Page 50 of Scripted for Love and Poison
“What about Emily?” Luke asked.
“The wife?” asked Owens, a bit confused, and Luke thought the detective still couldn’t remember the names of all the people involved in the case. Was it that hard? It wasn’t like it was such a great cast of characters. He was having more issues telling apart all the middle-aged journalist men.
“Yes,” Luke said.
“We also found very small traces of cyanide in her bodywhen we did the labs. Apparently she’d eaten a small amount of what we think was the source of the poison. Not enough to kill her, but she was indisposed for a bit.”
“And do you know the source of the poison?” asked Luke.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to figure that out by yourself.” Detective Owens chuckled. Little did he know, Luke had already done that. Thanks to Sol and her observational skills.
26
“Calm down, we’ll be there in no time.” Luke heard Divya talking on the phone as soon as he hung up with Detective Owens. He didn’t like the tone of that sentence. Divya sounded distressed, and sheneverlost her cool.
“What happened?” he asked the second she ended the call. He had a very bad feeling.
“Sol rang me because you were on another call, and your number kept sending her to voicemail,” Divya explained, and Luke really couldn’t care less why his lover hadn’t called him directly but had called his colleague. He wanted to know if she was okay. “She’s just got a letter.”
“A letter?”
“Someone left it at her friend’s house, the place where you two are staying,” Divya explained, and Luke was losing his patience. Why was she being so slow in telling him what he needed to know? What had happened to Sol?
“What does the letter say? Is Sol alright?”
“She’s fine. She’s at the friend’s place, and she told me the friend and the husband are also there, and even the kidhas taken the whole thing extremely seriously. He’s been going through all the footage from the security cameras, trying to figure out who dropped the letter off.”
“I love that kid!” Luke couldn’t avoid saying. “What does the letter say?”
“Stop sitting on your fucking ass and start reading Simon Smith’s book,” Divya said, her face completely serious.
“What?”
“Apparently it’s a very short letter that contains only that sentence.”
“They want her to read Simon’s book? Is there any direct threat of what would happen if she doesn’t do it?”
“No, just those words.”
“How does the letter writer know Sol has Simon Smith’s manuscript? I didn’t even know until last night!”
“Could someone have been following her and saw her leaving Jason Zit’s house with the manuscript?”
Luke had told Divya that morning about the conditions under which Sol had come into possession of Smith’s manuscript.
“Or could the killer have been watching Jason Zit’s house, and they saw Sol leaving it, and now they’re also onto her and she’s in danger!” Luke’s heart pumped exaggeratedly fast, considering he was simply standing in the middle of the street and not involved in any strenuous activity.
“It’s weird though, innit?” Divya said.
“What is?” he almost barked, even if he didn’t mean to be curt.
“We were at the point where we believed that Simon Smith’s disappearance and the two poisonings were unrelated ...”
“... but now there’s something else pointing to both cases possibly having something in common,” Lukecompleted Divya’s thought as they used to do while working on a case together.
“There’s something that still doesn’t completely feel right. I don’t like it,” Divya said, and Luke also had that feeling, just at the edge of his mind, telling him something didn’t fit. He knew he needed to listen to that feeling to crack the case. It was how he’d cracked all the cases before that. But he wasn’t paying attention to that feeling because there were other, more important things—like making sure Sol was safe.
“What I don’t like is someone sending Sol letters, even if there’s no direct threat in them. They’re still telling her what she should do. I knew she shouldn’t get involved in this bloody case, but the woman is the most stubborn person I’ve ever met!”
