Star System Catering sometimes, though,” the wannabe actress explained.

“I see,” Luke said. “And by any chance were you working a couple of nights ago?”

“For the critics awards ceremony? I had to skip that one. I’d booked a role in a toothpaste commercial,” she said, flaunting the most perfect of white smiles. It was so fluorescently white, it almost blinded Luke.

The story checked. Luke thanked the actress for her time and made his descent to the street, but before requesting another car and wondering if he should think about renting a vehicle full-time, he called the number Chef Gill García had given him for Vinny Green and got exactly what he was expecting: a no-longer working number.

“The plot thickens,” he said out loud while he dialed Divya’s number and waited for his Uber to arrive .

I will not fall asleep , Sol kept reciting to herself, but it was difficult to follow her own precise instruction.

She was at an almost-deserted showing of Haughty Horizons at The Grove.

A full hour of the movie had already gone by, and she still couldn’t tell what the movie was about or why had it ever been greenlit.

She was utterly bored. And tired, so tired. She loved Lola, but as inflatable mattresses went, her friend’s was the most uncomfortable one Sol had ever slept on. And that was counting the whole of her twenties and even a few of her thirties.

But Sol feared it hadn’t been the discomfort of the mattress that had caused her to sleep extremely poorly the night before, but Luke’s humming presence lying next to her.

Silent. He was so close. Yet the farthest apart from her she’d ever felt him.

Even when they’d just met and had just started knowing each other, he hadn’t felt so out of reach.

He hadn’t stopped flirting with her back then.

But now, for all she knew, he was flirting with someone else.

Why else would he have told her about the chef hitting on him?

She needed to stop obsessing about him and pay attention to the damn movie.

She was supposed to write about the damn movie!

But she knew there was no way she’d get even minimally interested in the story of Haughty Horizons , and she resisted the idea of thinking about Luke, plus those seats were definitely more comfortable than Lola’s mattress.

So she finally allowed herself to give in and sleep. She just hoped she wouldn’t snore much.

She was woken up by a movie usher, the ending credits of the movie rolling on the screen and not another moviegoer in sight.

“I’m so sorry!” Sol told the usher when she realized she had, indeed, fallen deeply asleep .

“Oh don’t worry, ma’am, it’s this movie. I feel the director has stumbled on the cure for insomnia,” the usher said, and Sol couldn’t avoid laughing out loud, even if she had yet again been called ma’am .

Her cell phone buzzed the minute she disabled airplane mode, and she left the screening room, thanking the usher one last time. It was Luke calling, and she felt the only way the two of them were communicating lately was telephonically. She hated that.

“Luca,” she answered, using the affectionate version of his name she had for him, momentarily forgetting she was supposed to be mad.

“Ciao, cara, sorry to bother you,” he said, and she felt they had perhaps reached some kind of tacit truce.

“You never bother me,” she said. It was so much easier to not be mad at him. She didn’t want to be mad at him. Why was she mad at him? Some miscommunication nonsense.

“How was the movie?” he asked, because of course he’d remembered she’d mentioned she was going to watch Haughty Horizons when they’d all had breakfast together that morning like a big happy modern family.

Lola’s husband had made whole wheat pancakes with blueberries and Shinko pears, and everyone had shared their plans for the day.

Not only that, Luke had listened. Not that the same could be said of her.

She had no clue what everyone else was doing at the moment.

“The movie was dreadfully boring,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he did sound as if the idea of her being dreadfully bored was appalling.

As if that wasn’t already enticing enough, her mind decided that was the perfect moment to remind her how he looked completely naked, and Sol concluded she was a fool and had been acting like one for the last few days.

There was absolutely no reason why she should be mad at such a man.

“Don’t be sorry, I had the most restorative of naps,” she said.

“That mattress is also killing you, huh?”

“Most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever slept on.”

“I know,” he said, a conspiratorial tone in his voice. The half-deflated mattress suddenly sounded much more appealing. It was the most tortuous sleeping device, but she’d shared it with him. “Listen, I have a bit of an odd request.”

“Uh-huh,” she said while she headed to the nearby Barnes & Noble. She sure could treat herself to some book buying now that she no longer was fuming against her partner.

“I know the answer is probably no, since everyone you seem to know is somehow associated with the showbusiness industry,” Luke continued.

“Except for you,” she said, a smile reaching her lips.

“Except for me,” he said, and she could hear him smiling as well.

“But would you happen to have any contacts in law enforcement here? If I were in London, I’d have reached out to my and Divya’s contacts at the Met already.

We both feel a conversation with the LAPD would probably help right now but don’t know where to start. ”

“The investigation is stalled?” she asked.

“Very much so.” He sighed. “I have a missing witness, a chef who won’t pick up the phone, and Travis still doesn’t feel strong enough to talk to me or anyone else, apparently.

I was just texting him, and he told me he needs a few more days.

But I really want to wrap this up and head back home as soon as possible. ”

“I see. ”

“Sorry again. I know I said I wouldn’t get you involved.”

“I may know someone,” she said, even if she regretted it the moment she uttered those words. But she wanted to help Luke. “Can’t promise anything, but he’s an assistant district attorney for the city.”

“That’s exactly what I need! I’m trying to get the official police file and whatever they may have on Travis’s and Simon’s cases.”

Sol hesitated for a beat, then said, “Sending you his info right now. Tell him I gave you the contact.”

“Grazie, cara. I’ll call you later. See you at Lola’s?” Luke asked.

“Sure,” Sol said before hanging up. Should she have told Luke how she knew someone in law enforcement? He was so caught up in the case and fixated on going home that he hadn’t even thought about asking.