I sank into a chair on the visitor’s side of Ty’s desk. Casey had asked me that, when he arrived in Sutton. Why had I come? I remembered what else Casey had said, about an upset Liza calling Mabel at HQ. Had she called when she’d been fired from her doctorate program? Or was there even more going on in Liza McCarthy’s secret life?
“Does this have anything to do with her death?” I was surprised at how weak my voice was. But I had never been good with people disappointing me.
Ty tilted his head, as if he was considering the possibility. ”Maybe.”
I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that Ty Hatfield was never going to be up-front about Liza’s death with me. He was never going to be honest, or share information, or treat me like I had a legitimate stake in this investigation. From the beginning, he had dismissed, ignored, or mocked me. That was going to end today.
From now on, I was going to find out the truth about Liza McCarthy, her life, and her death. It was my responsibility to my sisters.
Ty Hatfield could bite my big fat Delta Beta butt. Well, the butt I had before Jillian Michaels took care of that particular problem area.
Chapter Seventeen
CASEY AND I set up a new office in the chapter advisor’s apartment. Like the office, the apartment was tucked away in the back of the house, almost as an afterthought, when someone realized that a chapter advisor might want a little separation from the young women of the chapter. After only three days on the job, I could definitely see why some space was a good idea.
Basically a small studio, there was a bedroom that opened up into a sitting area, just big enough for a love seat, a recliner, and a desk. Casey set up his laptop and the files on the desk while I updated him on all that I’d learned about Liza McCarthy.
Casey, of course, was as horrified as I was. The thought of a Delta Beta woman phone sexing for money was scandalous. Combined with the fact that she’d been dismissed from her academic program and had lied to the chapter and headquarters for months, it was essentially unheard of. But Casey was also a man. And though he tried to hide it, I could tell he was titillated by the whole phone-sex thing.
“What are we looking for?” Casey asked, plugging in the thumb drive.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess we have to make sure that the chapter was still run competently, even with all the drama in Liza’s life.” Casey nodded in agreement. Our first priority was protecting the sorority.
With that thought in mind, it generated a second, scarier idea. If Liza had been murdered, then I needed to protect the chapter from whoever had done it. And to do that, I needed to solve the murder.
I’d never solved a murder before. But at the Miami chapter, I had disciplined a sister for chronic shoe theft, and that was pretty bad.
Casey pulled up the spreadsheets I had reviewed earlier in the week on the chapter advisor’s computer. Rows and rows of numbers meant almost absolutely nothing to me, and Casey stared at them blank-faced as well. Some headings or something would have been helpful. Finally, I realized that the far-left-hand column were dates, separated by hyphens instead of slashes.
“Okay,” I said, pointing at the screen. ”These must be dates of when the chapter received money, right?” The second column was some sort of code. It didn’t make sense to me, but the same ones were repeated, but in no particular pattern—902, 812, 421, 902, 902, 902. Probably some accounting thing from HQ. So glad I hadn’t taken that job. The third column had monetary amounts. I could tell these were monetary because they each used a dollar sign and period. The final columns were a mix of codes and dollar amounts. Maybe they were account numbers? Disbursements to savings and checking accounts?
Casey thought my interpretations were reasonable, and I was about to move on until I realized what had bothered me about the spreadsheet before.
There was no consistency. No patterns. No similarities.
Ten years in a sorority, and I was very aware of the ebb and flow of the academic calendar and the sorority calendar. No money would come into a sorority during summer breaks because women weren’t in school. Same with winter breaks. On the other hand, financial records would show many, many checks received during rush, the beginning of the pledge semester, and the beginning of each month, when dues were assessed and paid. Those patterns weren’t reflected on this sheet. At all.
“These aren’t the chapter financials,” I breathed. They were something else entirely.
A quick review of the papers Casey had brought from HQ proved that whatever we were looking at on the chapter advisor’s computer wasn’t the report on finances that had been submitted to headquarters. I could actually decipher those. Maybe there was hope for me in the accounting department, after all.
