Sisterhood is Deadly: A Sorority Sisters Mystery

by Lindsay Emory

  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 is admissible in court?” Ty asked 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, also shrugged. 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/earpiece 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 winnow 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 started off. Ty smiled like I was being a smart-­ass, but I was being about 85 percent 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 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, Liza had wanted to disband the phone-­sex ring. Hunter had been blackmailed by an unknown person into getting the evidence of Dean Xavier’s participation and Stefanie Grossman’s S&M file.

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

  “Violating stuffed animals, secret sex tapes, and hefty doses of Botox are right up the fraternity-­prank alley,” I said.

  “Sounds like a party,” Casey murmured.

  “You left out something,” Ty said when I was done. My mouth was dry, my cheek muscles were sore from talking so much. What could I have left out?

  “That black address book,” he said. ”The one that went missing from your apartment.”

  I brightened. “Oh. I found that.”

  Instead of being happy about that, Ty looked pissed. “Where?”

  I crinkled my nose. “Aubrey’s closet?” I said it that way because I knew that I’d get the whole Ty Hatfield, heavy sighing-­eye rolling-­head naggy thing for conducting “illegal searches” or something. “I was borrowing clothes, and I just happened to see it in her bureau,” I said defensively.

  Ty leaned back in his chair, his arms bent out at the sides of his head. I had seen him do that motion before, when I was in police custody. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling those experiences behind bars were going to forever affect my relationship with this man.

  “What do you have in mind?” he finally said.

  I smiled. “First, I need a black bodysuit.”

  IN THE END, I didn’t get to wear a black bodysuit with high-­tech gadgets on my belt and badass lace-­up boots. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t find some on my favorite shopping sites as soon as I got rid of the whole murder rap.

  No, we had argued and cajoled and negotiated and come up with the stupidest scheme. I want to go on the record officially and announce that this stupid scheme was the idea of one Officer Ty Hatfield.

  But just the first part was Ty’s idea. The second part was all mine. You’ll see which is which.

  Mandatory invitations went out to all of Panhellenic, under the auspices of the Panhellenic advisor. Once Ty called Amanda, she was only too happy to help out. After all, as she kept reminding us, she wasn’t going to be the Panhellenic advisor anymore. All five sororities were required to be in the G. G. Hankler Auditorium on campus to hear a presentation on the evils of Botox. And even though I was nervous about it, I made sure that all Delta Betas would be there. No Sutton sorority member was getting special treatment; except for Ainsley St. John, who, her sister told me, had a meeting at the Panhellenic offices.

  Even stupider, Casey was selected to give the presentation, he of the unlined brow and unnatural orange color. But he was the one with public-­relations experience, and he could whip up a convincing fifteen-­minute slideshow with very scary images yanked from the Internet.

  We all knew that this plan might not work, but it was our first step to identifying who, if any, were the other unknown sex operators in Liza’s ring. I’d gone on record suggesting that if it proved unsuccessful, we were pulling a sting on the fraternities next; in my opinion, there was still something fishy about these pranks on innocent women, and it looked like Ty agreed with me. Or at least, he nodded vigorously when I brought up the black bodysuit again.

  Ty sat in the front row of the auditorium, and I sat off to the side, on the stage, so I could have a good view of the seats and the women occupying them.

  When all the sororities filed in, Casey went to the mic and introduced himself as Dr. Casey Kenny, Plastic Surgeon to the Stars. An alias and a glamorous fake job? Casey had all the fun.

  Right away, the first slide was shocking. Apparently, Botox was some kind of paralyzing agent. Which was really scary, especially with what had happened to Liza and Stefanie.

  Then Casey used some facts and figures, blah blah blah.
Then he got into the good stuff. He flipped a slide, and it showed a world-­renowned actress in a recent action-­adventure movie. The picture was from a scene where she was screaming that her lover was shot. Her face was contorted in every painful way except for her forehead.

  Then he showed a young starlet, barely twenty-­two, shiny and plastic-­y. “Your age,” Casey pointed out with a delightfully dire tone in his voice. “And that’s with photoshop.”

  Something about seeing the unnatural face on a huge projection screen really made you think. Personally, I wondered how she got her pores so small.

