Chapter 47

47

S ol was taking a long and supposed-to-be-soothing bath with the intention of forgetting about everything going on in her life. The whole endeavor was feeling like a waste of water when it suddenly hit her.

She'd never found any mystery script inside her purse that day when she came home. But Sara had been admiring of her weekender bag at the Tube platform. Perhaps too much, considering it was just a gray gigantic canvas tote.

She grabbed her phone to message Luke from the tub, which felt sexy and comfortably warm all of a sudden.

Sol Novo: I think Sara must have grabbed the script from my bag when we "ran into each other" on the Tube. I also don't think the encounter was casual

She edited Luke's contact on her phone once more, had a sip of her still lukewarm cup of tea, and thought she should do the whole long, potentially calming bath thing more often. If only she'd remembered to bring her book to the bathroom. She saw Luke's message then.

Luke (Tea Connoisseur): On doughnut duty but my colleague Divya Bakshi will call you right now

Luke (Tea Connoisseur): You can trust her

She had barely a couple of seconds to read Luke's messages when she got a call from an unknown number and picked it up.

"Hello?" she said hesitantly. What if it was another obnoxious Voyeur staffer trying to get a quote? She'd been screening all her incoming calls even more zealously than normal since the previous day, letting all unknown numbers go straight to voicemail.

"Is this Sol Novo?" a woman with a strong Mancunian accent said. "This is Divya, Divya Bakshi. Luke Contadino told you I'd be calling, right?"

"Yes," Sol answered, still unsure about the whole situation.

"He's, unfortunately, taking care of some useless surveillance so that our bosses can charge a lot of money to some rich clients." That fit what Luke had previously told her about his agency. "But he asked me to ring you and ask you a couple of questions."

"I see."

"Is this a good time to talk?" Divya asked. Sol had to admit this detective seemed to have a nose.

"As a matter of fact, can I mute you for a few seconds while I take care of something?"

"Go ahead."

Sol muted her cell phone, got out of the tub, and wrapped herself in a gigantic plush organic-cotton bathrobe while drying her wet hair with a towel.

"Okay, what do you need to ask me?" she finally told Divya from her office, still enveloped by towels.

"Let's see if I have all the details straight. On the day of the theft, you went to grab your bag but your locker was open. Since it was late, you took a different route than usual and walked to the Tube station. Did you at some point notice something weird inside your bag?"

"Like a TV script?" Sol said. "Nope. But, as I've told Luke, I carry papers around all the time because I'm?—"

"Old-school and analogic, yes, he mentioned."

"He's described me as old-school and analogic?" Perhaps Luke had realized how old she was.

"No, he said you had described yourself that way. Do you want me to tell you how he describes you?"

This detective could really read her mind—through the phone! She seemed to know what she was doing.

"No. I'll let him do that," Sol told Divya, trying but not quite accomplishing a nonchalant tone.

"I see." Sol could almost hear the smirk in her voice. "What happened when you got to Charing Cross station?"

"I was waiting for the train, and I saw Sara standing next to me on the platform. I said hi because I'm polite that way."

"So you first approached her?"

"I did. It would have been rude otherwise. Has Luke talked about my Mediterraneanism?"

"He has," said Divya almost too formally. Sol wanted to ask about the specifics but didn't. "What happened then?"

"We had some small talk until Sara commented on the gorgeousness of my bag and asked to try it on."

"She asked to try on your bag?"

"She was looking for something big enough to carry all her work stuff and workout stuff, but she's kind of, like, not the biggest—shorter and definitely skinnier than me—and she wanted to make sure she wouldn't look ridiculous with a bag the size of mine."

"I see. So did you let her?"

"Of course."

"And you didn't think anything of it then?"

"I mean, the bag is fabulous. It's from this boutique design studio in Florida, of all places. All their products are made with high-quality standards and they're all manufactured in the US. The thing is even machine washable and water resistant. I can send you a link to their website if you want."

"You needn't do that," Divya said. Sol couldn't help but feel the detective was all professional and not much of a fashionista. "So could Sara have grabbed something from your bag when she was checking it out?"

"I suppose so. It's not like I was intently looking at her to make sure she wouldn't steal something from me. I was probably more focused on seeing if the train was any closer."

Divya made a humming noise. "I have slightly bad news. Please don't get upset as I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. Even if we haven't found it yet."

"What do you need a perfectly reasonable explanation for?" Sol was aware that her tone was a bit elevated.

"Your encounter at Charing Cross," said Divya, still perfectly calm. "Sara Daniels called Luke and me earlier today. We've been trying to talk to her for days. She says she never took the Tube on February 23 and, as a result of that, she didn't run into you on the train platform. According to her, she left Josie's at half past six, couldn't find the script inside her bag then but didn't think much of it at the time, hailed an Uber, and went directly home to finish some work. Of course, she could be lying."

"She has to be!" Sol wrung her hands.

"She's offered to send us the receipt for her Uber ride. Hasn't done it yet though."

"Are you still there?" Divya asked Sol after a few seconds of silence.

"I'm speechless," Sol admitted. Never in a million years had she pictured herself saying that.

"It happens." Divya's composure was comforting. In a way, it was easier talking to her because Divya had kept her cool the whole time, unlike Luke—who was Mediterranean to the core, even if he didn't always admit it. "Listen, we're trying to figure this out. Don't worry, and let us professionals handle it."

