by Carsen Taite
Bill Davenport took a deep drink from the glass of Scotch in his hand. “When you called this morning, you really took me by surprise. I had no idea what was going on back here. If I had, I would’ve talked to you about this sooner.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe if you’d stuck around instead of running off to find yourself or whatever the hell you’re doing, you’d have known exactly what’s going on around here.” She was done with his vague comments and excuses. She’d watched him spend his whole life never standing up to her mother, but why did he choose the moment they needed him the most to take off?
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“Let me guess, it’s too complicated for you to explain. That’s all I’ve ever heard from you. If you didn’t come here to explain, then why are you here?”
“I am here to explain. It just isn’t easy. I’ve kept your mother’s secrets for all these years. As much as you think I’m a disloyal rat, I’m actually pretty good at keeping secrets, even when they tear people apart. Now, are you ready to hear what I have to say? It’s not pretty.”
Ellen nodded. She had no way of knowing if she was ready or not, but she did know she had to have some answers about why her family was suddenly in the sights of a serial killer. “I’m ready.”
“I met your mother at a joint Alpha Nu and Tau Zeta mixer our junior year in college. I had transferred in from another university, didn’t know a lot of people. You know your mother. She was in the center of things, always in charge. I mistook her enthusiasm for her sorority for enthusiasm for life, and it was addictive. I was a little on the shy side back then, still am, but your mother helped me learn how to break out of my shell.” He shook his head. “I never thought any of this would ever surface.”
“If you don’t get around to telling me what ‘this’ is soon, I’m going to scream.”
“Sorry. I’ve never told anyone this story. Bear with me.”
Ellen tamped down her impatience and waited for his next words. Within moments, she was transported back to her parents’ college days. She’d never heard her father speak of that time in his life, and her mother only spoke about college to extol the virtues of Alpha Nu.
“These were the days before stories about binge drinking flooded the news. We didn’t know and didn’t care about the dangers of drinking to excess. We were a year away from graduation and we were invincible.
“Our mortality came to visit the fall semester of our senior year. During rush. Your mother was the president of Alpha Nu, and Marty Lawson was the pledge captain. Between the two of them, they ran all the recruitment activities for the sorority. They had a habit of picking a batch of girls who looked and acted just like them, with similar backgrounds and interests. But every year they chose one charity case. A girl who wasn’t a legacy, didn’t have the same pedigree as the rest. She may not be as pretty, she may not have much money, but she desperately wanted to be a part of the group. That was the key.”
“The key to what? Things are no different than now. We admit girls who aren’t legacies and we have programs available to help with dues. It’s important to be diverse.”
“Dear, this wasn’t about diversity. Although I guess you could say it was about diversity of class. The one girl who wasn’t quite worthy? Well, she paid way more than money for the price of admission. She was the gopher, the doer of unpleasant tasks. I’d venture to say the only thing she got out of the experience was the ability to list Alpha Nu on her resume if she made it through the process. In the fall of our senior year, your mother and Marty had their sights on one particular girl. They decided she would be the perfect Pledge Thirteen.”
“That’s an ominous name.”
“Fitting though. Rush was always a crazy time. Personally, I hated the antics. Fraternity hazings were pretty rough compared to the pranks sorority sisters played on new initiates. The problem came when you mixed the two. On the last night before final pledge cards were sent out, the Tau Zetas invited the Alpha Nus to their house for a combined mixer. Beer wasn’t the only thing flowing freely in the house that night.”
Ellen took a deep drink of her gin, unsure she wanted to hear anything more her father wanted to say. Wasn’t as if she didn’t know her parents weren’t perfect, but hearing about their crazy parties was a little too much information. She decided to urge the story along. “Was this Pledge Thirteen there?”
“Of course. Her duties for the evening included waiting on the officers of the fraternity.”
Her parents rarely talked about their college days except to say that’s where they’d met and fallen in love, but his comment sparked a memory. Ellen dug deep to remember. She’d been in high school, cast as Lady Bracknell in the senior play, The Importance of Being Earnest. Convinced she could find a better costume among her mother’s castoffs than the one the theater department had provided, she semi-accidentally found and rummaged through a box of her parents’ personal stuff in the basement of their home. Starved for something personal beyond the posed photos and framed certificates that decorated their home, she spent several hours pursuing the contents of the box. Snapshots, yearbooks, letters back and forth between them. The only thing she recalled about her exploration at this moment was a photo in one of the yearbooks featuring Bill Davenport, Chapter President, standing with his arms around two other officers of Tau Zeta. The significance sent chills up her spine. “She waited on you.”
“And others. Your mother thought it was funny. Even then she liked to watch me squirm.”
“And yet, you chose to marry her.” The bitching on both sides had gotten old a long, long time ago. And so had this story. “What horrible things did you and your pals make Pledge Thirteen do, and why are you telling me all this?” She had a sinking feeling this story was headed in a bad direction and she’d prefer not to endure the torture of his long, slow telling.
“I promise I’ll get to it. Be patient with me. I’m wading through a lot of history here.”
