by Diane Hoh
If you really believe that, she asked herself as she hung up the phone, why are your nerves still strung as tightly as piano wire? Why do your eyes keep glancing toward the door, as if you expect someone in a weird disguise to come bursting in at any moment? Why do your ears keep listening for the sound of familiar voices out in the hall so you’ll feel safe?
And why are you having such a hard time remembering what feeling safe feels like?
Chapter 18
THAT WEEK WAS THE worst that Maxie had spent in the house. Nerves were taut and tempers flared. The atmosphere in the house had never been worse. Two girls left, saying they were moving into dorms with friends for the time being.
Their desertions did nothing to improve the mood at Omega house. Nor did a sudden change in the weather on Friday that brought in a balmy, unexpected wave of warmth. April had arrived gently and sweetly.
But the residents of Omega house didn’t believe for a minute that warm weather would improve their situation.
“Maybe,” Tinker said with hope, “whoever is after us will get a sudden attack of spring fever and reform.”
No one seemed to think that was likely.
“I have never been so glad to see a Friday night arrive,” Candie said as she brushed her long, auburn hair in front of Maxie’s dresser mirror.
“Let’s all just stick together, okay?” Maxie suggested. “I know nothing has happened to any of us away from the house, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t.”
They all agreed.
But less than an hour later, Maxie found herself sitting alone on a couch in the student center, her only companion a tall, potted plant. Brendan, after giving her a quick hug and asking about her ankle, had been dashing around ever since, seeing to party details.
Jenna had introduced her to “Skip,” who really was cute, and then disappeared. Erica and Tinker had been dancing ever since they arrived, and Candie was off in a corner talking to Cath Devon, probably telling her how wise she’d been to leave Omega house.
Jenna and Skip brought her a cup of soda, kept her company for a little while, and then went off to dance again.
When Maxie realized that a whole hour had gone by, she quickly tried to locate her friends. She hadn’t been keeping an eye on them after all, when she had promised herself that she would. Just in case …
There was no sign of any of them. She didn’t see Brendan or Erica anywhere in the huge room, Tinker wasn’t on the dance floor. Graham was standing with a large group of people off to her left, but Candie wasn’t with them.
A seed of worry birthed itself in Maxie’s mind. So much for promising to stay together. This being one of the warmest April firsts on record, her friends might have gone outside on the terrace.
She was on her way to join them, threading her way through the dancers on the floor, when she passed Graham, dancing with a small, blonde girl.
“Where’s Candie?” she asked impulsively.
He shrugged. “Candie? How would I know?”
Shaking her head, Maxie continued on her way.
The tiny seed of worry sprouted and blossomed into full-fledged concern for Candie. Where was everyone? If they weren’t out on that terrace, Maxie was going straight to one of the security guards.
“Where are you going?” Chloe, standing at the refreshment table, called as Maxie limped by.
“To look for Candie and Erica. Come with me?”
“They’re not here.”
Maxie stopped just a foot shy of the glass doors leading to the terrace. “They’re not here? Where’d they go?”
“Erica lost one of her pearl earrings. The ones her grandmother gave her? We looked all over here and couldn’t find it, so she said she had to retrace her steps to find it. She was really in a panic. Candie went with her to help. I offered to go, too, but Erica said one other person was enough. They should be back pretty soon.”
“They went back to the house? Just the two of them?”
“Well, they’ve been gone a while, so I guess they didn’t find the earring right outside. They must have gone back to the house.” Chloe read the expression on Maxie’s face and added quickly, “But there are two of them, Maxie. They’ll be okay. It’s not like Erica went all by herself. They have to come back here, anyway, because they didn’t take their coats. They weren’t planning on being gone that long. But,” she glanced down at her watch, “maybe they decided not to come back, after all. I don’t think Erica was having a very good time.”
“I’m going home, too,” Maxie said, deciding suddenly. “My ankle hurts and Brendan’s too busy to even talk to me. If you see him, tell him I’ve gone, okay? Ask him to call me after the party. I’ll take Erica’s and Candie’s coats with me, just in case they decided to stay home.”
“You’re not going to walk, are you? With that bad ankle?”
“It’s not that far to Omega house, Chloe. But no”, I guess I’ll hop the shuttle. See you when you get home.”
Glancing around the room in hopes of seeing Brendan or Jenna and Skip or Tinker to tell them she was leaving, and seeing no sign of any of them, Maxie picked up Erica’s blue blazer and Candie’s white jacket off the chair where they’d left them.
The night air had cooled considerably, and Maxie, in a long-sleeved sweater, hadn’t worn a jacket. Slipping into Erica’s blazer, she climbed aboard the empty shuttle.
As she took a seat in front, it occurred to her, too late, that she might miss Erica and Candie altogether. They could already be on their way back to the student center, Erica’s missing earring on her ear lobe where it belonged.
Maxie felt her heart skip a beat. If they weren’t there when she arrived … she did not want to walk into an empty house. Not that empty house, anyway.
She would have changed her mind then, returned to the party and waited for Erica and Candie there, or waited until someone was free to leave with her, but as she was debating, she slid one hand into a pocket of Erica’s blue blazer.
