Chapter 29

29

L uke and Divya had decided the night before to go straight to Meshflixx and talk to Sara themselves. Now that they knew Agatha was no longer an option as a thief—they had checked with the Four Seasons and at least three staff members remembered the agent staying there until late on the afternoon of the theft. She was a memorable tipper, apparently—they needed to know what happened on February 23. What actually happened.

Next on their to-do list was to get a link, copy, or whatever available medium of the recording from the class that night. Sol had promised Luke to ask the Pilates instructor for it herself and brief Josie on what was going on.

Luke had said yes to Sol's proposal because he suspected Josie would react better to Sol's request than his. Josie had known Sol for much longer than him, and Sol had never lied to Josie about her identity.

Plus, and Luke would not know how to express this in so many words, he'd liked Josie in his venture as Greg Knight. He'd admired her and didn't want to tell her that he'd lied to her. He'd already done that twice in the previous days—first to Sol, then Agatha—and it had been draining and exhausting even if Agatha had seemed not to care.

But coming clean had been brutal when it came to Sol. Their relationship had changed since that conversation, since his confession to her. He suspected she still tolerated him only because she needed him. She needed to be close to him to keep an eye on the investigation.

They had somehow moved from potential lovers with lots of chemistry to simple acquaintances who had a common goal and where one of them had betrayed the other. Perhaps if Luke managed to salvage Sol's reputation and keep her name out of the case, once it was finally wrapped, she would give him another chance as a potential love interest. He'd like that.

Divya broke him out of his reverie that Monday morning by handing him a to-go cup of tea as they met at the entrance of the Meshflixx building.

"I know you don't like just any kind of tea," she said. Luke rarely had tea on the go; it was never the right brand or strength, and he hated paper cups. "But I know you need another cuppa. You've been distracted. I need you sharp. Know what I mean?"

Luke could have objected. He and Divya had the kind of relationship where they were straightforward with one another but also joked constantly. But she was right about him being distracted. So he grabbed the cup and accepted her method of trying to get him awake and alert. "Ta."

Once they got inside Meshflixx's ultra-modern, ultra-minimalist building, the receptionist wanted to know if they had an appointment with Sara Daniels.

"We don't," said Divya. "We are from Thompson & Thomson, the agency investigating the theft of The Privateers script."

"I see." The receptionist seemed to understand. "Let me get her people."

After fifteen minutes of idly standing in the Meshflixx lobby—there were no chairs or even stools in the whole reception area as the interior designers had taken the minimalist concept to an uncomfortable extreme—a petite person with turquoise hair and dressed in an immaculate lemon-colored two-piece suit and sneakers came looking for Luke and Divya.

"You are the detectives?" the person asked, and Divya and Luke nodded. "I'm Moon Scott, Sara and Bryana's creative liaison. My pronouns are they, she."

"I'm Divya Bakshi, junior investigator at Thompson & Thomson, and my pronouns are she, her." Divya smiled, and Luke recognized that smile as the one reserved for purveyors of good food, and beautiful people.

"And I'm Divya's colleague, Luke Contadino. He, him," he added.

"Follow me," Moon commanded, taking them through what looked like a maze of lifts, halls, and stairs. For such a recent construction as Luke knew the Meshflixx building to be—there was no way of overstating his real estate obsession—the place had been designed with the worst interior design choices of the seventies when it came to its floorplan.

"Please sit down," Moon told them when they got inside a cube-like room where all the walls were glass. A round plexiglass table sat in its middle, four equally transparent chairs around it. "The agency didn't tell us you'd be coming today," said Moon.

Luke decided to let Divya do the talking. She was better than he was at charming their way into getting something.

"They didn't?" she asked so convincingly that even Luke believed it. "I'm afraid our manager has been a bit preoccupied lately. New love interest troubles."

Luke didn't appreciate that Divya was using his own romantically caused distractions as a plausible excuse.

"I see," said Moon. "We've all been there."

"Yes, we've all been there." Divya smiled again, and Luke rolled his eyes a bit. She'd scolded him not a week before because the job wasn't the place to meet people , yet there she was in full meeting-people mode while performing her responsibilities as a detective.

"Unfortunately, Sara isn't at the office," said Moon. "She's been working from home."

"Would it be possible to get her address and talk to her at home?" asked Divya.

"That won't be possible." Moon returned Divya's smile, and Luke was thoroughly entertained. On the surface, Moon and Divya were having a cordial chat, but beneath all the professionalism were sparks between the two of them, even if they were on opposite sides. "But I can pass her any message you folks may have for her."

"We'd like to have her version of the facts one more time," explained Divya. "She mentioned leaving the Pilates class early that day, and we were wondering if she'd been the only one to do it. Also, was there any other thing out of the norm that day?"

"Other than her script being stolen, you mean?" asked Moon, not a single trace of sarcasm in her tone.

"Other than that," conceded Divya.

"The whole thing is so odd," said Moon. "Sara didn't normally go to Pilates on Thursday nights. Evenings tend to be very involved in terms of breaking and pitching new storylines. But that day we finished early, and she decided to go. She needed to finish some revisions of the script at night. She normally does that on her tablet or laptop, but the wi-fi was down that afternoon. That's actually why we finished early."

"The wi-fi was down?" repeated Luke. "Where? Here? Isn't that odd?" And extremely inconvenient for a tech company.

"Very odd!" replied Moon. "So Sara grabbed a copy of the script and left to go to Pilates. If only the wi-fi had worked, but she didn't want to risk getting home that night and not being able to access the latest version of the script on the cloud because of the wi-fi kerfuffle."

"Was it the whole building? The wi-fi not working, I mean," asked Luke.