“So what are these?” Casey asked, looking back and forth between the laptop and the printouts.
A feeling of dread settled into my stomach. “I think Liza had another business on the side.” Casey couldn’t hide that he was a little excited by what the other “business” entailed: men.
“I wonder what her phone-sex name was.” His voice had all the wonder and anticipation of a five-year-old boy at Christmas, waiting for Santa to bring him a special edition Versace Barbie.
I crinkled my nose. “What’s a phone-sex name?”
“Well, I’m guessing she didn’t tell people her name was Liza McCarthy, sorority advisor.”
Oh, Lord in heaven, I hoped not. A horrible thought occurred to me. “If Dean Xavier knew about Liza’s research, how many other people knew?” I gasped. “Do you think the girls knew?” I asked Casey in a voice just above a whisper.
His eyes went wide with the thought. “There’s only one way to find out.”
I groaned and fell into the recliner, an arm across my face. “There has to be another way.”
“Well, let’s think this through,” he said in his best matter-of-fact way. Casey didn’t get dramatic like me. That’s what made him the best at public relations. “If you were running a phone-sex business, what would you need?”
“I cannot believe I’m having this conversation.” It was mortifying and hilarious. I could only do this with Casey. “Okay.” I tried to focus. “I’d need a phone.” I thought through what I knew about phone-sex operations, which was all based on one Law & Order, SVU episode. “Privacy. You can’t take those calls just anywhere.” Casey snorted. I ignored him. “Some way to collect payment.”
“And you need some way to get customers …”
There was a note in Casey’s voice I didn’t like. I really, really, really didn’t want to pull my arm off my face.
There was a long silence from Casey, and I knew it was inevitable. I kept my eyes closed, lifted my arm, and peeked. The Web site on Casey’s laptop was exactly my worst nightmare.
“Sorority Girls Gone Wild. All your wildest fantasies come true. $1.99 for the first minute; $2.99 for each additional minute.”
A seriously unattractive groan came out of me. For the first time in my life, I really hated a dead sorority sister.
“How do we know it’s hers?” I asked weakly. Silently, Casey pointed to the pictures on the screen. Someone had photoshopped pale pink and bright orange Greek letters onto the silicone enhanced blessings. It was too hideous a color combination to be an accident. Whoever ran the site was someone who despised Tri Mu. And although that didn’t narrow it down definitively (after all, this was Tri Mu we were talking about), it was a pretty big clue.
“Now what?” he asked.
I picked up his cell phone from the desk. “Really?” His voice was half-interested, half-horrified.
“Dial,” I said, pushing his phone toward him.
“Why me? Why can’t you do it?”
I gave him a “duh” face. “You’re a man.”
He pushed the phone back toward me. “So? I’m not any more interested in those things than you are.”
“They’ll be suspicious if they hear a girl’s voice.”
I pushed the phone back at him. “Then you don’t have to talk to anyone.”
He took the phone in resignation. “Do you know how expensive this is going to be?”
“That’s a corporate phone. You don’t pay the bills.”
Casey brightened. “Oh yeah.”
I was sure the sorority wouldn’t mind at all.
Casey put the phone on speaker and dialed, holding up a finger to his lips while he did. Like I was going to say anything. My mouth was sealed shut from humiliation.
A canned voice finally picked up. “Hi, Heather speaking.” The “h’s” were thick and breathy. “I’m so glad you called. My sisters and I are wet from our shower and are waiting for you.” The “w’s” were wide and deliberate. “Just one sec while we fight over who gets to make you …”
“Ohmigod!” I squealed, holding my hands over my ears. This was all kinds of wrong. I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but the greeting sounded like Liza’s voice. She was very breathy.
Hearing a sister talk like that was just … weird. Then the music came over the line, bow chicka wow wow stuff. “Really?” I asked. “How cheesy.”
Casey agreed. “Do you think we’re paying for this right now?”
