Hatfield had mentioned notes and letters. Sadly, there weren’t many of the latter. I found a few birthday cards that made me want to cry. Unfortunately, there were tons of notes. Half-scribbled on pieces of paper ripped from some spiral notebook, copies of Panhellenic agendas with her doodles all over them, even napkins with lists of names and numbers. I couldn’t make sense of them, as haphazard as they were. I kept digging, until I found notes I did recognize, on the official forms of the Delta Beta Standards and Morals office.
Standards and morals was the worst part of the job anywhere in the Delta Beta sorority organization, but it was a duty essential to the proper development of young women. Every sorority kept its own standards for membership, some lower than others (cough, Tri Mu, cough), and when sisters failed to live up to those standards, they sat through hearings in front of the standards and morals director, the chapter president, and the chapter advisor. Consequences ranged from financial penalties, to work penalties, to the ultimate, heartbreaking discipline: yanking a sister’s pin.
I recognized these forms on Liza’s desk, which detailed the violations of one sister and scheduled a date for her hearing, in just three days’ time. This one was being disciplined for having an inappropriate relationship with a professor. I shook my head. It was a tale as old as time. I found a folder for the S&M forms and placed them in a desk drawer. It seemed appropriate, something tawdry as that needed to be locked up.
It was when I was placing the folder in the drawer that I found the address book. A plain, black book, it had no markings to indicate whether it was official Delta Beta issue or for personal use. I suspected it was personal just because it didn’t have a honeybee on it (our sorority symbol), nor a yellow rose (our sorority flower), nor a picture of a topaz (our sorority jewel).
Remembering what Aubrey and Hatfield had told me about Liza’s family, I got excited when I opened the book, hoping against hope that there was a name or a number of someone who would want to get the news of Liza’s passing. Maybe I would even make the call myself. I imagined the tears, the heartbreak, the jagged voice of a long-lost cousin thanking me for finding them so that they could do the right thing for Liza.
I flipped open to the “A” page. It was empty. “B” was also empty. “C” was where the entries started. They continued through “D,” “E,” “F,” rows of incomprehensible letters, followed by ten numbers, then followed by either numbers, letters, or a mix. The first set of letters could have been names, maybe. Some of them were pronounceable and some had lots of consonants and no vowels which, unless Liza knew a whole lot of Eastern Europeans, didn’t make much sense. Out of frustration, I flipped to the “M” page, in the vain hope that I’d see an entry like, “McCarthy, Long-Lost Cousin Ed.” But there was just more of the same: two lines with letters, then ten numbers, then a shorter mix of letters. Clearly, this was some sort of secret journal, but it could have been for anything from her investments, to her Internet passwords, to her sociology class’s grading system.
I was staring at the address book when I heard the door lock slide. The door opened and Callie Campbell walked through.
“Oh!” Callie froze when she saw me. “Sorry! I was just …”
“Come in,” I said, getting up and shoving the pile meant for the sociology department off the chair on the other side of the desk. “Sit down,” I invited her. “I’m just cleaning up in here. What can I help you with?”
Callie quickly sat down, an anxious look on her face. It was obvious she was stressed, poor girl. Who wouldn’t be, under these circumstances?
When she pushed a strand of long blond hair behind her ear, I could see she was trembling. “Callie? Honey, tell me what’s wrong.”
“N-nothing.” She took a shallow breath then followed with that brilliant smile, bracketed by those adorable dimples. “I’m S&M director, you know …”
“Yes,” I placed my hand on the drawer pull where I had placed the forms earlier. “I’ve been reviewing Liza’s papers.”
“Oh?” Callie’s hazel gaze swept the piles on the desk. “ ’Cause I came to see … if I could help, or I can just get them, keep them. You know, help you out.”
What a sweetheart. Putting me first even though she was clearly overcome with the emotions of being in Liza’s office. “Callie, I just don’t think that’s appropriate. As chapter advisor, I should really keep all the S&M forms. Especially with the subject matter.”
