Sisterhood is Deadly: A Sorority Sisters Mystery

by Lindsay Emory

  “Like what?”

  “Like they haven’t determined a cause.”

  I frowned. “Is that normal?”

  Ty folded his arms. “You tell me.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I said in exasperation. “I don’t know why you don’t like me, but I’m not a bad person. I’m just trying to help. That’s my job. Helping ­people.”

  Ty looked around the room. “This is her office?”

  I had a bad feeling. “Filled with confidential sorority information,” I said quickly.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Any objection to my looking around?”

  “Objection,” I said clearly. Big-­time objection.

  “I could get a warrant,” he said.

  “You could, if there was something illegal going on.” Don’t mess with the Law & Order mega fan. I knew all about warrants. But I gasped when a thought occurred to me. “Is there something illegal going on?”

  I saw when Ty Hatfield decided to sort-­of trust me. “The medical examiner doesn’t think the death was natural.”

  My mouth formed an “O.” Because if it wasn’t natural, that meant it was … “Murder?” I whispered.

  “They’re doing additional tests,” Ty repeated, not acknowledging the “m” word.

  I sank back down in the chair. Here in Liza’s office, I was surrounded by her things. It seemed unreal that someone who had sat here just hours before me was now dead and that she may have been murdered. I shivered.

  “Nothing’s conclusive,” Hatfield said.

  “It’s not possible,” I said, sounding pretty confident that it was true.

  “Why?” Ty’s eyes sharpened. For a small-­town cop, he was pretty intense.

  “I was there,” I said quietly. “We all were. We would have seen something, heard something. Liza couldn’t have been murdered. Not in front of fifty witnesses.”

  Ty lifted a shoulder. “One person’s witnesses are another person’s suspects.”

  I was so caught up, remembering the moment of Liza’s passing that his words didn’t fully impact. But then they did.

  “Excuse me?” I said that a lot around Ty Hatfield, it seemed. “Are you implying …”

  “Nothing’s conclusive …”

  I couldn’t even wrap my brain around the idea, the accusation, the thought …

  “She was our sister!” I finally said.

  “The medical examiner’s report shows no sign of natural death. No hemorrhage, no heart attack, no stroke.”

  “We have standards!”

  “The ­people I talked to last night all said that Liza was here, in the house, all day before the meeting. According to the sociology department, she had no classes on Mondays because she saved Mondays for chapter work. The security log from her parking garage shows she left her apartment Sunday night and never returned.”

  “We have morals,” I hissed at the policeman, coldly rattling off facts like he knew what he was talking about.

  “The only ­people Liza McCarthy saw in her last day alive were all here, in this sorority house.”

  It was too much. “You obviously don’t understand sororities, Officer Hatfield.”

  “It’s Lieutenant Hatfield,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure I do.”

  “So are you arresting someone? Are you getting a search warrant?” There was a hesitant look in his eye. He didn’t have as much as he thought he did.

  I took a stab in the dark. “No one believes you. Is that it?”

  “The tests are inconclusive,” he bit out. “And yeah, no one at the college or in town is going to call this murder until it’s slapping them in their face.” He took a deep breath. “That’s why I need your help.”

  Ah. A cat-­eating-­the-­canary grin settled across my face. Now we were getting to it. “What exactly do you need, Captain Hatfield?”

  His jaw tightened before he threw an arm toward the desk. “Information. Liza’s records, notes, letters, phone calls …”

  They were things he couldn’t get without a warrant. Especially if I was sitting in the chapter advisor’s seat.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said slowly. “You’ve basically insinuated that Liza McCarthy was murdered by someone in this chapter, by one of her own sisters. And you want to review confidential sorority information to confirm your suspicions?”

  Muscles twitched in his jaw and around his eye. “Yes.” He cut me off before I could answer. “Don’t you want justice for your ‘sister’?”