“Ew,” I said, although I had to respect the business strategy of making perverts pay through the nose for a cheap porn-reject sound track.
Finally, after three long minutes of synthesizer slow jams, we heard a click. A squeal came out of me and out of Casey, too.
“Hello, this is Hailey.”
Casey’s wide eyes met mine in an “oh crap” expression. I rotated my finger in a circle to get him to start talking.
“Um, hello.” I had to swallow a laugh at the look on Casey’s face, like a gay deer caught in heterosexual headlights.
“Hi sexy,” the voice said, just as breathy and X-rated as you’d imagine.
“Hi, yourself.” Sweet child of mine. This was going to take all night and be painful besides.
“Oooh, you sound hot.” She sounded like she was constipated.
I bit back a giggle. Casey did not sound hot. He sounded nervous and awkward.
“What do you want to do to me today?” The voice on the other end sounded really sincere, like she really wanted to know what Casey wanted to do to her. Meanwhile, Casey was looking at me like he’d been caught in his mom’s closet with her high heels on, completely clueless. Again, men. When you want them to bring their A game, they act like they’d never seen girl parts before. Which in Casey’s case, could be the truth.
I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote, shoving the message at Casey’s face.
“Um … I’d like to talk?” Casey’s voice lifted on the end as he directed a silent question to me. I nodded, using my finger again in the universal “keep ’em rolling” sign.
“I love to talk dirty,” she said.
“How old are you?” Casey read off my page.
The girl giggled. “Barely legal, if you know what I mean.”
Oh Lord. I shoved the paper at Casey again. “Do you do this full-time?” He asked the question, then mouthed “WHAT?” to me. I know, I wasn’t sure why I was asking that question either. I was under pressure.
“Oh … yeah, I do it all night long.”
We weren’t going to get anywhere with this. Casey read the next question and shook his head. I mimed ramming the pen up someplace personal, and he relented. “Do you know Liza McCarthy?”
“Um …” There was a long pause. When she spoke again, I could tell the slutty girl act had been compromised when she improvised, “Is that another girl you’re doing? Tell me about it.”
Casey had had enough. “No, I’m serious. I’m a friend of Liza’s, and I want to know if you knew her.”
“I—I …” She sounded really flustered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I grabbed the phone from Casey. “If you know her, you can tell us, we’re not going to get anyone in trouble.”
The next thing we heard was a dial tone. I guessed we didn’t really think through the “call-a-phone-sex-operator” plan.
After Casey recovered the color in his cheeks, I poured us both a glass of lemonade to boost our blood sugar. I looked at him, and said, “She definitely knew Liza.”
Casey nodded. “Definitely.”
I jammed my bangs back as I thought through the implications. “And that means Liza had employees. And the employees knew her. This could all blow up in Delta Beta’s face.”
We both thought about it. “I don’t know how we find her employees,” Casey said.
Then we both came to the same conclusion. “Liza’s phone,” we said in unison.
I looked around the apartment in vain because I knew it had been empty when I moved in. “She didn’t live here, she lived in an off-campus apartment, for some reason,” I explained to Casey.
“Because phone-sex operators need their privacy,” Casey said, throwing my words back at me. I closed my eyes briefly. It was all becoming clear now.
“Right …” I thought aloud. “If I were a phone-sex operator, I’d want a cell, right?”
Casey nodded. “A landline ties you down too much.”
I had to find Liza’s phone. I thought back to the night of her death. Surely, she’d had it on her. Everyone carries their phone with them. If it had been in her pocket, it was still in her unclaimed effects at the morgue.
“How does someone get into the morgue?” I wondered aloud.
“Is that a really bad joke?” Casey had an edge to his voice.
I shot a look of apology over. I hadn’t meant it like that.
But Casey had moved on. “Maybe the police? You could ask that hot police officer.”
The thought of going back to Ty Hatfield for any type of assistance was untenable. I couldn’t trust him to tell me the truth about any of this.