"When did she realize the script had been stolen?" Sol asked. She was going to let the professionals do their thing, but she needed to understand what had happened. "You said she realized the script was missing at the studio but still went home."

"I guess she was hoping to find it at home and, once there, she called her office at Meshflixx. Her creative liaison told her the script wasn't there either, and then she started thinking she could have misplaced it and worried," Divya explained. "But Sara says she didn't realize what had happened until the script appeared online hours later. Know what I mean?"

"I see."

"There's something else. Luke told me you may get cross if I brought it up though…"

"Sounds promising." Sol couldn't imagine what the subject could be.

"He says you told him Josie could not be involved in this in any way because it would put the studio at risk," Divya said.

"Uh-huh. That, and Josie is not the kind of person to steal."

"We did some digging. She was ready to sell the business a couple of months ago."

"What?!" The last thing Sol needed in her life right then was for Josie's to close or change in any way.

"In the end, she didn't, but we're wondering if she needed money and found another way of getting it. Did she ever suggest that she was thinking about selling, or that business was tight?"

"Never. She's a very private person though. She never talks about her personal life with her clients. She's sort of a mystery to all of us, which I think contributes to her aura," Sol said. "And you're sure she's not selling now?"

"We think she isn't," said Divya. "But there's also the fact that it was her who caused the class to run long that day. Even if you've told us she's normally extra punctual."

"I still think Josie as the thief doesn't make sense." Literally, the last thing she needed then was for her perfectly crafted exercise regimen to be altered in any way. Then she realized she had bigger problems at present and ordered herself to stop panicking about what could be construed as nonsense.

"Listen, you have my number now," Divya told Sol. "If you remember anything else or if you need an update or even if you just want to talk, you can call me. Of course, you can ring Luke as well, but we both know he can be a bit overdramatic sometimes. So you can call me for the fuss-free experience."

"Thank you. You and Luke are devoting way too much time to this." Sol was genuinely moved.

"We feel bad that you're in this position due to our agency's incompetence. We're better detectives than this."

···

She decided to listen to Divya and leave the investigative part of the mess she was in to the actual private sleuths. But that didn't mean she couldn't do anything about her situation. She was going to do everything she could to restore her ill-damaged reputation. She had to be in control of at least that aspect of her life.

She was still wearing a bathrobe and she hadn't even bothered drying her hair—a beauty inattention she only allowed herself if she was vacationing at the beach—but she was happy with the writing she'd done since hanging up the phone.

She read the draft once again, this time for possible typos, and clicked the publish button. When the post was live on the online publishing platform she used, Sol copied the post's link and pasted it into a message on her Twitter account that read: "In case you want to know what actually went on in that Richard Fynn interview. TL;DR: He didn't want to talk about Revengers. Also, I didn't steal no script!"

What Really Happened in My Interview With Richard Fynn

You'll never read about these behind-the-scenes Hollywood details in traditional media. Plus, I didn't steal that damned script!

BY SOL NOVO

What do you do when a director tells you "It's not like I had too much of an option" when—at the very beginning of a one-on-one interview—you thank him for taking the time and talking to you? You shrug it off and move to the next question.

What do you do when that same director follows that up by telling you that the promotional portion of making a movie is "the numb, soulless act of trying to charm the likes of you "? Also, did I mention he was eating when I got to the Four Seasons suite where the chat was taking place and never bothered closing—or wiping—his mouth while doing it?

I don't know why filmmaker Richard Fynn didn't want to be there during the press day for his upcoming sequel Revengers Reunite Redo , which opens on May 5, but he didn't. "Why do the fans care about my return?" he told me when I asked him what made him decide to return to the iconic franchise. He seemed oblivious to the reasons why Revengers has been so popular over the years. "Fuck if I know!" were his actual words when prompted about it.

He also kept manifesting his dislike not personally for me but for journalists in general, referring to us as "you people" and our need to "over-analyze every single frame" of his filmography. He refused to talk about his longtime collaboration with director Mark Green—together they made over 20 action-adventure movies during the 1980s and 1990s in a time when Fynn was still only producing and Green was directing.

And he also didn't want to talk about how the changes in technology over the last fifteen years—the first Revengers was released in 2008 and Revengers Reunite opened in 2010—may have been a game-changer in the production of this third installment. If you watch the original films now, you'll see that the special effects on those movies don't look exactly current.

In a chat with a publicist for the studio releasing the movie that took place after the peculiar Fynn interview, I was told that the filmmaker was "nervous" because the film was technically not completely done. So whatever VFX or other post-production work is taking place, it's making Fynn uncomfortable.

"I've been babbling about the damn movie all morning already!" were the words Fynn used when he decided he was cutting our initially agreed upon 20-minute chat short. He left the room, fried chicken thigh in hand, never to return.

And that's basically what went on, to the best of my recollection—plus the relistening of the recording of the actual interview and reading of my detailed note-taking—during my recent chat with Fynn, which was initially published on Conceit Fair but was later taken down because I was accused of "mischaracterization."

I didn't have to fight twenty editors to get this story approved, edited, copy edited and published. What's best, I could even write my own headline.

Also, and this has nothing to do with Revengers or Fynn, but don't believe everything you read on the internet, especially if you saw it on Voyeur . No, I didn't steal a script for the second season of The Privateers that made its way online.

She closed her laptop and promised herself not to look at it for the rest of the day. She even went as far as deleting the Twitter and Mail apps from her cell phone.