Stage Fright (Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Book 6) (10 page)

Bess blushed, but didn’t disagree.

“I, on the other hand, found something you actually need to see,” George continued.

“What is it?” I asked, excited.

George pointed up above our heads. I craned my neck.

“All I see is a mess of wires and pipes and things.” I said, hesitantly. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

“We were talking to Tim, Bess’s new friend,” said George, pointing to a cute, curly-haired guy who was operating a saw over in one corner. “He told me there’s a whole world up there in ‘the grid.’ It’s designed to make it possible for the people running the lights and things to get around during the show—without being seen by the audience.”

A lightbulb went off in my head.

“So if I wanted to mess with Claire during the show …”

“You’d hide up there!” Bess and George said at the same time. “That’s why we came and got you,” George continued. “Come on.”

George and Bess brought me to the tiny metal staircase that led up into the rigging. The higher we went, the quieter the noises of the theater became, until it was just a distant roar below us. It was dark and quiet and downright creepy up here. Lights and props and planes loomed in the dark, balanced carefully on thin metal wires.

“Wow,” I said, walking down the narrow walkway that led from the stairs out into the grid proper. “This is intense!”

“Right?” said George. “As soon as Tim told me about it, my danger-senses started tingling.”

“Tiiiiim this, Tiiiiim that,” said Bess. “I think you’re the one with a crush!”

George’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t … it’s not … he’s just … I’m going to look over there!” she sputtered, heading quickly down a walkway that intersected the one we were on.

“George and Tim sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g …” sang Bess to herself as we walked. I smiled. Bess and George were both best friends and cousins—they really knew how to push each other’s buttons. Rarely did they like the same boys, though, and if I knew my friends, Bess was going to take advantage of this moment to tease George mercilessly.

I peered beneath my feet. The walkway was made out of thin strips of steel laid out in a diamond pattern, so I could see all the way to the seats below. It was a long way down, and I shivered just thinking about the drop. Someone was walking beneath me, and I could imagine the terrible injuries they would receive if something fell on them from this height.

Wait a second!
I realized.
That’s Linden!

Even from up here, I could recognize his perfect blond hair and easy, in-charge walk. He’d promised me he’d stay with Claire. What was he doing in the front of the house? Then I noticed the long trail of people carrying cameras behind him. He must have been leading a press tour. I couldn’t blame him for that … but it definitely made me antsy, knowing Claire was alone.

Bess and I reached the end of the first walkway. We were now standing dead center over the stage. The practicing backup dancers looked like tiny windup toy soldiers. Another narrow path stretched out perpendicular to our own. Without a word, we split up. I went right, Bess went left. That was one of the best parts about working with my two best friends: We were often so in sync we didn’t even need to talk things over.

I’d only gone about fifteen feet when something strange caught my eye. The walkways had handrails running on either side of them, held up by narrow metal poles. At the base of one of the poles, someone had left a
pile of … stuff. I knelt down to look more closely. There was a candle, a lock of hair, a pink plaid scrunchie, and one of Claire’s headshots! The headshot was taped to the pole, and everything else was arranged before it. It looked like an altar—a weird, deranged altar!

I looked down at the stage below. I couldn’t be certain, but I was willing to bet we were right above the mark where Claire was supposed to start the play. Whatever creepy stalker had built this altar had found the best spot from which to spy on Claire—or kill her. We had to find out who had put this stuff here, and get ahold of them before the show started in a few hours!

Just as I stood up, a shout came from the other end of the grid. I whirled around to see George bent over the railing. She was holding on to a rope with both hands. Something heavy must have been on the other end, because her entire body was straining with the effort of keeping it up.

“Nancy!” George yelled. “Help!”

George stumbled, and the rope pulled her a little farther over the edge. Now she was standing on tiptoe. In a few seconds, she would either have to let go—or get pulled over the edge!

“I’m coming!” I yelled, racing down the narrow walkway at top speed. In the dark, my foot caught one of the poles, and I slammed my knee hard into the metal. It
was all I could do not to stop and grab my leg, but I gritted my teeth and just kept running.

