by Diane Hoh
Mildred’s relief at this news was visible. None of the girls had eaten lunch at Omega house. She was blameless, after all.
But the girls affected had not all eaten lunch at the same place, which further confused the police. Different restaurants, cafes, and dining halls were involved, yet apparently only the girls from Omega house had fallen victim.
“Wish we had those plates,” one officer said regretfully as they turned to leave the sorority house. “Can’t be sure of anything now.”
They were no more confused than Maxie. She had been so sure that the phony exterminator had done something to the spaghetti. If not, what was he doing in the house?
The worst consequence was that now the university definitely wouldn’t spring for more security.
The police did agree with her that the bricks in the fountain wall had been tampered with. But they didn’t seem to be taking it nearly as seriously as she did. They seemed to regard it as a “prank” gone bad. Shaking their heads and making comments about the stupidity of initiation rituals, the police officers left, telling the housemother to call them if anything else came up.
Maxie left for class thoroughly dispirited. Although her ill sorority sisters would be coming home that afternoon, the help that she had hoped for hadn’t arrived, after all. No one, not even the police, knew what was going on. They didn’t even seem to believe that anything was going on.
But she was sure. Positive. The loosened bricks hadn’t been a prank, and neither had the stolen things so mysteriously returned, or the disgusting ants in the pantry. And whatever it was that had sent her sisters to the hospital, it had to have come from the phony exterminator. Nothing else made sense.
Oh, who am I kidding? she thought as she hurried along campus, too preoccupied to notice the tiniest of buds sprouting on the crab apple trees or the tips of snow crocuses pushing their heads up through the cold, hard ground. None of this makes sense!
It was almost April. But to Maxie, the day seemed like the darkest day of the winter.
Her sisters came home, pale and drained, and went promptly to bed. Maxie did what she could to make them more comfortable.
Jenna called. “I heard your compadres were sprung. Must be a really cheery atmosphere over there right about now. Feel like coming over here to escape your cares and woes?”
Annoyed, Maxie said sharply, “Jenna, I can’t leave now! I’m going to help Mildred give everyone soup later on.”
An offended silence met her ears. Then, “Right. And since I don’t have two good hands, I couldn’t possibly be asked to help.” Click. Jenna had hung up.
It took Maxie a few stunned minutes to recover. What was Jenna talking about? Of course she had two good hands. But …
Then she got it. Jenna had wanted to be asked to help at Omega house. And why not? She was not only a friend of Maxie’s, she knew many of the girls in the sorority. They would probably have been grateful if she’d shown up.
And why hadn’t she been asked?
Maxie dialed Jenna’s number so fast her fingers dialed a two instead of a three and she got a wrong number. Concentrating, she dialed again.
No answer.
Jenna had probably left the room in a fury. Who could blame her? Of all the snobbish, callous …
Maxie couldn’t stand herself.
But she was soon so busy she had to put Jenna’s hurt feelings out of her mind.
Soup, toast, and tea did a lot to restore the spirits of the ailing girls. A few came downstairs to watch television later that night, and by the next morning, all but three attempted to go to classes. Several of that group came home early, however, and decided to take the rest of the week off.
“Food poisoning stinks,” a girl named Sam declared emphatically as she struggled up the stairs. “I’m going back to bed. Don’t wake me up until Sunday morning.”
“There’s a party at Tri-Delt Saturday night,” Maxie reminded her.
Sam visibly brightened. “Okay, then, Saturday afternoon. Not a minute sooner.”
Maxie tried to tell herself that with the police on the alert, with the peephole in the front door and the new chain lock installed, and with warnings to check all identification carefully before letting anyone in, Omega house was as safe as any other house on campus.
And as her friends recovered and laughter and chatter and music again began to take their rightful place in the house, she felt some of her tension easing away.
The rest of the week passed without event. Candie was still fielding calls from Graham Lucas. Jenna was cool when she spoke to Maxie on campus and Maxie was at a loss as to how to apologize for her thoughtlessness. But everything else seemed normal. There were no new visitors to the house, no more insects in the pantry, and no one caught Tom Tuttle staring in the windows.
