Rushing to die, p.15
Rushing to Die, page 15
I crossed my arms. “You asked me for help, and when I give it to you, you mock me.”
Ty’s lips flipped up a bit. “Thank you. I appreciate the tip.” He weighed the thumb drive in his hand and shook his head. “I still can’t believe—”
“That the Delta Betas had the forethought to install security cameras around Greek Row?”
“Security. Yeah.”
That was my story, and I was sticking to it. Really, we should get an award or something. Sutton Panhellenic Crime-Fighting Chapter of the Year. If we ever got off probation, I was sure that was going to happen.
I nodded at the drive in his hand. “If you need any help with that, I’m sure Zoe can help you out.”
“How many days have you had these cameras up?”
“Just since Sunday.”
“Anything interesting that you’ve noticed?” He held up a hand. “Besides mean boys giving you a hard time?”
I thought of Ginnifer and Von Douton’s meeting. It looked really bad, but it wasn’t the kind of thing Ty was looking for. “Just the usual. The stinky cheese and the blue lilies and the Internet hacking. From our feeds, we saw the Lambda sisters sneaking into the Tri Mu house to plant the cheese and the Moos waylaying the florist’s truck to dye the Beta Gam lilies blue.”
“What about the ingenious plot to reverse-filter the Lambdas’ Internet router to only show porn?”
Of course he’d pay close attention to that one. “We’re not sure; it was probably done remotely.”
“By a highly skilled Internet genius in the Delta Beta house?”
I gasped when I realized he meant Zoe. “No!” And made a mental note to ask her later.
“Anyway,” I said to get back on track, “I think I need to look at the Witness glasses’ card again.”
He flipped on his computer screen, and, a few moments later, I saw what I’d thought I see. “There!” I pointed at the lilies in the background of the footage shot by Shannon Bender. “We thought those were irises, remember?”
“Sure we did,” Ty said. Typical male, pretending he knew anything about flowers.
“But that would be odd because clearly, from the clothes of everyone else in the frame, this was shot either in the winter or late fall. Look at the jeans and boots and the girl in the Patagonia jacket, here.” I pointed at the corner.
Ty squinted. “How did you—That’s just a black jacket.”
I didn’t have time to explain everything to a man who couldn’t distinguish Patagonia from North Face from a hundred feet away, and refrained from asking him how he got to be a police officer. “Irises don’t bloom in January, and besides, she’s clearly in a Lambda sorority house because of that needlepoint crest there on the wall, but it’s not the one at Sutton because the Sutton Lambdas don’t have green wallpaper in their music room, they have soft rose walls and—”
“Blythe! Spit it out!”
“I’m trying to!” I took a deep breath. “Those aren’t irises.” I nodded at the screen. “They’re dyed lilies. Like the dyed lilies here.”
Comprehension began to dawn on Ty’s face. “That’s another chapter …”
“Where the same prank was pulled,” I confirmed.
“According to her parents, Shannon Bender graduated from Oregon at the end of the fall semester. They said she’d been home with them since then and just left to visit friends before she was going to find a temp job before grad school started.”
“We need to call the Lambda chapter at Oregon and find out if they were the victims of the lily dye job.”
“And then what?”
“We know Shannon Bender didn’t orchestrate both because she was murdered before the lilies were dyed here.”
“So Shannon might have had a friend here who carried out the plans for the flowers?” Ty sounded like he couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. And he wasn’t getting the point, at all.
“We already know who dyed the Lambda lilies!” I reached for the thumb drive on the desk, the one I’d just given him. “We know the Moos did it! Shannon Bender was a Moo! She obviously came here to visit her Moo friends and help them with rush, and someone in that house killed her!”
“I just questioned the Moo—I mean Tri Mu—chapter yesterday. No one recognized Shannon Bender’s picture.”
I pushed the drive back in his palm. “There. That’s all the evidence you need to put the entire Tri Mu chapter behind bars.”