  That hit me harder than I thought it would. Of course I did. I wanted justice for all. That was in the Delta Beta creed. Or was that the pledge of allegiance? It didn’t matter. They were pretty much the same thing.

  I looked around the office and the piles of papers and books. It looked like Liza had used the office for her doctoral studies and not just chapter business. I recognized some of the official Delta Beta handbooks and policy manuals. But there were scribbles on notepads, sociology tests, and journals that I did not recognize. Sorting through Liza’s papers was going to be necessary, no matter any impending investigation. As her sister, I had a duty to get her affairs in order, to protect the chapter, and to ensure justice was done.

  Ty must have seen the look on my face. “Let me guess. You’re objecting.”

  I held up a hand. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “A deal? You’re trying to make a deal … with the police?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Your arrogance is impressive.”

  I drew back. I was pretty sure he meant something else. Like confidence. Or competence. Or fashion sense. Whatever. I went on. “Obviously, I can’t just let you go through sorority papers, willy-­nilly.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I have to go through all this first.” I waved my hand at the piles of paper around the room. “And I’ll let you know if I find anything … interesting.”

  “What’s the deal?”

  I looked at him squarely in the face. “You do the same for me. I need to know the truth about Liza’s death as soon as you know it.”

  “You’re not the next of kin.”

  He really didn’t understand. “I’m the next thing to it,” I said sadly.

  Chapter Eight

  AFTER TY HATFIELD left, I needed something positive to focus on. So I headed back to the chapter room, where the pledges were having their weekly meeting. Despite all the drama, it hadn’t escaped my notice that the Sutton Delta Beta chapter had an exceptional rush this year. Not only was the pledge class larger than usual, but they were fantastically good-­looking.

  I’m sure they all were made of a good moral cloth, too. But you can’t judge that just by looking at someone.

  The women sat in a circle on the floor of the chapter room, as only initiated members could sit in chairs. (That’s not hazing, that’s just Deb tradition.) Each had a notebook and pen in hand. Cheyenne, the pledge trainer, sat at the top of the circle next to an easel with posters stacked on it.

  Cheyenne pointed at a poster. “Leticia Baumgardner.”

  A pledge busted out with the answer. “Who is the founder of Delta Beta?”

  “Correct.” Cheyenne smiled at the girl and pointed back at the poster. “Walnut Valley College.”

  “What is the college where Delta Beta was founded?”

  “Correct again.”

  Oooh. It was Deb Jeopardy! I loved this game.

  “Frisky Friedman,” Cheyenne offered to the room.

  A tentative hand went up. “Who is a guy we should never date?” Giggles erupted around the circle.

  Cheyenne was patient with the little joke. “No. Who is the Delta Beta Olympic gold medalist,” she answered.

  “Bonus points,” I chimed in. “Who knows Frisky’s Olympic event?”

  No one seemed to know.

  “C’mon guys, it was heptathlon,” I said.

  Pens were picked up and notes were scribbled. Pledges didn’t just learn this stuff for fun.
They were tested on it. If they didn’t get a perfect score, they weren’t initiated. (It wasn’t hazing. It was education.)

  “What kind of a name is Frisky?” a dark-­haired pledge asked.

  “It was a nickname, one she picked up as a pledge. It has nothing to do with boys. Or cats,” I hastily added.

  The pledges looked impressed at the breadth of my knowledge of Delta Beta trivia.

  Cheyenne moved on. “Dorothy.”

  “Oh! Oh!” A petite Asian girl on the floor said, waving her hand in the air. “The original name for Busy Bee, our mascot.”

  Cheyenne scrunched up her nose. “I’m sorry, your answer has to be in the form of a question.”

  “Fun fact!” I interrupted again. “Does anyone know why a Bee was picked to be the Deb mascot?”

  Hands shot up around the circle. “Because its colors are black and gold?”

  “Because they’re really small and petite?”

  “Because they sting like a bitch?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “Because bees work hard, play hard, and always listen to the queen.”

