Whoa.
“Well, I can sort of see his point,” I ventured. “As I’ve tried discussing with you, I think the pranks are getting out of control. Especially if they’re involving dangerous substances like gelatin or roofies.”
Brice’s gorgeous green eyes focused on me. “Do you want to have a drink sometime to discuss it?”
“I don’t—”
“Tonight?”
“My friend Casey …”
“I’m cool if you want to bring her along. The more the merrier.”
“Casey’s a—”
Brice winked. “Yeah, I’ve heard the rumors about you Deb girls.”
Clearly Brice was neither going to help me nor take me out. But I wanted the last word “Casey’s a guy.”
Brice’s eyes widened. “Wow. Haven’t heard those rumors. Just the ones about the phone sex.”
The preppy jerk. “How ever did you hear about that?”
“One of the Eta Ep brothers is dating a president of one of the sororities. I think she’s a—”
Now it was my turn to interrupt him. “Tri Mu,” I muttered as I turned and left his office.
Chapter Thirty
CALLIE’S ROOM WAS on the second floor by the stairs. As S&M director, I thought she should be notified that a confidential file had probably been stolen by a fraternity. As I approached her door, I heard the familiar sound of a girl crying. Not another one.
I knocked three times. “Callie? Can I come in?”
She answered in the affirmative, and I found her curled up in her bed, a Deb T-shirt quilt wrapped around her. She was clutching her cell phone so tightly her knuckles were white.
“Callie.” I went to her immediately. It broke my heart seeing her, clearly devastated by something. “What is it?”
A wet sob bubbled out of her, and I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing her. Ten years of sorority life, and I knew only one thing wrought this kind of devastation.
“Boy trouble?” I asked.
She nodded, clenching her phone into her chest. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Callie’s head shook in my shoulder. “It’s okay, I know,” I sympathized. “Boys are so stupid.”
She nodded in my shirt, and I heard the squelch of something wet from her face.
“I know, I know. Let me guess, he was supposed to call, and he didn’t?”
Another shake. I was getting a little frustrated at this guessing game. “Why don’t you just tell me what happened?” I said, pulling away so I could give her a chance to talk. And breathe.
“I just don’t get men,” she wailed. “They just don’t listen, you know? They want you there when they want you, but when you want them to you know, shut up and give you a chance to talk, they’re like, they’re the man and they’re going to do what they want to do. You know?”
“Maybe,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure I followed, but sometimes distraught girls just needed someone to hear them out.
“We talk every night,” she sobbed. “But he said he couldn’t call tonight.” I hoped the phone was sturdy because she was gripping the thing very tightly.
“Why can’t he call tonight?” I asked carefully. I was pretty sure she hadn’t covered that part.
“BECAUSE HE’S STUPID.”
Oh yeah, now that I got.
“Look,” I grabbed her wrists and shook her slightly. It was hard, with her arms locked to her chest around her phone. “You are Callahan Campbell. You are a descendant of Mary Gerald Callahan, the founder of one of the greatest sororities ever created. Do you think Mary Gerald waited around and cried when a stupid boy didn’t call?”
Callie sniffed. “Probably not. In 1879.”
“Exactly!” I said. Point proved. “No, Mary Gerald and her best friend Leticia didn’t want stupid boys running their lives. They wanted to have a place, all their own, where women could support and love each other and live together and not worry about what other people thought.”
Callie cocked her head. “Family gossip has always been that they were lesbians.”
I took my hands off Callie and folded them in my lap primly. “Like I said, we don’t need men,” I added briskly.
“I know.” Callie sighed, leaning back into her pillows. “It’s just hard for me. When they just won’t listen. You know?”
I had been an advisor for a little over a week. I totally understood being ignored.
“I need to talk to you about Stefanie Grossman,” I said.
“It just feels like you’re not even a real person. When you’re being talked at, and not to.”
“It’s about her file,” I said. “The one that was taken from the chapter advisor’s office.”
