Sterling was baffled. What the hell was he thinking? He’d practiced that scene for weeks. At this point, she knew the lines better than he did.
“Well, isn’t today full of surprises?” said Christoph, arching one brow as he scratched a note on his clipboard.
Fernando cleared his throat. Twice. Then began reciting Shakespeare. Of course. Sterling slid down in her chair, hiding behind the roses, sweating from vicarious embarrassment.
Fernando tapped his heel twice. Their signal. He glared at her with an intensity that made her sit up straight, transmitting a four-alarm Best Friend Emergency Alert.
Sterling elbowed Andreas’s rib. He made a scoldingpay-attentionhiss.
She leaned over and whispered, “Something’s wrong.”
“Yes, you’re interrupting.”
“No, something else. I don’t know what.”
Fernando recited, gazing wistfully into the distance, occasionally darting a look her way. “It was thenightingale, and not the lark,” he said, rolling his eyes towards Christoph’s chair, then back to her. A nervous frisson brushed over her skin.
Andreas leaned forward. She grasped his thigh, and he hissed, more catlike this time.
“Sorry. I need your phone flashlight, show me that guest you recognized,” she said.
She’d yet to decode Fernando’s message. He extended one arm, fluttering his wrist. The move was classic misdirection, so she watched his other hand, lowered by his side, where his fingers flashed the numbers four, four, four.
Serafina’s lucky number. As Sterling connected the pieces, the monologue continued.
“That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.”
The puzzle pieces began interlocking. If not the full picture, at least the edges. Nightingale. Christoph. Serafina.
Andreas lit his phone. Hidden behind the bouquet, he unfolded the paper and pointed out one of the headshots from the house theater corps.
One of the Bookish Bachelors. There was more. The head technician was in the crew photo. He’d delivered the ice cream cake.
But the face at the top of the page sent a shudder of fear through her. The leading actor Fernando was auditioning to replace was none other than the Third Man.
She glared at Christoph, poised on his director’s throne, watching Fernando give the performance of his life. Sterling crinkled the pamphlet as she rose to her feet.
Fernando’s voice trailed off as she stepped forward.
“You,” she snarled at her uncle.
His eyes widened as she raised the bouquet of roses overhead, then hurled them at him.
Christoph fluttered and spat, batting flowers away. He stood, knocking his chair over. “Whatin the name of Mae West are you doing?” he cried, tripping over floral shrapnel.
His spotlight followed him. Another lit up Sterling.
Andreas stood, seemingly uncertain if this was part of the show or if Sterling had lost her mind.
She hadn’t. In fact, everything suddenly made sense, the way nothing about the night of the murder had. Eerie phone calls, a strange deliveryman, a sudden blackout, every cliché in the book. Why? Because it was all a performance, directed by her uncle and acted by his theater troupe.
She climbed the stage steps towards Christoph. “You’rebehind Nightingale.”
Andreas followed. “What’s going on?”
