“Fun! So do chapter advisors,” I said as I sat down next to her. “Somehow, it’s not as much fun as it used to be.”
“No,” Amanda said flatly, her eyes lost in thought. “It’s not.”
“You look like there’s something bothering you.” I wanted to encourage her to confide in me without confessing that I was an eavesdropper. Not that I thought she would mind about the eavesdropping. But there could be some Panhellenic confidentiality rules that I’d violated.
She shook her head. “Sometimes, I try so hard, you know? I try to help people, but some people don’t want to help themselves.”
I nodded, thinking of Stefanie Grossman. If she’d just shown up to the hearing, maybe we could have worked with her, given her some other kind of disciplinary consequences to her public display of affection. But she hadn’t, and we couldn’t do anything other than apply the letter of the law. Then, thinking of Stefanie, I remembered the horrible information I’d learned about the man that Amanda was dating. “Sometimes we just have to do what we have to do.” I sighed, thinking of the tough decisions I had to make.
“Being a grown-up sucks.” I offered Amanda my popcorn, and she took a handful, still lost in thought.
Loud cheering erupted from the bowling alleys. It sounded like someone had taken the lead or struck out or something. My presence would likely be required. I gave the rest of my popcorn to Amanda, who took it with a grateful smile. “Do you want to do lunch tomorrow?” She looked so depressed, and I wanted to cheer her up. “We can do it off campus, so we’re not seen together.”
“I’d like that,” Amanda said.
Chapter Twenty-two
AFTER RECOVERING FROM an evening spent pretending to like Tri Mu, I looked forward to meeting Amanda for lunch. She texted me the name and location of the restaurant, a little tearoom on the town square not known for attracting the collegiate crowd. It was feminine and quaint, perfect for private conversation between two sorority sisters who needed to catch up.
After we ordered our sweet iced teas and chicken salads, I decided to tackle the issue straight on, as honesty was the best Deb policy.
“I saw you talking with Ainsley St. John yesterday.”
Amanda’s spoon stopped stirring her tea. “Oh,” was all she said.
“C’mon, Amanda. If you can’t talk to me, who can you talk to? I’m your little sis. And I’m chapter advisor, now. I get the drama, believe me. With Liza’s death, this week has been … a little much.” That was an understatement, but I didn’t want to burden Amanda with all the unseemly details.
“I can’t even imagine,” Amanda said, compassion and empathy all over her pale face. She reached out and squeezed my hand. “You’re right. We should talk about our problems. We are the only ones who understand each other.”
“It’s so crazy. We have Liza’s memorial service tomorrow …”
“Tomorrow?” Amanda asked.
“Well, we couldn’t have it today. Chapter meeting is today.” Amanda nodded in understanding.
“When’s the funeral?” she asked, straightening the napkin in her lap.
“Oh, I don’t know.” I took a sip of iced tea. “I don’t think they’ve released the body yet because of the investigation. And the toxicology.”
Amanda’s eyes got real big. “Toxicology?”
I nodded. “To determine the cause of death.”
“What was it?” she asked breathlessly.
“I don’t know,” I said, lowering my voice while the waitress put down our plates. “Lieutenant Hatfield is being strangely tongue-tied about it.”
“You two are talking about it?”
My eyes rolled around. “Sort of. He keeps saying he wants to share information, but I think he only wants me to give him information. He’s not forthcoming at all, especially about—” I cut myself off. “Stuff.” I finished lamely.
“Come on, Margot,” Amanda’s voice was chiding. “You have to tell me, especially if it’s Deb related. I’m a Delta Beta, first and foremost.”
That was so true. “Okay,” I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to break the scandalous news to Amanda. She wasn’t going to handle it well. “Turns out, Liza McCarthy had a secret phone-sex organization on the side.”
Amanda’s fork clattered to her plate, but something in her eyes wasn’t as alarmed as I thought she should be.
“Have you heard about this?” I asked evenly.
