Mean Sisters

by Lindsay Emory

  ‘Way to be inconspicuous,’ I said as we headed toward the parking lot.

  ‘You’d think they’d get bored of crapping in one place,’ Casey muttered. I’m not sure Casey ever lived in an apartment complex of college students with dogs. Neither long, leisurely walks nor doggie bags were popular.

  ‘Did you get anything?’ Casey asked when we had the car doors safely closed.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Casey’s laptop was at the hotel and the hotel was closer than sorority row, so we went there to view the zip drives. He insisted on scanning them for viruses first, which I thought was mighty health-conscious of him.

  We plugged them in, not knowing what kind of files were on them. More spreadsheets? An open letter from a serial killer/phone sex client admitting his guilt? We could only guess.

  Turned out, the media player opened. And up popped a scene I was semi-familiar with: the inside of the Chapter Advisor’s office.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ I asked. ‘There really was a bug in there?’

  ‘Holy shit,’ Casey said. I gave him a chastising look. There was no excuse for foul language.

  There were fits and starts in the surveillance footage, either from a motion sensor, or from someone deleting scenes, or both. There was Liza, talking with Aubrey, then Callie, then the housekeeper. Then there was Callie, opening the door when the office was empty. Then the door opened again. Hunter.

  Then they were kissing.

  And undressing.

  And … ‘OH MY GOD!’ I cried out, covering my eyes.

  ‘Holy SHIT!’ Casey yelled. This time I didn’t chide him. There was a time and a place for everything.

  There was no audio, thank goodness and Casey let me know when it was safe to look again. A minute later, Callie and Hunter were back at it again, this time against the bookshelf. Then on the desk. Then the chair.

  I closed my eyes and told Casey to review the rest. Nothing else was on the zip drive but videos of Callie and Hunter doing it like bunnies in the Chapter Advisor’s office.

  I was really scared of the second thumb drive. Even Casey gave it a speculative thought. The fact that he even paused was something.

  He waited until I was ready to plug it in.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Do it.’

  I expected the media player to pop-up with a video, but instead it was a sound recording. With lots of heavy breathing, lots of talk about being tied up and lots of Dean Xavier. I wasn’t sure if I could prove it was him until the phone sex operator very clearly said, ‘Yes, DEAN, DO ME DEAN.’ And then he said, ‘Don’t call me Dean.’ Which probably wouldn’t prove his identity, since you can’t prove a positive with a negative (or something like that). But he did finish with, ‘Call me Professor Xavier,’ which helped me out a lot.

  After about ten minutes’ worth of freaky-deaking, I motioned to Casey, who fast-forwarded to see if we had anything else good on there, like a woman’s voice identifying herself as Heather and saying that she was going to kill Liza McCarthy on a Monday night, but our luck had run out.

  ‘So Liza had these in the butt of a Busy Bee?’

  I know. Like Busy Bee had to be further insulted – she’d already had dirty sex tapes up her behind.

  ‘Why would Liza put them there?’

  I had been thinking about it. ‘One, she wanted to keep them safe. But you know what? I think someone knew about these.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The Busy Bee in the Chapter Advisor’s office was torn open when Hunter trashed the place. I don’t think that was a coincidence. Maybe Hunter knew the recordings were in there and he wanted them?’

  ‘But how would he know he was being recorded? Or where they were?’

  ‘And what did he do when he didn’t find them?’ I asked, rhetorically low. ‘And this was all after Liza was killed. So either she told Hunter before she died …’

  ‘Or someone told him after.’

  No doubt there were huge pieces of the puzzle that I was missing. But I knew how to knock out a bunch of the corner pieces.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ I asked Casey.

  ‘We need to go find that camera.’

  ‘Yeah. That too.’

  *

  I had to fill out some Chapter Advisor paperwork. Yes, I know that sounds boring, but it was really vital. Then Casey and I headed to the police station.

  For once, there was someone at the front desk. Will wonders never cease? His nametag identified him as Deputy Winchester.

  Casey argued some legal mumbo jumbo about a prisoner’s rights under the Geneva Convention which, I had to say, impressed the heck out of me. The most international law I knew about was diplomatic immunity and that was only because so many scumbag diplomats were also creepy pedophiles on Law & Order.