Her fingers touched … paper. A note, maybe. None of her business. Erica’s blazer, Erica’s private property.
But as her fingers moved against the paper, something sharp jabbed the tip of her thumb.
Private property or not, the jab hurt. No point in Erica being stabbed, as well.
Maxie pulled the offending object free. It was wrapped loosely in the folds of a paper napkin. A napkin from the party … the words April Fool were printed on the maroon-colored paper.
Maxie unfolded the napkin to see what had stabbed her.
She recognized the earring immediately. She had seen it before, and another just like it, when the pair had been returned to Omega house after being stolen.
Erica’s pearl earrings from her grandmother.
Maxie had been stabbed by the sharp, pointy little post on the back of the earring. She turned the pearl earring over and over in her hand. Then she sat very still, the earring lying in the palm of her hand. Anyone watching the way she was staring at it might have thought she had never in her life seen anything like it.
But she was staring at it because she couldn’t figure out exactly what it meant.
An earring could fall off an ear. Happened all the time. She’d lost more than one earring that way herself. An earring could even fall from one’s ear into a jacket pocket without the wearer realizing it.
But … an earring could not fall off someone’s ear and then promptly wrap itself up in a paper napkin.
An earring could only end up inside a wrapped paper napkin if someone put it there. Someone’s fingers had taken that earring, wrapped it in the napkin, and put it in the blazer pocket.
Erica’s blazer pocket. Erica, who had said the earring was missing. Erica, who had taken Candie with her on an earring hunt.
For an earring that wasn’t missing.
Questions boiled and bubbled in Maxie’s mind.
Why would someone wrap an earring in a napkin, hide it in their jacket pocket, and then tell other people the earring was mis
sing?
Well, Maxie’s inner voice suggested, didn’t it make a great excuse for leaving the party? Wasn’t a missing earring a great reason to return to Omega house, where there are no painters standing guard outside and no housemother, and there are no sorority sisters because they’re all at the party you just left? And they’re going to be there for a while? So you know you’ll have the house all to yourself?
Why would Erica want the house all to herself? Maxie questioned. Besides, Erica didn’t go back to the house all alone. She took Candie with her.
Too bad for Candie, the voice answered.
Scarcely breathing, Maxie pictured tall, wide-shouldered Erica as the gray-haired, white-clothed caterer’s helper she’d seen in the pantry. Then she pictured Erica as the fake Tia Maria. In her mind’s eye, she slathered Erica’s face with makeup, dressed her in the lime-green and hot-pink outfit, slapped a cranberry-colored wig on her head. It worked. Erica’s own mother wouldn’t have known her.
Then Maxie erased that picture and pictured instead Erica in a white exterminator’s uniform, a cap and sunglasses completing the picture. That worked, too. Feeling as if she were playing paper dolls, Maxie then wardrobed Erica in a white medical coat, pushed her blonde hair up underneath a gray wig and covered half her face with a white handkerchief.
That, too, worked.
We were wrong, she thought, leaning forward to clutch at the back of the seat in front of her as nausea overtook her. We thought it was different people, maybe the friends of girls we hadn’t pledged. But it wasn’t different people. It was one person, in different disguises. Erica?
No …
But she was the right size, and she had the sort of square, strong face that, without makeup and with darkened eyebrows and lashes, could pass for masculine. She had been in drama classes in high school, and would know something about makeup and disguises.
No … All of those people who had come to the house had been Erica?
Maxie struggled to think of even one instance when one of the disguised people had come to the house while Erica was there, proving that it couldn’t have been her.
The catering staff? Erica had been somewhere in the house, but it wouldn’t have taken that long to throw on a gray wig, a white uniform and white shoes and glasses. And she’d only been in the pantry a few minutes … in and out … just long enough to plant the garbage in the frig. Then she must have slipped up the back staircase, removed her disguise, and rejoined the group.
And, of course, she hadn’t been home when the doctor showed up. The ants must have been in the black medical bag that was part of her disguise.
Where had she found so many ants?
That one was easy. Erica worked in the entomology lab two afternoons a week.
And only Chloe had been home when the fake exterminator showed up.
Maxie groaned aloud.
“You okay back there, miss?” the driver asked nervously. “Not getting sick on me, are you?”
“I’m fine,” she answered, although she wasn’t. Far from it.
Erica.
Omega Phi’s president had been sabotaging them.
Why?
Chapter 19
THE SHUTTLE STOPPED AT the foot of Omega’s driveway. The house was dark. Maxie climbed down and stood under a streetlight, debating.
Should she wait in the driveway until the next patrol car circled the block? She could flag down the car and get help. Or would that be wasting precious moments? Candie was probably in that house alone with Erica.
Why Candie? Maxie wondered as she made her decision. She dropped the two coats on the ground and broke into an awkward, limping lope up the driveway toward the house. The heavy white scaffolding against the garage side of the house stood out against the night darkness. The painters had long since gone home. She was on her own.
Did Erica have something against Candie that no one knew about? Or was it just that Candie was there when Erica decided to lure one of her sisters back to the house? Would any one of the sorority sisters have suited Erica’s purpose, and Candie just happened to be the unlucky one, in the wrong place at the wrong time?