I looked at my watch. “Let’s take a break,” I suggested. ”We can think about this over drinks with the Alpha Kapps.”
The excited look in Casey’s eyes showed me he thought that was a good plan, too.
Chapter Eighteen
I HAD JUST gotten out of the shower when there was a dull roar outside the apartment door, the kind only a bunch of excited women could make. Wondering what it could be this time, I pulled on a tee and running shorts, opened the apartment door, and saw nearly the whole chapter headed toward the front door. “What’s going on?” I asked Ellie, a sophomore from Texas.
“The Eta Eps! They’re serenading us!”
There’s not much that a girl likes more than being serenaded by cute boys. That’s why boy bands and Glee are so popular. It feeds into our feminine delight that there’s a boy who’s overcome his insecurities and decided the way he feels is more important than being told he’s a crappy singer. Or something like that.
So, of course, when I heard that the Eta Eps were serenading our chapter, I got a little flutter in my chest even though it was probably completely inappropriate and cougar-like. But right as I joined the flood of women heading outside, something else fluttered in my head, a memory from my sophomore year.
“HOLD IT!” I yelled, stopping dead in my tracks. “NOBODY MOVE!”
But nobody listened to me. They just kept rushing toward the front door, giggling and anticipating the Tom Cruise-as-Maverick vocal stylings they’d no doubt be treated to by the Eta Eps.
I tried again, this time with feeling. “SERIOUSLY! STOP!”
All I managed to do was confuse a few of the girls in the back. The rest pushed through and lined up on the front porch. The only way I was going to get their attention was to be in front of them, preferably singing “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.” I had a bad, bad, feeling about this. Eta Eps weren’t known for their chivalric conduct. Just ask the Tri Mus my senior year, after they were sprayed with fire hoses during a faux fire drill.
I peeked through the front window, and, sure eno
ugh, twelve Eta Ep pledges were standing on the lawn, dressed in suits and bow ties and top hats. A little excited pitter-patter started in my cougar heart. Damn it. I looked up, trying to confirm my suspicions, but I was at a bad angle and couldn’t see much besides the backsides of Debs and the goofy Eta Eps.
Think, Margot!
I had two options. I could push my way through to the front porch, cause a big commotion, and totally disappoint everyone if I was wrong about the motives of the Eta Ep pledges. Or I could slip out the chapter advisor’s apartment door, nonchalantly come around the front of the house, and double-check the situation before I made a big deal over nothing.
I chose the first option. I favor efficiency over discretion.
The front door was still open, and sorority sisters packed the entry, all scrambling to see and hear the show. As predicted, the Eta Ep pledges opened with “You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips.” It wasn’t terribly creative, but I had to hand it to them. It was a classic for a reason. There were lots of sighs and giggles and a few catcalls, about which I’d have to speak to the ladies.
“Excuse me,” I said, shoving my way through. “I need … to … get …” The girls were packed tight, all jostling and moving, but soon I had stepped over the threshold. Looking up, I saw what no other Delta Beta did, as entranced as they were by gangly eighteen-year-olds sacrificing all their street cred for a fraternity prank.
I couldn’t see who held the cord that was connected to the net holding a hundred water balloons above the Delta Beta chapter’s collective head; but if I started screaming about an ambush, someone could easily pull the cord, and all our carefully styled hair would be doomed. But if I could be sneaky, I would find the guy holding the cord, tackle him, pin him to the ground, and somehow ensure he didn’t pull the cord in the fracas.
Neither option worked for me, so I decided to hold and enjoy the show until an opportunity presented itself. Maybe there would be an intermission.
But the pledges wrapped up their first song and were headed into a Billy Joel doo-wop number (adorable, if a little clichéd) when I saw movement along the right side of the house. Two Eta Eps out in the yard held up cell phones to capture the upcoming ambush. The signal must be soon. I knew I had to act fast to avert crisis.
Sisterhood is Deadly: A Sorority Sisters Mystery Page 9