Page 2 of For Better or for Ransom

They managed not to be seen by any of the ushers and took the narrow stairs that went to the dressing rooms. Fortunately that area of the Casanova theater was well lit.

“It makes no sense,” Sol said once they were out of earshot from the staging area. “When I interviewed Leonardo this afternoon, he was looking forward to this last performance of the play.”

“Maybe he isn’t feeling well,” Luke offered, still clutching Sol’s hand and following her.

“He felt perfectly fine not two hours ago,” Sol reasoned, turning to look at Luke.

“He could have eaten something bad…”

“He specifically told me he never eats before a play precisely because he doesn’t want to risk something not sitting right with him. He has a heavy breakfast and then has dinner after the play. His not being here makes no sense.”

Sol came to a closed door with Leonardo’s nameplate on it. She rapped a couple of times with no answer. Then she went to open it.

“Wait,” Luke told her. “If we really are just sneaking in, let me go first.”

Sol’s eyes swept upward. “This is perfectly safe. Plus, he knows me. I mean, I know he’d probably not be able to remember me in a couple of days, but I interviewed him this afternoon.”

“Sol you just ruled out his feeling sick, so unless he’s been hit by a bus and lying on a hospital bed right now, something else could have happened. Since we don’t know what that is, let me go first.”

As a rule of thumb, Sol Novo, an independent woman of forty-three, entertainment journalist twice divorced, and a person who did lots of things alone like traveling, eating out, or going to the movies, didn’t like being told what to do—or not to do. And she definitely didn’t like other people getting all protective of her. But then again, Luke wasn’t just other people. He was the person she was sharing her life with. If anything, in the last few months together she’d learned that commitment sometimes meant caring about someone—and letting that someone also care about you.

“Be my guest.” She stepped aside from the door to Leonardo Pascual’s dressing room so that Luke could go in first.

He smiled at her, then made sure to get her behind his body. Luke also tapped on the door with his knuckles, and when there continued to be no answer he went in.

“I didn’t see this one coming,” he muttered under his breath.

Sol was still close behind him, his bigger frame and height not letting her see what was inside the room. “What is it?”

2

Luke

What the fuck does that mean?” Sol asked him for a third time and Luke was afraid he still had no answer. But they needed to stop wondering about it and start making sure they’d be fine.

“We need to call the police,” he said.

“Why?” She protested. “Shouldn’t we try talking to someone in the production, first?”

Her reasoning was sound. Still.

“Call it a professional hunch.” From the moment Luke Contadino had opened the door to that dressing room, he’d sensed something wasn’t right. He still couldn’t quite explain why his skin prickled and his heart had picked up. But a decade working as a private detective had given him enough experience to know calling the legal authorities was the right course of action given the present circumstances. “Let’s make the call first, we can talk to someone in the theater after.”

He waited while his partner made the dreaded call. He’d have done it himself under normal circumstances (if they were in London), but she was the one to speak the local languages in Barcelona and they couldn’t afford any misunderstandings at present.

Leonardo Pascual’s dressing room at the Casanova theater, where he had been supposed to be Oedipus for one last night, had been completely empty when Luke had opened its door a mere two minutes before. A chill ran down his spine immediately after stepping inside. It hadn’t been just that the low-ceilinged bare space had given him the creeps—a window had been left open.

The only furniture in the closet-sized room had been a chair facing a narrow table, set against a wall. On top of it there was a tarnished mirror hanging. Several opened tubes and containers of makeup of all kinds were scattered over the table. Up to that point nothing screamed bizarreness other than the fact that Luke would have assumed Leonardo Pascual’s room to be much more luxurious.

But even with his lack of entertainment knowledge, Luke knew theater to be the poorer of the performing arts compared to television or cinema. What had properly puzzled Luke—and even managed to shake him a bit—had been the printed note taped to the mirror.

You’ll never reach him in time. What do you offer in exchange to get him back?

“The police said they’ll be here in ten minutes,” Sol said after hanging up her mobile phone.

Luke arched one of his eyebrows. “Ten actual minutes or ten Spanish minutes?”

He’d been romantically involved with Sol for almost a year and even if his family was from the south of Italy, the consummate Londoner in him still had problems with how lax Spaniards seemed to be when it came to following a schedule. Things tended to run a few minutes late invariably. He now knew that when one was told something would take five or ten minutes, that could be anything from the actual five or ten minutes to almost an hour.