Ellen’s sympathy stores were drained. “And I’m wading through a bunch of secrets. The police are mad because I’ve lied to them.” Not to mention she’d lost Danny because of the lies. “I’m sick and tired of not knowing what’s going on.”
He cleared his throat and continued the story. “At some point during the party, she disappeared. Your mother threw a fit. Pledge Thirteen was supposed to be visible, show her allegiance to the chapter by waiting on us. Frankly, I thought the whole thing was silly, but it seemed harmless. She was supposed to bring us beer, tap the kegs, make sure everyone had snacks. Compared to the hazing my fraternity brothers put us through, it was tame.”
“So what, she skipped out?”
“She was in my room. In my bed. With one of my fraternity brothers, Leonard Cenco. Jerry Jager, our pledge captain, found them there.”
Long pause. Was she supposed to read the rest of the story from there? Fooling around wasn’t out of the ordinary, especially at these functions. Watching him tell this story bit by painful bit was excruciating. Time to shake things up. “Were they fucking?”
His head jerked up and he frowned with distaste. That’s the one thing he and her mother had in common—reluctance to say anything distasteful. But she wasn’t backing down. “Seriously, Dad. You fly across country and you have to belt down a few drinks before you can manage to tell me why you’re here. I’m going crazy not knowing what’s going on. What the hell happened and why does it matter now?”
“I think Pledge Thirteen is involved in these murders. I think she’s taking revenge.”
“What?” She practically screamed the question. Nothing he’d said so far made any sense insofar as how it related to her current predicament, but his proclamation was over the top. “You need to fill in some blanks here.”
“She claimed Leonard raped her that night. Actually, she claimed Leonard and Jerry both raped her.”
“Oh my God.” Ellen grabbed the sides of her chair as the implication sunk in. Nothing would
take down a house like a rape accusation, especially if it occurred during a function on the chapter’s property. It’s one thing to say the house has a bad apple or two, but a sexual assault during an event with free-flowing liquor meant there would be hell to pay. As the president of the fraternity, her father would have been called on the carpet, probably lost his position, might have even been suspended.
But none of that had happened. The yearbook she’d seen had come out the summer of his graduation. He’d been proudly featured as president of a fraternity that had to be in good standing to make the book. This had to be the point of the story. Of course, it was. If Pledge Thirteen had been seeking revenge, it had to be because she didn’t get justice at the time. A wave of nausea coursed through her as she remembered picking up the roses from the broken vase on her front porch. A baker’s dozen of gorgeous white roses. Thirteen. A message for her? No, Pledge Thirteen was sending a message to her parents. But why kill Alpha Nus if it was the men of Zeta Tau who’d harmed her? She posed the question to her father.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of what happened next. Your mother, Marty, and a few other girls took her upstairs to the game room and held a little session. Your mother paid her a tidy sum to leave the party and never come back. That’s all she told me, anyway. But last year, while I was attempting to find things that might resurrect her memory, I came across a stack of her journals in the attic. I opened one and started reading and couldn’t stop. Parts were mundane, but the rest detailed everything that happened that night. Every detail about how they threatened that girl with certain ruin of her reputation. They told her if she went to the police, they would give Leonard and Jerry an alibi. They were ruthless. They didn’t have as much to lose as Leonard and Jerry, but Alpha Nu was everything to your mother. She had no identity without it. She couldn’t bear the thought of the university shutting down the chapter.”
“And you? I guess losing your cushy little fraternity life was too much to handle. You didn’t dare rat out your friends?”
“It wasn’t that simple. If someone had gone to the police, we all would’ve been investigated. Jerry denied he had sex with her at all. Leonard said it was consensual. We all knew who the police would believe. And…”
He stopped talking and hung his head. She could tell recounting this story was painful for him, but she had to know what he’d stopped himself from saying. “And what?”
“And your mother pointed out they had had sex in my bed. That evidence would be there. That the police would look at me as a possible suspect or at least an accomplice. My future would be ruined. I was already accepted to law school. A rape charge would have ended my career before it began.”
His lack of sympathy for the abused girl and her mother’s ruthlessness sickened her. “Where are the journals now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try again.”
“Really, I don’t know. Your mother and I got in a terrible fight over them. She started saying she was going to tell people what was in them. She went a little nuts about it. I realized later it was probably the Alzheimer’s talking, but I didn’t know about it at the time. It was right before she was diagnosed.
“We’ve never really gotten along. I think the only reason we actually stayed together was this secret. She was so focused on what she wanted out of life, and I fit into that picture. If either of us had told anyone what had really happened, the walls would come crumbling down. Staying together was the only way we could trust each other.”
Ellen shook her head. “Don’t make this all about her. You had just as much to lose, and when she really needed you, you took off.”
“I spent my entire life with this secret. She’s not even really present anymore. I can’t live tied to a memory. And she was threatening to expose me. I could’ve lost my job, my reputation. Once I learned about her disease, I realized if I wasn’t around, it was much less likely the memories would be stirred. She wouldn’t be as troubled and I could be free. And then you called.”