"Not sure, but several people on our floor told me they also had problems."

Luke was about to ask Moon how unusual it was for the building to be without internet when they heard a knock on the glass door of the fishbowl-like meeting room.

Sara Daniels was the one knocking. It appeared she wasn't working from home after all.

"Oh, Bryana is here," said Moon.

Luke shook his head. Why had he assumed the woman at the door was Sara? He knew she had an identical twin, and he'd been told Sara wasn't there. But his detective's nose tended to veer toward not believing everything he was told. He must have assumed the creative liaison hadn't told them the truth.

"These are the detectives in charge of investigating the theft ," said Moon, uttering that last word almost in a whisper.

Bryana introduced herself. Name, last name, job title, and pronouns. The detectives did the same.

"We'd love to talk to your sister," said Luke.

"She's been focused on writing," Bryana said. "As I'm sure you'll understand, the leak was a bit upsetting and she feels responsible, even if we've all assured her that it wasn't her fault. We're quite busy with The Privateers . But Moon and I will be happy to send her any request for information."

"Please, tell her we'd like to chat with her. It wouldn't be more than ten minutes, and a phone call would suffice." Luke gave Bryana and Moon cards with his phone number.

The cards read Luke Contadino (he/him), Investigator and included his phone number and email account. He'd had them printed when he was working as a contractor at another agency, and he was still using them since T&T had never bothered outfitting him with new cards.

"So you're busy writing the second season then?" he asked Bryana.

"Incredibly busy," she said, without offering any specifics.

"Any chance the quartermaster doesn't get killed in the end?" Luke still hadn't watched The Privateers but had decided to use all the information Sol had given him.

"A fan, are we?" asked Bryana, not giving anything away.

"You caught me," lied Luke. "I loved that you didn't prolong the whole will-they-won't-they routine too much, and that the quartermaster and captain finished the first season as a couple."

Divya shot him a look from across the round table. Have you decided to start watching The Privateers without telling me? her eyes asked.

"I wanted them to solve another crime together this season," added Luke, feigning the shyness of an overzealous fan. "I'm very much into whodunits with lots of romance." He almost blushed. Those were the truest words to come out of his mouth that morning, which made him wonder why he hadn't started watching this show yet.

"That's what the fans keep telling us. That they want more of Leonardo Pascual and Murray Groff together doing their sleuthing bit," Bryana said. She was less guarded than before. She'd warmed up to Luke's demonstration of appreciation for her and her sister's work. "I won't spoil anything…"

"Please don't," fake-pleaded Luke.

"But don't worry too much," Bryana said.

Luke was about to express his fake relief when Divya thankfully intervened. He'd never been a good actor and wasn't sure he'd be able to pull off the authenticity of a comforted fan.

"Does that mean the leak made you change the script?" asked Divya. Nothing escaped her deducting skills.

"Oh no, no!" replied Bryana, back to her professional reserve. "But the version of the script that was stolen wasn't by any means a finished one, and there are many ways of keeping a character."

Before either Luke or Divya could add anything else, Bryana checked her smartwatch, stood up from the chair she'd taken, looked intently at Moon, uttered an apologetic goodbye to the detectives, and left.

"I'm afraid we have no more time," Moon told them. "We're meeting with Meshflixx execs in five minutes."

"Everyone looks so busy," said Divya with one of her sweetest, most adorable smiles, her amber eyes looking perfectly innocent.

Luke loved working with her because they could easily communicate. They always coincided with their reads of the interviewees, and they could take turns leading the questioning depending on who the person they were approaching responded to.

"We're a bit swamped," Moon said in their musical Southern US accent. "Lots of rewrites." She grabbed her mobile phone and stood to guide them to the exit.

"Are rewrites usual at this point in production or is it because of the leak?" asked Luke, afraid his eagerness may spook Moon. Divya sent him a killing stare that could only be read as Back off!

"I don't know about other TV productions," said Moon. "But rewrites have always been the normal way in The Privateers writers' room before and after the leak. And we don't start shooting for another few weeks, so there's still plenty of time. Sara and Bryana are the kinds of showrunners who may rewrite a scene during production just because they saw how an actor reacted to the material." Luke couldn't tell if she was being completely honest. Was the creative liaison tired of being swamped, perhaps?

On their way to the lift, they crossed a hall where movie and TV posters from some of Meshflixx's most popular productions hung from both walls.

"Is this a Martha Broch design?" Divya suddenly asked Moon. One of the posters did resemble Martha's work, even if it was for the first season of The Privateers .

"It's not," said Moon.

"It looks exactly like her work," said Divya.

"Unfortunately, Martha wasn't able to join our team the first season, and she didn't design the poster and title credits sequence of the show. She was working on that other show with Nolan, who was making his TV debut. He really took a lot of Martha's time," explained Moon.

"So Sara and Martha are still on good terms even though they broke up and everything?" asked Luke. Divya shot him another irate look.

"Of course! The breakup was mutual," said Moon. "They are best friends. Martha organized Bryana and Sara's latest birthday party."

"Sometimes it's better to be friends than lovers, I guess," said Divya, and Luke almost rolled his eyes.

Moon saw Luke and Divya to the lift and badged them straight to the bare lobby with a warm smile. The moment the lift's doors closed and the detectives were alone, Divya said, "I was taking care of the interview with Moon!"

"I know. I should have let you deal with them, but I wasn't sure you'd ask about the rewrites."

"I wasn't going to because I knew they wouldn't answer," said Divya. "But I was going to ask them for their phone number, and you made the whole thing very awkward!"

"And here I thought the job wasn't the place to meet people …"

"Oh, shut up!" she grumbled. But even if Divya sounded annoyed, she'd forgive him soon enough.