Callie nodded and pushed her hair behind her ear again. “I see.”
“Especially with the hearing in three days.”
Callie’s eyes widened. “Three days?”
Maybe I had it wrong. I checked my monogrammed calendar. “No. Stefanie Grossman. Saturday at two.”
“Oh.” Callie’s shoulders relaxed. “Yeah. Stefanie.”
I made a sympathetic face at the note of defeat in Callie’s voice. “I know it’s hard when you have to go through this with a sister.” Callie still looked distressed. “When was the last time you saw Stefanie?”
Callie’s brows drew together. “It’s been weeks. She wasn’t happy when she got written up. She just disappeared. We think she might be … with him.” She hesitated before explaining further. “Her professor.”
I nodded. Sisters rarely were happy to be brought up on standards and morals and often tried to bring other sisters down with them, or claim that favoritism was at work. It seemed that Stefanie had taken the opposite route of just walking away. It was a defense mechanism, to protect herself from being judged by her friends.
“Are you going to be able to do the hearing?” I asked. S&M hearings could be so traumatic. If Callie was this upset about it now, she’d be in for a real shock when the final judgment came.
Callie looked pained but nodded in the affirmative. I wouldn’t expect anything less from Mary Gerald Callahan’s great-great-great-great-granddaughter. Devotion to Delta Beta ran in the family, I was sure.
“Anything else I should know about?” I asked, hoping to distract her from the depressing topic.
“The Alpha Kappa mixer on Friday,” Callie said with some force.
“What about it?”
Callie crinkled her nose. “It’s traditionally … a busy time of year?”
“You mean …”
“It’s crazy. A lot of girls get written up when we party with the Alpha Kapps.”
I smiled reassuringly at Callie. “Don’t worry, I know how to handle the Alpha Kapps,” I said. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that I was on that dance floor at an Alpha Kappa mixer. I knew my way around a fraternity house or two. In a totally innocent way, of course.
Chapter Ten
CALLIE HAD JUST opened the office door to leave when a brunette with corkscrew curls yelled and ran into the room. Another brunette, this one with stick-straight hair ran in on Curly’s heels. They were both screaming something incomprehensible. Finally, I understood. Sort of.
“Goats?” I asked in my grown-up, completely authoritative squeal. “What do you mean, goats?”
Curly breathed hard. “Goats. In the bathroom.”
“Which bathroom?” I asked both of them
“The half bath on the first floor.” That was Curly. Her name might have been Stacy. Or Tracy. Lacey?
“Yes, GOATS!!!” That was the straight-haired sister. I was pretty sure her name was Emma. Or Jenna. Jemma?
The ladies followed me down the hall to the half bath, where a small group had already gathered. Sure enough, there was a certain odor emanating from the bathroom. And a shuffling, munching sound. What the … I tiptoed to the door and cracked it.
“GOATS!” I yelled before I slammed the door again. A bleating came from inside. Or was it a baa?
“What do you mean?” Asha Patel was confused.
“It’s an acronym,” Jane told her.
“Not an acronym,” I said.
“Or a disease,” Jane said.
“Definitely not a disease,” I disagreed. “Goats.
” I opened the door again. “See?”
Jane and Asha and eight other women peeked and peered into the half bath. One goat was on the floor, eating something. One goat stood on the back of the toilet tank. Another goat rested on top of the vanity, its little goat belly inside the sink. I wondered if that was a comfortable position for a goat.
“What’s that one doing on the countertop?” one of the girls asked reasonably.
“It’s probably pregnant,” Asha said. “About to give birth in a manger like Mary.”
Oh hell no. There were going to be no baby-goat deliveries on my watch, virgin or otherwise.
“Does anyone know who’s in charge of removing goats from the half bath?” Jane asked the group. Again, it was a reasonable question.
Ten sets of eyes looked at me. “Me?” I asked dumbly. “But don’t you need like, a goat license? Or a vet to properly dispose of a goat?”
A tall basketball player with straight blond hair burst into tears. “Don’t kill them!”