And then I called. And brought the walls crumbling down. She’d called him for help, for comfort, but there was none of that here. She shuddered to think that she was a child of a completely loveless relationship. Two people who’d married and built a family out of an obligation to keep a secret. And she’d been keeping secrets too. Unknowingly, she’d interfered with an investigation by not telling Danny or Sarah about her mother and her involvement with the sorority. They might have been able to connect some of the events if they’d had this information. Well, she was tired of carrying other people’s burdens. It was time to get rid of the secrets.
Chapter Nineteen
“She’s bringing a lawyer?” Danny had rushed from the courthouse when she’d gotten Sarah’s call. Now she listened to Sarah explain that she’d gotten a call from Ellen that morning. Apparently, Ellen was ready to talk, but didn’t trust them enough to come forward on her own so she’d hired some hotshot lawyer to represent her.
Of course she didn’t trust them. Danny knew she was the reason. Within the span of twelve hours yesterday, she’d gone from making love to Ellen to hurling accusations at her. She’d resisted breaking the wall Ellen had erected even though she’d longed to send a text, make a call. Ellen had made it clear she should stay away. So she kept her lonely distance. Ellen had every right to distrust all the things she’d said about wanting a relationship. People in relationships didn’t issue ultimatums at the first sign of trouble.
But they weren’t in a relationship. Ellen had made it clear from the start she wasn’t interested in anything more than a good time. Which was probably for the best. Danny wasn’t sure she could get past the fact Ellen had hidden information from her. It wasn’t as if what she’d concealed had been something inconsequential, like a messy closet or a propensity to eat chips in bed. She’d deliberately concealed information Danny and the others needed to solve this case. The betrayal stung, and, as much as Danny tried not to take it personally, she couldn’t help but compare Ellen to Maria. Was she doomed to repeat her mistakes?
No. She’d write their brief interlude off to lessons learned. Today, she would focus on the case, on her work—the only thing she could really count on.
“She should be here any minute. Do you want to get another ADA involved?”
Danny looked up at Sarah, surprised to see concern in her eyes. “Another prosecutor? Why?”
“You know, just in case it gets a little uncomfortable?” Sarah shrugged, but Danny got the point. An attorney for the state should be in the room, in case whatever hotshot attorney Ellen had likely hired wound up trying to push the cops around, acting like they should be able to cut a deal. But it should be her. This was her case. She could either buck up and see it through or admit she was both a personal and professional failure and bow out. She squared her shoulders.
“I’ll be there. You and George take the lead. It’ll be fine.” She stood and started to walk to the coffee maker, but stopped and turned back. “Seriously, I’ll be fine, but thanks for…you know…” She hoped Sarah got the point.
Sarah gave her an aw-shucks expression and waved her off. As Danny poured her cup of coffee, she considered how much her first impression of Sarah had been off. She’d assumed the flirty, cocky, arrogant side was all there was, but now she saw clearly the loyal, caring person beneath. The realization reminded her of Ellen’s transformation from playful to passionate. Then painful. She shook away the thought, and spent the next few minutes wishing coffee had healing powers beyond caffeine.
She was halfway through the cup, when she heard Ellen’s voice. Bracing for their first meeting since the revelations outside of Ellen’s house, Danny turned to greet her, but instead of Ellen, a familiar tall redhead stood in her path. “Morgan?”
“Nice to see you again.” Morgan extended a hand. “Parker sends her regards.”
Morgan Bradley was more than hotshot. She was high power. If Sarah had been from around here, she would’ve known that Morgan
was one of the best criminal defense attorneys in town. Maybe Ellen really did have something to hide. She’d been up against Morgan and her partner, Parker, a former cop, several times and, although both were pleasant to deal with pretrial, once they entered the courtroom, the battle was brutal. “Nice to see you too. I assume you’re here for Ms. Davenport.”
Morgan raised her eyebrows at the mention of Ellen, but her tone remained cordial. “I am. I was hoping you and I could talk alone for a minute before we get started.”
Danny couldn’t resist a look into the hall. Ellen stood facing Sarah, but neither of them were talking. She was just about to look away when Ellen looked at her. Despite the distance, Danny could see the pain in Ellen’s eyes, the circles underneath. She desperately wanted to push past Morgan and go to Ellen, slip an arm around her waist, and whisper in her ear that everything would be all right. Whatever secrets Ellen had, whatever lengths she’d gone to to hide them, everything would be all right. She willed Ellen to read her mind because it was the most she could do for now.
She looked back at Morgan who didn’t even try to hide a slight smile. “Yes. We can talk.”
Alone in the room with the door shut, she waited for Morgan to say her piece.
“Ellen wants to talk to you, to tell you everything about her mother, but I thought it might be helpful to give you a little background to make it easier for you to understand how difficult this has been for her, and to spare her from experiencing too much emotion when she tells her story.”
Danny’s mind raced with possibilities. Was Ellen about to confess to some horrible deed? Was her mother involved in these killings? She steeled her mind to remain open and nodded for Morgan to continue.
“As you know, Ellen’s mother has been an important player in the Alpha Nu alumnae group. What you don’t know is that last year she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and Ellen had to place her in a home.”
Not what she’d expected to hear. Her heart ached for Ellen and the trauma that must have been. “I had no idea.”