  Deputy Winchester rolled his eyes and said we’d come during visitor hours anyway, which seemed like a good cover story for him.

  Hunter was still sitting in the cell, now dressed in a county-issued scrub set. ‘Why haven’t you paid bail yet?’ I asked. Surely a Sutton College fraternity brother could spare some cash to help a friend out.

  ‘Mom and Dad are on a cruise down the Rhine. They’re trying to teach me a lesson.’

  I almost felt sorry for him.

  Casey pulled up two chairs to the bars. I set the laptop on one of them. The second chair was for Hunter’s next visitor. Just a few minutes later, Callie Campbell walked slowly down the hall, her blue eyes big and scared. ‘What’s going on Margot? Why did you say there was urgent chapter business here?’ Her gaze sought out Hunter’s and the pain in them was obvious to even Shakespeare, dead in his grave, all the way back in England, who was impressed by how Romeo and Juliet these two were.

  ‘Sit down, Callie.’

  She responded immediately to the inherent authority in my voice and sat in the chair without the laptop, the one that was at an angle to the cell and the laptop screen.

  I began with an official statement. ‘In compliance with rule 10.9, subsection C (1) of the Delta Beta sorority Standards and Morals manual, I am hereby inciting an emergency standards and morals hearing, under my authority as a properly instituted Chapter Advisor.’

  There was no evidence of Callie’s adorable dimples as her face went ashen.

  I handed her the S&M paperwork I had filled out and, as she started to review it, Casey pressed play on the laptop. As we’d seen earlier, there was nothing very notable about the first minute or so of the video and Callie ignored it, as her horror grew while reviewing the pages I’d written up. But Hunter saw the screen immediately and knew what it meant. ‘Where did you get that?’ he whispered urgently.

  ‘Where do you think we got it?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head, mute as he and Callie burst onto the screen. His strangled sound made Callie look up, startled. And then she saw what was on the laptop.

  ‘What!?’ She squealed. ‘What is that!?’ Panicked, she looked up at Hunter, who was now at the bars, gripping tightly. ‘You taped us? You pervert! Asshole!’

  ‘I didn’t. I swear, baby, I did it for you.’

  Casey and I exchanged a look. Now that was a line.

  Callie buried her face in her hands. ‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’

  ‘Callie, baby, I swear, listen to me, I never would have done it, but she said she was going to take your pin. And I knew that would destroy you.’

  I held up a hand. ‘Who told you she would take Callie’s pin?’

  Hunter brushed both hands in his thick hair, looking like a very sad Romeo. ‘I don’t know. She never gave me a name. She blackmailed me into breaking into the office and she said she needed the evidence in there. In the stuffed bee.’

  ‘What about the computer?’ I asked.

  ‘She told me to get rid of it.’

  ‘And the file?’

  Hunter stilled, his stricken eyes focused on Callie. ‘I did that for you.’

&
nbsp; ‘You stole Stefanie’s file for me?’ Callie’s voice was strangled. ‘You are a bigger idiot than I thought!’ She stood and screamed the last bit, which surprised me.

  ‘Baby, Callie, baby, listen to me,’ Hunter pleaded. ‘I know I hurt you. But I thought if I could get Stefanie’s papers, you wouldn’t have to hear all the details. I didn’t want you to think of me like that, especially ‘cause you know there’s no one else but you.’

  ‘You are so dumb!’ Callie exploded. ‘You think if you steal the file it just goes away? Delta Beta is way more organised than that!’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. Hunter was devastated. His plan hadn’t been thought through at all.

  ‘Hunter, back to the point, please.’ I snapped my fingers.

  ‘What’s the point?’ He groaned dramatically, sitting on the bench, his head in his hands.

  ‘If you don’t tell me the truth, I will pursue this S&M hearing against Callie. Her pin will be taken because of her involvement with a house brother, in direct violation of S&M Manual section 24 B.’

  Callie’s response was a soft cry. I would have felt bad for her, but she was leverage and had clearly broken a major S&M rule.