Inch by inch, George was being pulled over the railing. Whatever she was holding must have been incredibly heavy.

“Hang on, George!” yelled Bess, who was running over from the other direction. We both made it to George at the same time and grabbed the rope from either side. Heaving with all we had, we gave George enough support to get her feet fully back on the ground. Whatever was at the end of that rope must have weighed a ton. Even with the three of us pulling as hard as we could, we couldn’t raise it back up. After a minute of wrestling with it, my arm muscles were beginning to burn. We couldn’t do this for much longer. And when we let go, whatever we were holding would slam into the busy stage below. I looked down and saw a dozen actors scurrying across the stage like ants, oblivious to the danger they were in. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to them.

“Bess, George—if I let go for a second, can the two of you hold it up?” I asked.

George nodded.

“Make it a really, really quick second,” Bess grunted. “This is definitely not part of my usual gym routine.”

“Ready?” I asked. “One, two, … three!”

Bess and George leaned back, trying to use their own weight to make up for the fact that I was no longer holding the rope with them. I could tell they wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long.

I grabbed the slack coil of rope that was still on the walkway. Quickly, I wrapped it around one of the poles three times, finishing it off with a tight knot. It might not hold forever, but it would work for now.

“That was too close!” I said, as George and Bess let go and began massaging their sore arms. “What’s on the other end of this thing?”

George sat down heavily, sweat pouring down her face. “It’s one of … the bomber doors,” she panted. “Real World War II ones … Linden insisted.”

“What happened?” I asked, bending down to peer more closely at the rope. I hardly needed George to answer. It was easy to see where it had been cut nearly in two. Whoever had done this had set it like a booby trap. At some point, the rest of the rope would have torn, and whoever happened to be below it would have been crushed to death! George had come along just in time.

“I was looking at this when I noticed the rope fraying,” George said, holding up a brown notebook with a bookmark inside it. “I think it’s Claire’s.”

I flipped it open to the bookmarked page. It was Claire’s all right. In fact, it was her missing show journal, the one she’d offered to lend me. The marked page
contained her notes on her entrance in the second act, when she was supposed to “parachute” onstage through these very bomber doors. I had been wrong before. This wasn’t a random trap. It was built so that Claire’s additional weight would break the rope, sending her—and the doors—tumbling sixty feet to the stage below! We had to get downstairs and warn somebody before my knot gave.

I heard the clink of metal on metal behind us, and I whirled around. While we had been fighting with the rope, Damien had crept up behind us. Now he stood between us and the ladder back down.

“What are you doing up here?” he said, his voice low and menacing.

That’s when I noticed that in his right hand he held a vicious, sharp-looking saw.

CHAPTER
12

FRANK

ACT TWO : THE REAL TRUTH

I stared at Madonna in shock, my mouth hanging open. She was the one trying to kill Claire? Here we thought she was an innocent bystander! We’d spent the past few days investigating everyone at the theater, and our saboteur was already far away. And from the look of her casts, while Madonna might not have been imprisoned, she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“You did it?” Joe asked.

“Yes!” moaned Madonna. Her voice had gotten hoarse and low. “It was me. Me! Oh what will my parents think? And my fans? And Claire!”

She thrust her wrists out toward us.

“Cuff me! Take me away. I belong in jail for this.”

I leaned forward to take her hand and comfort her,
and she pulled them back as fast as she could. “No!” she screamed. “I’m too delicate! I’ll never survive a jail sentence! My life is … ruined!”

With that, she collapsed backward onto the bed, tears streaming down her face. I couldn’t help but notice that she took a moment to arrange her hair so that it perfectly framed her face on the pillow. There was something odd going on here. I was beginning to feel as if I was in some sort of terrible soap opera—the teary confessions, the hospital setting, the terrible acting …

“So, you—” I started to ask Madonna a question, but she popped back up before I got two words out.