  After another slide or two that caused some of the sorority women to gasp and cringe, I nodded to Ty. There really wasn’t a reason to let this go on so long except that Ty felt strongly that Botox was dangerous, given the murders and everything.

  In the front row, he acknowledged my signal, and surreptitiously pressed a button on his cell phone. We weren’t sure how long this part was going to take, so we waited, as Casey pointed out another Botox horror story that made a few Betas in the back cry.

  Then it started happening. When Ty had pressed the button, it had started a redial of the phone-­sex hotline. He had programmed it to redial every thirty seconds, knowing that when the hotline picked up, it would forward the call to another and another available operator. Sooner or later, if there were phone-­sex operators in our auditorium, we would know. No college woman could ignore her phone for that long.

  A phone rang in the Beta section, hastily answered. Another Beta had her phone on vibrate, but she checked her screen. Two Epsilon Chis got theirs out. A Tri Mu grabbed her phone and acted like she was leaving to take the call. And yes, I saw two Delta Betas receive calls.

  Some of them could be coincidences. But not all of them. My heart sank, knowing that we had just added more sisters and friends to the ever-­growing suspect list.

  Then the unthinkable happened. Another phone rang, loudly. I recognized the ring tone. Beyoncé was singing in my purse.

  I jerked the phone out and saw an unknown caller ID. My head jerked up to see Ty’s inscrutable gaze. This was not happening.

  As we had decided, Casey informed the audience that there had been a threat and that they’d need to exit in a single-­file line out the back. What he didn’t tell them was that police officers would ask those who had been seen with their phones to step to the side.

  I had to do the same. I had a sick feeling in my stomach. Everything clicked into place. Accidents took on a whole other meaning. Little things that I had ignored were really big, important things.

  I didn’t have to walk to Ty. He was next to me in a moment. For some reason, I handed him my cell phone. “You have to go to the Panhellenic offices,” I managed to say through my rising nausea.

  “Why?”

  “Because Ainsley St. John is about to be murdered.”

  Ty grabbed a radio from his belt and called a code in. “I need someone at Sutton Student Center, Panhellenic offices looking for Ainsley St. John.”

  He gave me a hard look, and I held up a hand to stop him from saying whatever he was about to say.

  “I promise I’ll tell you everything. But you have to make sure that Ainsley St. John stays alive.”

  Casey stepped up. “I’ll make sure Margot doesn’t leave the country.”

  That didn’t have the effect on Ty that Casey intended. He paused, gave us a very intimidating look, turned, and jogged off the stage. I hoped he could stop an attempted murder. For Ainsley’s sake, and for mine.

  Chapter Forty

  CASEY AND I stood alone on the stage of the auditorium together, silent for several minutes. Which had to be a new record for us.

  “Margot,” he finally said slowly. “Were you …”

  “NO!”

  “But your—­”

  “NO.”

  Another long pause. “Good. Because you really suck at phone sex.”

  I shot him my you-­better-­not-­be-­taking-­the-­last-­brownie look.

  “I heard you, remember? When we accidentally called that professor?”

  Yeah, I remembered. And he was right, I would be just horrible at phone sex. But I didn’t want that to be my argument in front of a jury.

  Everything looked bad for me, right now. Every. Single. Thing. I could only pray that Sutton’s finest got to the Panhellenic office in time.

  “Do you want to talk?” Casey asked. I loved that about him.

  I shook my head.

  “What do you want to do? Besides head for the Canadian border?”

  I thought for a moment before I had the perfect plan.

  After returning to the chapter advisors apartment, I leaned my head on Casey’s shoulder on the little love seat in the chapter advisor’s apartment. We had Milano cookies, beverages topped off with Casey’s magically refilling flask, and an episode of Project Runway. Nothing was more reassuring than Tim Gunn. Even when a garment was a disaster waiting to happen, Tim Gunn could see a way out of it. It was a much better message for me now than my other favorite show. On Law & Order, someone was either dead or locked up at the end of each episode. Not what I wanted to think about.

  When my phone rang, I nearly jumped out of my cozy honeybee slippers. I listened to the short message, hung up, and looked at Casey, who was waiting with inquisitive eyebrows.

  “I’ve been summoned,” I said. “And I’ve already worn all my innocent clothes to the police station.”