So that would be wrong? “I’m not going to kill them,” I said, reluctantly tossing aside my brief visions of goaticide.
“Does anyone know whose goats these are?” I yelled in my mean-chapter-advisor voice. “There are three goats in a Delta Beta bathroom. Somebody has to know where they came from.”
All I got was a bunch of blank looks in response. Great. A goat mystery. That was all I needed. There was a goat sound from inside the bathroom, then two. Then the sound of splashing and a toilet flushing. “That’s it,” I muttered. I pulled out my phone and called 911.
“What’s your emergency?” the operator asked, in a not very urgent voice.
“I have goats in my bathroom.”
“Okay, is this something that you’ve had before or did it just start today?”
“Today,” I snarled, not appreciating the implication that I always had goats in my bathroom. Who did he think I was?
“Are you having trouble breathing, pain in your chest, dizziness, or—”
I interrupted him. “Yes, no, and …” I grabbed at the wall with my free hand. “Maybe. I’ve never dealt with this before.”
“Do you have someone there who can drive you to the hospital?”
“I have three goats in my bathroom! I can’t go anywhere! They’re going to flood the place!”
“Okay, I’m sending someone out immediately,” the operator said.
I looked up at the girls around me. “Someone go out and wait for the goat exterminator.” The tall blonde wailed. “I mean, the nice firemen. Asha.” I got the social director’s attention, her big brown eyes wide with excitement. “You know the frats pretty well, right?”
“Well …” She blushed and looked down, clearly misinterpreting my question. Seriously?
I waved my hand in front of her face to get her to focus on me again and not her love life. “Get on the phone and find out which stupid fraternity wants its goats back.”
In unison, the remainder of the girls went “ah” and nodded in understanding. As furious as I was about three goats taking up residence in the first-floor guest bathroom, I had to give props to whichever fraternity pledges thought this up. This kind of prank took both unprecedented skill and sneakiness, two traits highly valued by the fraternity men of Sutton College.
The first responders showed up, firemen who acted like they had never removed goats from a building before, which I found a little ridiculous. These were somewhat common farm animals, if Lucy, the bubbly sister from Kentucky, was to be believed. They hemmed and hawed and got rope out and finally came up with the brilliant plan to lead the goats outside with ropes around their necks. Some heroes.
Then they left the goats out in the front yard, each tied to its own tree, and left, their fire truck clanging down sorority row as it went, causing Tri Mus and Betas and Epsilon Chis to emerge from their houses to gawk at the goats in the Deb yard. Because that was just what we needed this week. Farm animals certainly didn’t help a chapter’s reputation.
I called animal control about pests in the front yard. They said they didn’t deal with goats.
“I didn’t say they were goats,” I snapped back.
“Yeah, we heard about it over the scanner. Good luck with your goats.”
“Asha!” I yelled.
She appeared by my side in a jiffy. “I have it narrowed down. It definitely wasn’t the Trikes.”
I rolled my eyes. Trikes weren’t known for animal pranks. Their pranks usually involved protractors and the scientific method. Annoying, but easy to clean up.
And so, I found myself babysitting three goats until we could catch the culprits and bring them to justice, or at least give them their goats back. And this was why I was sitting in the front yard of the Deb house, hand-feeding Honey Nut Cheerios to a potentially pregnant goat when Lieutenant Ty Hatfield strolled into the Delta Beta yard.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Police scanner?”
He settled into the tree swing, his long legs stretching out. “Nah. Heard it from the meter maids downtown.”
I didn’t want to know how far this had gotten. I patted the nanny goat’s head and pretended that I was on a farm, far, far away.
“You’ve got a way with farm animals,” he said. I shrugged. “But you’ve got a way with most things.”
I scratched between the goat’s ears. She seemed to like it. Turned out, a goat was kind of like a larger, uglier, smellier dog.
“So what’s your plan? Are you going to slap some sorority letters on these and teach them about proper etiquette and what not to wear?”