  Cheyenne and I exchanged a knowing smile. I could tell we both liked being the queen.

  “Have you all gotten your Busy Bees yet from your big sisters?” I asked the pledges.

  The pledges all smiled and nodded. Delta Beta big sisters always gave their little sisters their first plush Busy Bee. It was a cherished item that the littles kept with them for the rest of their lives. And since it wasn’t a teddy bear or a bunny, there was nothing juvenile about it in the least.

  Of course, I still had my Busy Bee from Amanda, back in my room at my parents’ house in Florida. Because I traveled full-­time for Delta Beta, it never made sense for me to get an apartment in Atlanta when I was only there six weeks of the year, so most of my personal belongings had sat in boxes for the past six years.

  “Did you give a Busy Bee to your little sister?” the Asian girl on the floor asked me. She couldn’t know that she had touched on a sensitive subject.

  “I never had a little sister.” It was the brutal truth. And six-­plus years hadn’t made the pain of that truth go away.

  The pledges’ eyes widened in shock. I bet they’d never heard something so disturbing. “It’s all right,” I assured them. “I’m sure it will never happen to anyone else.” I was just a fluke.

  “What happened?” The question came from a pale girl in the front. I had to ease their minds.

  “My sophomore year, I was ready to sign up for the big-­sister selection process, but my big sister got mono. As you know, the process takes a lot of time, and I couldn’t help take care of my big and get her class notes and assignments and devote myself 110 percent to finding a Little, so I had to drop out.” Sympathetic murmurs and sad little frowns dotted the room, and telling the story drew me back into my college years, the stress of balancing schoolwork, friends, and Delta Beta obligations.

  “Junior year, I was in charge of the Delta Beta Ice-­Cream-­Sundae championship, benefiting our childhood-­obesity philanthropy. There was a … conflict.” I finished lamely, remembering the details like it was yesterday. I was neck deep in organizing the event and the deadline to sign up for a little sis unfortunately coincided with the day the Guinness Book of World Records investigators’ visit to determine if the Debs had truly built the largest ice-­cream sundae in the world. At the end of my junior year, I faced the harsh truth that I had neither a little sister nor a Guinness World Record to brag about.

  “And your last year?” the Asian girl on the floor prompted me.

  This one was the hardest of all to talk about because I still didn’t understand why. “I was president of the sorority. And I didn’t get matched with a Little.”

  Now there were gasps of horror. Even Cheyenne blinked back her visible shock. There had been all sorts of theories floated as to why I had failed to receive a little sis. Maybe ­people were too intimidated to request me, the president of the chapter. Maybe they didn’t want a graduating senior, and I could sort of understand why a pledge would want a big who was going to be around longer than a semester. But anyone who knew me, knew that I would have been a really kick-­butt long-­distance big. I forced a bright smile on my face, in case these pledges got the wrong idea.

  “But I want all of you to know from my example, that you can be a proud, strong Delta Beta even if your little-­sister dreams don’t work out like they should.”

  As an initiated member, Cheyenne understood better than the pledges what my admission meant. Compassion and support were in her eyes before she picked up her tablet and started again on the training process.

  I pulled a chair to the back of the room and listened as facts and figures that I knew so well were repeated and memorized by a new generation. This is what it was all about: sharing history and learning traditions. This was the fabric of our lives.

  The pledges finished Deb Jeopardy, and Cheyenne told everyone to pull out their Pledge Manuals and open to page fifty-­five.

  I knew what that was. The beginning of the standards and morals sections. Standards and morals were so vital to every sorority. Pledges were first gently corrected on bid day if they drank beer from a bottle or smoked in their letters. But it wasn’t about the silly little rules. All the silly little rules contributed to something larger, something more important, reminding the pledges that their conduct reflected on the sorority as a whole, on their friends and sisters. Personally, I thought proper conduct was something that more young women needed to learn these days. And not to smoke and walk at the same time—­that was just common sense.