By Saturday afternoon, the fully recovered patients decided to head out to the mall. Everyone went but Maxie. The thought of having the house all to herself was just too tempting. A few days earlier, the thought would have set her teeth on edge. Now, she felt grateful for the solitude. It was a bright, sunny afternoon and nothing bad had happened since the spaghetti incident. She decided to start off with a long, hot shower.
Her hair was still wet, hanging loosely down her back, when the telephone shrilled.
It was Brendan. “You’re going to hate me,” he said cautiously. “I can’t make the Tri-Delt party tonight.”
“Oh, Brendan. Why not?”
“Gotta do a friend a big favor. Charlie Donovan’s sister went and got herself engaged. Big-deal engagement party tonight over in Charlie’s hometown, Shadrach. About eighty miles over the hill. He doesn’t have wheels and he’s desperate for a ride. I said I’d take him.”
“Brendan!” Was she whining? She hated whiners. So did Brendan. “Why can’t he take a bus?”
“Shadrach is a town of three thousand people, Maxie. They have a gas station, a grocery store, and a dairy. They do not have a bus station. Therefore, buses do not go there.”
“Oh, Brendan.” She wouldn’t whine anymore. “I was counting on having a little time with you … Is there any chance you’ll be back in time to catch the last few minutes?”
“No can do. I’m staying to bring him back home. Ninety minutes to get there, a couple of hours at the sister’s party, and then ninety minutes back here. It’ll be late. Maybe we’ll catch a movie tomorrow night, okay?”
Giving up, Maxie told him it was okay, to drive safely, and to call her tomorrow. Then she slowly, regretfully replaced the receiver.
It wouldn’t be as much fun without Brendan.
The phone rang again, and she allowed herself the crazy wish that it was Brendan calling to say he’d changed his mind and Charlie Donovan could just walk to Shadrach because seeing her was much more important.
The voice was male, but it wasn’t Brendan’s. “This is Graham Lucas. Is this Maxie?”
Graham Lucas? Why was he calling her?
Maxie didn’t know what to say. If he knew Candie was fine, that she was feeling well enough to attend the party, he’d show up there and make her crazy. “Why are you calling me, Graham?”
“I wasn’t sure Candie would talk to me. Sometimes she won’t. And I needed to know that she was okay. I heard about what happened and I haven’t seen her on campus, so I was worried.”
But Candie doesn’t want you worrying about her, Maxie thought but didn’t say. “She’s better,” she said cautiously. “So you can quit worrying.”
There was distress in his voice as he said, “Why was she home that night? She wasn’t supposed to be.”
Maxie wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “What? What night?”
“The night it happened. That food poisoning. I asked her out to dinner that night, and she said she couldn’t go because she already had a dinner date. So when I first heard about what happened, I figured she was okay, since she wasn’t planning on eating, at the house. But then, I didn’t see her on campus, so I asked someone and they said she w
as in the hospital. I couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Why was she?”
Maxie rolled her eyes heavenward. Because she lied to you, you twit. You wouldn’t leave her alone when she told you the truth, so she lied. I don’t blame her. Aloud, she said, “Maybe her date was canceled, Graham. Anyway, she’s better, so relax, okay?”
“I can’t help it.” Now who was whining? “We had a fight the other day and all I could think of when I heard about this rotten business was that I might not get the chance to make up with her, tell her I was sorry.”
She almost felt sorry for Graham. If only he’d take the hint and buzz off. Disappear. But he was clinging to Candie like fungus, just like she’d said.
“Maybe you should play hard to get, Graham,” she offered, taking pity on him.
“What?”
“Never mind.” The concept was probably foreign to him. “Like I said, Candie’s fine. Gotta go, Graham. Bye.”
Well, at least she’d saved Candie a conversation Candie didn’t want to have.
She was just about to switch on the hairdryer when the doorbell rang.
What now?
Ignore it, she told herself, whoever it is will go away.
Then she remembered that Mildred had informed them that morning that the university was planning to have the house painted, now that the weather had warmed up. Maxie had initially objected, feeling that this wasn’t a good time for such activity around the house. But she had quickly realized, on second thought, that having a crew of painters stationed outside might not be such a bad idea.