Just when he was acting nice to me, he started in on my sorority. That’s how I knew that Ty Hatfield and I would never work—in a romantic sense. He didn’t appreciate my sorority. And any man who couldn’t do that was out the totally theoretical door.
“We’re arranging for their owners to pick them back up,” I informed him, like that had been my calm, well-thought-out plan all along.
“Not going to happen,” Ty said. “The frat pledges don’t own up to their pranks. They like to be anonymous. Like really anonymous.”
I knew that. Sutton College pranks never made the most sense. Like the time the Omegas paid a marching band from a local high school to march up and down sorority row between the hours of 2 and 4 A.M. Or the time the Alpha Kapps had two hundred pineapple pizzas delivered to the Deb house. Who even eats pineapple pizza? The pranks were annoying and juvenile and probably, in the end, harmless. That’s why they liked them, I guessed. They could be still be kids, do kid stuff, without any of the grown-up consequences.
“We’ll find out who it was,” I said calmly, stroking a goat’s head.
“And then what?”
I turned my big, innocent brown eyes on him. “We’ll take revenge.”
Ty pretended to shudder, which really wasn’t appropriate for an officer of the law. He should take a threat of revenge more seriously. But I guess I wasn’t very scary, and neither was my sorority. For as long as prank week had been going on, fraternities had pranked and sororities had sat back and been pranked. It was a tradition. And there was no room in that tradition for a sorority to join in and exact vengeance. Especially a sorority as demure and polite and formerly scandal-free as Delta Beta.
Chapter Eleven
NO WOMAN WANTS to meet the man of her dreams while petting a goat. That was what raced through my head when I saw Mr. Dreamy. Slim, dark, and in a way-too-fashionable-for-North-Carolina gray suit, he flashed a devastating smile at me despite the goat/Cheerio snot I was hastily wiping on my jeans.
“Hi, can you tell me where I might find your chapter advisor?”
“My chapter advisor?” I shook my head in confusion. “I don’t have a chapter advisor.”
“He means you, Blythe.” Ty drawled from my right.
The handsome man’s smile widened. “Blythe? You’re Margot Blythe? But you look too young to be an advisor! I thought you were a chapter member.”
Well. He was handsome and fashion-forward and knew just the right things to say to make a girl blush. This was probably what love at first sight was like.
“I’m Margot,” I assured him. “And you are …” My knight in shining armor?
“Brice Concannon, from the Interfraternity Council.”
Somewhere, from the direction of Ty Hatfield’s face, I heard a snort. Brice continued, “I left you a few messages.”
“Oh yes.” The goat nudged my hand forcefully because I’d run out of cereal. “How can I help you?”
“As I said on the phone, the college has asked me to be the point man for this …” He waved his hand vaguely toward the sorority house. “Situation.”
I crinkled my nose. “Situation?”
“With a sudden death and police investigation, the college wants to ensure that the students are supported as much as possible. If there’s any need for counseling, or academic assistance, or I could even help you with your interactions with the police.”
Now Ty growled, something that sounded like a word Delta Betas never used in polite company.
I bit my lip as I thought about this unexpected offer. It was reassuring to know the college wanted to support my traumatized sisters, and I made sure to let Brice know that. But until we knew, one way or another, the truth about the circumstances of Liza’s death—and the involvement of any other sisters—I knew it was better for me to keep my mouth shut and keep the details shared with Sutton administrators to a minimum.
“I will make sure to keep all that in mind,” I promised him. “So far, the police have been pretty reasonable to work with.”
Brice looked over at Ty, still lazily rocking back and forth in the swing. “So good to hear that.”
Ty smirked back at Brice, the expression more challenging than anything. Police were so possessive about their investigations.
The goat nudged me again, this time burrowing under my armpit, which was both weird and a little tickly. My inadvertent giggle didn’t escape Brice’s attention, unfortunately. Why could I not meet a cute guy without a goat nuzzling me?
Sisterhood is Deadly: A Sorority Sisters Mystery Page 5