“I just want someone to hear me, really hear me,” she said.
“I’m concerned about the confidentiality provision being compromised,” I explained.
Callie got a lost look on her face. She stared at me, then crumpled into moist sobs again. For such a cute girl, she sure was an ugly crier.
“Okay, okay. We can do it later, if you want,” I said.
With a pathetic little nod, she rolled over on her side still clutching the cell phone in her hand. She was clearly too upset to handle sorority matters tonight.
“Remember Callie,” I said, trying to cheer her up. “Another stupid guy will come along. Just wait. You’ll see.” I thought she looked a little better when I left.
FUELED BY CASEY’S magical refilling Delta Beta flask and a selection of Milano cookies, I updated Casey on my meeting with Brice Concannon and the strong possibility that whispers about Delta Beta’s phone-sex participation were now running rampant around Sutton.
“At least they’re complimentary rumors,” Casey sighed, nibbling on a cookie.
Once again, that failed to comfort me.
When my phone rang a few minutes later, I could tell it was headquarters. (Because I had a special ringtone for Delta Beta sisters. “Independent Women” just seemed appropriate for those sassy Debs at HQ.)
Mabel Donahue was on the other end of the call. I straightened up on the couch, as if she could assess my posture over the phone. “Hello, Mabel.” Casey sat up as well. “Yes, yes, he’s here with me.”
“Put him on speaker. You’ll both need to hear this.”
I did as Mabel commanded—always have, always will. “The worst has come to pass,” Mabel said with a dire tone.
Casey gasped. “Lindsay Lohan pledged Delta Beta?”
“No,” Mabel said. “Worse.”
Casey and I exchanged a horrified glance. What could be worse?
“Fraternity mixers have been banned by Panhellenic?” I guessed.
A sigh came from Mabel’s end. “Worse. The Tri Mus. They know everything.”
I clutched my pearls. “Well, that’s impossible,” Casey said.
“I just got a call from their headquarters. They’ve been informed of the Sutton College chapter’s involvement with a phone-sex ring. Barbra Kline was very supportive and offered their assistance.”
“That bitch!” Casey said. He could use that word since he wasn’t bound by Panhellenic expectations of ladylike conduct.
Mabel continued. “She offered to send one of their leadership experts to our chapter to assist us with, and I quote, our ‘moral lapses.’ ”
I closed my eyes. The shame was too much. Thanks a lot, Tri Mu. “But wait, there’s more.” I broke the news to Mabel that the rumors might have already reached the fraternities.
“You two have to deal with this,” Mabel said sternly. “There is too much at stake to let the Tri Mus get the upper hand.”
“Their chapter president is one of the phone-sex operators,” I told Mabel officially. “They have as much at stake as we do.”
“How do you know this?” she asked.
Casey and I exchanged a guilty look. There was no way to explain to Mabel that we were only calling a phone-sex hotline for the most noble of purposes. And using a Delta Beta credit card
, besides. “She confirmed it to me.” That was pretty much true. As mentally confused as Ainsley seemed to be, she didn’t deny doing what she did for money.
“All right then,” Mabel sounded positive for the first time since the call began. “We have a weapon, and we’re not afraid to use it. This is war. They hit us, and we hit them back. Casey, can I count on you?”
He had already grabbed his laptop to work. “Yes, ma’am. Going to the message boards now. Scandals don’t exist unless they’re online.”
“Excellent. Margot? I assume you can control the ladies in Sutton?”
Control was a strong word, but I wasn’t going to let Mabel down. “You can count on me,” I promised.
Chapter Thirty-one
CASEY AND I spent the next few hours trolling greekgossip.net, shooting down Tri Mus talking trash. Word was spreading fast online; there were even memes. And if it was online, it was definitely being gossiped about via text and Instagram. It was like a never-ending virtual carnival game and, at the end of the night, more than profane. We had to face the cold, hard facts. Tri Mu had a weapon of mass destruction, and they weren’t afraid to push the button. We had to come up with a plan.