“Every member of the crew,” Mildred told the girls, “will, of course, be thoroughly checked out by the administration and probably by the police, as well. So having them around might actually make us all feel just a tiny bit safer. And, of course,” she had added cheerfully, “our lovely house will soon be wearing a fresh new coat of paint.”
Maybe the person ringing the front doorbell was here about the painting job.
Brring, brring, brring.
The noise was driving Maxie nuts. Whoever it was wasn’t going to go away. Besides, it could be someone who lived in the house and had forgotten their key. The door was kept locked at all times now.
Wrapping her white terrycloth robe tightly around her, she ran down the stairs. She had the peephole and the chain lock. It wasn’t as if she was about to let anyone in. If it wasn’t someone who belonged at Omega house, she’d just get rid of them.
She peered through the peephole. Her eyes widened in disbelief, and her mouth dropped open.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Leaving the chain lock on, she pulled the door open a few inches.
Chapter 14
STANDING ON THE PORCH was one of the strangest-looking people Maxie had ever seen. She was a tall, heavyset woman with an unbelievable amount of cranberry-colored hair piled high on her head and hanging loose, in tight Shirley Temple curls, around her face. The eyes, behind Coke-bottle-thick eyeglasses, were heavily made-up with false eyelashes and several shades of fluorescent shadow that hurt Maxie’s eyes. Her wide, generous mouth was outlined with dark brown liner and filled in with several layers of glossy, bright pink lipstick.
“Yes?” Maxie asked when the initial shock had passed. She bit her lower lip to keep from smiling at the garish lime-green wide-legged pants and the hot-pink and lime-green flowered sweatshirt spilling out from beneath the woman’s open denim jacket. “Can I help you?”
“Well, sweetie,” the woman boomed in a loud, brassy voice, “you sure can. You can deliver me, posthaste, to Mrs. Allison Barre’s baby daughter, Candace. I’m Tia Maria, the one and only, and I’m here to make little Candie the work of art that nature intended her to be. I’m here on her mama’s say-so, so you’d best let me in, hon. Allie, I mean Mrs. Barre, will not be in a generous mood if I don’t transform her precious darlin’. And if Mrs. Barre isn’t feeling generous, this sorority doesn’t get its semi-annual whopping, whale-sized checks, if you get my drift.”
Maxie was speechless. “Tia Maria?”
“You got it. My orders are to make Allie’s precious darling look good enough to knock every hormone-crazed young man on campus off his Reeboks. So how’s about letting me in, sweetie, so I can get to work.”
Candie’s mother’s hairdresser. This was the woman Candie’s mother had told them so many stories about the day she came for the tea.
“Here’s my card, hon.” The woman held out a shocking-pink business card, embossed with her name and, directly underneath that the words, BEAUTIFIER PAR EXCELLENCE.
Maxie couldn’t help smiling.
Tia Maria said proudly, “I do faces, too. Not just hair. Faces.”
Not the same way you do your own, I hope, Maxie thought.
“No one’s home right now,” Maxie said, making up her mind and releasing the chain lock. “I don’t know how soon they’ll all be back, but you can come in and wait. You can wait in my room, and keep me company.”
“Well, thanks, hon,” Tia Maria said, hefting her black leather case and giving Maxie a broad, pink-lipsticked smile. “Don’t mind if I do. My tootsies are giving out.”
Maxie pulled the door open, and the hairdresser stepped inside.
In her room, Maxie motioned Tia Maria to a wicker chair at the desk and went to the dresser to pick up her hairbrush.
“Listen, hon, I have a great idea,” Tia Maria said, not sitting down. “Since Allie’s baby girl isn’t here at this precise moment, what say you and me have us a makeover session? On my honor, I can make you so gorgeous you’ll think the Body-Snatchers came and replaced the original you with some famous movie star. How about it?”
“A makeover? Me?” Maxie glanced around nervously.
The woman read her mind. “Oh, relax, sweetie,” she said, waving jewelled hands in Maxie’s face. “Now just sit right there and let me get to work.”