A guilty look crossed her face. “Rumors, only. I just thought they were vicious rumors spread by—”
“Try Moo,” I finished for her. It was that obvious. Especially with the rumors that Casey had heard, originating from Tri Mu headquarters, which is what I was telling Amanda when her phone buzzed. She looked at the number. “I have to take this,” she said.
“Is it Dean Xavier?” I asked carefully, my heart sinking a little at how flustered she looked at his name.
“H-how did you know?”
“When I took Liza’s sociology papers back to the department, I met him then. Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything about you.” I winked. “Much.”
“Oh God,” Amanda took a shaky breath, clutched her phone so tightly I thought it would break, and headed out of the restaurant.
Through the front window of the tearoom, I saw her talking on the phone, covering her mouth, and facing in toward the building. .
After about ten minutes, Amanda returned to the table and pushed back her plate, which was fine because I had finished my meal while she was taking her call. “Everything okay?” I asked, trying to be discreet even though there were definite signs of trouble in paradise.
Amanda waved her hand around. “You know. Men. They’re all the same. Like Officer Hatfield, they take, and they don’t want to give.”
I totally agreed with that statement. But if anyone could convince a man to turn his life around, it would be my big sister. She was a pretty persuasive gal.
“Look at us talking about boys just like we did in college,” I mused. “Remember all those double dates with those Omega pledge brothers? What were their names?”
“John and …” she snapped her fingers. “Shoot. I forget. He was tall and he always smelled like—”
“McDonald’s cheeseburgers!” I laughed. I hadn’t thought of him in years. “Remember how you’d always get dressed in my room?”
The smile on Amanda’s face faltered a bit. “Because you had the most amazing clothes, of course.”
The clothes were thanks to a high-limit credit card my father had given me—to buy my silence about a certain trip he’d made to Vegas. The memory made my smile fade as well. I shook it off and adjusted the napkin on my lap. “Who would have thought that we’d both still be single all these years later?”
“Technically, I don’t know if I’m single or not.”
“It’s complicated?”
Amanda’s expression showed me just how complicated it was, and that made my decision not to bring up what I knew about Stefanie Grossman. For all I knew, Dean’s fling with Stefanie had occurred while he and Amanda were on a break. Until I knew more about either situation, I needed to stay discreet, for everyone’s sake.
We went on to chat about shared friends and shared interests: the new Louis Vuitton handbag she’d just bought and the latest spa treatment that reduced cellulite.
The lunch check was on Delta Beta, and Amanda had to hurry to a meeting, so I paid the tab and headed out the door, wondering if I had time to run by the Greek boutique and pick up a new Delta Beta Busy Bee for the chapter advisor’s office to replace the one that someone had disposed of so violently. Then a beauty-pageant-worthy head of highlights stepped in front of me. This time, I recognized her, even without the pale pink and bright orange.
“Ainsley St. John,” I said, wanting so badly to add “I presume” but feeling that would be a little over the top. “Sorry I confused you the other day for your sister.”
“You’re the new Debbie ad
visor, right?” she asked, ignoring my apology and using the nickname that Moos used for us: Debbies, short for Little Debbies, the lowbrow snack.
“I’m the pro tem Delta Beta advisor,” I corrected her. “Can I help you?”
She pressed a plain white envelope into my hand. “There’s a perverted Debbie phone-sex orgy going on, and it needs to stop or I’m going to bring the whole Debbie circus down.”
I’m sure my face contained a whole lot of what the hell? “And what do you know about it?”
Her mouth twisted as she looked at the envelope currently crunched in my palm. “That’s what I know. And I know the Panhellenic advisor isn’t doing anything. I just saw you having lunch with her. She didn’t tell you, did she?”
“She told me some jealous Tri Moo skanks were spreading rumors about my sorority.” My insulting snappishness came as a reflex even though I knew the phone-sex operation wasn’t just a rumor. Still, I didn’t like that a Tri Mu knew about it. If Ainsley St. John knew about it, this was dangerously close to being public knowledge, and that would definitely be a lasting mark on the unsullied Deb reputation. Panic started creeping in.