  I pressed my advantage and focused on Hunter again. ‘So someone called you out of the blue and blackmailed you into breaking into the office and getting the evidence out of the stuffed bee. What did you do when you didn’t find it?’

  Hunter slowly raised his head and looked at me, a question clear on his face. ‘But I did find it.’

  Casey held up his hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. ‘What did you find?’

  Hunter tilted his head towards the laptop. ‘That.’

  Casey and I exchanged a long glance. ‘Hunter …’ I drew his name out slowly as my brain worked through that information. ‘When did you get the call blackmailing you?’

  Hunter blinked once, twice. ‘Which call?’

  Well. I wasn’t expecting that.

  ‘How many calls were there?’

  ‘Two,’ Hunter said. ‘During the first one, she said she knew about me and Callie and said if I didn’t want Callie brought up for getting involved with me, I had to …’ He looked away, as if he was embarrassed.

  ‘Yeah, it was such a hardship for you, we feel so sorry for poor little Hunter,’ Callie spit.

  ‘Baby, I said I was sorry! I told you it didn’t mean anything. It was all for you!’

  Callie flashed the universal sign for ‘whatever’ but I still wasn’t getting what they were fighting about.

  ‘What did you do?’ I asked Hunter in exasperation. ‘You stay quiet,’ I snapped at Callie.

  ‘I set Stefanie up, like she asked.’

  My mouth made an ‘oh’ shape. Aubrey had said that Stefanie had insisted she was set up. The convolutions of this plot were almost beyond me. Almost. I was a philosophy major. We were pretty good at convoluted.

  ‘So you got a call, blackmailing you into setting up Stefanie Grossman for what would look like a sexual encounter that would result in us taking her pin.’ Hunter nodded, shamefaced. ‘Then you got a second call, blackmailing you into breaking into the Chapter Advisor office, to destroy a computer and an innocent Busy Bee.’ Hunter nodded again in the affirmative.

  I paused. ‘Were there any other calls?’

  ‘No.’

  That was something.

  ‘And when did you get the second call?’ Casey asked Hunter.

  ‘The night after Liza died.’

  ‘Was it the same voice each time?’ That question came from behind us, from a voice I recognised as belonging to one Ty Hatfield.

  Hunter looked surprised at that question, like he’d never even considered it. ‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘It must have been. Because I knew who it was the second time.’

  ‘Did you know what you were supposed to get out of the Busy Bee?’ I asked.

  ‘I was told it was video footage of me and Callie.’

  ‘And did you actually look at it?’

  Hunter’s lip curled at me. ‘I know she doesn’t believe it,’ he said, nodding at Callie. ‘But I’m not an idiot. I wasn’t letting anyone else see that. I deleted the thumb drive. What I want to know is how did you get it?’

  ‘What I want to know is who did you give the drive to?’ Ty asked, ignoring Hunter’s question.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ty brought me and Casey back to his office. At my unspoken suggestion, Casey shut the laptop. We left Callie to fume at Hunter, or kiss him, whichever she chose.

  Ty shut the door behind us and spread an arm inviting us to sit down. I chose to stand and Casey stood with me like the best friend he was. Since we didn’t sit, Ty didn’t either. It was like a shoe department face off at the Nordstrom semi-annual sale.

  ‘I interviewed Hunter and he didn’t tell me any of that,’ Ty ground out.

  I could tell the good Lieutenant was a little frustrated, but I wasn’t sure how he spoke at all when his jaw was clenched that tight.

  ‘He’s a romantic guy. He was trying to protect his girlfriend,’ I said, surprised I was making excuses for Hunter now.

  ‘He thought his parents were bailing him out.’

  ‘That too,’ I said.

  Ty’s jaw clenched again. That wasn’t a good sign. ‘And where did you get the surveillance footage?’

  ‘So that’s a complicated question,’ I started to say, thinking quickly. ‘Because it seems like, according to Hunter, there were multiple copies, anyway.’

  Now Ty’s eyes narrowed. Very scary. ‘Really, who could say where one gets anything,’ I hedged. Ty reached for the baseball on his desk and squeezed hard. I spoke quickly. ‘But I’ll give you permission to find the hidden camera that you didn’t find during your search warrant.’