  After they had all gotten to the correct page, Cheyenne resumed her presentation. “Now, last week we discussed some of the academic rules, the required GPA, the mandatory study hours, and the expectation that all Debs will turn over their class notes at the end of a semester for other sisters to use in subsequent semesters. This week, I’d like to go over your morals. Can anyone tell me why good morals are important to Delta Beta?”

  The petite Asian girl raised her hand. “Because it’s in our creed?”

  “Sort of, but I think it’s in our creed because it’s important to the sorority, not vice versa. Anyone else?”

  “Because we’re not Tri Mu?” That came from the back of the room and resulted in almost everyone snickering.

  “That’s sort of true, too,” Cheyenne said with a wink. “But good morals define your character. Anyone can follow a rule just because it’s a rule. That doesn’t mean they’re moral ­people. They just don’t want to suffer the consequences when they break a rule. Morals are how you live your life when there are no rules. Morals are how you live when nobody’s watching.”

  “I thought that was dance,” a tall girl with thick auburn hair half joked.

  “Yeah,” another pledge nodded. “You’re supposed to dance like no one is watching.”

  A pretty cheerleader type scoffed. “The whole point of dancing is to make sure ­people are watching you.” Some of the other pledges nodded in agreement.

  “It’s the same principle with morals,” I said to the room. “Yes, you can dance for performance’s sake, for your dance class, or for your parents, who paid for the lessons. But if you dance while no one is watching, you’re wilder, crazier. You reveal your true self then, just when it’s you and the music. Morals are the things you do when no one is watching. Your sharing class notes; your forming a study group. Your showing up for work on time. These are the things that shape your character.”

  This is what Ty Hatfield didn’t understand about the Delta Beta code. It was why I preserved the sanctity of our rituals. It was why I would always put my sisters first. It was why I knew a Deb could never murder or kill someone on purpose. It would go against everything we stood for.

  Chapter Nine

  WEDNESDAY MORNING, I got up with a renewed sense of purpose. After dressing and eating a quick breakfast, I headed to the chapter advisor’s office and locked the door of the office
behind me. It was rather futile, maybe even immature, but somehow I felt the need to lock myself in. Hatfield’s visit the night before had given me a lot to think about, on top of the pile of to-­do’s I already had. As cute as he was, Ty did seem to be a diligent cop and rather distrustful of women. It was a shame. Women had so much to offer men.

  The suggestion that Liza McCarthy had been murdered was bad enough. The suggestion that a sorority sister was the murderer was untenable. Ty Hatfield did not understand how sororities worked. Sorority women were a lot of things, but we weren’t murderers.

  First, I checked the office voice mail. Sure enough, as Amanda had warned me, there were about ten messages from Sutton College administrators and other Greek chapter advisors, offering both their condolences and not-­so-­subtle digs for information. The last five messages were all from the same person; a Brice Concannon, the fraternity-­council advisor. According to his final message, he’d been appointed by the college to be the go-­between between the police, the chapter, and the administration, which I thought was ridiculous. I didn’t need a man to do my talking for me. As I had nothing to share with this Brice Concannon, I focused on organizing the office.

  The first round was clearing all sociology papers from the room. This was fairly easy, and in thirty minutes, I had a nice pile of books, tests, and papers that one of the chapter members could return to the sociology department. As a doctoral candidate, it looked like Liza had taught some classes, and the department would probably need these.

  During the next pass, I focused on collecting the standard Delta Beta materials. The chapter bylaws and the pledge manual went on the bookshelf as I had all that committed to memory. Since I had thoroughly reviewed the monthly reports to HQ, with the GPAs and membership numbers, I shoved those up there, too.

  Then I was left with the details. I set aside the order forms for the house’s kitchen, intending to temporarily delegate those decisions to the house cook. There were several piles of receipts for various chapter expenses that I placed in a large brown envelope marked “receipts.” I’m fairly organized that way.