“Margot … I need more than some pictures of flowers to arrest sixty people.”
“Sixty?” I scoffed. “There’s no way that chapter has more than forty-five women. They haven’t made quota in two years.”
“I interviewed sixty women yesterday.”
I quickly did the math. “Those ho-bags have been illegally rushing! I am so reporting this to the Recruitment Council.” To pledge women outside the confines of formal recruitment was one of the biggest sins at a small Panhellenic like the one at Sutton. We had rules, gosh darn it. Lots of rules, all written to ensure everyone was on an even playing field.
“I thought you wanted them behind bars.”
“That, too,” I muttered.
Ty sighed and looked at the ceiling. “I never knew sorority rush was this dirty.”
No longer caring that I was speaking to a police officer, I let my anger get the better of me. “They are so going down.”
“You know, it’s not an open-and-shut case. We’re getting anonymous tips from everywhere about the murders.”
Something in his voice made me pause and give him all my attention. “Like what?”
“Like anonymous tips about sorority sisters being outside their house after curfew.”
As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. “I tried waiting in the lobby, but no one came.”
It was Callie, dressed as I hadn’t seen in her in days. Gone was her rush-week work wear of fleeces, tees, and jeans. In their place was her usual Callie Campbell style—slim wool trousers and a perfectly pressed oxford shirt with her mother’s string of pearls at her throat and at her ears. Her perfectly curled hair and groomed eyebrows made me feel a little self-conscious that I had run off to the police in my casual state. Delta Betas should always put some effort in, especially while meeting with law enforcement.
“What are you doing here, Callie?”
She looked between me and Ty. “I was called in for an interview?”
My hands went to my hips as I glared at Ty. “Did you think you were really going to get away with interviewing one of my girls without notifying me?”
“Hope springs eternal, Blythe.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
I HAD NEVER, ever allowed Lieutenant Ty Hatfield to conduct illegal searches, seizures, or interviews of my Debs without my presence, and he darn well knew it. I took my responsibilities as their mentor/advisor/honorary big sister extremely seriously. If their parents were not around, I was going to be there, in a quasi-legal capacity.
Two questions into Ty’s interview of Callie, I knew exactly where this was going. “Really? You called her in because of an anonymous tip? On Law & Order, they always ignore those—they’re from psychics and other crazy people.”
“This one was very specific.”
I crossed my arms and waited because there was no way in heck my sweet Callahan Campbell, a direct descendant of Mary Gerald Callahan, for goodness’ sake, would have broken rule number four and left the Deb house after curfew.
Ty continued, “This one said that at or about four in the morning, you left your room on the third floor of the Delta Beta house, exited out the northwest back door, and proceeded to run around the block, switching up the chapters’ Greek letters outside their houses.”
That was really specific. I said, “That is ridiculous.”
“Did you—”
“Objection!” I said. Callie opened her mouth, then closed it when I glared at both of them.
“Ms. Blythe …” Oooh. “Ms.” only scared me when it was from someone younger than me. I was not intimidated by Lieutenant Ty Hatfield.
“Do you know who this is?” I wrapped my arm around Callie.
“Callahan Campbell, I hope.”
“Exactly! She’s Callahan Campbell, the chapter’s standards and morals director. She’s an excellent role model who’s never broken a sorority rule in her life.” Callie bit her lip.
Ty raised his eyebrows. “Wasn’t she the one having an illicit affair with the house brother last semester—”
“Okay, really—”
“And was recorded having sex in your office?”
Callie winced. “You’ve gone too far,” I said.
“You brought up her character.”
Darn him and his accuracy. “Even if she did leave the house and go for an early-morning run, which is an excellent health habit, by the way, and one which we should be commending her for when obesity strikes far too many beautiful, successful college women—what does that have to do with anything?”
Ty speared me with a sharp stare. “Daria Cantrell was murdered at approximately four in the morning. Which makes Ms. Campbell either a potential witness to the crime or a possible suspect.”