  From the way his jaw was working, maybe I shouldn’t have added that part. ‘And you might be interested in this,’ I took out the second thumb drive, the one with Dean Xavier’s heavy breathing serenade.

  ‘I’m sure this will be admissible in court.’ Ty said with a sigh as he plugged it into his computer.

  I made a little ‘maybe’ noise. Who knew? Casey, with his year’s worth of law school shrugged too. See? Even the experts weren’t sure about ‘admissibility.’

  The recording didn’t get any more enjoyable the second time around and Ty shut it off right after the ‘call me professor’ part. He unplugged the drive and held it up. ‘It would help if I knew where this came from.’

  I went for it. What was he going to do? Arrest me? ‘Liza McCarthy’s apartment.’

  The lieutenant’s blue eyes sharpened with attention. ‘When?’

  ‘Today.’

  ‘You do understand that you’re a suspect in her murder.’

  ‘You were serious about that?’ I asked.

  Casey snickered. Ty, not so much.

  I sobered up. ‘Yes, I know there’s a lot that looks bad for me. But I’ve just given you two other suspects and a whole lot more leads you wouldn’t have without me.’

  ‘Or you’ve just drummed up evidence to falsely accuse someone else. That’s what their attorneys are going to say!’

  Oh. I hadn’t thought of it quite like that.

  ‘Look,’ Casey interrupted. ‘We can go round and round about whether Margot killed Liza.’

  That did not sound like a good idea. My eyes bugged at my supposed best friend.

  ‘Or,’ Casey continued, ‘we can solve this once and for all.’

  ‘How?’ Ty looked like he was steeling himself for something preposterous like a good old-fashioned murder suspect walk-off.

  ‘A sting.’

  A heavy silence filled the spaces in the room as we all ruminated on that one. Have I said how much I loved Casey’s ideas? I’ve always wanted to be in on a sting.

  It was clear the wheels in Ty’s head were turning. And so were mine. I could see it now. Me, in an all-black bodysuit, with lace up boots and some kind of high tech microphone/ear piece combo wrapped around my long dark
braid, Lara Croft style.

  ‘You’ve got to narrow down the suspects,’ Casey said, reasonably.

  ‘Except for me, I’m already out,’ I added. Ty gave me a look that said he wasn’t completely sold on my innocence yet. ‘We’ve got a whole bunch of people who want to keep their involvement with Liza McCarthy secret, bad enough to kill. But we don’t even know who all of them are.’

  ‘So we need to round them up and rule them out,’ Casey added. We were so in tune with one another.

  ‘Before I agree to anything, you have to tell me everything.’ Ty’s brows rose. ‘EVERYTHING. No holding back because of some B.S. sorority secrecy rules.’

  Casey and I exchanged a glance and agreed silently that this was our best plan of action.

  ‘First of all, I’d like to go on record and say that I’m pretty sure the Tri Mu sorority started all of this,’ I began. Ty smiled like I was being a smart ass, but I was being about 85% sincere.

  I sat in the chair in front of Ty’s desk and Casey followed my lead. I outlined what I knew about the phone sex ring and how Liza’s proposed sociology experiment had either turned into something darker or the research was just her cover all along. We knew that at least two members of the Deb chapter had been employed by Liza. One of them, Stefanie Grossman, was now deceased. The other, Aubrey St. John, had a twin sister who had been viciously run over by a car, the same sister who was demanding that the phone sex ring be taken down and had gone to our rival sorority headquarters with the information.

  ‘See what I mean about Tri Mu?’ I muttered before continuing.

  We knew that Liza had been fired from the sociology department and had called Deb HQ upset about something a few months prior.

  From Aubrey’s account, Stefanie had wanted to quit her phone sex job. Hunter also backed up Aubrey’s story that Stefanie’s bathroom stall hookup had been some blackmail scheme to get Stefanie written up for standards and morals violations and ensure her silence about her side gig.

  The thumb drives had presumably been found in two locations: the Chapter Advisor’s office and Liza’s apartment. And there was a hidden camera, put in the office by an unknown person. Finally, I had to point out that the fraternity pranks were seriously out of control.