Page 65 of Scripted for Love and Poison
“Yes, his intention was never to be believed completely dead but to surround himself with lots of mystery and get himself a book deal and some headlines out of it,” Luke explained.
“I would have preferred not to have been sent on the wild goose chase of a missing journalist when there were other, more important things to investigate. But I’ll be glad to mark this whole thing as solved,” Hunky Dory said, a hint of frustration in his tone. “Any chance you know where we’ll be able to find Simon Smith? I’d like to have a friendly chat with him. Don’t want him getting any ideas and pulling another fake disappearing act in case he doesn’t get to sell the screen rights of his book—which I’m afraid he might.”
“That’s why I’m calling you, actually. To tell you his whereabouts. He’s not home. He got it into his head that the press are going to be looking for him there,” Luke said, and he sighed. “So he’s booked himself at a place called Chateau Marmont because he told me he was feeling like entering his celebrity era. If that makes any sense to you ...”
“I guess you need to be an Angeleno to get it,” HunkyDory said. “Thanks for the information. Tracking him down has provennoteasy. And I want to put that case to rest, for good.”
“No problem,” Luke said and then proceeded to state the real reason behind his call. “So how’s the Jason Zit investigation going? Any leads? We heard he may have been seeing someone?—”
“The girlfriend rumor?” Hunky Dory asked, and Luke was glad the detective seemed to have warmed up to him and was in a chattier mood. “I’m starting to believe it was just that: a rumor. We’ve poured over all of Jason’s emails, chats, phone calls, and text messages. There’s nothing there to indicate he was having an affair or even an office bromance! I don’t think he was even mildly flirty with anyone, to be honest. All our interviews with his work colleagues seem to indicate that. And we haven’t been able to locate any friends who’d seen him in the last few months.”
“Could the person having an affair with him have lied to you?”
“Yes, but some other colleague would have told us about them. I’m sure you’ve noticed, journalists?—”
“Are nosy and love to babble,” Luke said. He’d never let Sol know he’d said such a thing about her profession, even if he knew she shared the belief. “Could Jason have had any device you haven’t checked?”
“Like a second cell phone for booty calls?” Hunky Dory said. “We haven’t found anything. Unless he bought a burner with cash and kept it extremely well hidden, I’d say the man was faithful—and utterly boring.”
“Let’s see if I got this right. Julie is too happy to have been kept in the dark about Simon’s behavior, because she feels she was instrumental to him in getting this investigation going. And that’s why he didn’t pick up her considerably more and more anxious phone calls,” Sol said. She and Luke were having dinner at Felix Trattoria that night, and they were going over the latest development in Simon Smith’s case. “Claudia is thrilled to have been the editor in chief at the outlet that first reported Simon’s story and declared him not only not dead but a genius. I won’t read you the headline, because I’m sure you’ve seen it.”
“I have. Claudia called me and read it to me,” Luke said, savoring a glass of Frappato and then handing it over so that Sol could taste it as well, as she’d ordered something different.
“That thing is clickbait gold,” Sol said, then tasted Luke’s light-bodied red wine. “And Officer Hunky Dory is thrilled to have one less case to worry about. Oh, and of course, Simon Smith is now hunkered down at Chateau Marmont, thinking himself the next Hunter S. Thompson.”
“You’re disappointed,” Luke said.
“You’re making it sound as if I’m sad that the man is alive. But it makes you think about the survival capabilities of white, straight men of his generation. The man has been absolutely abusing the works of others for years. Nobody likes him. He feigns his own demise and now is rewarded with headlines and most probably a book deal, according to what I’m reading and hearing.” Sol sighed and sipped some more wine. “The whole thing has made me wonder?—”
“About what?”
“Are those the lengths people have to go to get their works published these days?” Sol distractedly twirled thetonnarelli cacio e pepe on the plate around her fork. And she questioned the prospects of her yet unpublished book.
“Do you mean do you need to fake your own death to have some agent or publisher show interest in your book?” Luke looked at her with those warm chestnut eyes that always made her stomach flutter.
“Of course not. But is there any other way?” she wondered.
“I know you don’t like being reminded of this,” Luke said, and he appeared to be tentative. “But just be patient. I know something will turn up. It’s just a matter of time.”
“You know I’m not a big fan of patience!”
“Believe me, I do,” he said with his most smoldering smile, and she managed to almost forget about everything else. Even that she was still a person of interest in a murder investigation, or that unpublished book of hers. But the moment was interrupted by the arrival of an annoying text message.
“Sorry, I thought I had silenced it.”
Her cell phone had been lying on top of the table, as she’d taken it to show Luke a message from Lola when they’d been seated at the candle-lit table facing Abbot Kinney.
“I can’t believe it!” she said. “It’s from David. He says he’sready to be aniceex.”
“Is that what you talked about yesterday?” Luke asked her, and did he look a bit hesitant?
“In a way, I guess. I think we both needed some sort of closure.”
“And you got it?”
“At least this way I get to think about the ten years I spent here and not pretend likehenever happened,” Sol said. Even if she had a hard rule preventing her from talkingabout past relationship failures with present lovers, she somehow didn’t feel awkward sharing that with Luke. “I still won’t call him to go for a drink when I come to LA like I do with Miquel in Barcelona. But it’s nice to be on good terms.”
“Glad you managed to get it sorted with him,” Luke said, and he did look genuinely glad. “Basically because it looks like you won’t be ditching me for him.”