I stood up, yanking Callie’s arm with me. “We’re done. Come on Callie, let’s go.”
“I’m not done,” Ty said, his voice rising a little as he also stood behind his desk.
“Are you accusing her of something? Is she being arrested? Based on an anonymous tip?”
“No, but—”
I held up a finger. “After all the help I’ve given you today, this is how you repay me?”
“Margot, I have to look at everyone, not just the suspects you give me.”
I pushed Callie toward the door. Ty called out behind me, “I don’t arrest people just because you tell me to!”
“And I don’t sit down and shut up just because you tell me to!” I yelled back over my shoulder.
It might not have been the most ladylike thing I’ve ever said, but it was probably the truest.
BACK IN THE safety of the Delta Beta house, I marched Callie into my apartment living area. “Spill,” I ordered her.
She twisted her hands, and when she turned her big brown eyes at me, I knew.
“Callie!” I exclaimed.
“It was hilarious!”
“You broke rule number four!”
“I didn’t see anyone, and no one saw me!”
“Someone did and knew what time you left and what door you went through. Unless …” A crazy thought entered my head. “That was all just made up?” Maybe it was a psychic’s lucky guess that someone named Callie Campbell left the Delta Beta house at 4 A.M.
“No, that was all correct.”
“The northwest back door?”
She nodded glumly. The Delta Beta house sat at the end of the street and backed up to a greenbelt and the Sutton College golf course. It was probably one reason so many people dropped dead bodies in our backyard—it was very private. The northwest back door faced the woods. Unless someone was sitting in the woods watching us in the middle of the night (and that would be supercreepy), that meant …
I covered my mouth with my hand. This couldn’t be happening again. Callie saw my distress and asked what was wrong. I briefly debated telling her my suspicions, but since her name had been reported to the police, I thought she deserved to know.
“It had to be someone on the inside who saw you leave.”
Callie’s eyes narrowed. “Ginnifer.”
“Don’t leap to conclusions,” I warned her, but I had to admit, I had the same thought. Little Miss Follow the Rules would have had a fit if she’d seen Callie leave the house during curfew. And that was why it also didn’t make sense.
“Why didn’t she report you to Panhellenic, then? Why did she make an anonymous tip to the police?”
“Because she hates me. She hates the whole chapter.”
I can see why Callie thought that. The Gineral had definitely earned her nickname.
“Has anyone seen her?” I asked, trying to think all this through.
Callie shook her head no. I moved to the computer and paused as a terrible notion hit me.
“You really ran around the block and switched everyone’s letters?”
Callie’s adorable dimples flashed at me. “It’s funny.”
Under normal circumstances, she would have been right. But her midnight prank had, in all likelihood, been captured by our security cameras’ footage. Footage that we had just handed over to the Sutton PD.
Sometimes being the Crime-Fighting Chapter of the Year had its definite disadvantages.
Before I did anything crazy, like accusing Ginnifer of narcing to the cops about our beloved S&M director, I went to the corner of the backyard to double-check the vantage points. Walking in an arc confirmed that unless someone was lurking about under the tree cover, there was no accidental way to see Callie sneaking out of the house last night. I would ask Zoe to check our cameras, but they wouldn’t be able to see into the woods. Maybe next year, we should talk about upgrading to an infrared system.
I was walking back inside when my phone blew up—and judging from the sounds I simultaneously heard from the house, everyone had been alerted to some kind of drama. I said a silent prayer to the patron saint of long-suffering chapter advisors and prepared myself for the worst. As soon as I heard “GreekGossip,” I knew I’d found it.
GreekGossip.net was the nastiest, filthiest, lie-infested Web site on the Internet. The message boards were crawling with trolls and fraternity guys who probably looked like trolls, spewing sexist, elitist, racist, every kind of bad-ist vitriol about sororities. Each college had its own forum for Internet meanies to post polls like “Which chapter is the sluttiest?” and “Who has the ugliest pledge class?” The site was a stewpot of negativity; and everyone who pledged anywhere read it regularly.