I called Amanda the next morning. I thought I should give her an update on the situation, as a prominent Delta Beta in the college administration. She picked up on the third ring, sounding a little breathless. “Hey, Big, it’s your little,” I said.
“Oh hey, I was just about to call you.” That sounded less than enthusiastic.
“Yeah?” I asked, suddenly nervous.
“I’m still officially Panhellenic advisor so I’m just going to come right out and say it.”
Now I was definitely nervous. “What?”
“There’s been a complaint filed against you.”
I blinked hard and shook my head like there was water in my ears. “WHAT?” That was not what I was expecting.
“Actually two.”
“Who?” The one word was all I could get out. I was dumbfounded.
“It’s so ridiculous, it really is. But … once paperwork is filed …” Amanda’s voice trailed off. I understood. In our world, these things were official.
“Can I come down there?” I asked. I really hated doing these things over the phone.
“Umm …” She paused and I imagined her looking at her trendy watch. “I’m afraid I have a meeting that’s going to take most of this afternoon.”
“Tomorrow?” I asked.
“You’ll have to respond formally.”
Damn. You’d think Amanda would cut her little sister a break. “Can you at least tell me what this is all about?”
“The first complaint is from Ainsley St. John.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Amanda! Really? You and I both know that girl has let the peroxide go to her head.”
“I know, I know,” Amanda said in a soothing tone. “But that’s why you should respond formally. Put everything in writing, saying all that. How crazy she is, all the insane things she’s done.”
I wasn’t sure Ainsley had really committed so many wrong acts; she just seemed really intense and scary. But Amanda’s advice was sound. “What about the other one? Who filed that?”
She paused, and I could hear her flipping through the papers. “The Eta Eps,” she finally informed me. “They said you threatened their pledges.”
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. “You can’t be serious,” I said. “The Eta Eps? Like anyone believes a word out of their mouths.”
But Amanda wasn’t laughing. “Margot, you have to take this seriously. They’re one of the best fraternities on campus.”
“Since when?”
“Since they pledged a bunch of nerdy guys with trust funds. Trust me. You don’t want to alienate the chapter from them. They’re rich and socially awkward.”
“But they dumped gelatin on our chapter!” I half yelled into the phone. “Maybe they should not want to alienate us!”
Amanda’s silence was chiding. Then so were her words. “This is the way things are, Margot. Successful Sutton College sororities know how to play the game. And they don’t threaten fraternities.”
I told Amanda I’d come by her office tomorrow, without defending myself further. All of a sudden, I was unsure of a lot things—like whether I was really the best woman to advise this chapter.
CASEY AND I met for lunch at Cool Joe’s, a burger dive on the south side of campus. Not coincidentally, it was next door to Sunset Station, the tanning salon that all the sorority girls at Sutton frequented. I complimented Casey on his new, unnatural orange glow, received at the very same tanning salon.
“It’s a spray, of course. The latest in microbead delivery. I’m really impressed they have it here in Sutton since it hasn’t been approved by the FDA yet.”
“It looks fabulous,” I said. I was always a firm believer in an almost sincere compliment.
Casey ducked his head, his eyes scanning the restaurant on alert for saboteurs and double agents. “You will not believe the things I heard,” he said under his breath. It was almost certain that an Epsilon Chi worked a pole at the Silk Stocking on Wednesday nights, and that the Lambdas were still offering discounted plastic surgery to their less-cosmetically-blessed pledges. Of course, the Beta Gammas were seriously plagiarizing every single English exam, and there was proof somewhere on the fourth floor of the Samuel L. Jackson Library. (No relation to the Hollywood Samuel L. Jackson. The Sutton College forefather was dead.)
I leaned over, eagerly awaiting the coup de grace, the final nail in the coffin, the fat lady singing her precious little heart out. “And what about the Moos?”
The sparkle left Casey’s beautiful blue eyes. “I got nothing.”