  Casey took the challenge seriously. When I walked through the doors of the Sutton police station, I was styled by Casey Kenner. My trusty black skinny jeans were an obvious choice. The high-­heeled boots were mine. The black-­leather blazer he borrowed from Kelli on the second floor. The gold Delta Beta T-­shirt with the black Greek letters topped off the ensemble. Make it work, Delta Beta style.

  Ty Hatfield met me at the front door, his blue eyes sweeping over me with some kind of amusement.

  “How’s Ainsley,” I asked first. I really did care about that, first and foremost.

  “Alive and well, thanks to you.”

  I let out some air I’d been holding since I first put the pieces together there on the stage.

  “Campus security found her cornered in the Panhellenic offices, a syringe full of Botox pointed at her neck.”

  “Oh God,” I breathed, my hand reaching out to steady myself. I couldn’t help but think of how, a few minutes later, Aubrey would have lost her only sister.

  “And?” Ty knew what I was asking. He nodded his head for me to follow him, and I did, down the same hall that led to his office, but we passed it, going farther, then right down another hall. That’s when I saw it. The two-­way mirror. The cops drinking coffee and watching the scene unfold inside the interrogation room. I actually felt my heart go pitter-­patter. It was exactly like I had imagined it would be.

  And then I saw inside the interrogation room and my same pitter-­pattering heart stopped and sank like a stone.

  “You knew it was her, didn’t you?” Ty’s voice was low and kind in my ear. Neither his voice nor the fact that he was right made this any better.

  I nodded. I had known. It hadn’t meant that I hadn’t prayed that I was wrong.

  Sitting in the interrogation room, her hands twisting in front of her, was Amanda Jennifer Cohen, my big sister.

  Chapter Forty-­one

  TY TOOK MY elbow and led me into a nearby office. The lights flipped on when we walked in. “It all made sense when my phone rang,” I told him. “Until then, I thought I was just having bad luck. That all these things were just accidentally pointing to me, setting me up. But when the phone rang, I knew someone had deliberately been setting me up to make it look like I was the killer.”

  I smiled at Ty sadly. “And Amanda was the only one who knew why we were calling all the sororities together. I need to go talk to her. Will you let me?”

  Ty wasn’t sure. “If I let you go in and talk to her, there’s no privilege or confidentiality. Everything
in that room can be used in a court of law.” I wondered if he was worried about Amanda’s confessing something, or if he thought that I would.

  “It’s okay,” I assured him. “I won’t confess to anything you don’t already know about.”

  When I walked into the interrogation room, Amanda smiled at me. It was a habit, I realized. Something she did, not something she felt.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked, when I settled into the metal chair across from her.

  Her fingers stopped squeezing each other for just a moment. “Remember when I was a senior and the chapter’s representative for the Miss Greek pageant?” I nodded. She continued, “And the Beta Gams and Moos joined forces and bought that ad in the Sutton Eagle implying that the Debs used drugs to stay skinny? You and I marched down to the newspaper offices and bribed the editor with a cute wrapped gift basket full of alcohol to get him to collect all the editions off campus so the Delta Beta name would be protected.”

  I remembered.

  “It was like that,” she said. “Liza was going to tell everyone about the phone-­sex line. She had called Mabel Donahue. She threatened to go to the Sutton chancellor’s office. And then Liza said she was going to tell the Delta Beta Sisterhood Mentor when she arrived. I had to protect Delta Beta.”

  The queasiness came back in my stomach. “That’s not like what we did in college, Amanda. ­People were hurt. ­People died.”

  She did a little eye roll.

  “What happened, Amanda?” So much was wrapped up in that question for me.

  “I heard a Beta Gam gossiping about a really great way to make some cash. I followed the trail and found out it was Liza,” she said, like we were gossiping about old friends from college. “I came out to her then. As a Delta Beta sister, I couldn’t approve what was going on.” Amanda flinched at the memory. “Then she cut me in.”

  I put a hand to my mouth. “A bribe?”

  Amanda’s expression pleaded for understanding. “Do you know what that was like for me? Finally becoming successful? The purses, the shoes? Not having to worry about money? Margot, sometimes the line brought in $3k a night.”