Ainsley’s face was bitter, and the resolve I saw there scared me big-time. This girl meant what she said. She was going to blow this whole thing up. The sad thing was she and I both wanted the same thing—to bring down the phone-sex ring. But how could I work with a Tri Mu?
I decided to give it my best shot. “Believe me, if this is true, I don’t want this thing to exist.”
That got Ainsley’s attention. I held up my fist with the envelope. “Is this going to help or hurt people?”
Now her resolve was mixed with anger. “Both,” she said with a clenched jaw.
I sighed. It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear.
CHAPTER MEETING CAME and went in a blur. I could barely pay attention to the announcements and the debates, and my usual copious and detailed notes tonight consisted of numbers and letters that I haphazardly scribbled down as my subconscious tried to work through all the details and detours I had been presented with in the past few days. Part of my difficulty was that I just didn’t want to believe that any of this was true: that Liza had led a double life, that my beloved sorority was in danger of having its reputation shredded and thrown under an eighteen-wheeler. After my talk with Ainsley, I had come back to the house and looked at her envelope, immediately recognizing her evidence for what it was—proof that tied Liza to the phone-sex site. I tried to calm myself that nobody else would recognize all these phone numbers except for me, the least-likely woman to come into possession of phone-sex line records. If Ainsley had really showed this to Amanda (and I had my doubts given her obvious instability), I could see why the Panhellenic advisor dismissed it as rumors and innuendo. The numbers were gibberish unless you had the master list.
I hadn’t had time to figure it all out or make peace with it, with the demands of chapter meeting, setting up the ritual items, and dealing with last-minute agenda additions. After the chapter meeting, Casey was coming to the house, and we’d go over everything, step by step. Casey would help me make sense of things.
The closing ritual was about to start, and the energy in the air shifted as the ladies reached for each other’s hands. It was in this very circle, a week ago, that Liza had dropped dead. Around the room, the memory was sketched on faces, in lines that no college student should have. The thought made me angry, that someone had done this to us, that we should have such a happy moment that celebrated friendship and loyalty and sisterhood forever marred by a senseless act of violence.
The time was now, for a chapter advisor to speak up, to share inspirational words, perhaps a quotation from Leticia Baumgardner. But the words got stuck in my throat, raw and splintered. Around the room, fifty hands formed a circle with their thumbs and forefingers. Fifty mouths said words that generations had recited solemnly. Then, fifty sets of eyes gazed in horror as the door to the chapter room was wrenched open in the middle of a ritual and a man in uniform strode in.
“Lieutenant Hatfield!” I yelled, as the room dissolved into chaos. Ty barely shot me a glance as he marched to the front of the room, with his hands held high. In one hand was a piece of paper.
Chapter Twenty-three
WITH JUST A slightly raised, deep voice, Ty had the chapter’s attention. He held up a folded piece of paper. “I’m Lieutenant Hatfield, from the Sutton PD. We’re looking for Stefanie Grossman.”
The chapter room immediately erupted into whispers and exclamations. I was at Ty’s side in the next moment, yanking down on that lifted arm. “What do you want with her?” I demanded. The room went quiet at my voice. It seemed the rest of the chapter wanted to know as well.
“I have a warrant for her arrest for the murder of Liza McCarthy.” I closed my eyes as the room exploded, biting back several very un-Deb-like profanities.
Ty looked at the room again. “If anyone has any information as to her whereabouts, you are legally required to inform the police.” Then he met my eyes. “I’ll be waiting out front if you’d like to speak with me.” And then, like he hadn’t just done the equivalent of unveiling a transgender stripper in the middle of the First Baptist Sunday morning service, he marched himself right out of the chapter room.
Forty minutes later, I had calmed almost everything and everyone down. There were girls crying. Some were freaking out; some were calling their mothers. Everyone wanted to know where Stefanie was and why the police wanted her. In the chaos, I saw Aubrey giving Callie the evil eye from across the room. It was clear Aubrey was still loyal to Stefanie, but she had to know that Callie’s writing Stefanie up on S&M matters wasn’t why the police had issued a warrant for Stefanie’s arrest. At least, I hoped it wasn’t.