What the heck, Maxie figured as she sat down in front of the dresser. It might be fun, being made over. She could always undo whatever Tia Maria did if it was really awful.
While Tia Maria worked, she talked. Nonstop. She set Maxie’s hair on hot rollers, talking the whole time about politics, religion, child-rearing, and the state of the nation in general, all in that brassy, booming voice. By the time she started on Maxie’s face, Maxie’s ears were ringing.
She worked quickly, efficiently. Maxie admired the way her fingers, in thin plastic gloves, flew, and how the brushes she used seemed to fit so perfectly in her hand, as if they were a part of it.
“And you poor guys here,” Tia Maria said as she brushed Maxie’s brows upward in firm but gentle strokes and applied tiny dabs of vaseline to hold the hairs in place, “you’ve really been having a time of it, haven’t you?”
At first, Maxie thought she was talking about something political, like state budget cuts that had affected the university, or a recent hike in tuition.
“I mean,” the hairdresser continued, nimble fingers applying blush high on Maxie’s cheekbones, “first, those things being stolen and then the ants in the pantry, yuck! And that poor kid tumbling into the fountain, and then of course, that dreadful insecticide. You girls were really lucky there. Could have been all she wrote, don’t you think? Beats me what the world is coming to.”
Maxie froze in her chair. Her eyes went to the mirror in front of her. Every nerve in her body sprang to attention as she watched Tia Maria bend to fill a huge, fluffy brush with loose translucent powder and then stand to shake off the excess. Maxie couldn’t think, couldn’t sort things out … something bad had just happened and she had to concentrate, so that she could figure out exactly what it was.
Yes, now she had it. How … how …
“How did you know about all of that?” she demanded. She had let this woman into Omega house. Without seeing any identification except for a stupid bright-pink business card. Not enough. Not nearly enough proof that she was who she said she was.
“Oh, Allie to
ld me,” the hairdresser said breezily. “Clients tell me everything. You’d think I was their best friend or sister or something.”
Maxie sat perfectly still, not even wincing when Tia Maria, began pulling the hot rollers from her hair and had to pull sharply on one that had become slightly tangled. That explanation made sense. Allison Barre might very well have told her hairdresser everything that had happened lately at her daughter’s sorority house.
There was only one problem with that explanation. There was only one reason Maxie still hadn’t relaxed, her stomach hadn’t stopped churning, her hands trembled in her lap.
She hadn’t relaxed because she knew, she knew that Candie had never told her mother about any of that stuff. She wouldn’t have. Candie had said that her mother would never believe her, never. That her mother would more readily believe that Candie, a straight-A student, was suddenly flunking all of her courses before she’d believe anything negative about Omega Phi.
Then how … if that were so . . . how did Tia Maria know … ?
The last hot roller had been removed. Tia Maria began to brush, swiftly and thoroughly, Maxie’s shoulder-length brown hair. One hand held the brush, the other firmly held Maxie’s head still.
Would a woman whose profession was making other women beautiful really do such an inexpert, outlandish job when she made up her own face?
Was the garish makeup Tia Maria was wearing really just her style?
Or …was it a disguise? No one could possibly figure out what the woman really looked like underneath all that makeup.
Maxie’s heart thudded down into her kneecaps. Oh, God, she thought miserably, I fell for it. I fell for her whole stupid routine. I don’t believe this. How could I be so dumb? Now I’m alone in the house with someone who should not know anything about what’s been going on here. … but does. Someone who isn’t who she says she is. There is only one way this person could know what happened in this house. She had to have something to do with all of it. What am I going to do?
What she wasn’t going to do, she decided when her brain finally roused itself enough to think clearly, was let on that she suspected anything. All she had to do was make up some excuse to leave the room, slip down the stairs and run outside. Whoever this was, standing behind her brushing her hair, still prattling on and on about how awful it must have been for all of them, wouldn’t be dumb enough to do anything to her once she was outside, where people could see. If Tuttle’s truck was in the driveway, she’d race over there and use his phone to call the police. If he wasn’t …