“NOTHING?” I repeated, incredulously. How could that be? Every sorority had gossip. And no one was better at ferreting it out than a gay man in a spray-tan booth.
Casey clearly took the failure personally. “I tried, I did. I even straight up asked, ‘What about those Moos?’ But no one had heard anything.”
We both sat and stared at our remaining lunches, too depressed to eat. Tri Mu HQ had information that would majorly damage Delta Beta’s reputation, and what did we have? Big fat zero. If we couldn’t fight back with some dirty gossip, what kind of sorority women were we?
Chapter Thirty-two
AFTER HOURS OF scouring the Internet to stop the spread of the true rumors about my sisterhood, I was exhausted and needed some alone time.
The closet was as dark as ever, and I tentatively shuffled until I saw the light from the window. This was my spot. This was where I could finally relax.
I pulled a cardboard box over to the window and sank down, noticing how tired my feet were, which was strange since most of the time in the hospital had been spent with my butt in a chair. The moon was clear and bright. Whether it was waxing or waning, it was nearly three-quarters full, and I watched the view that I loved. From this vantage point on the third floor of the sorority house on the bluff above Sutton, nothing had changed in the past ten years. The hallowed redbrick buildings of the college stood as they always did. The trees cast the same cool shadows. The streets wove the same basket-weave pattern.
It was Zen-like, contemplating the town like this. Not that I knew much about Zen. I was a yoga-school dropout. There was too much silence and “stay on your own mat” for my liking.
I felt my eyes grow heavy. I had already dozed twice, my head falling, my neck catching my head before my nose bounced off the windowsill, when something caught my eye as it reopened. I had to blink a few times before my zoned-out mind made sense of it.
Then I made what seemed the rational choice. I decided to go check out an optical illusion that looked like a dead body.
I let myself out the chapter-advisor door, fully intending to be back in two minutes and fall straight into bed after I’d satisfied my curiosity. What I’d seen was a play of shadows and moonlight. Or a leftover rush prop
. Or, this week, a fraternity prank. If it was, heads were going to roll. Our chapter had dealt with too much drama in the past week to become the butt of some awful joke.
I followed the sidewalk to the back of the sorority house, where the yard dipped down a bit and fell into a creek. On the other side of the creek was a greenbelt with a jogging path that led to the college golf course and the dormitories. It was a convenient yet picturesque location.
She was lying in the grass, flat on her back, arms spread, still as a stone. I took a few steps back and automatically pulled my phone out of my pocket and called 911. Yes, this was an emergency. No, there were no goats. Yes, it was another dead body. The operator took my address and told me to stay where I was.
And so I did. Because the one thing I do well is rules. I follow them. I enforce them. Somewhere deep inside, I remembered that one of my rules was to help people. And even though I knew she was dead, I went back to help. I knelt beside her, put my hands on her mostly cold throat, and brushed away a piece of dark, curly hair from her face. I sat back on my heels, sticking my hands into the grass behind me, feeling the need to wipe them off on the cool, damp lawn. I felt something small and hard and closed my hand around it.
Oh, they were going to have a field day with this on greekgossip.net.
The police, the ambulance, then the coroner came. It was like a rerun of a bad sitcom, predictable and painfully unfunny.
Someone led me away from the body, put a blanket around my shoulders, asked if they could look into my eyes and shone something bright there. Someone gave me a cup of water. Someone asked me my name.
Then Ty Hatfield was sitting with me. “How did you find her?” he asked, his voice gentle.
“Dead,” I said bluntly.
“I meant, how did you come to see her?”
“I looked out a window and saw a weird shadow. I had to come check it out before I went to bed.”
“It’s Stefanie Grossman,” he said, like he wished it wasn’t true.
I nodded like I wished the same.
He took my hand, and, for a millisecond, it felt nice. His skin was rough yet warm and my hand was still so cold. Then he took the glass vial out of my hand.
Sisterhood is Deadly: A Sorority Sisters Mystery Page 16