What was Erica’s purpose?
Something to do with her mother’s accident? Maxie wondered as she quietly, carefully pulled the big wooden door open and stepped cautiously into the foyer. Erica’s mother had been injured because of hazing for the sorority, and had limped ever since. No one had had any idea that Erica blamed Omega Phi for that. But she must. It was the only explanation that made sense.
Erica was seeking revenge for a twenty-year-old injury? That was insane.
The first thing Maxie noticed as she stealthily entered the house was the overpowering smell of paint. A faint glow came from the kitchen at the rear of the house and another was shining down from the upstairs hall, but the lamps that were usually left on in the living room had all been switched off.
Someone wanted the house in darkness.
At first, the only sound Maxie heard was the distant, steady drip-drip of the kitchen faucet. Then, as her eyes became accustomed to the near-darkness and she listened intently, scuffling sounds in the living room to her right caught her attention.
She was afraid to call Candie’s name aloud. If her arrival hadn’t been heard, she didn’t want to announce it now. She might still have the element of surprise on her side.
Maxie tiptoed over to the wide arch leading into the living room. She stood at the entrance, peering into the darkness.
Someone was in there. She could see a figure that seemed to be dressed completely in white, moving about the room, mumbling softly as it bent and stooped, bent and stooped. Hefting something … Maxie peered more intently … large white containers. Plastic buckets with handles.
Paint containers. Huge white plastic paint containers, like the ones lined up in the garage. The figure in the living room was setting big buckets of paint all around the room, ripping the lids off them, tossing the lids aside.
The fumes made Maxie’s eyes burn.
“Erica,” she wanted to call out, “what are you doing? Stop it right now! And where is Candie? What have you done with her?”
But she knew better. The person dressed in what she now realized was a white coverall like the painters wore, a white painter’s cap covering the hair and a stiff, white mask covering the lower half of the face, was so far unaware of her presence.
Best to keep it that way.
If she tried to phone for help from downstairs, she’d be overheard. But there was a phone in her room. If she could make it up there without being seen or heard, she could make a quiet call and end this awful thing right now before it was too late.
Maxie turned, lope-limped to the stairs as quietly as possible, hip-hopped up them, far more slowly than she wanted.
She had made it all the way to the top of the wide, curving staircase, breathing hard, when she misjudged the distance to the top step and fell sideways, slamming into the wooden railing and letting an involuntary “oof” escape.
The sound seemed to carry like thunder in the dark and silent house.
Maxie held her breath.
The scuffling sounds below her stopped, leaving in their place a terrifying silence.
Maxie turned her head slowly, slowly, filled with dread as she glanced fearfully down the staircase.
The figure dressed all in white, masked in white, capped in white, stood in the doorway to the living room, looking straight up at her.
Chapter 20
KEEPING HER EYES ON the phony “painter,” Maxie inched her way backward, up the final step. She had to get to the telephone in her room.
The painter began moving slowly up the stairs. “Well, hi, there, hon!” the brassy voice of the fake Tia Maria boomed. “Wasn’t expecting company, sweetie, but everybody knows Omega house is well-known for its hospitality, so we’ll just have to see to it that you feel right at home, okay?”
Maxie turned and ran, wincing in pain with each step as her ankle re
minded her of its injury.
The footsteps on the stairs behind her failed to pick up speed. She could hear them slowly, patiently moving up the stairs with soft thuds.
Maxie felt a wave of doubt. If that was Erica in those painter’s clothes, she knew there were telephones up here. Why wasn’t she hurrying after Maxie, to stop her?
Maxie made it into her room, closed and locked the door, exhaled a huge gulp of relief, and stumbled to the telephone. Picked it up, put the receiver to her ear.
There was no dial tone.
The phone was dead.
Maxie sank to the floor, the telephone still in her hand. No wonder Erica hadn’t raced up the stairs after her.
There was a light tap on the door. Then the voice of the injured “doctor,” deep and confident, called, “Need any help in there? I noticed you have a bad ankle. I might be able to give you a shot for the pain.” A deep, wicked chuckle. “Put you to sleep for a long time. Maybe even a very long time.” Another laugh. “But first you’ll have to open the door and let me in.”
“Not in this lifetime!” Maxie shouted defiantly. She was angry, but she knew the person she was angriest with was herself. She should have waited in the driveway for the patrol car. What was the good of having the police around if you weren’t willing to let them handle things?
Now, look where I am, she thought wearily. Locked in my room, no one else home, no telephone to call for help, and a maniac on the other side of the door.
She couldn’t just sit here on the floor and wait for something to happen.
As she pulled herself to her feet, Maxie caught sight of the white scaffolding stationed outside her window.
No … I hate heights, she protested even as she moved to the window to look out. Heights make me dizzy and sick. I’d fall before I even got both feet on that thing.
But she opened the window and peered out. The structure stationed against the house loomed up out of the darkness like a giant Tinkertoy. The platform itself, running horizontally beneath her window, was too far down for her to step directly onto. She would have to hang from the sill and drop onto it.