Still, I wasn’t quite clear why Stefanie was suddenly the number one suspect in Liza’s murder. When I could, I made my way to the front yard to see if Ty Hatfield was still available to answer a few questions.
He was sitting in the bench swing that hung from a huge oak branch, the swing on which each pledge class affixed a small brass plaque. After all the years, the back of the bench glittered with reptilian brass scales, catching in the sunlight or the moonlight, sparkling on clear nights like tonight.
I walked slowly toward him, my arms wrapped around myself, chilled from the cool October evening. “Lieutenant,” I said when I got closer.
“Ms. Blythe,” he said slowly.
“Why aren’t you out there, looking for Liza McCarthy’s killer?” I was surprised at the bitterness in my voice.
“We can’t find her. That’s why I came here, to see if any of your sisters had any information.” The way he said, “your sisters” made me uncomfortable. Like I was responsible for anyone who was hiding Stefanie someplace.
I hesitated for a moment. “Stefanie was supposed to come to a standards hearing on Saturday. She never showed. From what the girls told me, she stopped coming to chapter events after she was told she was being written up. She even stopped returning calls. No one’s seen her.”
Ty nodded, a single head bob. “I’ll need you—and whomever you’ve been talking to—to come down to the station tomorrow to give those statements.”
“Tomorrow’s Liza’s memorial service.”
“After that. I’ll give you a ride.”
“You’ll be there?” I was surprised. I didn’t think he knew Liza.
Ty smiled, a bland expression that didn’t reach his eyes. Oh, of course. The killers always came to the victim’s funeral. At least, they did on TV. Maybe they did in real life, too, and Ty was hoping to catch a murderer.
We stayed silent for a long moment as Ty continued rocking on the swing, the creak of the chains hanging in the air, the moonlight turning his dark blond hair as shiny as the pledge-class plaques.
“How did you know it was her?” I couldn’t contain my curiosity.
Now it was Ty’s turn to hesitate. Then he seemed to decide something.
“She had a personal vendetta against Liza. The only thing taken from the chapter advisor’s desk was her file. Seems she wanted to keep something quiet.”
I crinkled my nose. Her giving a BJ to her BF in a bathroom hadn’t stayed under wraps. “But we went ahead with her standards hearing,” I said. “It didn’t stop us.”
Ty’s hand sliced through the air. “Not that. She was one of Liza’s girls.”
I gasped. It was my worst fear, the one that I hadn’t even spoken in my head, let alone out loud. Learning everything I had about Liza, I was still praying, hope against hope, that Liza hadn’t violated the sacred chapter-advisor trust and recruited her phone sexers from the chapter. It looked like my prayer hadn’t been answered. I sank onto the swing next to Ty, feeling that my legs weren’t all that trustworthy at the moment.
“Were there … others?” I asked, barely able to make the words audible.
“We had an anonymous tip,” Ty responded quietly, almost gently. “We’re trying to confirm that now.”
“Did the tip come in a white envelope?” I couldn’t look at him. When he said yes, I stood and walked back into the house without looking back, knowing he was watching me the whole time.
CASEY HELD THE white envelope in one hand and the notebook paper in his other. The piece of paper had been torn out of an ordinary college-ruled notebook, the perforations and holes all jagged on the left side.
“I don’t get it,” Casey said.
“These are phone numbers.” I pointed at the sheet. Then I pointed at his laptop screen. “They’re the same. The records on the computer were a phone log, with how many minutes were charged, the total amount and then …” I moved my finger across the spreadsheet to the smaller columns with the dollar signs. “The disbursements. Presumably one to Liza, one to the … operator.”
Casey peered at the screen. “But there are three disbursement columns.”
“Taxes, I don’t know,” I said in exasperation. I was trying to put all this together with limited information. “But this is independent verification that Liza was behind the phone-sex site.”
Sisterhood is Deadly: A Sorority Sisters Mystery Page 12