“I just couldn’t resist,” she said quietly. She made her eyes big and innocent looking, and she peered up at us as though she were a child being punished by her parents. She seemed to be in a different movie now, no longer a soap opera. “I wanted to feel the lights and the applause. You understand that, don’t you?”

She grabbed my hand in both of hers. A single tear slipped down her cheek.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know it was wrong to put that stuff in Claire’s juice. But she was never going to be sick. This is my first role on Broadway and I was never going to get onstage! I thought, if I did it during the preview, it wouldn’t be so bad. And the guy at the pharmacy said that ipecac was medicine, and a little
bit would never really hurt anyone. She is okay, right? Oh no—is that why you’re here? Did she die? I’ll never forgive myself if I killed Claire Cleveland. Why is this happening to me?”

Madonna’s words became garbled into one long sobbing sound, which broke off suddenly.

“Do they need me to take over the part?” she asked eagerly. “Because I’ve been thinking, we could put Nancy Wake in a wheelchair, and the play would totally still work. I’ve mapped out all the choreography in my head. It’ll just need minor changes. I can be at the theater in thirty minutes. Twenty, if you two will give me a hand.”

Madonna started fumbling with her hospital bed, trying to free her broken legs from the restraints that held them in place.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Madonna was crazy. She’d spent the last few weeks trying to threaten and kill Claire, and now she thought they’d let her back onstage?

“I’m sorry, Madonna, but that’s not possible,” I said. She tried to interrupt me, but I talked right over her. “You’re going to be arrested for harassment, theft, and attempted murder.”

It was harsh, but there seemed to be no other way to get through to her. Now it was Madonna’s turn to stare at us in shock.

“But … but … but … I never stole anything from anyone! Or threatened anyone. All I did was put ipecac in her drink, once, I swear!”

Joe and I exchanged a look. This was getting interesting.

“So you had nothing to do with the plane being set on fire?” Joe asked. “Or the threatening texts Claire has been receiving?”

Madonna flinched, and this time, it seemed genuine. “Heck no!” she said, with a sudden thick New York accent that she had been hiding this whole time. “Claire’s my idol! I’ve wanted to be her since I first saw her on the Ratty-Rat Club on TV when I was a kid. This is my dream job! I would never hurt her.”

I quirked my eyebrow at her.

“Well, I would never hurt her in a
real
way,” Madonna clarified. “I dream about being her some day. Claire Cleveland,” Madonna sighed, “is the luckiest girl in America.”

Wow. She was definitely a Claire fan. There was no faking that kind of emotion. What was with this play? I guess Claire had more star power than I realized. Between the rabid fans outside, and the even more rabid fans in the cast and crew, she must have had the most dedicated fan club in the world.

I pulled over a chair from the other side of the room and took a seat. This was starting to make my head
swim. Joe perched at the end of Madonna’s hospital bed.

“You swear that’s all you did?” asked Joe. Madonna nodded. For the first time, I felt as if we were seeing her real personality—the star-struck girl from Brooklyn who made it big by accident. She wasn’t our killer. But she might have some useful information.

“Did you see anything strange before you fell through the trap?” I asked. “Was anything off, or anyone acting weird?”

“Nuh-uh,” said Madonna. “I was flawless, and the show was going great. It was the best night of my life. Well, maybe that was the day I got cast. Or that time a girl mistook me for J.Lo …”

“Nothing strange happened during the preview?” I asked again, trying to keep her on topic.

Madonna thought hard for a moment. She was one of those people who couldn’t think something, or feel something, without it showing up on her face, so Joe and I watched while she tried to remember.

“No,” she said finally. “I mean, let’s face it, the show is kind of a mess at the moment. The dancers were a little off. They kept messing up the routine, which threw me off a little. They were just a nightmare, especially that blond one. But they only threw me off a little!” she quickly clarified. “Please don’t send me
to jail,” she said miserably. “This isn’t my fault!”

She sounded defensive, and I got the sense that in her world
nothing
was ever Madonna’s fault. But she might also have been right. I looked at Joe. Madonna had done wrong, but her punishment was ten times worse than any harm she’d intended. Joe nodded slightly.