Page 31 of Scripted for Love and Poison (Sol and Luke Mystery #2)

T he following day, he was knocking on Divya’s door before seven in the morning.

“I blew it with Sol,” he told his colleague and friend when she opened her door, fresh-faced and with her short hair still wet from the shower. Luke had to admit jet lag had at least one advantage: Divya was already up and ready.

“What now?” she told him, implying that he’d been blowing it with Sol for days. And he had.

“I told her to go back to London,” he said as Divya let him inside, and he collapsed on top of one of the chairs in the hotel room, which may have been full of discarded clothes in varying degrees of cleanliness, but he didn’t care. Fortunately, neither did Divya.

Divya breathed deeply, her eyes darting upward. “Let me guess, she didn’t take it well?”

“She threw me out of her friends’ house and told me not to contact her unless it was to apologize,” he explained, raking his hand nervously through his messy hair .

“And what are you waiting for?” Divya said. She sounded a bit impatient.

“I can’t apologize.”

“Are you serious!?” She definitely sounded cross at him. “You can’t tell a grown woman what to do, mate! And I can’t believe that I am really having to explain this to you. I had you pinned for a feminist ally. I’m sure Sol had too. Not sure any of us would want anything to do with you otherwise.”

“I still think she should go back to London. But even if she wanted to, which has been plenty clear to me she won’t do if only to go against me, she still couldn’t because of that stupid Detective Tom Owens!”

“So tell me again why you’re not apologizing, then? She can’t return to London, and it’s out of your control and her control. And by the way, she already has one man telling her she can’t leave the country. She doesn’t need her partner telling her she has to leave it.”

“I mean, when you put it like this!” he said, defeated.

“Luke, I really thought you were better than this.” Divya sounded genuinely disillusioned. It was as if he’d let his favorite teacher down. “Men, mate. You always have to disappoint, don’t you?”

Luke didn’t like the sound of those words. He wasn’t just another man , certainly not one who was simply a disappointment to women. His two sisters and his mom could vouch for that, right?

“Go on then, off you go back to Sol,” Divya told him, as if realizing he’d finally seen his mistake and was ready to correct it.

“Considering it’s rush hour, it’s going to take you a good hour to get there.

Plenty of time to practice your apology.

Because the first words you’re going to tell that woman are, ‘I’m an idiot.

I’m sorry. I won’t pretend to tell you what you have to do ever again. ’ ”

“She won’t want to talk to me yet. She’s too mad.

The only reason I’m not too worried that I’m not there is because the friend promised me they’d look after her and make sure she was safe.

But Sol doesn’t want me around,” he tried reasoning, but Divya was already grabbing him by the elbow, ushering him to stand and leave.

“‘ I’m an idiot. I’m sorry. I won’t pretend to tell you what you have to do ever again , ’” Divya repeated as Luke was now in front of the room’s door again and she was opening it.

“She’ll be happy with those words, to start with.

You’ll still have to do a full mea culpa after that and try explaining such a stupid lapse of judgment.

But I trust you’ll be able to figure out what else to say, right? ”

Divya gave him a pointed stare. He’d better start saying the right things.

“Right,” he muttered, still not completely sure what had happened.

His colleague was already closing the door to her room on his face when he remembered something else that needed mentioning.

“Wait, she told me she’d found something in Simon Smith’s manuscript and is going to call you and let you know. Please pick up when she rings you.”

“Luke, mate , since when do I not pick up the phone when it’s Sol or anybody else?”

“I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do.” He put his hands up as if to plead blamelessness. “I was only giving you the last update on the case.”

“Yes, yes. Off you go. Can’t say I’m particularly fond of you at the moment.”

Luke tried giving his colleague his best puppy-eyed expression in the hopes of regaining some of her sympathy. But as he was going to say goodbye and leave, he got a phone call .

“It’s Marquee Media,” he told Divya as he picked up the call and put it on speakerphone.

“Luke, good morning. How are you? Claudia Hopkins here.” Luke recognized the unmistakable voice of Sol’s former editor. “I know it’s early, but I’m an early-morning person. My bosses wanted me to give you a call. They’d like to know if you have any updates.”

And to think, he’d heard somewhere Americans weren’t direct. It wasn’t as if Claudia had actually asked him how he was doing and meant for him to give her an answer.

