EMMA DID HER disappearing act as they left the secret room, but appeared again in the library by the time Penny and JJ arrived.
Penny immediately started scouring the bookshelves on the second level. “It’s a long shot, but—here it is! Scripts.”
JJ and Emma joined her, wondering what Penny had in mind.
“Mr. Clark, or Gerrit Hofstra, liked disguises,” JJ said, catching on to her thinking now. “You think he was an actor in a play?”
Emma looked at the scripts section. “These are pretty old, but not this one.”
“That’s the one I was looking for.” Penny grabbed the play. “Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, by Fiona Fleming.”
Penny turned the front page to look at the actor lineup. There he was: Gerrit Hofstra.
Hofstra was listed as playing Mr. Barclay.
JJ said, “But he wasn’t listed as Mr. Clark, his fake identity. He was listed as Gerrit Hofstra. That means—”
“Fiona Fleming knew who he was,” Emma said, finishing his thought. “She knew that Mr. Clark was actually Gerrit Hofstra, the con man. But if she exposed him like this in the play, why kill him after all?”
“I don’t know.” Penny closed the script. “We should go ask her.”
“Good idea,” Emma said. “But if she is actually the killer, won’t she be dangerous? How will you stay safe?”
JJ pondered that as they left the library. “I might have an idea . . .”
THE THEATER WAS dark when JJ and Penny got there.
“You think she’ll show?” Penny asked JJ in a whisper. The acoustics in the theater were excellent, so everything you said sounded like a foghorn unless you kept your voice way down.
They stood near the stage. Waiting for a killer. Emma was off to roam the hotel, to see if she could find the actress, while Penny and JJ set what they hoped would act as a trap.
“I don’t know,” JJ whispered back. “We could be waiting for nothing.”
They had gone up to the theater lighting control booth to set up JJ’s ghost hunting camera. Thankfully he’d been able to repair it. Only the lens had a crack down the center. Even though it was designed to catch ghosts, it would do just as well catching a living person. Along with a voice recorder that JJ had in his pocket.
Maybe they could catch Fiona Fleming, trip her up, and have her confess to the murder as JJ and Penny questioned her. That was the plan, anyway.
Penny sat on the stage, dangling her feet.
“You think she could be hiding backstage?” JJ asked Penny. He walked up to the stage and climbed on. JJ was about to go behind the curtains when there was a loud clanging sound.
Suddenly, there was a spotlight on Penny and JJ. They covered their eyes against the bright light. Up in the control booth there was the faint outline of a woman.
Penny called, “Fiona?”
She didn’t respond at first, but then asked, “Why are you kids here?”
“To talk to you.” JJ blinked. When he looked up, Fiona was gone.
He hoped she hadn’t found his camera.
Penny looked for Emma, but she was a ghost. Literally.
A minute later, Fiona came out from backstage. “Shouldn’t the two of you be with your mom and grandpa? It’s after eleven already. Don’t you have a bedtime?” Her words and demeanor were sharper than usual, and not so bubbly. It was all an act, that nice actress they’d seen this weekend. Now, here onstage, Fiona Fleming looked like a snake ready to bite.
“We’re here for the truth,” Penny said, undeterred by Fiona’s attitude.
“Oh, now someone cares about the truth!” Fiona threw her hands to the sky in an overdramatic fashion.
“Yes, we want the truth about you,” Penny countered. She stood up.
Fiona lowered her arms. She blinked.
“We know who you are,” JJ said.
She looked puzzled.
“You wrote that threatening letter to Mr. Clark,” JJ continued. “You are ‘His Daughter.’ From the letter.”
Fiona’s face softened. She looked sad. “I am,” she said. “I was a daughter. But not anymore.”
The theater was dead silent.
Fiona cleared her throat. “My father is dead. The butler was the one who killed him.”