Page 71 of A Midsummer Night's Ghost

Who was now her husband. And who was rich. And had been with Mary before her death.

“How long have you and Clifford been together?” I murmured.

“Since I came on board as director.”

“Why?” I asked, because why not? She was eccentric so I could be impolite, right?

“Because life is disappointing, Bailey. I had my shot. I was supposed to be a star. I failed. It all slipped through my fingers. I’ve got my own Wikipedia page and here I am, back in Cleveland, living with my parents and broke as a joke.”

Everyone had a Wikipedia page. Even my mother had a Wikipedia page.

“So it’s about his money?”

“Of course. He has, what, maybe five years left in him? I’m an amazing actress. I can pretend to love him. I can pretend anything, really.”

I decided to shoot my shot. “Even pretend that you were trying to solve James’s murder when you’re the one who killed him?”

“You’re much more clever than I gave you credit for. You didn’t really seem all that smart in high school.”

That was unnecessary. “We had a competitive class,” I protested.

“Though you did fall for my acting skills.” She sipped again, looking calmly out onto the stage.

“Why would you kill James?”

“Because he got the antifreeze for me. I couldn’t risk buying that with cameras and receipts and whatnot. Then I couldn’t risk him telling anyone.”

I thought maybe I was caught up on her plan. “So you were going to poison Mary originally.”

“Yes, but then I couldn’t get Clifford to agree to marry me while he was still with Mary. Because I thought if she dies, people think he did it, he goes to prison, and I am his wife so I get all his money. But he didn’t want to be disloyal to her.”

“Well, that’s odd, considering he was already cheating on her with you.”

Sara smacked my arm. “Right? That’s what I thought! Men.”

This confession was a little too casual and detailed for my comfort. But I couldn’t resist the urge to ask about the stabbing. “You could have killed Clifford, you know.”

“Oh, well, that truly was an accident. He was supposed to stab himself. He’d just given me a hundred grand as a gift, free and clear, and I decided that was all I was going to get out of this, so I’d better just have him gone. I switched the knives. I was demonstrating, he moved, I don’t know what happened. But that was gross.”

Slurp, slurp.

I was getting a really bad feeling about all of this. “You know I’m not recording you,” I said. “My phone is in the dressing room.”

“That’s good.”

“And everything will just think I’m crazy if I tell them any of this. You know that, right?”

Pyramus was onstage right then finding Thisbe’s torn cloak and going wild with grief. Clifford was nailing it tonight.

“I don’t believe in taking chances,” she said.

Then she hit me on the back of the head with her steel tumbler.

SEVENTEEN

It wasn’ta hard enough blow to knock me unconscious.

But it did send me sprawling onto the stage, landing on my knees and my palms, the cell phone I had in fact been used to record Sara spinning across the stage.

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