“So?” Claudia’s impatient tone cut through the morning air as Luke and Divya looked at each other, interrogating themselves silently and deciding what they could offer.

“We had a very interesting chat with Travis yesterday,” Luke said after a nervous, throat-clearing cough. “And we’re almost prepared to confirm filmmaker Victor Lago had nothing to do with either the poisonings or the disappearance of Simon Smith.”

“Pity,” said Claudia, and she did sound genuinely upset. “It would have made for such a juicy story. The headline writes itself: Has-Been Director Kills Editor, Makes Critic Disappear Because They Dishonored His Snoozefest of a Movie . Or something like that. Shorter, of course ...”

“Right,” Luke said, and both he and Divya were rolling their eyes in disbelief. Luke’s colleague seemed to be telling him, Showbiz people, mate .

“So.” Claudia’s tone changed to businesslike once again. “Victor Lago is out. Who’s in? What else have you sleuthed ? Is that even a verb?”

“I think it is,” said Luke. “We’re following several leads at the moment.”

“Yeah, that won’t do. You need to stop exploring and start wrapping this whole thing up,” Claudia said, and it was as if Luke was having déjà vu.

Every time he was entangled in some sort of Hollywood investigation, they reached a point when the client lost their patience and wanted things solved quickly.

“My bosses at Marquee Media aren’t happy.

Between you and me, they’re thinking about firing you if you don’t come up with a culprit soon. ”

“Investigations take time. If they are unhappy, we can send an invoice for services rendered,” Luke said, and he hoped the bluff in his tone wasn’t audible. “But we know there’s not simply one culprit.”

“What do you mean?” Claudia asked, and her tone had turned from ominous to genuinely curious.

“We think Simon Smith’s disappearance and the poisonings are unrelated.”

Luke could almost hear the wheels turning in Claudia’s brain.

“Interesting,” she finally said. “I’m thinking how we could use this information.”

“Use it?” Luke didn’t follow.

“As I’ve said, Victor Lago as our man was the perfect story.

And we need some sort of favorable story.

My bosses aren’t happy with so many of their employees at the media company biting the dust. They think it reflects badly on Marquee Media, which is why they hired you .

But there can still be other ways of spinning this.

One of my writers is going to be calling you in a few minutes.

Would you be so kind as to answer their questions about the case? ”

“You want to quote me in an article?” Luke asked.

He’d never say so to Sol, but he didn’t like talking to journalists.

He still knew it was a necessary thing to do for certain high-profile cases.

And the publicity they’d gotten from past cases had brought Divya and him some new clients.

He still felt trepidation every time he had to speak to a reporter .

“Yes, we’ll write something about the threat to the press when journalists are silenced,” Claudia said, and Luke thought she was saying those words out loud as she thought them.

“Silenced for what reason?”

“Doing their jobs. Obviously! Can you think of something clever to say?”

“I’m sure I can come up with something.” What was it that day that all women wanted him to say the right words but didn’t appear sure he was able to do it?

“And leave Simon out of this, okay?” Claudia said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean don’t talk about him in the story. Even if Jason was an absolutely mediocre editor with not the best manners—the man would never remember anyone—he and Travis were still pretty well regarded in the industry. Simon, on the other hand ...”

“Nobody seems to like him much,” Luke said, almost as if to prove he wasn’t such a simple man, after all, and could deliver what was being asked of him.

“Exactly. It doesn’t suit our narrative of sympathetic journalists being censored. Let’s leave him out, yes? You said the two cases weren’t related, anyway.”

Luke had said that, and he probably wouldn’t have thought of mentioning Simon if someone had asked solely about the poisoning case. But being told not to do it made him feel queasy, nonetheless.

“You know Simon mentions you in his book, right?” Luke asked the editor.

“And I’m sure he only had awful things to say about me,” Claudia deadpanned, and she sounded as calm as usual. “Tell me, does he have good things to say about anyone?”

He needed to ask Sol, but he had a suspicion that the answer to Claudia’s question was going to be no. When he hung up with Claudia, Divya didn’t wait to let him know what she thought of the situation.

“I’ll call Sol now and ask her whatever she found in the book. We need results soon. It sounds like we could find ourselves without a case unless we come up with something.”

“Good idea,” Luke agreed. There was no need to speak the words And we really need the money . They both were plenty aware of it.