I didn’t read GreekGossip.net because I liked it. I read it to stay on top of the rumors and the public perceptions about the chapter. For instance, when our previous chapter advisor was murdered three months ago in the midst of rumors of a phone-sex ring, my best friend Casey Kenner, the PR genius, and I had stayed up all night long posting on the boards, shooting down the gossip about Delta Beta—and adding red herrings about other chapters, just for fun.
So when I walked inside the house, and the entire chapter was buzzing about a new thread on GreekGossip.net, I knew that it was probably a bunch of lies. But that messiness could still be a huge pain in the seat of my lululemon yoga pants.
I walked straight to the kitchen and poured what was left in the coffeepot into a cute Delta Beta mug emblazoned with our mascot, Busy Bee. There was no time for a much-needed latte. Our day off from formal recruitment was more dramatic than a day full of preplanned conversation and supercute coordinated outfits.
Aubrey, Asha, and Zoe were clustered around a laptop in the dining room. I pulled out a chair across from them. “How bad is it?”
“For whom?” Asha asked.
I perked up a little at that. It was actually a good sign that no one was in hysterics. Maybe it meant that the GreekGossip.net trolls had decided to pick on another chapter for once. When Asha read the posting aloud, there was almost nothing I found offensive. Another first from GreekGossip.
“The Sutton College Tri Mu chapter is really the lowest of the low,” Asha read. I sipped my coffee. So far, so good.
“Their rush tactics show that they are a desperate, skanky bunch of ho-bags who couldn’t rush their way out of a Walmart bag,” Asha continued.
“Wow,” Aubrey said. “That’s harsh.”
None of us corrected her. Aubrey’s twin sister was president of the Tri Mus, so we tried to be tactful in her presence.
“The whole row has today off,” I observed. “Some Beta Gam or Epsilon chick got bored and decided to start something.” I didn’t really see what the fuss was about. It was more of the same for GreekGossip.
Asha shook her head. “It wasn’t started by a sorority member.”
“A frat guy?” I asked. It wasn’t unheard of, the fraternities got a kick out of starting stuff with sororities, as they did with the annual prank wars in the fall.
“If Nick Holden is in a fraternity.”
Crap. I swiveled the laptop toward me and saw that a user named Nick Holden had started a topic on GreekGossip: Tell the Truth about Sororities.
“WHY?” I asked no one in particular, but Aubrey answered anyway.
“I heard he’s had trouble getting people to cooperate with his interviews.”
That made sense, given that it was rush and the Mafia had essentially threatened anyone who participated in his journalistic strategies. “But this is the way he gets his scoop?” I asked no one, again. It seemed desperate and shoddy.
Then Asha kept reading. “ ‘The Tri Mu hired rush consultant is a beyotch who travels around the country starting shit with other chapters. This shows you what kind of people the Moos are. They purposely brought this beyotch in to divide Sutton Panhellenic like she did at the last schools she went to. At the University of Oregon, Colorado State, Tufts, Immaculate Conception, and more, she has done horrible things to people.’ ” The post ended with “Don’t pledge MU MU MU or you will be joining the biggest bitches ever!”
I flinched a few times during the rant. It got pretty specific about some other aspects of Sheila, speculating about her weight (unfair) and her nose job (totally up for debate). I knew if it were our chapter singled out, we would be worried about rushees reading it and the negative PR impact. But in the end, anyone who knew anything about sororities also knew that the stuff on GreekGossip was 90 percent bull. Surely, Sheila DeGrasse had heard worse over the course of her storied and evil career.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“THEY SAID WHAT?” I screamed at the laptop screen.
It didn’t take long for the Tri Mus to rally on GreekGossip.net. They really had way too much time on their hands if all they were doing was sitting around reading this stupid Web site.
